Next (Radio) Book Club Selection - Read the ORIGINAL St. Ignatius

No disrespect to the founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius of Loyola, but martyred in 110 A.D., Ignatius of Antioch is the original Saint Ignatius. 

The second bishop of Antioch after Peter's departure from that city, Ignatius provides us with tremendous insight into the life of the early Church.  The man heard the Apostle John preach the Gospel!  While being transported from Antioch to Rome, where he was to be fed to the lions, Ignatius penned seven epistles.  Dr. Kevin Vost and I invite you to read Ignatius' epistles as we pass through the holiest time in the Church's year, and then call in to share your thoughts with other listeners on Saturday, April 6th, on EWTN Radio's "St. Joseph Radio Presents ..."  Ignatius' epistles are available online free of charge (click here for text, or here to download audio files).

In Ignatius' seven epistles you will:

• Discover a saint who wanted to share the sufferings of Christ
• Find the first written reference to Christ's Church as "the Catholic Church."
• Find testimony to our belief in Jesus' full humanity and divinity
• Read of the absolute centrality of the Eucharist in Christian life
• See clear teaching on Christ's Real Presence in the Eucharist
• Hear repeated testimony to the Church's ministerial structure of Bishop - Priest - Deacon
• Read historical testimony of Peter and Paul's leadership of the Roman Church
• Garner exciting testimony to the preeminent place held by the Church of Rome in the earliest days of Church

I recently ordered Dr. Kenneth Howell's Ignatius of Antioch & Polycarp of Smyrna, a brand new translation and commentary for the writings of these two early bishops and martyrs.  I can't wait to dig into it!

Making Moral Judgments

"You shall not act dishonestly in rendering judgment. Show neither partiality to the weak nor deference to the mighty, but judge your fellow men justly" (Leviticus 19:15).

We Christians place a high value on empathy and compassion - or at least we should, if we are trying to live in the image of Christ!  Where far too many Christians run into trouble today however, at least in the West, is when we sacrifice truth in the name of compassion - when we excuse, or worse yet affirm, what Christ would call sin in the name of sparing someone's "feelings."  There is no love without truth.  Sentimentality, yes; but not love. 

Love seeks the other's good, his/her objective good - and that is freedom from sin and life with God.  A person can derive pleasure from something that is killing them.  We see it on the natural level:  smoking, abuse of alcohol, contraction of a sexually transmitted disease.  And the same is true on the supernatural level!  Sin kills the soul, and to remain in that death - to never have repented and accepted God's forgiveness - is to step into Hell.  And for a Christian to affirm someone else engaging in what is objectively sinful behavior, or to keep silent when speaking up could save that person's life, is the opposite of love. 

The Christian does not speak up out of the desire to condemn, but to save - exactly as Jesus did.  We need to judge - to evaluate actions - by Christ's criteria. His judgment does not change because we shed a few tears or feel "condemned" by what He tells us; He loves us far too much to cave to that kind of sentimentality.  He knows our lives hang in the balance.  "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him" (John 3:17).

The Gravity of the Papal Conclave - What I Didn't Realize!

On the drive home today I caught Dr. Matthew Bunson on Kresta in the Afternoon.  He shared two details - both related to art - that I never considered in relation to the Conclave; and both speak to the gravity of the Cardinals' actions.  

First, just before entering the Sistine Chapel, the College of Cardinals will gather to hear a sermon in the Cappalena Paolina (Chapel of St. Paul).  And the Cardinals will listen to that sermon beneath Michelangelo's fresco, the Martyrdom of St. Peter.  Looking at that fresco, each of them knows what election to the Papacy entails.

Second, once the Cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel, they will engage in their deliberations under Michelangelo's Last Judgment.  They will elect Peter's Successor beneath that sobering reminder that each of them will have to answer to God for how he voted.

Jesus at Prayer, WITHIN St. Patrick

If you've been reading my blog this past year, you may have noticed my interest in the way Jesus' prayer intersects with our own.  (I have channeled most of my thoughts into a book manuscript, but haven't been able to keep myself from sharing at least a couple of tidbits.)  We Christians talk about the way Jesus speaks and acts through us, but hardly ever take the next step to talk about how He prays through us.  And yet, that is what we believe happens at Mass - Jesus' offering to the Father is made present through the action of His Church.  His petitions to the Father, on behalf of the Church, pass through the lips of His priests.  When we pray the Our Father, those are Jesus' intentions for the Church - made to the Father through you and me.  

Section IV of the Catechism of the Catholic Church does a wonderful job of opening up this reality to the faithful:

Christian prayer is a covenant relationship between God and man in Christ.  It is the action of God and of man, springing forth from both the Holy Spirit and ourselves, wholly directed to the Father, in union with the human will of the Son of God made man.  (CCC 2564)

The prayer of Jesus makes Christian prayer an efficacious petition.  He is its model, he prays in us and with us.  (CCC 2740)

St. Paul wrote about this aspect of our prayer in Romans:

... the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Rom.8:26-27)

And to my great surprise, St. Patrick of Ireland wrote specifically on this topic!  In his Confession, he recounted two mystical experiences:

And another night - God knows, I do not, whether within me or beside me -in most learned words I heard those whom I could not understand, except that at the end of the prayer one spoke out thus, “He who gave his life for you, he it is who speaks within you.” And thus I awoke, joyful.

And on a second occasion I saw Him praying within me, and I was as it were, inside my own body , and I heard Him above me - that is, above my inner self. He was praying powerfully with sighs. And in the course of this I was astonished and wondering, and I pondered who it could be who was praying within me. But at the end of the prayer it was revealed to me that it was the Spirit. And so I awoke and remembered the Apostle's words, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we know not how to pray as we ought. But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for utterance." And again: "The Lord our advocate intercedes for us.”

Jesus at prayer within Patrick, through the Holy Spirit!  Jesus at prayer within you and me, in the same way!  There's something to meditate on as we head into St. Patrick's Day weekend.

Please get to know the real St. Patrick this week.  Check out his Confession, his spiritual autobiography, and call into EWTN Radio this Saturday (March 16th) between Noon and 1 p.m. Central, to share your thoughts.  Dr. Kevin Vost and I are looking forward to hearing from you!

1-855-447-6000

Get Reading - the Book Club is COMING!

Only one week until my and Dr. Vost's first "radio book club"!  Read St. Patrick's Confession online for free (a mere 25 pages), and then call into EWTN's "St. Joseph Radio Presents" next Saturday, March 16th, to tell us your thoughts.  We want to hear from you! Show starts at Noon Central/ 1 p.m. Eastern.  
                      1-855-447-6000

0.34 Seconds - That's All It Takes

0.34 Seconds - the time it takes to blink your eye; that's as quickly as everything can change for the better.  When I prayed the Rosary this morning, I meditated on Jesus' Resurrection, putting myself in his tomb.  One second He was there, wrapped in His shroud.  And in the next second, with a brilliant flash of light, the shroud lay flat on the stone slab; He was gone.  That's how quickly God can change defeat into victory.  

We have little glimpses of this throughout life.  Think of those times when the phone has rang with a surprise invitation, or you ran into someone you hadn't seen in months; or you got an email out of the blue.  One moment everything was moving along as ho-hum as usual and then boom - you're like a rocket shooting into the stratosphere.  Life is not just one long struggle, carrying the Cross up Calvary; it's also shot through with these experiences of the Resurrection -and we never know when the Lord will surprise us next.

What we know for sure is that each second brings us closer to that instant when "we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed" (1 Cor. 15:51-52).

This year: Full-Court Press for St. Patrick's Day!!

The parade in St. Louis' Dogtown is great and green beer is a hoot - but celebrating St. Patrick's Day by reading the saint for yourself tops them all!  That's right, St. Patrick left us a book - his Confession, or spiritual autobiography.  That's news to you?  Me too - up until three short years ago!

And here's a deal too good to pass up:  it's available online, absolutely free.  CLICK HERE   I found myself completely in awe of Patrick's faith, and I have no doubt that you will too.
 
To celebrate St. Patrick's Day this year, Dr. Kevin Vost and I want to invite you to read Patrick's Confession - a mere 25 pages - over the next two weeks, and then be ready to call into EWTN Radio's "St. Joseph Radio Presents ..." on Saturday, March 16th, to share your thoughts and/or ask questions.  I am a humble fan of St. Patrick, but Dr. Vost seriously knows his Celts!  (Check out his book, Three Irish Saints.)  Our toll-free number is 1-855-447-6000, and the show starts at 1 p.m., ET.

I sincerely hope we will hear from you!

Jesus Founded a Kingdom, Not a Democracy

I remember walking into a discussion back in 2004.  One of my co-workers was in my boss's office, lamenting the recent statement from our city's Archbishop that if the Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, campaigned within our Archdiocese, he should not present himself to receive Communion. 

Our Archbishop, (now Cardinal) Raymond Burke, was vocal in his conviction that Catholic politicians who publicly persist in grave, manifest sin such as supporting abortion, must be denied Communion.  Their reception of Communion was both a sacrilege 
(see 1 Cor.11:27-32) and a scandal to the consciences of the  faithful - giving the confusing impression that it was possible to receive the Lord in Holy Communion while simultaneously persisting in grave sin (see 1 Cor.5:1-13).

My coworker felt it was completely wrong for a churchman to tell someone how he should vote.  We live in a democracy where every one has the right to vote their conscience.  My boss, knowing how committed I was to the Faith, asked me to weigh in.  Here was how I responded to my coworker:

"Senator Kerry is free to vote however he wishes.  What he cannot do, and Archbishop Burke is reminding him of this, is support the killing of unborn children and, at the same time, be united to Christ.  The Church is not the "Democracy of God," it is the Kingdom of God.  Jesus is the King, and His statement of what is good and what is evil is absolute; it's not up for a vote.  So John Kerry must decide which is more important to him - union with Jesus or his support of abortion.  The choice is his, but he can't have it both ways."

Why am I bringing this up 9 years later?  I was reminded of it yesterday while watching PBS's Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.  With the election of a new pope about to get underway they wanted to revisit a Vatican report released earlier this year citing “serious doctrinal problems” within the United States' Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) - a group that has expressed approval of same-sex relationships and contraceptives, and signed the New York Times letter stating there were legitimate, diverse opinions possible on the matter of abortion.  The program (transcript available here) interviewed Sr. Mary Hughes, past president of the LCWR, who seemed hopeful that the Church might adopt a more democratic model in the days to come:

"This is not just about the Vatican versus the nuns. This really is about the future of how we interpret the message of the Second Vatican Council, and what’s going on right now quite frankly makes me sad, because I see certain people in Rome, in the Vatican, who want retrenchment, who want to go back to the church the way it was before the Second Vatican Council, when the church was essentially the hierarchy, and they determined everything down to sometimes the minutia of Catholic life ...  There’s always a blessing that comes with every conflict. Perhaps the blessing is that we continue to open up within the Church avenues for true dialogue and true dialogue isn’t about winners and losers. It’s about people truly being able to listen to understand the other perspective before making any judgments."

To its credit, Religion & Ethics also interviewed author Colleen Carroll Campbell, who responded:

 "Women religious need to stand with the Church, and if they don’t feel that they can in good conscience do that anymore then I think it would take more integrity to simply step back and say, you know, maybe we’re not called to be Catholic women religious anymore. Maybe we want to be something else."

The Church isn't a democracy; it's a Kingdom.  The Pope and Bishops cannot dialogue on these matters because they aren't matters upon which diverse opinions can exist among disciples of Jesus.  They aren't positions that can be changed over time.  They are the directives of our King, "Jesus Christ - the same yesterday, and today, and for ever" (Heb.13:8). 
 

EVERY Christian Has a Pope (It's Simply a Question of "Who?")

Whether we are Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, "non-denominational," or a variety of Christian somewhere in between, each of us has a pope.  Each of us has someone we:

1) look to for direction in living the Christian life, and
2) appeal to as an authority in explaining why we interpret Jesus' teachings the way we do.  

It might be the founder of your denomination, a favorite author, pastor, or ... simply yourself.

Some may object, "I just go by what the Bible tells me.  I don't need someone to interpret what Jesus said to me."  But my friends, unless you are reading the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, you are depending on someone else's interpretation of what Jesus said! And even if you are reading the Bible in its original languages, you still have interpret the meaning - the intent - of its words.  Let me give a few examples:  

• When you read the gospel accounts of Jesus' Last Supper, if you understand His words "This is My Body" and "This is My Blood," to mean anything other than that the bread and wine have literally become His Body and Blood, then you are engaged in interpretation.  The same can be said of Jesus' words in John's Gospel, "My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.  He who eats [trogein in Greek, meaning "chews, gnaws on"] my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" (Jn.6:55-56).

• Jesus told the Apostles, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (Jn.20:23).  If you do not believe that Jesus gave the shepherds of His Church the power, in His Name, to forgive sins, then you are engaged in some type of interpretation.

• If you believe that we are saved through faith alone, and that works play absolute no part in obtaining final salvation, then you are interpreting the Epistle of James (the only place in the Bible where you find the phrase "faith alone") in some sense other than the text's face-value, "You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone" (Jas.2:24).

Now, if you have read these verses (or the multitude of similar ones) but haven't experienced a pull toward the Catholic Church you either

a)  haven't truly wrestled with them, or 
b)  believe there is another way to interpret them

We Catholics are very comfortable with their face-value meaning.  If you understand them in a way other than at face-value however, what is your authority for that?  What is the weight of your argument?  Whose insight are you relying on, and what are their (or your) credentials?  

I glossed over or tried interpreting them other ways - for a couple of years - but the more I learned, the more I found myself humbled.  Time after time, when I really dug into Scripture and how it was understood by its earliest readers - in 70 A.D., 90 A.D., 107 A.D., 150 A.D. - those in a far better position to understand its original meaning, their interpretation always matched what was being said by the Pope today! 

I realized how I had went for years denying the Pope's gift of  infallibility, but acting as if I was infallible!  (And seriously, what credentials did I have?)  I denied that the Pope was the Successor of Peter, holding the "the keys of the Kingdom," with the power to "bind and loose" (Mt.16:19) but lived my life as if I did - as if I was the final arbiter of what Christ taught!  The thing is, when I finally buckled down and did the research, every piece of historical evidence spoke in the Popes' favor instead of mine (or anyone else's)!  Here's but one example.
 
A little unsettling to think about?  Tell me about it.  What it finally came down to for me was this:  "Jesus, I know that you didn't appoint me as an infallible authority.  I need help, I need guidance, to understand Your teaching and how to live it out.  If You appointed the Pope as a shepherd for me - and I am now convinced that You did - then I accept him."

Each of us has a pope, it's just a matter of, "Who?"

Sharing About the Blessed Mother

This Friday morning, March 1st, I will have the pleasure of speaking about the Blessed Mother with Sean Herriot of Relevant Radio's Morning Air.  We will discuss Chp.5 of The God Who is Love, "Every Boy Needs His Mother (and Brothers and Sisters too)."  If you would like to tune in, I will be speaking with him from 6 - 6:20 a.m. CT, with a replay at 9 p.m.  Below is a list of articles and blog posts I have written about Our Lady: 

"Am I Not Here Who is Your Mother?" (A short explanation of what it means to be consecrated to Jesus through Mary)

"The Eucharist, Mary, and Redemptive Suffering"

"Did the Apostles Pray the Rosary?"

"Eve and Mary (the New Eve)"

"I'm 'No' on the Rapture, But 'Yes' on Mary's Assumption"

"Participating in the Obedience of Jesus"

"The Blessed Mother, Receiving Jesus From John (A brief thought on the Priesthood)"

"When Life Takes That 'Wrong' Turn"

"Mother Mary and Father Abraham"

"The Eucharist and the Assumption"

Hope you enjoy!

Why the New Pope will be POWERLESS

Cover of Pope Fiction

- powerless to change Church teaching, that is.  

Every time a new Pope is elected, the media begins to buzz as to whether or not this new Pope will be more "liberal," and bring Church teaching up to date with the "modern" world.  We even hear it among fellow Catholics.  
Will this new Pope:

• ease restrictions on the use of contraceptives?
• recognize same-sex "marriage"?
• allow women to be ordained to the priesthood?
• change Church "rules" on divorce and remarriage?

What these questioners fail to realize is that the Pope does not have the power to change these things.  Why not?  Because they are not his policies; they are Christ's.  

The world has shown itself to be a place of opinion, not moral conviction.  Its understanding of sexuality and the meaning of marriage has morphed in the past 50 years.  But Jesus' understanding has not.  Many, many Christian groups have slowly let go of elements of Christ's teaching in this area.  But the Successor of Peter, because Christ appointed him to share His own role of acting as a Rock to the faithful, cannot. (See here, here, and here.) Take an issue such as "same-sex marriage" - it is oxymoronic to the mind of Christ and thus, must be to the Pope's as well (and honestly, to anyone who believes that Jesus' words were not just those of a man, but God). 

The Pope's ministry is to strengthen his fellow bishops and all of the faithful in living out Christ's teachings.  He has no authority to change them. 

Please keep our new Pope in your prayers; he has a tough row to hoe - but in the end God will make his work fruitful.  A couple of verses to keep in the back of our minds as we pray:
 
"In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (Jn.16:33)
 
"Whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith." (1 Jn. 5:4) 

That Tight-Lipped Jesus ...

So here is a stream-of-consciousness post for you.  Stay with me though, there is a point:

On the drive to work today I was praying the Rosary and meditating on the Lord's Resurrection.  I was thinking of the women at Jesus' tomb.  Nothing could have prepared them for the absolute shock of the empty tomb - and definitely not for their encounter with the Resurrected Jesus.  I was struck how you and I are often so completely in the dark about all of the good things that God is doing behind the scenes, completely surprised when they break out into the light.  God seems to work in silence; He doesn't make us privy to His plans - just shocks us with their awesomeness.

Wait, that's not quite right.  Hadn't Jesus told His disciples, over and over, that He would be rejected by the chief priests and elders and be raised on the third day?  Yes, He had; but they didn't understand.  Jesus had told them exactly what was going to happen.  His crucifixion shouldn't have come as a shock - and neither should His Resurrection!

And here is what Jesus says to you and me.  We should listen closely so that we're not caught off-guard:

“I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (Jn.16:33).
  
Fore-warned is fore-armed.  We will suffer the Cross.  And if we stay united with Him, we will experience His Resurrection.

Confused By the Accounts of Jesus' Resurrection?

I can understand that.  When you put the Resurrection accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John side-by-side you will notice discrepancies.  (Click one of the above links to open that gospel's account of the Resurrection.)  But these are apparent, and not actual discrepancies.

In the The God Who is Love, I wrote about several of the events that God used to shape my life.  From time to time I felt the need to streamline anecdotes.  There were details that weren't needed to come to my point and I felt that, had I included them, they would have weighed the story down unnecessarily.  (Readers want something that reads smoothly - not a story constantly interrupted to fill in this or that detail or piece of background info.) Everything I wrote was true; but it wasn't as full of an account as I could have written.  That gave me a new appreciation for the way the four gospels narrate the same events from Jesus' life in different ways.

Looking at the four accounts of Jesus' Resurrection, I would like to suggest a chronology for the events of Easter morning that, if kept in the back of your mind, will resolve the apparent discrepancies.  In a nutshell, I think that the women who visited Jesus tomb that morning went back and forth between it and the apostles more than once:

1.    Jesus rose from the dead.
2.    The guards outside the tomb fled.
3.    The women (Mary Magdalene,  Mary the mother of James, Salome, Joanna, and one or more  unnamed women) arrived at the tomb to annoint Jesus' Body, but found it empty.
4.    The women ran to the apostles to alert them that someone had stolen the Body.
5.     Peter and John raced to the tomb, saw the grave wrappings, and left.
6.     The women returned to the tomb and saw angels inside.  The angels announced Jesus' Resurrection.
7.     The women were frightened by the angels' appearance but (possibly after a delay) set out to carry the announcement to the apostles, when Jesus appeared to them.
8.     The women reported all of this to the apostles but were not believed.
9/10 Jesus appeared to two disciples on the road to Emmaus.  He also appeared to Peter.
11.    Jesus appeared to the apostles and disciples gathered in the upper room.

Each of the gospel writers streamlined these events in different ways - omitted one or more of the numbered events, or omitted one or more characters (human and angelic) in their telling of an event. The accounts do not disagree with each other but each is fragmentary.  None of the gospels claim to give an exhaustive account.  Quite to the contrary; John's Gospel plainly says, "Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (Jn.20:30-31).  

When you listen to the Gospel readings at Easter time, keep the eleven points above in your mind to see if it helps.  I would of course love to hear your thoughts about my stab at reconstructing the sequence of events that first Easter morning.

Transfiguration - Just a Stretch of the Legs

Something new regarding Jesus' Transfiguration jumped out at me while praying the Rosary. You remember the event: While Jesus was at prayer on a mountaintop, Peter, James, and John witnessed Him become “more brilliant than the sun.” Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus, and the disciples could hear them discussing His “exodus.” The scene culminated with a cloud overshadowing the mountain (as the Shekinah, or cloud of God’s glory, had when Moses received the Law on Mount Sinai) and God the Father proclaiming, “This is My Beloved Son, listen to Him.”

The new data that registered with me is actually preliminary to everything I just recounted: before the Apostles witnessed this, they had climbed a mountain! Traditionally Mt. Tabor, with an elevation of 1929 feet, has been identified as the spot. (Imagine the St. Louis Arch multiplied by three).  Those boys had to exert themselves a bit to “get into position” for the Transfiguration.

And that got me thinking about the energy we have to exert in our own lives. To make progress as Christians we have to work. God may have given us a new nature, but that doesn’t mean its “second nature” yet. (That sentence is crying out to become a bumper sticker.)  Seriously though, think about your day so far. How many words or actions do you regret?  I can think of a few. There’s no reason to become disheartened though. When the Apostles were climbing that mountain they had to exert themselves…but Jesus was right there alongside them. The Lord was exerting Himself, as they were exerting themselves. And the same is true for us. We have to do the work, we have to make an honest, concentrated effort; but Jesus is right there alongside us — and thanks to His resurrection and ascension, in us – working to get us to that next level. Without Him its impossible; but with Him, there are no limits.

This is what the Church is talking about when it says that final salvation is the result of Faith and Works. We become the kind of creatures that can exist in Heaven because we’ve actively cooperated with God’s activity. Maybe it’s a bit confusing to talk about Faith and Works as two separate activities; it’s really one fluid movement, beginning in God and returning to Him, through us. Listen to the Apostle Paul: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13). It’s 100% God and, because of grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit, 100% us too!  We’re joined to Jesus, as He loves and gives Himself to the Father, through us!  We’re inserted into the very Life of the Trinity.

And like the Apostles, embracing Jesus’ desire to get us to the “top of the mountain,” leads to incredible realities. Like them, we get to pray alongside Jesus. And because of that, our prayer will change, will become more mature, will focus upon God’s will instead of ours. We get to hear Moses (the Law) and Elijah (the Prophets) of the Old Covenant speaking to us as we study Scripture. Divine Light enables us to see things about ourselves and our situation that would have been impossible before.

And this pattern will be repeated again and again in our lives, as Jesus challenges us to follow Him from one peak to the next, until we’re as high as we can possibly go –”Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:22).

Jesus asks, "But Who Do You Say That I Am?"

Today the Church celebrates the "Chair of St. Peter"  - Jesus' establishment of the Papacy.  (If you would like to read more, you can click here, here, or here.)  What I want to focus on today is the question Jesus asked Peter, because it's the question he asks you and me - "But you, who do you say that I am?"  

Just last week the Holy Spirit gave me opportunity to repeat that question to someone.  A friend had emailed to ask if she could run a couple of religious questions by me.  When we sat down I expected a couple of factual questions about what Catholics believe or why we do this or that, but my friend dove straight into the deep end:  "I haven't been to church in a long time; but I believe that Jesus is God, and I believe that everything the Bible says is true.  But I also have a very open mind, so on a matter like gay 'marriage,' I think that so long as two people love each other and it makes them happy, they should be able to go ahead and get married.  I am like that on other matters too.  Am I going to go to Hell for that?  I think I try to be the best person I can; could I still go to Hell for thinking differently?"

Alright, first thing I did was to ask to back up from the question of going to hell for a moment and start with what she had told me about her faith.  I reflected back, "You told me that you believe Jesus is God, believe in the Bible; but then you also want to say that certain actions, that you know directly contradict Jesus and the Bible, are alright - so long as they make a person happy.  Seems to me that you are trying to hold two contradictory statements in your mind at the same time."  She smiled and shook her head, acknowledging that she understood that was exactly what she was doing.

I continued, "When you say that you believe Jesus is God, you are saying that you believe He created this world we live in and that He understands what will and will not ultimately lead to our happiness.  Our emotional reactions to something are not the real measure of what is good or bad.  A twelve year old boy might tell you that sniffing model airplane glue makes him feel happy; but you, with a wider knowledge base, understand that it can also damage his brain.  If we believe that Jesus is God and that He understands - objectively, perfectly understands - what leads human beings to happiness; then to say that He is wrong on some point doesn't make any sense.  You can't have it both ways."

"So far as who is going to heaven and hell, no one but God can tell you that.  What I can say is that He has told us - again, objectively speaking - which actions are compatible with the lives of his children and which are not.  But what factors lessen or increase a person's culpability for those actions ... only God knows a person's history - how much of the truth they have been exposed to, their thought processes, the movements of their hearts.  I don't despair for anyone's salvation; I pray for God's grace to be at work in them, just as I pray for it to be at work in me.  Heaven is the culmination of a relationship with God.  And like all relationships, a relationship with God is dependent on our response.  If you had never responded to your boyfriend's dinner invitations, you wouldn't have much of a relationship today.  God invites us to get to know Him in many ways:  meeting Him at church on Sunday, receiving the sacraments, reading that Bible that He went to so much trouble to bring to us.  Do we live our lives in the way He has asked us; or do we tell him that we know better and go our own way?  At the moment of death, when this life ends and everything around us melts away; will we find ourselves next to God or at a distance?  If at a distance then we will experience loneliness, and that loneliness will not end.  That is Hell.  But it was us who moved away from God, not the other way around."

"Jesus asked the apostles and He is asking you, 'Who do you say that I am?'  You answered, 'God.'  Alright.  Now what are you going to do about it?"

My friend has a good head on her shoulders and love in her heart.  I am excited to see what this next year holds for her.

The Beauty of "Catholic" Sex - Why It's Good for the Baby

One of the hazards of being off school for a snow day is that you might be channel surfing and get sucked into watching an episode of Katie Couric's new talk show. There was a story I just had to hear:  A fertility clinic had accidentally implanted another couple's child into a woman's womb.  I am absolutely thrilled to say that the woman this happened to never contemplated abortion.  She said that her first thought was, "What if someone had accidentally been implanted with my child?  I would be on my knees begging her to carry my child to term."  And she did.  She and her husband contacted the other couple with the news that they had another child on the way - and they were overwhelmingly grateful that their child was going to be allowed to come into the world.  Nine months later, after the healthy birth of a boy named Logan, the woman at the heart of the story was told that her body was unable to endure another pregnancy.  Still wanting to welcome the children she and her husband had partnered with the lab to create, the couple hired a surrogate to carry their twin girls to term.

The story reminded me of a short post I wrote in 2009 where, with the help of The Office's Michael Scott, I talked about the dark side of IVF (in vitro fertilization).  The most shocking thing that I had discovered about IVF was how many "extra" embryos - human beings - are created in the laboratory, but never inserted into a mother.  (That's standard practice.)  There are over 400,000 frozen embryos in the United States alone!  Those are human beings in suspended animation.  Since I wrote that post, even the mainstream media has caught wind of how a higher percentage of children conceived through IVF are born with significant birth defects, in comparison to their normally-conceived peers (9 percent vs. 6.6 percent).  As with the story on Katie Couric, these are problems - serious problems - that God wants to safeguard us and our children from.

The Magisterium of the Church (the teaching office exercised by the pope and bishops) has always been clear that IVF is not compatible with God's will.  Before I say anything further let me state categorically that the Church has never, and will never, look down upon anyone conceived through IVF!  No matter how a person is conceived, he or she is a human being and has the same dignity as every other human being.  (That goes for a person conceived through an act of fornication, adultery, IVF, and even rape.  If the Church believed differently then we wouldn't have canonized saints, such as St. Martin de Porres, who were born out of wedlock.  Give it a hundred years and we could very well have a saint who was conceived through IVF.) You won't catch me condemning parents who have used IVF either; the vast, vast majority have done so with no awareness of its difficulties or the Church's teaching on the subject.


In addition to the problems with IVF cited above, why do the Church's teachers - the shepherds to whom Jesus committed His flock - feel compelled to speak out against the use of IVF?   

To safeguard the dignity and well-being of the child.  There are truths we have to keep in mind:

1.  A child is not an end, a good (to be sought in a lab), but a person with his or her own inviolable dignity and rights.
Yes, we experience the yearning to be parents to a child of "our own."  But the child is not our property; the child is his or her own person, with his/her own rights.

2.  Every child has the right to be conceived through an act of love between its parents.
The child is a person, and persons are meant to come into existence through the sincere, bodily gift of his/her mother and father to one another.  (The child is not a product that a doctor can mistakenly implant in the wrong mother.)


Last year a friend shared his niece's plight with me:  At age 16 she discovered that she was conceived through IVF.  She also discovered that she was the sole surviving embryo of several that had been created.  She confided in her cousin (my friend's daughter) the sense of shame she felt - her brothers and sisters being allowed to die, so that in a sense, she could live.  It messed with her mind.  She was angry with her parents. Not to mention her initial reaction - "I was made in a lab?"

3.  Sex, by its very nature, is love-giving and life-giving.
Everyone thinks the Catholic Church's oppostion to contraception is crazy, but it both maintains the reality of the sexual act and the dignity of the child(ren) produced by it.  What do I mean?

"This pregnancy was an accident."  Bull.  An accident is when something goes wrong.  If a pregnancy resulted from your lovemaking then biologically everything went exactly right - it couldn't have gone better!  Contraception has twisted how we see reality.  A child is never an accident, never some unforeseen by-product of a night of romance.  

Creating a new life is an inseparable part of the sexual act.  And those who do try to separate it out, eliminate it, are doing something against nature.  Only by ignoring that obvious truth can an individual - or a society - speak of the growing child as an "accident."

When a Catholic husband and wife make love, they give their whole selves to one another.  There is nothing about their fertility that needs to be suppressed or treated as a hindrance to their love for one another.  If they are practicing NFP (natural family planning), and come together during a time in the wife's cycle when they believe her to be infertile, and if a pregnancy should result; then they understand that their child is anything but an accident - a surprise, sure; but never an "accident"!  That child is the result of their love - a beautiful gift entrusted to them by God.  That child is its own person, brought into existence to enrich the world and spend eternity with God.  

The child did not come into being to meet a need felt by the parents.  The child is the fruit naturally springing from their love.  They are there to love the child - to pour themselves out for the enrichment and growth of this new person.  In doing so they will be enriched - both in the way they image and make present the love of God, and in the love their child returns to them.  But it is an enrichment that takes place while safeguarding the dignity and rights of the child.

The vast majority of people who have sought IVF have done so innocently, without anyone raising even one of these issues with them.  They know that they want to give their love to a child and have never heard its darker side or the moral problems associated it.  The Church's vision of sex and procreation safeguards the dignity of the child as well as prevents horrible situations like that being experienced by my friend's niece or young Logan from today's Katie Couric show.  Someday Logan will hear the story of his conception.  There is the silver lining of the woman who respected his life enough to carry him to term ... but there's so much else there that will likely be difficult to hear.  And it doesn't have to be that way.

St. Francis of Assisi's Paraphrase of the "Our Father"

A few months back I wrote a post sharing how the Our Father can be used as a template for times of personal prayer.  I was happy to discover that Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), Founder of the Friars Minor, did exactly that.  Here he is praying the first half of the Our Father:

O our most holy Father,
our Creator, Redeemer, Consoler, and Savior,
 

“Who are in heaven”,
in the angels and in the saints,
enlightening them to love, because you, Lord, are light,
inflaming them to love, because you, Lord, are love,
dwelling in them and filling them with happiness,
because you, Lord, are the Supreme Good, the Eternal Good
from whom comes all good
without whom there is no good.

“Hallowed be your name”:
may our knowledge of you become ever clearer
that we may know the breadth of your blessings,
the length of your promises,
the height of your majesty,
the depth of your judgments (Eph 3,18).

“Your kingdom come”:
so that you may rule in us through your grace;
enable us to come to your kingdom
where there is an unclouded vision of you,
a perfect love of you,
a blessed companionship with you,
an eternal enjoyment of you.

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” :
that we may love you with our whole heart
by always thinking of you with our whole soul
by always desiring you with our whole mind
by directing all our intentions to you
and by seeking your glory in everything
with our whole strength,
by spending all our energies and affections
of soul and body
in the service of your love and of nothing else (Mk 12,30).
And may we love our neighbors as ourselves (Mt 22,39)
by drawing them all with our whole strength to your love,
by rejoicing in the good fortunes of others as well as our own,
by sympathizing with the misfortunes of others
and by giving offense to no one.