Search This Blog

Friday, September 28, 2012

WOMEN / FAITH: Vatican highlights female doctors of the Church

Vatican newspaper highlights female doctors of the Church

CWN - September 27, 2012

L'Osservatore Romano has published a special insert devoted to the women doctors of the Church.

Pope Paul VI declared St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena doctors of the Church in 1970, and Blessed John Paul II declared St. Thérèse of Lisieux a doctor in 1997. Pope Benedict will confer the honor upon St. Hildegard of Bingen in October.

"We have chosen to dedicate to them, to these scholars, September's insert to put emphasis on how important culturally and intellectually the contribution of these women has been to the history of the Christian tradition," writes journalist Ritanna Armeni. "And to break another misconception about women and the Church: that women religious have a strictly assisting role, a role of self-denial; that they are tied to the concrete duty of organizing daily life, tied to humble manual labor. As for the rest, at least in the realm of culture and doctrine, they give or have given very little. Of course, that is not true."

"The story of many women, of many saints and many religious proves it," she added. "They knew how to love and understand, how to stimulate renewal and the development of doctrine, invent forms and expressions of the faith, to build and not only guard tradition."


Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Pope's choices for Synod participants

Analyzing the Pope's choices for Synod participants

2 4Google +0Delicious0

CWN - September 24, 2012

Sandro Magister of L'Espresso analyzes the list of prelates appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as members of the approaching Synod of Bishops. He concludes that the Pontiff named some bishops to "balance" the choices of the world's episcopal conferences, while others were probably chosen because the Pope has a particular respect for their opinions.


Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Jesus requires a new way of thinking

Jesus requires a new way of thinking, Pope tells audience

 0 0Google +0Delicious0

CWN - September 24, 2012

At his Sunday public audience on September 23, Pope Benedict XVI reminded the faithful that to follow Jesus entail adopting a new way of thinking, and abandoning earthly pride.

Reflecting on the day's reading from St. Mark's Gospel, the Holy Father observed that the apostles had not yet made that necessary change in outlook. "It is clear that a great interior distance separates Jesus and his disciples," the Pope said. "They are, so to speak, on two different wavelengths, and so the words of the Master are either not understood, or understood only superficially."

The Pope pointed to St. Peter—who, after a powerful confession of faith in Christ, recoiled at the idea that Jesus would be put to death. Soon thereafter the apostles were discussing "which of them was greatest." And then they wanted to keep little children away from Jesus. All these episodes showed that they were clinging on an old way of thinking.

The lesson to be learned, the Pope told the crowd in the courtyard of his summer residence, is that "following the Lord always requires a profound conversion on the part of man."


Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

SSPX - Vatican Talks remain difficult

SSPX spokesman explains remaining difficulties in talks with Vatican

CWN - September 21, 2012

A spokesman for the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has said that the group declined a Vatican offer of reconciliation because of a requirement that the traditionalists must acknowledge both the validity of the Novus Ordo Mass and the continuity between Vatican II and previous Catholic doctrinal statements.

Father Franz Schmidberger, the German superior of the SSPX, said that these two requirements had been added after the SSPX had nearly reached agreement with the Vatican on a "doctrinal preamble" that would have provided the basis for a reconciliation agreement. Father Schmidberger said that the SSPX could not accept the statement that the teachings of Vatican II are in continuity with the teachings of previous Church councils, since the group sees flat contradictions.

Father Schmidberger hinted that the two added requirements had been added to the "doctrinal preamble" by Cardinal William Levada, who at the time was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). But he gave no reason for optimism that the new CDF prefect, Archbishop Gerhard Müller, would be more inclined to favor reconciliation with the SSPX. In fact Archbishop Müller has not been forthcoming in his dealings with traditionalists, he said.


Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

Friday, September 21, 2012

WOMEN / U.S.A. : In secret service of the Sacred Heart

In secret service of the Sacred Heart
Thursday, September 20, 2012 20:04
 
By Craig Bowman
Born sometime between 1833 and 1848 in Hannibal, Missouri, Julia Greeley was freed during the Civil War although we don't know if she was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation or if her master set her free of his own accord. All we know of her parents is their first names, George and Cerilda. As for her own name, it is "most likely that Julia took the name Greeley from Horace Greeley, who endeared himself to many black people…by strongly urging Lincoln to emancipate the slaves."
She had every right to be bitter and angry. An African American ex-slave who didn't even know her birth year, she endured discrimination all her life. She suffered a lifetime of illiteracy and poverty. Yet, she responded to her life's hardships with tireless charity and hidden acts of kindness.
Fr. Blaine Burkey, O.F.M.Cap., of St. Francis Friary in Denver, writes a powerful historical documentary about Julia Greeley, "In Secret Service of the Sacred Heart." It is the story of an old, one-eyed black woman who appeared to be homeless and dressed in shabby clothes. At the same time, the account is naturally interwoven with early Colorado history, including the establishment of Denver's earliest Catholic churches and parishes, and the work of Colorado's first three bishops, Machebeuf, Matz and Tihen. The 140-page volume is stuffed with such historical persons, places and events that are familiar to Colorado natives and students of the state's history.
Yet, even a simple sequence of events in Greeley's life isn't simple at all. As with many heroic lives, the legends abound – and that's the problem. So, about a year ago, Fr. Burkey launched a painstaking effort to separate fact from fiction. For instance, shortly after her death, the "Rocky Mountain News" reported that "Julia came to Colorado with the second Mrs. Gilpin." As he does throughout the book, Fr. Burkey underlines that passage and notes that Julia "did not come to Denver with Mrs. Gilpin, and Mrs. Gilpin was not the governor's second wife; he was her second husband." This fact-checking is important to us as readers because, as we read Julia Greeley's life, we want to see as accurate a history of the times as possible.
Julia brought herself to Denver between 1878 and 1880. That same year, she lived with and worked for the former territorial governor, William Gilpin and his wife, Julia. The marriage was not a happy one, and Julia Greeley was dragged into the affair during an acrimonious and highly publicized divorce trial.
The rich Colorado history Julia Greeley witnessed barely fits into the book. The Catholic Church in Colorado grew up in front of her. In 1879, St. Elizabeth's Parish was established, and in 1887, it was staffed by Franciscan Friars. A year later, after Sacred Heart Church was founded and staffed by Jesuits, Julia was received into the Catholic Church by Fr. Charles Ferrari, S.J. On and off, Julia worked as cook or housekeeper for the Jesuits at Sacred Heart Church, and from the day she was baptized to the day she died, she attended Mass there.
Here's where the historical narrative fades into the background, and a miracle begins. Shortly after her conversion, Julia joined the League of the Sacred Heart, an organization dedicated to prayer and charitable works. One of the basics of her own spirituality was to place all of the day's activities into secret service of the Sacred Heart. Specifically and intentionally, Julia Greeley performed her numerous acts of charity covertly. Even though she earned only $15 a month, she gave away all but her rent money. When those funds ran out, she would beg for money or food to help the poor.
More than once, she was subject to scams. When asked why she still trusted people after such fraud, she replied that she would rather take the risk of being defrauded than to neglect even one poor person.
She often provided help to people who would be ashamed to accept help from "one-eyed Julia." Local artist Isiah McGill depicts Julia Greeley's secret charity in a scene painted for the book's cover, capturing its title. A cabin stands in a dark, cold night with a woman holding a sack of potatoes, wondering who put it on her porch. Julia has placed it there but soon realizes that the potatoes might freeze. So, she sends a child to knock on the door and run. "But don't dast say Old Julia sent ya." Julia and the child are hiding behind the backyard fence. The fireman's helmet on the child recalls Julia's dedication to Denver's firemen to whom she delivered literature about the Sacred Heart at every Denver station.
Julia Greeley died on First Friday, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, June 7, 1918 on her way to Mass.
Fr. Blaine Burkey, O.F.M. Cap, and others who know Greeley's story, hope that the recent publication of his historical documentary on her life will "make both her story and cause more widely known."
 
Father Blaine Burkey's book, "In Secret Service of the Sacred Heart," is available locally at Gerkins, Erger, and the Tattered Cover bookstores. It is also for sale at the Cardinal Stafford Library and may be ordered at the Julia Greeley website: juliagreeleyguild@gmail.com

 

From: jc3schmi@hotmail.com
Subject: WOMEN / U.S.A. : In secret service of the Sacred Heart
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2012 08:27:10 -0600

September 20, 2012
In secret service of the Sacred Heart
By Craig Bowman *

By Craig Bowman *
Born sometime between 1833 and 1848 in Hannibal, Missouri, Julia Greeley was freed during the Civil War although we don't know if she was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation or if her master set her free of his own accord. All we know of her parents is their first names, George and Cerilda. As for her own name, it is "most likely that Julia took the name Greeley from Horace Greeley, who endeared himself to many black people...by strongly urging Lincoln to emancipate the slaves."
She had every right to be bitter and angry. An African American ex-slave who didn't even know her birth year, she endured discrimination all her life. She suffered a lifetime of illiteracy and poverty. Yet, she responded to her life's hardships with tireless charity and hidden acts of kindness.
Fr. Blaine Burkey, O.F.M.Cap., of St. Francis Friary in Denver, writes a powerful historical documentary about Julia Greeley, "In Secret Service of the Sacred Heart." It is the story of an old, one-eyed black woman who appeared to be homeless and dressed in shabby clothes. At the same time, the account is naturally interwoven with early Colorado history, including the establishment of Denver's earliest Catholic churches and parishes, and the work of Colorado's first three bishops, Machebeuf, Matz and Tihen. The 140-page volume is stuffed with such historical persons, places and events that are familiar to Colorado natives and students of the state's history.
Yet, even a simple sequence of events in Greeley's life isn't simple at all. As with many heroic lives, the legends abound – and that's the problem. So, about a year ago, Fr. Burkey launched a painstaking effort to separate fact from fiction. For instance, shortly after her death, the "Rocky Mountain News" reported that "Julia came to Colorado with the second Mrs. Gilpin." As he does throughout the book, Fr. Burkey underlines that passage and notes that Julia "did not come to Denver with Mrs. Gilpin, and Mrs. Gilpin was not the governor's second wife; he was her second husband." This fact-checking is important to us as readers because, as we read Julia Greeley's life, we want to see as accurate a history of the times as possible.
Julia brought herself to Denver between 1878 and 1880. That same year, she lived with and worked for the former territorial governor, William Gilpin and his wife, Julia. The marriage was not a happy one, and Julia Greeley was dragged into the affair during an acrimonious and highly publicized divorce trial.
The rich Colorado history Julia Greeley witnessed barely fits into the book. The Catholic Church in Colorado grew up in front of her. In 1879, St. Elizabeth's Parish was established, and in 1887, it was staffed by Franciscan Friars. A year later, after Sacred Heart Church was founded and staffed by Jesuits, Julia was received into the Catholic Church by Fr. Charles Ferrari, S.J. On and off, Julia worked as cook or housekeeper for the Jesuits at Sacred Heart Church, and from the day she was baptized to the day she died, she attended Mass there.
Here's where the historical narrative fades into the background, and a miracle begins. Shortly after her conversion, Julia joined the League of the Sacred Heart, an organization dedicated to prayer and charitable works. One of the basics of her own spirituality was to place all of the day's activities into secret service of the Sacred Heart. Specifically and intentionally, Julia Greeley performed her numerous acts of charity covertly. Even though she earned only $15 a month, she gave away all but her rent money. When those funds ran out, she would beg for money or food to help the poor.
More than once, she was subject to scams. When asked why she still trusted people after such fraud, she replied that she would rather take the risk of being defrauded than to neglect even one poor person.
She often provided help to people who would be ashamed to accept help from "one-eyed Julia." Local artist Isiah McGill depicts Julia Greeley's secret charity in a scene painted for the book's cover, capturing its title. A cabin stands in a dark, cold night with a woman holding a sack of potatoes, wondering who put it on her porch. Julia has placed it there but soon realizes that the potatoes might freeze. So, she sends a child to knock on the door and run. "But don't dast say Old Julia sent ya." Julia and the child are hiding behind the backyard fence. The fireman's helmet on the child recalls Julia's dedication to Denver's firemen to whom she delivered literature about the Sacred Heart at every Denver station.
Julia Greeley died on First Friday, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, June 7, 1918 on her way to Mass.
Fr. Blaine Burkey, O.F.M. Cap, and others who know Greeley's story, hope that the recent publication of his historical documentary on her life will "make both her story and cause more widely known."


Father Blaine Burkey's book, "In Secret Service of the Sacred Heart," is available locally at Gerkins, Erger, and the Tattered Cover bookstores. It is also for sale at the Cardinal Stafford Library and may be ordered at the Julia Greeley website: juliagreeleyguild@gmail.com

Craig Bowman is a Colorado native who grew up in Catholic schools, but taught in public schools in the Denver area for over 30 years. Both his bachelors and masters degrees are in English, the former from Metropolitan State College (1970) and the latter from the University of Denver (1978). At the same time he was teaching, he was writing bi-weekly columns for the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News and later, the Denver Post. Those columns, mostly about reform in the public schools, ran for about 15 years. For a few years, he wrote pieces for the Denver Catholic Register. Craig retired from teaching six years ago, but is back at St. John Vianney Seminary, operating the Writing Center and helping seminarians with writing their papers and theses. Craig also sits on the Board of Trustees for Mullen High School and for the Ridge View Academy.

WOMEN: ‘What Catholic Women Think About Faith, Conscience, and Contraception’

'What Catholic Women Think About Faith, Conscience, and Contraception'

0 0Google +0Delicious0

CWN - September 21, 2012

The Ethics and Public Policy Center has conducted a survey on Catholic women's attitudes towards contraception.

"Critics of the Church's teaching propose an image of Catholic women fiercely and forever opposed to the Church's teaching on contraception, and suggest (wrongly) that nearly all Catholic women use contraception," according to a preliminary report on the survey.

The report added:

Our research found that up to one-third of church-going Catholic women (26-33%, depending on the question) hold mistaken beliefs about the Church's teaching on contraception. For example, 33% of Catholic women incorrectly believe that the Church teaches that couples have the right to decide the moral acceptability of contraception regardless of Church teaching. When presented with an accurate description of the Church's teachings on family planning, many Catholic women show reluctance to completely reject the Church's teaching …

While few Catholic women overall (13%) completely accept the Church's teaching, that number doubles (27%) among young (18-34) women who attend church every week. And it climbs still higher among women who both attend Mass weekly and have been to confession within the past year—37% of these women completely accept the Church's teaching.


Thursday, September 20, 2012

SOCIETY / Mideast : Islamic University praises Pope for defending religion

Al Azhar University praises Pope for defending religion

CWN - September 20, 2012

 

A spokesman for Egypt's Al Azhar University has praised Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican for their statements defending the dignity of religious faith.

Mahmoud Azab of Al Azhar singled out the initial Vatican response to the unrest and Libya and Egypt following the release of the film, "Innocence of Muslims." That statement, condemning deliberate provocations against religious believers, was a sign of respect for all faiths, the Islamic spokesman said.

Azab said that Muslims should show a similar respect for Christian beliefs, and condemned the action of an Egyptian man who tore up a Bible during a recent public protest.

Al Azhar University, the leading academic institution in the Islamic world, has often engaged in dialogue with the Holy See. But the Egyptian university broke off talks with the Vatican amid the protests following Pope Benedict's Regensburg address. Azab said that the possible resumption of talks with the Vatican was a separate topic.


Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

EVANGELISATION: Church looks upon new ecclesial movements with ‘great hope’

Vatican cardinal: Church looks upon new movements with 'great hope' for Year of Faith

CWN - September 19, 2012

Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, the president of the Pontifical Council said that "the Church looks with great hope to the ecclesial movements and the new communities" (ie. FocolareSisters of Life) in the upcoming Year of Faith.

"These groups offer specific itineraries of faith generated by their respective charisms for the very purpose of living the faith in a new way, in the world's new social and cultural settings which surround us," said Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko. "They are itineraries of faith which make it possible to discover day after day the beauty of faith, which enables us to rediscover the 'taste for God.'"

Citing St. Matthew's Gospel, Cardinal Rylko added that

an urgent need is being felt to rediscover faith as that "hidden treasure," that "precious pearl," for which it is worth giving everything. Rediscovering faith must be a goal for all of us believers …

Many of the baptized, in fact, claim that faith is a heavy burden that stands in the way of enjoying life, or believe that the observance of the Commandments does not permit one to be fully free and happy. Faith is neither an obstacle nor a burden; rather, it is a precious gift that unfolds new and fascinating horizons in our life. We must rediscover faith as a true, deep encounter with God.


Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

CHURCH: New prefect for the CDF* discusses Church unity, clerical abuse

New prefect for the CDF* discusses Church unity, clerical abuse

* Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF)
 

CWN - September 19, 2012

"To reduce the tensions within the Church" is "my underlying aim," the new prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has told Vatican Radio.

"In many countries, there is a strong polarization: traditionalists against progressives or whatever you would call them," said Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller. "This must be overcome: we need to find a new and fundamental unity in the Church and individual countries."

He continued:

Unity in Christ, not a unity produced according to a program and later invoked by a partisan speaker. We are not a community of people aligned to a party program, or a community of scientific research, our unity is gifted to us.

We believe in the one Church united in Christ. And if you believe in Christ, really believe --not manipulating the teachings of the Church, or singling out individual points to support your own personal ideology, but rather unconditionally entrusting yourself to Christ--then the unity of the Church is also important. Then the Church will not be, as it is sometimes described in Scripture, torn apart by jealousy and ambition.

Archbishop Müller, whose congregation has been entrusted with the responsibility of disciplining priests who have committed sexual abuse against minors, also discussed the abuse crisis.

"Always and in every case, our first priority must be the people who suffered these terrible attacks," he said. "However, it is also important to deal with the perpetrators in order to be proactive in prevention; at the same time the dignity of the offender must be respected … In this area, both the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the individual dioceses are proceeding to act on this issue in a very coherent manner."


Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

MISSION: In Lebanon, Pope's presence was the message

In Lebanon, Pope Benedict's presence was the message


Young women wearing T-shirts with the number 16 for the current pope present a giant copy of the "YouCat" Catholic catechism for youth to Pope Benedict XVI during a meeting with young people in the square outside of the Maronite patriarch's residence in Bkerke, Lebanon, Sept. 15. (CNS/Paul Haring)

By Francis X. Rocca
Catholic News Service

BEIRUT (CNS) -- When Pope Benedict XVI stepped off the plane in Beirut Sept. 14, he said he had come to Lebanon, and to the Middle East in general, as a "pilgrim of peace." In five major talks over the next three days, the pope repeatedly called for peace and underscored the role of Christians in promoting it. Yet his most eloquent message of hope to the troubled region lay not in the diplomatic language of his public statements, but in his very presence and the response it evoked from his hosts.

Throughout his trip, Pope Benedict limited himself to general statements of principle on the most contentious political issues, and he avoided some topics altogether.

His insistence that religious freedom is a basic human right and a prerequisite for social harmony was a bold statement in the context of a region where most countries restrict and even prohibit the practice of any faith besides Islam. But like the document he came to Lebanon to present, a collection of his reflections on the 2010 special Synod of Bishops dedicated to Christians in the Middle East, the pope said nothing specific about where and how the region's Christians are regularly deprived of that right.

The pope twice the deplored the human cost of the civil war in neighboring Syria, but his only practical recommendation for an end to the fighting there was a neutral call to end the importation of military arms, which he called a "grave sin." With regard to religiously inspired violence, the pope made a single generic reference to terrorism and a possible allusion to the subject in the statement that "authentic faith does not lead to death."

Pope Benedict said nothing at all about the incendiary subject that dominated news coverage in the run-up to his trip: an American-made anti-Islamic film that had inspired often-violent protests in at least a dozen Muslim countries, including Lebanon.

Awareness of that furor no doubt heightened the caution with which the pope treated the most volatile topics during his trip. Ironically, the crisis may also have helped him to get his message across.

With turmoil over the movie spreading across the Middle East, the papal visit suddenly became a much more dramatic and thus more appealing story to the secular press, which probably gave it more coverage as a result, observed Msgr. John E. Kozar, president of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, who attended the papal events.

For the Lebanese, the pope's willingness to travel in spite of security concerns -- he told reporters on the plane from Rome that he had not considered canceling the trip and that no one had advised him to do so -- powerfully underscored his commitment to the country and the region.

"The mere fact that the Holy Father came at this difficult moment is an indication that Christians here are not forgotten," said Habib Malik, a professor of history at Lebanese American University.

The pope's visit served as a showcase for Lebanon, which for years was a model of peaceful coexistence and religious freedom in the Middle East. The show of enthusiasm across sectarian and political lines, in a nation still recovering from the 1975-90 civil war, was a dramatic statement of unity to the outside world and to the Lebanese themselves.

Epitomizing the welcome by Muslim leaders, Lebanon's grand mufti gave Pope Benedict a written message stating that "any attack on any Christian citizen is an attack on Islam." And as Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper reported Sept. 17, Lebanon President Michel Suleiman cited the unanimity among political factions over the weekend in arguing that the "way to capitalize on the pope's visit is via dialogue."

Pope Benedict would no doubt agree, while limiting his short-term expectations. As he told the president in his arrival speech, Lebanese society's "equilibrium, which is presented everywhere as an example, is extremely delicate. Sometimes it seems about to snap like a bow which is overstretched or submitted to pressures which are too often partisan, even selfish, contrary and extraneous to Lebanese harmony and gentleness."

What precisely those pressures might be, the pope prudently declined to say.

END

Monday, September 17, 2012

PROPOSITIONAL Faith / UK : The trouble with atheists

The trouble with atheists: a defence of faith

Francis Spufford has heard all the arguments against Christianity. He understands the objections of Dawkins and Hitchens and he realises it's a guess as to whether there's a God or not. But here he offers a defence of his faith

Athiest bus campaign
'There's something truly devoted about the way that Dawkinsites manage to
extract a stimulating hobby from the thought of other people's belief.' Photograph: Frank Baron
 

My daughter has just turned six. Some time over the next year or so, she will discover that her parents are weird. We're weird because we go to church.

  1. Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense
  2. by Francis Spufford
  3. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop
  1. Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book

This means as she gets older there'll be voices telling her what it means, getting louder and louder until by the time she's a teenager they'll be shouting right in her ear. It means that we believe in a load of bronze-age absurdities. That we fetishise pain and suffering. That we advocate wishy-washy niceness. That we're too stupid to understand the irrationality of our creeds. That we build absurdly complex intellectual structures on the marshmallow foundations of a fantasy. That we're savagely judgmental. That we'd free murderers to kill again. That we're infantile and can't do without an illusory daddy in the sky. That we destroy the spontaneity and hopefulness of children by implanting a sick mythology in young minds. That we teach people to hate their own natural selves. That we want people to be afraid. That we want people to be ashamed. That we have an imaginary friend, that we believe in a sky pixie; that we prostrate ourseves before a god who has the reality-status of Santa Claus. That we prefer scripture to novels, preaching to storytelling, certainty to doubt, faith to reason, censorship to debate, silence to eloquence, death to life.

But hey, that's not the bad news. Those are the objections of people who care enough about religion to object to it. Or to rent a set of recreational objections from Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. As accusations, they may be a hodge-podge, but at least they assume there's a thing called religion which looms with enough definition and significance to be detested. In fact there's something truly devoted about the way that Dawkinsites manage to extract a stimulating hobby from the thought of other people's belief. Some of them even contrive to feel oppressed by the Church of England, which is not easy to do. It must take a deft delicacy at operating on a tiny scale, like fitting a whole model railway layout into an attaché case.

No: the really painful message our daughter will receive is that we're embarrassing. For most people who aren't New Atheists, or old atheists, and have no passion invested in the subject, either negative or positive, believers aren't weird because we're wicked. We're weird because we're inexplicable; because, when there's no necessity for it that anyone sensible can see, we've committed ourselves to a set of awkward and absurd attitudes that obtrude, that stick out against the background of modern life, and not in some important or respectworthy or principled way, either. Believers are people who try to insert Jee-zus into conversations at parties; who put themselves down, with writhings of unease, for perfectly normal human behaviour; who are constantly trying to create a solemn hush that invites a fart, a hiccup, a bit of subversion. Believers are people who, on the rare occasions when you have to listen to them, like at a funeral or a wedding, seize the opportunity to pour the liquidised content of a primary-school nativity play into your earhole, apparently not noticing that childhood is over. And as well as being childish, and abject, and solemn, and awkward, we voluntarily associate ourselves with an old-fashioned, mildewed orthodoxy, an Authority with all its authority gone. Nothing is so sad – sad from the style point of view – as the mainstream taste of the day before yesterday.

What goes on inside believers is mysterious. So far as it can be guessed at it appears to be a kind of anxious pretending, a kind of continual, nervous resistance to reality. We don't seem to get it that the magic in Harry Potter, the rings and swords and elves in fantasy novels, the power-ups in video games, the ghouls and ghosts of Halloween, are all, like, just for fun. We try to take them seriously; or rather, we take our own particular subsection of them seriously. We commit the bizarre category error of claiming that our goblins, ghouls, Flying Spaghetti Monsters are really there, off the page and away from the CGI rendering programs. Star Trek fans and vampire wanabes have nothing on us. We actually get down and worship. We get down on our actual knees, bowing and scraping in front of the empty space where we insist our Spaghetti Monster can be found. No wonder that we work so hard to fend off common sense. Our fingers must be in our ears all the time – la la la, I can't hear you – just to keep out the sound of the real world.

The funny thing is that, to me, it's belief that involves the most uncompromising attention to the nature of things of which you are capable. Belief demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires continual, fluffy pretending – pretending that might as well be systematic, it's so thoroughly incentivised by our culture. Take the well-known slogan on the atheist bus in London. I know, I know, that's an utterance by the hardcore hobbyists of unbelief, but in this particular case they're pretty much stating the ordinary wisdom of everyday disbelief. The atheist bus says: "There's probably no God. So stop worrying and enjoy your life." All right: which word here is the questionable one, the aggressive one, the one that parts company with recognisable human experience so fast it doesn't even have time to wave goodbye? It isn't "probably". New Atheists aren't claiming anything outrageous when they say that there probably isn't a God. In fact they aren't claiming anything substantial at all, because, really, how would they know? It's as much of a guess for them as it is for me. No, the word that offends against realism here is "enjoy". I'm sorry – enjoy your life? I'm not making some kind of neo-puritan objection to enjoyment. Enjoyment is lovely. Enjoyment is great. The more enjoyment the better. But enjoyment is one emotion. To say that life is to be enjoyed (just enjoyed) is like saying that mountains should only have summits, or that all colours should be purple, or that all plays should be by Shakespeare. This really is a bizarre category error.

But not necessarily an innocent one. Not necessarily a piece of fluffy pretending that does no harm. The implication of the bus slogan is that enjoyment would be your natural state if you weren't being "worried" by us believers and our hellfire preaching. Take away the malignant threat of God-talk, and you would revert to continuous pleasure, under cloudless skies. What's so wrong with this, apart from it being total bollocks? Well, in the first place, that it buys a bill of goods, sight unseen, from modern marketing. Given that human life isn't and can't be made up of enjoyment, it is in effect accepting a picture of human life in which those pieces of living where easy enjoyment is more likely become the only pieces that are visible. If you based your knowledge of the human species exclusively on adverts, you'd think that the normal condition of humanity was to be a good-looking single person between 20 and 35, with excellent muscle-definition and/or an excellent figure, and a large disposable income. And you'd think the same thing if you got your information exclusively from the atheist bus, with the minor difference, in this case, that the man from the Gold Blend couple has a tiny wrinkle of concern on his handsome forehead, caused by the troublesome thought of God's possible existence: a wrinkle about to be removed by one magic application of Reason™.

These plastic beings don't need anything that they can't get by going shopping. But suppose, as the atheist bus goes by, you are povertystricken, or desperate for a job, or a drug addict, or social services have just taken away your child. The bus tells you that there's probably no God so you should stop worrying and enjoy your life, and now the slogan is not just bitterly inappropriate in mood. What it means, if it's true, is that anyone who isn't enjoying themselves is entirely on their own. What the bus says is: there's no help coming. Now don't get me wrong. I don't think there's any help coming, in one large and important sense of the term. I don't believe anything is going to happen that will materially alter the position these people find themselves in. But let's be clear about the emotional logic of the bus's message. It amounts to a denial of hope or consolation on any but the most chirpy, squeaky, bubble-gummy reading of the human situation. St Augustine called this kind of thing "cruel optimism" 1,500 years ago, and it's still cruel.

A consolation you could believe in would be one that wasn't in danger of popping like a soap bubble on contact with the ordinary truths about us. A consolation you could trust would be one that acknowledged the difficult stuff rather than being in flight from it, and then found you grounds for hope in spite of it, or even because of it, with your fingers firmly out of your ears, and all the sounds of the complicated world rushing in, undenied.

I remember a morning about 15 years ago. It was a particularly bad morning, after a particularly bad night. We – my wife and I – had been caught in one of those cyclical rows that reignite every time you think they've come to an exhausted close, because the thing that's wrong won't be left alone, won't stay out of sight if you try to turn away from it. Over and over, between midnight and six, when we finally gave up and got up, we'd helplessly looped from tears, and the aftermath of tears, back into scratch-your-eyes-out, scratch-each-other's-skin-off quarrelling. Intimacy had turned toxic: we knew, as we went around and around it, almost exactly what the other one was going to say, and even what they were going to think, and it only made things worse. It felt as if we were reduced – but truthfully reduced, reduced in accordance with the truth of the situation – to a pair of intermeshing routines, cogs with sharp teeth turning each other. We got up, and she went to work. I went to a café and nursed my misery along with a cappuccino. I could not see any way out of sorrow that did not involve some obvious self-deception, some wishful lie about where we'd got to. And then the person serving in the café put on a cassette: Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, the middle movement, the adagio.

St Paul's Cathedral reopens in London Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters
 

If you don't know it, it is a very patient piece of music. It too goes round and round, in its way, essentially playing the same tune again and again, on the clarinet alone and then with the orchestra, clarinet and then orchestra, lifting up the same unhurried lilt of solitary sound, and then backing it with a kind of messageless tenderness in deep waves, when the strings join in. It is not strained in any way. It does not sound as if the music is struggling to lift a weight it can only just manage. Yet at the same time, it is not music that denies anything. It offers a strong, absolutely calm rejoicing, but it does not pretend there is no sorrow. On the contrary, it sounds as if it comes from a world where sorrow is perfectly ordinary, but still there is more to be said.

I had heard it lots of times, but this time it felt to me like news. It said: everything you fear is true. And yet. And yet. Everything you have done wrong, you have really done wrong. And yet. And yet. The world is wider than you fear it is, wider than the repeating rigmaroles in your mind, and it has this in it, as truly as it contains your unhappiness. Shut up and listen, and let yourself count, just a little bit, on a calm that you do not have to be able to make for yourself, because here it is, freely offered. There is more going on here than what you deserve, or don't deserve. There is this as well. And it played the tune again, with all the cares in the world.

The novelist Richard Powers has written that the Clarinet Concerto sounds the way mercy would sound, and that's exactly how I experienced it in 1997. Mercy, though, is one of those words that now requires definition. It does not only mean some tyrant's capacity to suspend a punishment he has himself inflicted. It can mean – and does mean in this case – getting something kind instead of the sensible consequences of an action, or as well as the sensible consequences of an action. Mercy is …

But by now I would imagine that some of you reading this are feeling some indignation building up. Wait a minute, wait a minute, you say; never mind how you're defining mercy. What about the way you're defining religion? That's religion, listening to some Mozart in a café? You were experiencing what we in the world of unbelief like to call "an emotion", an emotion induced by a form of artistic expression which, to say the least, is quite well known for inducing emotions. You were not receiving a signal from God, or whatever it is you were about to claim; you were getting, if anything, a signal from Mr Mozart, that dead Austrian in a wig. I hope that isn't your basis for religious faith, you say, because you've described nothing there that isn't compatible with a completely naturalistic account of the universe, in which there's nobody there to extend any magical mercy from the sky, just stuff, lots and lots of astonishing, sufficiently interesting stuff, all the way up from the quantum scale to the movement of galaxies.

Well, yes. By the same token, what I've described is also completely compatible with a non-naturalistic account of the universe – but that's not really the point, is it? The point is that from outside, belief looks like a series of ideas about the nature of the universe for which a truth-claim is being made, a set of propositions that you sign up to; and when actual believers don't talk about their belief in this way, it looks like slipperiness, like a maddening evasion of the issue. If I say that, from inside, it makes much more sense to talk about belief as a characteristic set of feelings, or even as a habit, you will conclude that I am trying to wriggle out, or just possibly that I am not even interested in whether the crap I talk is true. I do, as a matter of fact, think that it is. I am a fairly orthodox Christian. Every Sunday I say and do my best to mean the whole of the Creed, which is a series of propositions. But it is still a mistake to suppose that it is assent to the propositions that makes you a believer. It is the feelings that are primary. I assent to the ideas because I have the feelings; I don't have the feelings because I've assented to the ideas.

So to me, what I felt listening to Mozart in 1997 is not some wishy-washy metaphor for an idea I believe in, and it's not a front behind which the real business of belief is going on: it's the thing itself. My belief is made of, built up from, sustained by, emotions like that. That's what makes it real. I do, of course, also have an interpretation of what happened to me in the café which is just as much a scaffolding of ideas as any theologian or Richard Dawkins could desire. I think – note the verb "think" – that I was not being targeted with a timely rendition of the Clarinet Concerto by a deity who micro-manages the cosmos and causes all the events in it to happen (which would make said deity an immoral scumbag, considering the nature of many of those events). I think that Mozart, two centuries earlier, had succeeded in creating a beautiful and accurate report of an aspect of reality. I think that the reason reality is that way – that it is in some ultimate sense merciful as well as being a set of physical processes all running along on their own without hope of appeal, all the way up from quantum mechanics to the relative velocity of galaxies by way of "blundering, low and horridly cruel" biology (Darwin) – is that the universe is sustained by a continual and infinitely patient act of love. I think that love keeps it in being. I think that I don't have to posit some corny interventionist prod from a meddling sky-fairy to account for my merciful ability to notice things a little better, when God is continually present everywhere anyway, undemonstratively underlying all cafés, all cassettes, all composers.

That's what I think. But it's all secondary. It all comes limping along behind my emotional assurance that there was mercy, and I felt it. And so the argument about whether the ideas are true or not, which is the argument that people mostly expect to have about religion, is also secondary for me. No, I can't prove it. I don't know that any of it is true. I don't know if there's a God. (And neither do you, and neither does Professor Dawkins, and neither does anybody. It isn't the kind of thing you can know. It isn't a knowable item.) But then, like every human being, I am not in the habit of entertaining only those emotions I can prove. I'd be an unrecognisable oddity if I did. Emotions can certainly be misleading: they can fool you into believing stuff that is definitely, demonstrably untrue. Yet emotions are also our indispensable tool for navigating, for feeling our way through, the much larger domain of stuff that isn't susceptible to proof or disproof, that isn't checkable against the physical universe. We dream, hope, wonder, sorrow, rage, grieve, delight, surmise, joke, detest; we form such unprovable conjectures as novels or clarinet concertos; we imagine. And religion is just a part of that, in one sense. It's just one form of imagining, absolutely functional, absolutely human-normal. It would seem perverse, on the face of it, to propose that this one particular manifestation of imagining should be treated as outrageous, should be excised if (which is doubtful) we can manage it.

But then, this is where the perception that religion is weird comes in. It's got itself established in our culture, relatively recently, that the emotions involved in religious belief must be different from the ones involved in all the other kinds of continuous imagining, hoping, dreaming, and so on, that humans do. These emotions must be alien, freakish, sad, embarrassing, humiliating, immature, pathetic. These emotions must be quite separate from commonsensical us. But they aren't. The emotions that sustain religious belief are all, in fact, deeply ordinary and deeply recognisable to anybody who has ever made their way across the common ground of human experience as an adult.

It's just that the emotions in question are rarely talked about apart from their rationalisation into ideas. This is what I have tried to do in my new book, Unapologetic. Ladies and gentlemen! A spectacle never before attempted on any stage! Before your very eyes, I shall build up from first principles the simple and unsurprising structure of faith. Nothing up my left sleeve, nothing up my right sleeve, except the entire material of everyday experience. No tricks, no traps, ladies and gentlemen; no misdirection and no cheap rhetoric. You can easily look up what Christians believe in. You can read any number of defences of Christian ideas. This, however, is a defence of Christian emotions – of their intelligibility, of their grown-up dignity. The book is called Unapologetic because it isn't giving an "apologia", the technical term for a defence of the ideas.

And also because I'm not sorry.

WOMEN / Denmark : Childbirth safer than abortion, study shows

Childbirth safer than abortion, study shows

CWN - September 14, 2012

An exhaustive scientific study has shown that abortion is more dangerous for mothers than childbirth—contradicting a claim that is often advanced by advocates of legal abortion.

Studying the records of nearly 500,000 pregnant women, researchers in Denmark found that those who continued the pregnancy to childbirth had lower mortality rates than those who procured abortions. The study covered a time period from 1980 to 2004, and involved only women who were pregnant for the first time.

Among women who chose abortion, the study found, the risk of pregnancy-related mortality during the first year after becoming pregnant was 80% higher than those who gave birth; it remained 40% higher over a 10-year period after the initial pregnancy.

The Danish study confirmed findings from earlier studies in Chile and Ireland.


Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

MINISTRY: UK archdiocese to permit lay-led funerals

UK archdiocese to permit lay-led funerals

CWN - September 17, 2012

An English archbishop has commissioned 22 lay ministers to lead funerals in his archdiocese. "In some of our parishes in the diocese, priests are being asked to celebrate over 120 funerals each year," said Archbishop Patrick Kelly of Liverpool. "That does not neatly work out at two or three times a week."

If a lay minister leads the funeral, Mass should "be celebrated for the deceased at the earliest convenient time," he added.

In a 1997 instruction, eight Vatican dicasteries taught that

in the present circumstances of growing dechristianization and of abandonment of religious practice, death and the time of obsequies can be one of the most opportune pastoral moments in which the ordained minister can meet with the non-practicing members of the faithful.

It is thus desirable that Priests and Deacons, even at some sacrifice to themselves, should preside personally at funeral rites in accordance with local custom, so as to pray for the dead and be close to their families, thus availing of an opportunity for appropriate evangelization.

The non-ordained faithful may lead the ecclesiastical obsequies provided that there is a true absence of sacred ministers and that they adhere to the prescribed liturgical norms. Those so deputed should be well prepared both doctrinally and liturgically.



MINISTRY: UK archdiocese to permit lay-led funerals

UK archdiocese to permit lay-led funerals

CWN - September 17, 2012

An English archbishop has commissioned 22 lay ministers to lead funerals in his archdiocese.

"In some of our parishes in the diocese, priests are being asked to celebrate over 120 funerals each year," said Archbishop Patrick Kelly of Liverpool. "That does not neatly work out at two or three times a week."

If a lay minister leads the funeral, Mass should "be celebrated for the deceased at the earliest convenient time," he added.

In a 1997 instruction, eight Vatican dicasteries taught that

in the present circumstances of growing dechristianization and of abandonment of religious practice, death and the time of obsequies can be one of the most opportune pastoral moments in which the ordained minister can meet with the non-practicing members of the faithful.

It is thus desirable that Priests and Deacons, even at some sacrifice to themselves, should preside personally at funeral rites in accordance with local custom, so as to pray for the dead and be close to their families, thus availing of an opportunity for appropriate evangelization.

The non-ordained faithful may lead the ecclesiastical obsequies provided that there is a true absence of sacred ministers and that they adhere to the prescribed liturgical norms. Those so deputed should be well prepared both doctrinally and liturgically.


VATICAN / SSPX: Bishop to be expelled from SSPX?

Bishop Williamson to be expelled from SSPX?

 76 42Google +1Delicious0

CWN - September 13, 2012

The controversial Bishop Richard Williamson may soon be dismissed from the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), according to a leading Vatican journalist.

Citing a report on the German internet site Kreuz.net, Andrea Tornielli of La Stampa says that Bishop Williamson could be expelled from the SSPX for continued acts of disobedience. In defiance of SSPX statutes, Bishop Williamson recently traveled to Brazil to administer the sacrament of Confirmation without approval from his superiors in the society. He has also continued to produce a newsletter, in defiance of orders from Bishop Bernard Fellay, the SSPX leader.

Bishop Williamson has caused headaches for the SSPX and for the Vatican with his public statements, especially his statements questioning the severity of the Holocaust. He has also been an outspoken opponent of efforts to reconcile the SSPX with the Holy See.

If he is dismissed from the SSPX, Bishop Williamson would almost certainly take some priests and lay people with him, forming a separate organization. Such a development could complicate Vatican discussions with the traditionalist group. On the other hand, such a rift could mean the departure from the SSPX of the most vociferous opponents of accommodation with the Vatican, leaving the remaining group closer to reconciliation.


Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

EVANGELISATION: "Without moral rules, man courts disaster" - Benedict XVI

Without moral rules, man courts disaster, Pope says

CWN - September 10, 2012

The Ten Commandments "can be understood by everyone, precisely because they translate fundamental values into concrete norms and rules," Pope Benedict XVI said in a video message to participants in a new Italian program for evangelization. The "Ten City Squares for Ten Commandments" program, which will sponsor meetings in Italian cities during the coming year, rallied in Rome's Piazza del Popolo on September 9. The Pope's message was shown a giant video screen.

The Ten Commandments, the Pope said, are "a sign of love of God the Father, of his desire to teach us true discernment of good from evil, of truth from falsehood, of justice from injustice." However, while they are best understood by believers, they "can be understood by everyone, precisely because they translate fundamental values into concrete norms and rules."

These fundamental moral laws are now under attack, the Pope continued, in a culture "in which secularism and relativism risk becoming the criteria for all choices, and in our society which seems to live as if God did not exist." It is vital to regain a proper sense of natural morality, the Pope said, because when man ignores moral laws, "not only does he alienate himself from God and abandon the covenant with Him, but he also abandons life and lasting happiness."

"The sad experience of history, especially last century, stands as a warning for all humankind," the Pope reminded the participants in the initiative.



Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

Monday, September 10, 2012

MISSION / Iran : Protestant pastor acquitted of apostasy charges

Iran: Protestant pastor acquitted of apostasy charges 

CWN - September 10, 2012

The Iranian Protestant pastor whose 2010 death sentence on charges of apostasy was not carried out following an international outcry has been released following a new trial.

Youcef Nadarkhani, now 33, converted from Islam at the age of 19. In 2011, Iran's Supreme Court ruled that charges against Nadarkhani could be dropped if he reverted to Islam. At the new trial, Nadarkhani was acquitted on apostasy charges but sentenced to three years in prison on charges of proselytizing Muslims. He was released, however, because he has served three years' prison time.