One of the most neglected parts of the New Evangelization is using the library.
There's a limited amount of shelfspace. Decisions are made on what to purchase based on client demand--that is, what will be used and checked out consistently.
If we are not checking out and reading good Catholic books, libraries will not stock good Catholic books.
If we are not eagerly requesting good Catholic books, libraries may not know said books exist.
If good Catholic books are in a library, you haven't just made a difference to one library in one town. You've introduced a witness for the faith into a network, a system. Most public libraries these days participate in some form of inter-library loan. If one library has a book, the potential audience can be hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
How do we make a difference? Several ways:
Acquire and use a library card regularly.
Make reading good books a habit. Cut the screeen time! Read an old-fashioned ink and paper book. I believe it's better for your eyes, and it certainly leaves you feeling more satisfied, more like you've accomplished something, if you actually turn pages and close a cover when you're finished.
Add at least one Catholic book a month to your reading pile. There're a ton of interesting, engaging, excellent writers out there, pumping out a ton of quality Catholic content. Explore them! Read them!
Ideally, be getting your Catholic books from your local library. If they don't have them, ask if they can get it via inter-library loan. If that's not possible, ask how you can recommend they purchase a copy!
Always be polite and appreciative for the librarians' efforts. Never get belligerent--if they can't afford a book, then they can't afford it. If no one besides you has ever expressed an interest, pass on to your friends, family, and fellow parishioners this plan. Build the audience--don't get mad at the librarians if one doesn't exist. Catholics are notoriously bad at reading Catholic books!
Start a book club at your parish! Get other people reading good Catholic books, both literature and nonfiction. There's an endless wealth of books waiting to be discovered.
I was asked whether I really believed what I’d said about the news aiming to be objective, aiming to tell the truth, and not simply be politically biased about situations.
That’s a question with some nuanced answers, which I’ll get to later. But for right now, let me just say that I believe you can come to know people truly and deeply by the stories they tell themselves about themselves.
National myths; legends of the founding of organizations or institutions; the songs, the poems, the stories they tell themselves about themselves—that’s how you know what a people or an individual truly values. That’s how you can pick up on the themes and the boundaries of their own self-understanding.
And the media loves certain stories about itself. Consider the recently released Spielberg movie The Post.
Its theme, like the theme of almost every other movie or TV show about a heroic media, celebrates simply telling truth to power. Telling it like it is, without fear or favor. Serving the public’s right to know.
Consider All the President’s Men—ironically, a sort of sequel to The Post, though there would probably not be The Post without All the President’s Men.
There, you have a celebration of underdog reporters, sticking by their principles and protecting their source, all in the service of revealing criminal behavior originating from the highest offices in the land.
Consider Spotlight, called by Catholic sources perhaps the best movie on the sex abuse scandal one could have hoped for.
In spite of family and ecclesial pressure, in spite of a culture of secrecy and silence around priests and religious abusing children, in spite of every reason in the world not to put all the pieces together and tell the truth to the world, the Boston Globe ran a series in 2002 that shook the Catholic Church across the world. They told the truth. They exposed something badly needing exposure.
The stories the media tells itself, then, and loves deeply all celebrate truth telling. Not shading the truth to protect a political lobby or special interest; not suppressing the news about major events; not refusing people a voice. The media tells itself stories that celebrate objectivity, in spite of pressure from peers or friends (at the heart of The Post).
So yes, I believe the media truly believes it should be objective, it should tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and it aspires to be the sort of institution in which there would be full and fair coverage of the March for Life.
Now, there’re some necessary nuances to that story. Namely, the theme echoing throughout all of these stories is about telling truth to power. That is to say, they show plucky underdog media folk telling the truth to the Establishment or in spite of the Establishment (and yes, that does need a capital E). There’s nothing brave about telling a suffering person truths that will make them suffer more, nothing brave about exacerbating a woman’s pain, nothing to celebrate in ripping someone’s heart apart as they lay dying.
In short, you can and should do things to the strong that you have no business doing to the weak or to the oppressed. It’s balancing the scales and serving the cause of justice when you expose the weaknesses of the strong and the vices of the virtuous; it’s petty, spiteful, or acting a s a stooge to the powerful when you expose the weaknesses of the weak, reveal the vices of the vicious, or in any way make it harder for the oppressed to fight off their oppression.
Thus, those groups or individuals identified as victims are not to be dealt with in the same fashion as those presumed to be the powerful or agents if oppression.
It’s a perfectly understandable impulse; chivalrous, even. And yet if the media makes a mistake as oppressor and oppressed—say, for instance, they fail to realize that unborn children are the most powerless and defenseless of all victims of violence; they fail to perceive that many women, if they truly had a free choice, would not want to get an abortion, but rather are under severe pressure from family, friends, or their partner—then the media throws itself into the cause of the wrong party, or at least fails to fairly give a hearing to what they perceive to be the oppressive establishment, which already has all the strength it needs to make itself heard, and so doesn’t need any sort of assistance to get its perspective out there.
I believe they intend to do the right thing; there’s just confusion about the objective facts in play, as well as who has power in this situation. So the work of spreading the Gospel of Life goes on. We have an obligation to continue to share the truth that the dignity of human life and human rights must be defended from conception to natural death; that women are often forced into abortions and not making a free decision; that unborn children are the weakest of the weak, the poorest of the poor, and so deserve every chivalrous impulse to be roused on their behalf; that we need to work hard to make our civilization welcoming to life, animated by love, and one characterized by justice, mercy, and peace.
It's an interesting time to hang out with people of different political persuasions. There are the Democrats, who are almost uniformly aghast at the present administration; the Republicans, divided between NeverTrumpers, former Trumpers, and abiding supporters of the present administration; and a fairly mixed bag of independent, libertarian, or other people of less mainstream political stripes. And all of them tend to be quite vehement right now.
Faced with this hodgepodge on the one side and Catholic social teaching on the other, what's a Catholic to do?
Well, a few obligations are clear.
First and foremost, only Jesus Christ is your savior, not a politician, party, or platform. I don't care who the enemy we face in a given generation is; it's not worth damning your soul in order to defeat them.
Put no trust in princes,
in children of Adam powerless to save.
Who breathing his last, returns to the earth;
that day all his planning comes to nothing (Ps 146:3-4).
Trust in Jesus. Trust in the merciful love that created and sustains the cosmos. Don't throw over the law of love in favor of pursuing vengeance or victory in the political arena. No earthly conflict is worth losing your soul over. Reject the temptation to make power or money, race or class, status or security an idol. Reject, in short, "bad religion," especially as diagnosed by Ross Douthat.
No matter what else you do or do not do, pray. Pray for the country; pray for the common good; and pray for our elected officials, military and security folks, and all those who take part in the immense machinery of governance. Pray for those affected for good or for ill by the government. Pray for the people you like, and pray extra hard for those whom you do not like. Wish God's blessings on all of them, remembering that God blesses by helping people towards their ultimate good (sanctity), and so to pray for one's enemies or even for the enemies of humanity is not the same thing as to simply ask that good things happen to bad people.
Read. Don't just watch, as important as the news, C-SPAN, and other forms of media may be. Read good, solidly researched and generally objective biographies of major figures. Look into the history of the country, of your state, of your community, and let that inform your prayers and participation. Read up on Catholic social teaching, starting with good books such as Brandon Vogt's Saints and Social Justice: A Guide to Changing the World. Share what you read, and talk about it at the dinner table.
Realize that Catholic teaching and reality do not fit cleanly into left/right categories. To be Catholic is to transcend partisanship often. To be faithful to Christ and to the facts while seeking to do one's duty as a citizen and be usefully involved in politics is to be in a party, but not of it.
Vote. Brexit and President Trump's election victory should have proven to everyone that every vote counts. You know Benjamin Franklin's quote, "Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves."? Well, get out the vote and the election results will take care of themselves. What counts as a good result? Whenever policies conducive to the common good are enacted; whenever politicians seeking to serve the common good are elected. Now, of course, there will always be politicians and elected officials who are most interested in power, money, or self-aggrandizement. Human nature hasn't changed since our fall. At the same time, people can rise to the occasion. Confronted with stupendous challenges, they may respond with unexpected virtue. And even if they are not disinterested, their self-interest may motivate them to do a good job in order to get reelected.
Help reform your party. Few people have really publicly acknowledged that the parties died in 2016. There were four parties, really, with possible presidents in play: The Bernie Sanders supporters; the Democrats with Clinton; the Republicans with their 16 primary candidates; and Donald Trump's Breitbart/alt-right/etc. wing. The two major political parties in the United States are the walking dead right now. The Republicans could not field a life-long Republican presidential candidate who could beat Trump (a very recent Republican) in the primaries., and the Democrats could not defeat Donald Trump in the general election. It's time for the reform and renewal of the parties. True fidelity to the teaching of the Church--the whole teaching of the Church--should lead a Catholic to oppose his or her party on a semi-regular basis. For instance, on the right, the push for torture/enhanced interrogation, the ready willingness to discard human rights in the name of national security, and more should certainly be met with steadfast opposition from Catholics who are conservative. Look to St. John Paul II or Alexander Solzhenitsyn to see why. On the left, the push for abortion, attempts to restrict or redefine religious freedom so as to remove the Church and her members from charitable works and the public sphere, and gender ideology ought to be met with principled, firm, and unyielding opposition from Catholics who are liberal. Look to Pope Francis and Dorothy Day to see why.
Be willing to cooperate with your opponents when they're right. There are causes and laws that all people of good will should support. Certainly we ought to all be able to agree to pursue decent treatment of all our fellow men and women; certainly we ought to all be in favor of the protection and preservation of human rights. There are causes where we can and should cross the aisle to achieve a common goal. Democrats and Republicans can and should work together, live together, get married and raise children together, build homes, families, communities, and a country together. Differences and disagreements about means shouldn't prevent Catholics from seeing that we all (ought to) desire the same ends: our flourishing as one nation under God, indivisible.
Get involved in your local communities. Real change goes deep, and it starts locally. Join civic organizations; get involved in school boards and county commissions; become a member of clubs and associations. Meet your neighbors. Listen to them. Love them, whether they be left or right, whether they be like you or wildly different. Live love. Do good works at your state, diocesan or archdiocesan, and regional level. Support the common good of your local communities, and that will foster the common good of the nation as a whole.
Whatever else you do, do something! Catholics are called to be in the world, even as we are not of it. We believe in a God who became incarnate, who became a citizen of a certain place at a certain time, and who even paid taxes to God and Caesar. We are first and foremost citizens of the kingdom of Heaven, yes, but we are also citizens here below. Don't wait for someone else to come along and fix everything; take up what gifts and talents you possess and fix something.
Tell the truth. Live love. Contemplate your neighbor, and see Christ shining out through their eyes. Do the works of mercy, and work justice.
If you're looking for a solution/something useful to do, see the end of this piece. But I wanted to try once again to explain why I'm posting about all of this to such a degree. A friend said:
"You should not be easily moved to fear. It is unwarranted."
I'm not Jewish, or black, so yeah, I personally don't have nearly as much to fear. But I am Catholic, and I am an American, and the son of a Coast Guardsman. The Nazis and the KKK are enemies of the US. They are enemies of humanity. They are enemies of the Church. Their ideologies are to be opposed absolutely, especially when they are manifesting in marches and rallies.
We who are white, who are safe and far away from these things, can all too easily assume they are nothing to be afraid of, nothing to worry about. The ideologies were defeated. Sauron was destroyed, after all, and Voldemort died trying to kill a baby, and all that's over and done with. Right?
Tell that to the folks who attend the synagogue in Charlottesville. Tell that to the black people who have to live near or alongside people who put on their klan gear on the weekends. Tell that to the non-whites watching the Vice documentary this past week.
I am not afraid--I am in Massachusetts, deep in the North, deep behind Union lines. But I am furious and afraid on behalf of all those people who shouldn't have to be furious and afraid. Not, I hope, out of moral preening, but because Jim Crow endured because so many of us thought it silly to be afraid, thought Martin Luther King a troublemaker and the Civil Rights movement a whole lot of fuss about nothing. I'm writing all this because of Munich, and Chamberlain, and a very near thing for Britain because they disarmed throughout the 1930s, for all that Churchill never stopped speaking. I'm writing all this because let's try not to leave the Jewish people alone in the face of the Nazis again, or the black folks alone in the face of the Klan again.
"Furthermore, you are not asking people to simply state their opposition to Nazisism. You have affirmatively stated that unless someone supports punching people in the face for speaking words of hate, then that person has lost his mind."
No. If you can find it and repost it, I'll acknowledge I made a mistake. But what I've been saying or trying to say is that unless someone is able to empathize and understand why BLM or Antifa or an ordinary citizen punches people in the face for being public neo-Nazis and KKK, then that person has lost his mind. I cringe every time a conservative tries to equate Antifa or BLM with the neo-Nazis and the KKK because it's ridiculous on its face. Antifa and BLM have never held all of Europe in their thrall, never built concentration camps or ovens, never put stars on the Jews or sent forth death squads, the SS. They've never held the South in their thrall, sending and receiving slave ships on which millions died, never torn apart families, had breeding programs for their slaves, never sent forth night riders to lynch or bomb civil rights leaders. To attempt such a comparison is obscene.
"I am concerned that it strikes such fear in your heart that I will not advocate instigating violence. Hopefully you let go of some of that fear long enough to see that those who are not actively advocating for and justifying violence can still be fiercely opposed to the evils of Nazism and White supremacists."
Of course the right can be fiercely opposed to the evils of Nazism and white supremacists, but act and potential are two different things. This is why I keep saying this should be easy--there're all the intellectual and historical resources in the world for Republicans and Americans of all stripes, especially Catholic Christians, to oppose Nazism and white supremacist ideologies.
I'm seeing a lot of Catholic Christians and Republicans very intently defending the president and attempting to equate BLM and Antifa with neo-Nazis and the KKK.
I'm not seeing the Republicans on Facebook fiercely opposing Nazism and the KKK.
... He [President Trump] is also working to destroy and discredit the American Right, pitting us against one another in vicious internecine arguments. Right now there are otherwise good people who, out of partisan habits or long-borne outrage at biased media, are trying to concoct excuses for why Trump’s Q&A wasn’t so bad and all the criticisms of it are just fake news.
It’s time for that to stop. It’s time to stop looking at the latest Trump statement in relation to how bad you think the alternative is on the Left, or how biased the media is, and instead to compare it to what we should actually expect from a president. In a country where 99 percent of the population is opposed to Nazis, it should be the easiest thing in the world for an American president to unite the country by appealing to our shared values. Only Trump could take one of the most uncontroversial ideas in American politics, the Indiana Jones Rule, and turn it into a wrenching national argument. ...
And I'm really sad about that because this shouldn't even be a thing. This is the easiest challenge in the world, really, because conservatism stands against the sort of easy disregard for the common good that led to the Confederacy and the Civil War; conservatism stands for human rights and against totalitarian governments, as happened throughout the Cold War; Christianity calls us to love our neighbor, whoever they may be, and to know that all are one in Christ Jesus, no matter their race, no matter their skin color.
This was such an easy one to knock out of the park--but here we are, arguing instead.
So here's my proposed solution.
Dear conservatives and Christians of my acquaintance: I hold that when the Nazis and the KKK try to get on board the conservative end of the spectrum--that is, when the left hasn't had to lift a finger; the Nazis and the KKK are doing the work themselves--then the Republicans need to be leading the counter-demonstrations out of sheer love of country. Nothing to do with trying to "distance" yourselves from the Nazis. Tell the left, "We've got this. We'll do the counter-protests. We'll unite the right and stand between the 'Unite the Right' rally and the synagogue. Don't bother sending in BLM or Antifa. We'll bring the Knights of Columbus, the pro-life movement, and all the churches. We'll be the ones to get rid of the KKK and the Nazis because you've always been wrong about them being conservative or Republican. We know Christianity demands us oppose these groups. Don't worry. We protest Planned Parenthood; we'll protest the Nazis and the KKK." Why? It's an easy win; all of us are bound by conviction to oppose Nazism and the KKK; and the left is doing it wrong, as this piece makes clear.
... “The main thing that [hate groups] seek is attention and publicity to disseminate a message of hate,” Robert Trestan, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Boston office, told NPR’s “All Things Considered” during an interview about today’s planned “free speech” rally on Boston Common, which some are concerned will be a magnet for hate groups. “And so the best-case scenario is they come and they speak at the Common and there is nobody there to listen.” And Moises Velasquez-Manoff, a contributing op-ed writer at the Times, explained earlier this week that according to experts, “Violence directed at white nationalists only fuels their narrative of victimhood — of a hounded, soon-to-be-minority who can’t exercise their rights to free speech without getting pummeled.” “I would want to punch a Nazi in the nose, too,” Maria Stephan, a program director at the United States Institute of Peace, told him. “But there’s a difference between a therapeutic and strategic response.” Progressives would be eagerly echoing and retweeting this sort of logic if the wonks in question were talking about ISIS rather than the National Vanguard. Why should their insights suddenly be ignored?
If this line of thinking is correct, anyone disgusted by organized displays of explicit hatred should adopt a stance along the lines of this: “You know what? Let the Nazis rally. Let them try to promote a dying ideology the entire nation finds execrable. Down the road we are going to set up a big, inclusive show of solidarity that will be ten times larger. And anyone who is scared or intimidated or angry should come there, rather than risk their well-being facing down the dregs of society.” To be sure, this approach may not be as satisfying as punching Nazis, but it may increase the odds that in the future, there will be fewer Nazis to punch in the first place. ...
Let's do it right, peacefully, and far more effectively because if Christianity and conservatism makes plain the neo-Nazis and racists have no home on the right, they have no hope of a political home anywhere.
You want BLM and Antifa to become irrelevant? Publicly oppose racism in an organized fashion so they don't have occasion to riot.
And I sympathize to a degree with why conservatives are reluctant to respond to liberal challenges to condemn the Nazis, the KKK, and racism. I absolutely know how the left can attempt to demonize people or positions; I've seen the same sorts of things at Gonzaga; I agree that the ideological legacy of Communism perdures and must still be extricated from politics.
But conservatism, Christianity, and patriotism calls us to oppose the Nazis and the KKK. A pragmatic concern for ending the spectre of Antifa and BLM violence in this country calls us to publicly, clearly, consistently oppose racism, the white supremacists, and the neo-Nazis wherever they arise so that the left doesn't feel the need; so that it's taken care of.
Using the force of reason and public witness against racism is part of the new evangelization, after all, and a necessary part of developing a culture of life, leading to a civilization of love.
So come on--win big, win easily, and do the right thing, the thing demanded by conservatism and Christianity themselves--stand against the racists so the left doesn't have to, even if (when) segments of the left aren't grateful or gracious, when they wish you weren't there so they could attempt to tar you with the same brush. Do the right thing, as the pro-life movement has been doing for so long, even when it's hard, or thankless, or painful, or misunderstood.
The essence of Christianity is that God was one of us, and is, and will be forever. And that he can be encountered in every human being, as the Anchoress shows so well. Excerpts:
My mood being what it was, I wasn’t interested in finding out. I kept my head down, and my eyes lowered, and as I approached the steps I could hear him asking, “which one? This one? This one? Which door?”
Finally looking up, I realized the man was talking to me. “Which door?” he repeated, moving quickly from one to the other. “This one? I’m going to open the door for you! I’m the doorman! I’m waiting to open the door for you, if you’ll let me.”
“If you’ll let me…” those words struck something inside me, and made me feel guilty. I was too ungenerous to allow someone else to be generous. I know this about myself; it is an old flaw, and a deep one.
I let him open the door, and thanked him, but not warmly. I felt intruded upon, in exactly the way that shy, introverted people can feel burdened by simple exchanges of pleasantry that come so naturally for others. Why, oh why did people have to put themselves in my way, and inflict themselves upon my consciousness — forcing me to engage when I am so intent on only doing so on my own terms! Grouse, grouse.
Settling into my pew, still disturbed by the doorman in a way I couldn’t quite understand, I breathed deeply and asked God’s forgiveness for my unpardonable me-ness. I began to catalogue for him the prayer intentions I had brought with me — for a young woman and a young man, both battling breast cancer; for my family members sick in body, or mind and spirit; for a missing jetliner and grieving families; for the priest I could see preparing in the sacristy — a shy fellow, himself, who always inspires me to pray for him. Opening my Magnificat, I happened on a quote from the Servant of God Catherine deHueck Doherty:
The mercy that we must give to others includes that of standing up for the poor, the lonely, those who have no education and cannot stand up for themselves. It means to engage in what we call social justice on behalf of our brother. That involves opening ourselves to being pushed around and crucified. This always happens to those who stand up for others…
Lent is here to remind us that the mercy of God is ours provided we embrace his law of love; provided we realize that it’s going to hurt, and hurt plenty, but that the very hurting will be a healing. That’s the paradox of God, that while you hurt, you heal. That’s true healing.
The sea of his mercy is open before us. Lent definitely and inexorably leads us to it and makes us think about what it takes to swim in it.
I think the good/evil thing was basically another (apparently ill-translated) way of saying you can't ask of someone what they haven't got. You cannot expect an infant to have the knowledge and experience of an adult. You cannot give meat before milk. People must follow the good insofar as they are aware of it, insofar as they can find it, even if their consciences are not well formed or misdirected. It's the antidote to the great Catholic error of the past, namely, coercing others to give lip-service to the faith (see: Inquisition, Heretics, etc.) even though they don't get it, don't agree with it, and see no reason to accept it as true. We can expel people from the Church, and we can admit them, but it's not right to put a sword to their throat or a gun to their head and demand of them a knowledge and acceptance of the good and the true which they're not in a place to honestly give.
“The Church respects the freedom of individuals to seek the truth and to embrace it according to the dictates of conscience, and in this light she firmly rejects proselytism and the use of unethical means to gain conversions.” – Blessed John Paul II, in Sri Lanka, 1995
“ The word ‘proselytism’ has a negative meaning when it indicates a way of winning followers which does not respect the freedom of those to whom a specific kind of religious propaganda is directed. The Catholic Church in America is critical of proselytism by the sects and, for this reason, rejects methods of this kind in her own evangelizing work. Presenting the Gospel of Christ in its entirety, the work of evangelization must respect the inner sanctuary of every individual’s conscience, where the decisive and absolutely personal dialogue between grace and human freedom unfolds.” — Blessed John Paul, Ecclesia in America, 1999.
“We impose our faith on no one. Such proselytism is contrary to Christianity. Faith can develop only in freedom. But we do appeal to the freedom of men and women to open their hearts to God, to seek him, to hear his voice. ” — Pope Benedict, Munich, 2006.
You want to know what this pope is about? Read what he's said, not what he's reported to have said. For more, see:
"We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity."
And so totally this:
“I see clearly,” the pope continues, “that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds.... And you have to start from the ground up."
“The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all. The confessor, for example, is always in danger of being either too much of a rigorist or too lax. Neither is merciful, because neither of them really takes responsibility for the person. The rigorist washes his hands so that he leaves it to the commandment. The loose minister washes his hands by simply saying, ‘This is not a sin’ or something like that. In pastoral ministry we must accompany people, and we must heal their wounds.
“How are we treating the people of God? I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess. The church’s ministers must be merciful, take responsibility for the people and accompany them like the good Samaritan, who washes, cleans and raises up his neighbor. This is pure Gospel. God is greater than sin. The structural and organizational reforms are secondary—that is, they come afterward. The first reform must be the attitude. The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to descend themselves into their people’s night, into the darkness, but without getting lost. The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials. The bishops, particularly, must be able to support the movements of God among their people with patience, so that no one is left behind. But they must also be able to accompany the flock that has a flair for finding new paths.
“Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent. The ones who quit sometimes do it for reasons that, if properly understood and assessed, can lead to a return. But that takes audacity and courage.”
And this:
“The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.
“I say this also thinking about the preaching and content of our preaching. A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation. There is nothing more solid, deep and sure than this proclamation. Then you have to do catechesis. Then you can draw even a moral consequence. But the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing. The homily is the touchstone to measure the pastor’s proximity and ability to meet his people, because those who preach must recognize the heart of their community and must be able to see where the desire for God is lively and ardent. The message of the Gospel, therefore, is not to be reduced to some aspects that, although relevant, on their own do not show the heart of the message of Jesus Christ.”
Of course, as we all know, Pope Francis's comments are such a huge departure from everything Benedict ever said ohwait... Excerpts.
"...Some said Benedict was a "conservative" and that he wasn't open-minded, caring, loving, or other accusations. These are not accurate descriptions and he doesn't deserve to be accused of such things. Rather, he (like Francis) is CATHOLIC. That means he doesn't fit into the neat political framework of being either liberal, conservative, progressive, traditionalist, moderate, etc.
Take these quotes from BXVI for example - most would call them "liberal":
**"It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs."
**“It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity. Through Mary, and the other holy women, the feminine element stands at the heart of the Christian religion.”
**"the prevalence of a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an unregulated capitalism"
**"If we refuse to share what we have with the hungry and the poor, we make of our possessions a false god. How many voices in our materialist society tell us that happiness is to be found by acquiring as many possessions and luxuries as we can! But this is to make possessions into a false god."
So, what label should we put on Benedict? How about Catholic. Just as Benedict shouldn't be reduced to political labels, neither should Francis. It isn't fair to either of them..."
Read what they've written and what they've said. Study the men themselves, not what other people have said about them, and then you'll be able to spot the books and authors who reliably represent who Benedict and Francis really are. I'd recommend the following:
Pray, especially the Rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. Pray for our politicians, our military and law enforcement personnel, our allies overseas, our enemies at home and abroad--everyone. Pray for their conversion and sanctification, the Holy Spirit in their hearts and minds, the transformation of the Indwelling Trinity for them now and into eternity. Pray! As grace is unleashed into the world by our inviting God in, more people will become holy. A civilization of love depends upon a society of saints--a whole generation of people who answer the universal call to holiness. That's how the culture of death and fear will be confounded and the culture of life will win out. We won't be able to discern light from darkness without prayer. Nor will our actions have supernatural power or our words be full of truth if we aren't regularly getting in touch with God, the way, the truth, and the life. Don;t forget to fast, as well!
Accept the antique maxim "Give me liberty or give me death!" We must remember that if we surrender all our liberties for security, we shall have neither liberty nor security. Be willing that there should be casualties in a free society, or else we shall give all our rights away for no sure security.
Know and love your neighbors. Join groups. Form networks of friends, acquaintances, relatives, that cannot be sundered if you lose your phone or are offline for a time. Get to know the people around you. Love them. Pray for them. Go to church, or temple, or mosque, or whatever house of worship you choose--but join. Join the Knights of Columbus, or the PTA, or a book club, or something, just to better know and love the people around you. Take local community and family seriously. They're the ones who'll be around for you when you're old or ill or in need. If you haven't built those relationships, you will truly be all alone with no attachments to anything larger than yourself should the bottom ever fall out of your life.
Do works of mercy and don't stop. Find the needs which your time, talents, or treasure can best answer, then meet those needs.
Get involved in local politics. It's the local politicians of today who, in a few years or decades, will be the national and international powerhouses. If you want to see good, honorable people in national politics, start encouraging good, honorable people to get involved in local politics. Get involved yourself! Stop complaining about the people on offer and get your name or the name of the best and wisest human beings you have ever known on the ballot.
Join one of the major parties and stand your ground. There must be criticism from within. There must be pro-life Democrats and Republicans who refuse to accept "anything in the name of national security." There must be people who will not go with the flow, who will be living things and go against the current, to paraphrase Chesterton. Only then will the parties come to their senses.
Speak the truth. Write letters to the editor. Write blogs. Post on Facebook. Don't go quietly into this looming night. Speak! If enough of us talk about these impossible, insane, unthinkable realities which are falling into place around us, then we will live in an educated electorate. There will be hope for real democratic change based upon a knowledge of the severity of the situation and, at the same time, a sense of empowerment to make a change. Remember the methods used by Vaclav Havel, Pope John Paul II, Solzhenitsyn, and others to fight the doublethink and the culture of the lie they faced. Take to heart the wisdom of George Orwell: “In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” The truth is powerful--always has been, always will be. "And then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8:32.
Be holy as your Father in heaven is holy. Here's how, and here, and here, and here.
Ahem. So does this mean that by being pro-life, I'm a feminist? Language warning. Excerpts:
...'This link has just turned me into feminist hulk. Feminist hulk types REALLY HARD, and likes to use CAPS LOCK. You’ve been warned.
This is the part, in particular, that hulkafied me…”For those of us guys who like girls — you know, like them like them — and want to have relationships with them that may last anywhere from a few minutes to many years”…”Your sex life is at stake. Can you think of anything that kills the vibe faster than a woman fearing a back-alley abortion? Making abortion essentially inaccessible in Texas will add an anxiety to sex that will drastically undercut its joys. And don’t be surprised if casual sex outside of relationships becomes far more difficult to come by.”
Oh, you poor, poor little douchebag. GAWD FORBID we tie ANY LEVEL OF RESPONSIBILITY to that 2-MINUTE HOOK-UP in which you might accidentally CREATE ANOTHER HUMAN BEING, because, like, radical fauxminism, and labiaration, and stuff. IF YOU HAVE EVER WONDERED HOW ABORTION MAKES WOMEN MORE EXPLOITABLE THAN ANY OTHER THING UNDER THE SUN, read this garbage… I’m off to go smash $#!%… like the REAL PATRIARCHY. Ya know, the one where men expect you to kill your child so they can get a carefree piece of ass…
The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Texas law that everyone is freaking the f*** out about basically moves the last possible date at which a pregnant woman can obtain an abortion from 24 weeks, where babies can be born alive and survive, to 20 weeks, before the generally-accepted point of viability.
Let’s just hang on to that for a second.
If that seems straightforward, even pro-science to you, you’re not alone: if a kid can survive outside the womb, than it’s kind of hard to make the argument that they are an inhuman parasite. But, whatever. This is abortion legislation, so the rules are made up and the points don’t matter. What matters is, we’re all like, ten Texas legislators away from starring in our own post-apocalyptic Margaret Atwood novel, where us poor folk are chained to beds and forced to have children against our will. Never mind that by the time the Texas deadline rolls around you’re more than four months pregnant, you’re an idiot who simply can’t make up her puny female mind about being a parent, and need to have available a procedure that most of the world (except Canada!) views as barbaric. And Canada doesn’t count. As a country. And just generally. Because f*** Canada.
Oh, and then there’s the part about HB2 shutting down abortion clinics that can’t adhere to the same cleanliness and operation standards as a veterinary office, which, let’s just say, if they aren’t already, women aren’t getting good care. Because they aren’t getting the same standard of care as your dog. And if that shuts a couple of them down, I’m sure no one is going to miss them...
A to-do list for the new evangelization and answering the universal call to holiness. Excerpts:
...The Church does not exist for itself, but for the world, rather. And if its attention is on itself, Screwtape wins. The world now needs magnanimity, about which the Church, as proclaiming that which is more human and more dignified, is an expert. But this expertise must be taught, used, and just now what is needed is to show the glories of being human, always, of course, by revealing Christ who is the human made full, but also by the saints who have identified with Christ, and in the realm of human virtue and accomplishment and skill.
It’s to our tasks, I suggest, to our laboratories and workshops and studios, to the concert halls, lecture halls, surgeries—to our work, whatever it might be, in which we can give some indication of the greatness in whose image the human is and to which we are called and capable.
This is, admittedly, something of a tall order. The institutional Church lacks resources it once had, its reputation is diminished, dissent still hinders unity, and the significant contributions of individuals, whether lay or ecclesial, must attain a union of direction, purpose, and action. How is all this to be done, practically? Well, there is no formula, but neither are we without guidance.
First, work in Faith, grounding our hope in the foundation of Pentecost. On the first Good Friday, no one would have had good reason to think the small band of disciples—scattered, confused, splintering, some even unfaithful—would have amounted to much, and even after the Resurrection they lacked cohesion and public witness. But come Pentecost they are transformed, bold, clear, unafraid, and their work bears fruit. We can hope in the same, for the same Spirit lives and moves and breathes in us still—so, to our work, trusting that it is God who brings fruit, and will do so.
Second, distinguish fruit from leaves. Jesus draws near the fig tree, subsequently cursing it for its lack of fruit, because it was “in leaf” (Mk 11:13). Having all the trappings of fecundity, it lacked substance. We can expect, I think, many of our leaves to drop—grand buildings, parish schools, cultural acceptance and prestige, these may not be ours for long—but Christ promises none of those things, but instead His own presence, the Spirit as guide and comforter, the persistence of the Church, and a final victory. So, we seek fruit, holding leaves—which are, after all, delightful things—somewhat loosely.
Third, respect freedom. One reason I entered the Church was catholicity, namely, that it had not splintered but remained one, even though the various charisms, forms of spirituality, religious orders, and tastes were staggeringly diverse. A Church that includes Jesuits and Carthusians, Francis and Aquinas, Palestrina and Suzanne Toolan, knows, or should know, how to respect freedom in those things which are not defined or required so as to move in unity on the essentials. We cannot lose ourselves in little inner battles, when a watching world can’t tell the distinctions apart anyway, but looks to see if we profess the truth and live in love.
Fourth, appropriate what is there. The resources of the tradition are virtually overwhelming. Like so many converts from evangelical Protestantism, I took the first steps to Rome because of the sheer enormity and breadth of the received wisdom. We have the Fathers, the scholastics, the saints, the mystics, the martyrs, Scripture, art, music, poetry, cathedrals, monasteries, religious orders, doctors, theologians, encyclicals, we have the Catechism—there is no shortage of essential resources, if only we would turn to them. So, we need to learn these things, perhaps taking a lesson from Orthodox Jewish models of study in which many men and women of action and business nonetheless are students and scholars. Of course we work to make RCIA robust, school theology courses vigorous, the seminaries and pastors learned, the colleges more Catholic; but in the meantime, we can, all of us, read Augustine and learn to sing.
Fifth, celebrate. It’s very easy to become lost in our losses, and to forget that the Church is growing worldwide, that the Bishops are exercising moral leadership on matters of religious freedom, that men like George and Chaput and Scola (to name just a few of the many) exist, that new publishing houses and online journals spring up, that Francis leads and we still have Ratzinger writing, that many Protestants are discovering the fullness of Faith, and on and on it goes.
Sixth, rest in communion. The saints intercede for us, as does Our Lady, and we are surrounded by an enormous cloud of witnesses—those alive in body and those alive in soul only—praying and working, all. The sacrifice is performed and received now and in eternity, and God has taken residence with us. Be not afraid, we have all we need.
Seventh, learn shrewdness and innocence. Disposition alone solves nothing, we must also deliberate wisely and lengthily, guided by prayer, the tradition, authority, and reason, about what to do. We must be shrewd and watchful “in prayer and in love,” and we must cultivate those traits in the whole community of the faithful. The time of naivety is long past, the time of riding cultural heritage has departed, and we must be without guile, but also without stupidity...
...She concluded her talk by presenting five things the Church can do to change the culture. First, she said the Church must identify those people who can represent us well to the wider culture. Media spokesmen are needed, orators are needed, and good singers are needed, she said.
Next, the Church needs to start training artists again. Those with talents for creating beautiful works of art need to be identified, encouraged, and taught, all within the Church. Nicolosi lamented that there is not one Catholic school among the top 20 film programs in the country – “there is no place in the Church to send your artist kid to be the best.”
Nicolosi’s third recommendation for Catholics to change the culture is to start treating the arts as important, by again becoming patrons of beauty. Singers and architects need to well-compensated for their efforts to produce beautiful works of art; “we used to be willing to pay for gorgeous art.”
Medieval inhabitants of Europe sacrificed to produce magnificent Cathedrals, giving a sign of their faith for the future. Our sign for the future, Nicolosi lamented, is the popular 1980s hymn, “Gather Us In.”
Fourth, we need to work with professionals in the media field. Poorly made Catholic media does not evangelize: “ugly, shoddy, embarrassing work is not orthodox Catholic – it’s another kind of lie,” she said.
“You’re saying one thing with your mouth, and something else with your style.” As when building a Church one hires construction professionals, not necessarily daily Mass-goers, the production of Catholic films must include professional filmmakers.
Finally, Nicolosi urged prayer for artistic geniuses – for “Mozarts.” We must “pray to God to send a new influx of beauty, and people who can send it into our midst.”
“Ask God to send a Mozart, and that we’ll recognize him,” she concluded. “Let us, for the sake of the people out there beyond our doors, make what John Paul II called the sacrifices that beauty requires.”...
As C. S. Lewis said:
Good Works' in the plural is an expression much more familiar to modern Christendom than 'good work.' Good works are chiefly almsgiving or 'helping' in the parish. They are quite separate from one's 'work.' And good works need not be good work, as anyone can see by inspecting some of the objects made to be sold at bazaars for charitable purposes. This is not according to our example. When our Lord provided a poor wedding party with an extra glass of wine all around, he was doing good works. But also good work; it was a wine really worth drinking. Nor is the neglect of goodness in our 'work,' our job, according to precept. The apostle says everyone must not only work but work to produce what is 'good.'
The idea of Good Work is not quite extinct among us, though it is not, I fear, especially characteristic of religious people. I have found it among cabinetmakers, cobblers, and sailors. It is no use at all trying to impress sailors with a new liner because she is the biggest or costliest ship afloat. They look for what they call her 'lines': they predict how she will behave in a heavy sea. Artists also talk of Good Work; but decreasingly. They begin to prefer words like 'significant,' 'important', 'contemporary,' or 'daring.' These are not, to my mind, good symptoms.--The World's Last Night: And Other Essays, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Nov 4, 2002), pg 74 ff.
...Deconstructing this article has proven to be a hard task. On the surface the story of the Cathos 2.0 generation is so strong that it cannot be killed by a skeptical or hostile presentation. It is a French man bites dog story — student revolutionaries in Paris as ultramontane Catholics.
On the surface Le Nouvel Obs seems to have framed the story against the interest of the subject. While it allows the young Catholics to tell their own story, the analysis and commentary is drawn from the left — academics and liberal Catholics who bemoan the conservative political and doctrinal views of Cathos 2.0. Nor do we hear from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in France. This packaging should have made the issues unattractive and painted the subjects in an unsympathetic light. But by the end of the story these young people come off well. You like them...
The presentation and the structure the first three quarters the story follows the conventional secular thinking of the French elites. Yet by the end of the piece you’re hooked by these kids – – their enthusiasm, their excitement, their faith. I cannot tell whether this was an accident or was calculated move to bring the reader on board. Perhaps what we are seeing here is a conscious bait and switch.
How do you get a middle-aged left-liberal secular audience to read a story about a youth movement that detests the values and agenda of the ’68 generation now in power? You do it by couching the story in tropes and phrases that are comfortable to the audience — and then you slip them a story about young attractive — chic — students at elite universities whose faith is changing France and shaking up the church...
...Chris:...Just as Jesus gives you a new relationship with God the Father, the Holy Spirit gives you a new relationship with Jesus.
Sal: What new relationship?
Chris: There are a lot of aspects to it, but the heart of it is that Jesus becomes real to you, not just ideal or abstract. You know him, not just know about him. It’s as big a change as Job found at the end of his story, when the God he had been praying to and complaining to and calling on finally came to him. When that happened, Job said, “I had heard of you with the hearing of the ear, but now I see you with the seeing of the eye.” Firsthand knowing instead of secondhand. And that’s a big difference as weIl, I imagine your father had left home to fight in some foreign war when you were born, and you never saw him. You only got letters from him (that’s like the Bible), and your mother told you about him (she’s like the Church). Then one day he shows up at your front door and comes in, and you hug him and talk with him and play with him—you meet him...
See here for a chaplet to the Holy Spirit. For more, see:
...Ultimately my goal as a movie producer—and your goal in sharing the gospel—is to make your point stick in the audience’s mind. My friend, respected researcher George Barna, says that just two hours after a sermon, most people can’t remember the theme of the message they just heard. But years after seeing a movie, the audience can quote dialogue verbatim. When you have to process the question yourself, work at understanding the formula, and make an emotional connection, the message has a much better chance of sticking.
In my opinion, the film that should have won this year’s Oscar for Best Film is Les Miserables. Early in the movie (and the book), the confrontation of the bishop with former prisoner, Jean Valjean, is a classic and has been told and retold for 150 years since Victor Hugo wrote the original novel. The bishop forgives him for stealing from him, loves, protects, challenges and sends Jean Valjean on the greatest journey of his life. And very simply, the words of Valjean’s response show the gospel in action. Pastors, tell that story; use a video clip if necessary. Les Miserables is a timeless story that has captured what forgiveness and redemption really look like and mean, and is a clear sign post to what Christ has done for us...
There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.--Professor Quirell, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Paperback, (Scholastic, 1997), pg. 291
...Although the Church became entangled with government early on – namely, with the conversion of Constantine – it has never seen its primary duty as giving directives to kings, or telling citizens how to vote. That is, at best, a tertiary role the Church is sometimes forced to serve when the conscience of a polity has become so degraded that natural reason cannot do its job, so faith has to step in and plug the gaps. Classic examples include St. Ambrose’s rebuke of Theodosius for the massacre of unruly citizens; the Church in 16th-century Spain insisting that Indians in the New World were fully human and should not be enslaved; German bishops condemning Nazi euthanasia; and Pope John Paul II denouncing both Communist tyranny and the Western “culture of death.”
But these acts of political prophecy on the part of bishops and popes stand out because they are not the norm. It is the duty of laymen – statesmen and citizens – to inform their consciences with sound moral principles in order to form public policy. Religious believers and leaders must make sure that those principles are sound, and call out the culture when they are either perverted or ignored. That is what abolitionist Christians did in the 19th century, and civil rights leaders in the 20th. Such a movement in Poland brought down the Soviet bloc, ended the Cold War, and may have saved our species from a global nuclear war. So maybe – just maybe – people of faith deserve a hearing...
And then an essential rebuke of those who would seek a simply libertarian state with strict free market capitalism without paying heed to what sort of culture is needed to render that humane:
...Indeed, the very name of the workers’ movement (Solidarity) that knocked down the first domino in Communist Europe was borrowed from Catholic social teaching’s term for the force that knits society together, that goads us to treat each other justly even when the government isn’t looking, that lubricates the highly efficient engine of the market economy with the oil of human kindness. Too often, especially in Europe (as Samuel Gregg documents), the word “solidarity” is cheapened into a synonym for socialism. It’s trotted out as a slogan every time the goldbricking workers of one country crave a subsidy from the thrifty taxpayers of another. But words like “justice,” “love,” and “freedom” are often perverted, too – that doesn’t mean we drown the baby in the bathwater.
The central principle of solidarity in practice is simple and timeless – the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This ethical maxim, which Jesus quoted from the Old Testament, exists in some form in every culture on earth – as C. S. Lewis documented in The Abolition of Man, where he called it the Tao. It is so ubiquitous that it’s easy for us to assume that it’s universally accepted – at least in theory – while far too rarely practiced...
In a strongly ethical culture, a humane culture of life in the context of a civilization of love, perhaps we could have far fewer laws--more conscience, fewer cops. Perhaps a free market system could work with minimal regulation in a highly principled population. Absent the culture, though, libertarianism at its common extreme is one more example of the very modern/Enlightenment-era mistake of thinking that humans are innately good, merely corrupted by the structures binding them. If only we would loosen the fetters of society, then humans would do the right thing and get along without coercion. All would be well. Marx's revolution; Rousseau's noble savage; Rand's superman--on and on it rolls, across all ideological divides in the modern era.
Oh, look! Zmirak proceeds to make all those points in the rest of his article!
...We have another maxim, which crept into Western souls via “worldly philosophers” such as Machiavelli and Hobbes – the principle of the “consenting adult.” Any time someone uses this phrase, he is saying (under his breath) that none of us is the least bit responsible for each other. If folks make stupid choices, that’s not our problem. Even if we are the ones who tempted them to make such a choice – if we have exploited them personally, economically, or sexually – we are still scot-free: “She was a consenting adult;” “That schmuck should have known better,” we tell ourselves, and smirk.
Instead of an ethic that rests on reciprocity, on admitting the unique value of every person because he’s a fellow human, we treasure a heartless, pragmatic ethos that shrugs at suffering and confusion, a Darwinian willingness to pounce on our neighbor’s mistakes. So “consenting adults” work in sweatshops overseas making our iPads, or sweat before cameras enacting our porn, or wake up alone in the bed where we’ve left them when we were finished with our desires. No individual rights were violated, no crime was committed or contract broken – so the modern secular conscience has nothing meaningful to say.
What we don’t dare to realize is that human trust, promise-keeping, and a basic sense of concern for our fellow man are the glue that holds a free society together. (So Adam Smith taught in his Theory of Moral Sentiments.) The anarchy which arises in its absence is just too awful for people to tolerate, so in self-defense, they will even embrace a tyranny.
how, and 
, and 
, and 
.
, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Nov 4, 2002), pg 74 ff.
, 
and 
feature-film series and 
. Early in the movie (and 
), the confrontation of the bishop with former prisoner, Jean Valjean, is a classic and has been told and retold for 150 years since Victor Hugo wrote the original novel. The bishop forgives him for stealing from him, loves, protects, challenges and sends Jean Valjean on the greatest journey of his life. And very simply, the words of Valjean’s response show the gospel in action. Pastors, tell that story; use a video clip if necessary. Les Miserables is a timeless story that has captured what forgiveness and redemption really look like and mean, and is a clear sign post to what Christ has done for us...
is usually well worth reading, and 
Then talk to me about libertarianism.