Scalia on Pope Francis and Prayer

Elizabeth Scalia, that is.  Excerpts:

The Holy Father continues to speak with a sharp sense of urgency:

“Yes, you have to come to know Jesus in the Catechism – but it is not enough to know Him with the mind: it is a step. However, it is necessary to get to know Jesus in dialogue with Him, talking with Him in prayer, kneeling. If you do not pray, if you do not talk with Jesus, you do not know Him. You know things about Jesus, but you do not go with that knowledge, which He gives your heart in prayer. Know Jesus with the mind – the study of the Catechism: know Jesus with the heart – in prayer, in dialogue with Him. This helps us a good bit, but it is not enough. There is a third way to know Jesus: it is by following Him. Go with Him, walk with Him.”

It is necessary, “to go, to walk along the streets, journeying.” It is necessary, said Pope Francis, “to know Jesus in the language of action.” Here, then, is how you can really know Jesus: with these “three languages - of the mind, heart and action.” If, then, “I know Jesus in these ways,” he said in conclusion, “I involve myself with Him”:

“One cannot know Jesus without getting oneself involved with Him, without betting your life [on] Him. When so many people – including us – pose this question: ‘But, who is He?’, The Word of God responds, ‘You want to know who He is? Read what the Church tells you about Him, talk to Him in prayer and walk the street with him. Thus, will you know who this man is.’ This is the way! Everyone must make his choice.”

...The prayer is the key. Without it, we can know the Catechism back and forth, and we can seek to serve others and look for Christ in each other, but the root of all of that — the root that feeds our understanding of the books and helps us to see Christ in others, and to recognize the promptings of the Holy Spirit — is prayer. Daily prayer is what nourishes all of the rest: feeds it, supports it, connects it, grounds it, as Mary grounded Martha...

And if I may, here are some books to get you started (scroll down). Or if that's too much, just say, "Jesus, my Lord and my God! Help! Thanks! Love you!" Rinse, repeat...

Or "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner."

Or the Our Father. Or the Sign of the Cross. It's not hard to get started. Make it a habit. Do it as needed, and do it daily even when you don't think you need to.

Other great prayers:

• the Rosary
• the Chaplet of Divine Mercy

A few excellent basic guides to prayer:

• Fr. Thomas Dubay, Prayer Primer : Igniting a Fire Within
• Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners
• Mark Shea, The Heart of Catholic Prayer: Rediscovering the Our Father and the Hail Mary 

For an overview of the life of prayer/interior life/spiritual life/life in the Spirit:

• Ralph Martin, The Fulfillment of All Desire
• ed. by Mike Aquilina and David Scott, Weapons of the Spirit: Selected Writings of Father John Hugo
• Fr. Thomas Dubay, Deep Conversion/ Deep Prayer 
• Fr. Robert Barron, The Strangest Way: Walking the Christian Path
• Dan Burke, Navigating the Interior Life: Spiritual Direction and the Journey to God
• Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, The Three Conversions in the Spiritual Life

For in-depth explorations of Christian prayer:

• Father Jordan Aumann, OP, Christian Spirituality in the Catholic Tradition
• Father Thomas Dubay, Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel-On Prayer
• Fr. Harvey Egan, SJ, An Anthology of Christian Mysticism (Pueblo Books)
• Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, The Three Ages of the Interior Life (2 Volume Set)

Okay, Catholics, Settle Down

I'll grant that we all can celebrate the Papamoon until Divine Mercy Sunday, I suppose, but then we do need to let Pope Francis get on with his work and make sure we're doing our own--prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; evangelizing, catechizing, and sacramentalizing; walking the road to holiness and clinging to the Lord; spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of Life, and the civilization of love.

We've got a lot of work to do.  We had a lot of work to do when Benedict XVI was pope, and we have a lot of work to do now that Francis is Pope.  We need to kneel down and set to it.

I'm writing this for my own benefit as much as for anyone else.  I've been rather too distracted by the least little tidbit of papal trivia, the smallest newsflash, the latest excited or exultant Catholic predictions of happy days under Pope Francis.  I'm hopeful, too.  I'm joyful, too.  And yet I'm neglecting the things I need to be tending to, especially in this season of Lent.

I look forward to English translations of Francis's work soon to come.  Until that day arrives, I have a ton of Ratzinger I haven't read, and Pope John Paul II, and John Paul I, and Paul VI, and John XXIII, and on and on.  I mean to get my hands on a copy of George Weigel's Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church, and Sherry Weddell's Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus, and Ryan Topping's Rebuilding Catholic Culture.  I should encourage other people to delve deeply into great books on the Catholic faith in this year of faith like Fr. Michael Gaitley's The One Thing Is Three: How the Most Holy Trinity Explains Everything, or Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth series, or Father Mitch Pacwa, SJ's The Year of Faith: A Bible Study Guide for Catholics, or any number of other awesome books on Jesus, Mary, the Trinity, the Church, etc., etc., ad eternam.

I love what I know of our new Holy Father, and I look forward to getting to know him even more in the days of head.  In the meantime, I need to turn my prayers to heaven, my attention to my work, and serve Jesus and his Vicar where I'm at.

But I may cheat every now and again.  As Simcha Fisher said, it is still Papamoon.

Pope Francis: A Round-Up of Reactions

Man, Hugh Hewitt gets some good guests!

Father Robert Spitzer, SJ, author, former president of Gonzaga University, and founder of the Magis Institute (among a whole ton of others), reacts here.

Father Robert Barron, author, rector of Mundelein Seminary, and founder of the Word on Fire ministry, reacts here, including some interesting predictions on who will be replaced within the Vatican itself.

Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, founder of Ignatius Press, reacts here.

Rocco Palmo, blogger at Whispers in the Loggia, reacts here

Mark Steyn, author, columnist, and all-around rabble-rouser reacts here.  (Very interesting commentary on the western reaction to Blessed Pope John Paul II's death here.)

Dr. Albert Mohler, author, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and one of the country's leading Protestant theologians, reacts here.

Father C.J. McCloskey, author, a research fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C, and a priest of Opus Dei, reacts here.

Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., author and archbishop of Philadelphia, reacts here and here.

And George Weigel, author, papal biographer, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, talks evangelical Catholicism here.

Jesuits React to Francis, First Jesuit Pope

Why so unexpected?

The power of prayer.

The experience of being there for the announcement.

From their Superior General.  Excerpts:

...In the name of the Society of Jesus, I give thanks to God for the election of our new Pope, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., which opens for the Church a path full of hope.

All of us Jesuits accompany with our prayers our brother and we thank him for his generosity in accepting the responsibility of guiding the Church at this crucial time. The name of “Francis” by which we shall now know him evokes for us the Holy Father’s evangelical spirit of closeness to the poor, his identification with simple people, and his commitment to the renewal of the Church. From the very first moment in which he appeared before the people of God, he gave visible witness to his simplicity, his humility, his pastoral experience and his spiritual depth.

“The distinguishing mark of our Society is that it is . . . a companionship . . . bound to the Roman Pontiff by a special bond of love and service.” (Complementary Norms, No. 2, § 2) Thus, we share the joy of the whole Church, and at the same time, wish to express our renewed availability to be sent into the vineyard of the Lord, according to the spirit of our special vow of obedience, that so distinctively unites us with the Holy Father (General Congregation 35, Decree 1, No. 17)...

From the Jesuits’ secretary for the promotion of the faith.  Excerpts:

...Father Blaszczak said Pope Francis’ training and priesthood as a Jesuit “tell you that he’s been steeped in Ignatian spirituality,” has had “a top-notch secular education” and that “his formation has always put him in touch with real people in real-life situations,” which he then has reflected upon in an effort to identify the ways God was present.

“That he chose the name Francis signals to us where he’s from, what he’s about and what he believes the reform of the church is going to require: It’s not going to require moral muscle, it’s not going to require just philosophical analysis; it’s going to require an engagement with the person of Christ,” particularly through the Scriptures, he said. “But it’s going to be the Christ poor and humble.”

While some people thought maybe Pope Francis took his name thinking also of the great Jesuit St. Francis Xavier, Father Blaszczak said Jesuits know just how important the life, example and spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi was in the conversion of their founder, St. Ignatius, and in the development of what has come to be known as Ignatian spirituality...

“For Ignatius, Francis is the alternative to the life of the world. Francis, with his itinerant ministry and his intense devotion to the life of Christ and his ascetical lifestyle,” is the counterbalance to the worldly life in the court, the Jesuit said.

“Ignatius, as he admits himself, was given to womanizing, gambling and feats of arms,” but at the time of his conversion, “to his great surprise,” Ignatius finds himself “much more attracted, much more consoled, enlivened and given joy when he thinks about imitating the life of St. Francis,” the founder of the Franciscans, who died in 1226.

Father Blaszczak said Catholics already have a good hint of how Ignatian and Franciscan spirituality might impact the way Pope Francis exercises his ministry “in the way he engaged the people of Rome” when he first stepped out onto the balcony as their bishop and pope March 13 “with great simplicity, with minimal pomp and circumstance.”

The Jesuit said he expected Pope Francis to continue as much as possible to live as he did while cardinal and archbishop of Buenos Aires, with “simplicity and austerity in conformity with the life of Ignatius and Francis, in conformity with his intention to follow Christ poor and humble.”

The focus of St. Ignatius, St. Francis and “historically of our new pope” when he was bishop was to be closest to the poor and those on the margins of society, he said...

"From the conversations I’ve had with my Latin American Jesuit colleagues, this is a man who knows his own mind. This is a man who is not afraid of choosing and marking his own direction,” he said.

He also said he did not think the life of the Society of Jesus would change much with a Jesuit in the Apostolic Palace, because “we are bound to the service of the church through our connection and availability to the Holy Father, and that doesn’t change” no matter who is pope.

The Jesuits promise not to seek high offices in the church, which explains in part why there has never been a Jesuit pope before. However, Father Blaszczak said, that Jesuit promise is secondary to their promise to always be available for whatever mission the church needs them to take on...

American Jesuits react.

The Sins of Catholicism

Are remarkably similar to the sins of Israel in the Old Testament.  Or so saith Thomas Howard.  Excerpts:

...Rome's opulence, her political machinations down through the centuries, her tyrannies and hauteur and self-assertiveness, not to mention the Dionysian romp in the Vatican in the Renaissance, what with Borgia popes and catamites and so forth: all of that is bad - very bad.

The Catholic Church knows that.

Matt Archbold, Religious Liberty, and What to Emulate

He does good work, he's ubiquitous where it counts in the culture wars, and he's a darn sight more popular a blogger than I am.  But he's got me worried.

So this piece, 8 Reasons Catholics are the Worst Protesters, raised some interesting points. It also said this:

You ever see the Occupy Wall Street protests? Those folks are angry. I mean spittin' mad. Catholics aren't really good at anger. You ever been to a pro-life March? There's more smiles and sing alongs than at a Barry Manilow concert. Occupy Wall Streeters are liable to bum rush a police station. Catholics pray the Stations of the Cross. I just can't imagine Bishop Lori turning over a Chevy Volt in protest, can you? You get that on YouTube and you've got a viral hit on your hands, my friend. Come on, Detroit Red Wings fans turn over cars when their team wins a playoff game and we won't do it when Obama torches the Constitution? I'm not saying we should. I'm just saying that we should maybe act like we're ready to. Let's make the administration remember who invented the Crusades and the Inquisition, punk.

Of all the people Catholics could and should think of looking up to, Occupy Wall Street just isn't it.  And we don't usually make up songs about how "they will know we are Christian by our anger, by our anger!  They will know we are Christians by our anger!"

Planned Parenthood Payouts

ought to stop. Excerpts:

Planned Parenthood has been misleading Congress and American taxpayers for many years. I know -- I was part of the deception. For eight years I worked at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas, and for two of those years I was the clinic's director.

Here are the ways Planned Parenthood is deceiving the public -- and taxpayers -- about what it does...

Weigel on Papal Condoments

A (4-week) retrospective:

...While the media misreporting and over-reporting of radical change has played its usual, mischievous role over the past four weeks, it cannot be doubted that a certain lack of clarity has characterized the Holy See’s response to the controversy. That lack of clarity could impede the possibility of a genuine deepening of Catholic moral insight as the internal theological debate unfolds. There is little question that it will put Catholic bishops who have taken a strong line in defending the Catholic integrity of Catholic medical institutions and Catholic health care professionals in a very difficult position vis-à-vis an increasingly aggressive and secularist ambient culture.

Thus, both to ensure that the theological debate generated by Light of the World is a genuine advance rather than a moment of retreat from the truths taught in Veritatis Splendor, and to provide armor for those bishops who are determined to defend the integrity of their institutions and the consciences of those members of their flocks who are medical professionals, it would seem opportune for an indisputably authoritative voice, capable of speaking in the name of the Church, to publish a substantial clarification of the issues that have surfaced over the past month.

Such a clarification might usefully touch several key points. It would reaffirm the Church’s classic teaching on marriage and human sexuality, underscoring that the basic principles at stake here are true and can be known to be true by reason. It would reiterate the intrinsic wrong of contraception. It would endorse educational and pastoral programs affirming chastity and fidelity as the morally appropriate and empirically effective response to HIV/AIDS, while recommitting the Catholic Church to the relief of those already suffering from HIV/AIDS.

It would also be helpful if such a statement would reaffirm that what the Catholic Church teaches in these complex and delicate areas of human life is not a matter of “positions” that can be changed if sufficient public pressure is brought to bear. Rather, the Church brings the light of both reason and revelation to bear on these questions, in the certain conviction that the truth liberates us in the deepest meaning of human liberation.

Deification: For This We Were Made

Olson on John Paul on the Trinity:

...Man has a God-made hole in his being, a deep recess which can only be fulfilled in one Way and by one Person, Jesus Christ. In the Incarnation, God united himself to man, making possible the unthinkable: intimate communion between the creature and the Creator. "This union of Christ with man is in itself a mystery," the Holy Father states in his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, "From the mystery is born ‘the new man,’ called to become a partaker of God’s life, and newly created in Christ for the fullness of grace and truth." (RH 18.2).

This "partaking" of God’s very life (see 2 Peter 1:4) is the reality of divinization, or deification. In the Eastern Churches it is often called theosis; it is a central focus of Eastern Christian theology and worship. It is also one of the consistent and unifying themes of John Paul II’s thought, appearing often in his important trilogy of Trinitarian encyclicals – Redemptor Hominis, Dives in Misericordia and Dominum et Vivificantem – respectively on the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit.

At times acknowledging his debt to Eastern sources, John Paul II writes with profundity and insight about the reality of divinization. In the Trinitarian trilogy (and elsewhere) he addresses four key features of this vital doctrine: divinization, the adoption of man into God’s family, reveals the inherent dignity of man; it is possible only through the central mystery of the Incarnation; the Redemption is the concrete way in which the Incarnate One paved the way for man’s divinization; and the divine grace, given to man is the inner life and love of the Triune God and comes to man through the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church...

Rutler on Deification

This passage comes from an interesting book by a prolific priest/author:

The truth of the saints is this; the human intellect and will become mroe human by becoming more divine. The ancient Fathers used bold language to say it in more mystical prose; but they balanced their words as skilled acrobats, and they did not mean that men become gods, as clumsy pantheists have thought. Divinity cannot be some kind of vapor leaking into creation. Humans do not become godlike, though the grace of holiness can make them a place for God. There is no contradiction, and nothing less than a great affirmation, in saying two things at once: that saints become more human by becoming more divine and that saints become truly holy by becoming human. This is a mystery which modern people misunderstand to their tragic loss. Vianney confided an old secret to his arrogant new world: "All the saints are not saints in the same way; there are some saints who would not have been able to live with other saints...all do not take the same path. Nonetheless, all arrive at the same place."

And, in a piece for the Feasts of Saints and Souls:

The greatest saints could have been the worst people who ever lived if they had misused their native gifts. St. Augustine's intellect could have created a convincingly false religion. St. Louis IX could have used his rank to ruin his kingdom. St. John of Capistrano could have invoked his charismatic charm to persuade the Christian soldiers to surrender Western civilization, and St. Ignatius Loyola could have used his organizational skills to destroy the Faith in foreign lands.

By the same logic, the worst villains in history could have become saints if they had used their political power, rhetorical talents, and energy to spread the Gospel. Herod the Great might have become a Christmas hero; the faithful might now be lighting candles at the tomb of Lenin as at a reliquary, and churches might have been dedicated to saints named Mao Tse-tung and Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler if . . . On that "if" hangs all human destiny. "If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me" (Rev. 3: 20)...

The crown of righteousness is offered to all those who take off their masks, for we cannot see God if we are disguised by pride. A culture of death does not make the transition from All Hallows Eve to All Hallows Day. St. John never disguised his love for his Master, and he assures our confused world: "Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2).

On (Maybe) Why the Jesuits Cracked

An interesting comment on the Dominicans v. the Jesuits from the Dark Lord Himself:

...when I discovered the liberty of the Catholic faith (and even more so, of the Dominicans where the prevailing ethos is "If you've met one Dominican, you've met one Dominican") I felt as though I'd come home. One of the funniest critiques of the Catholic faith has always been the "The Pope tells you what to think. You beome one with the mnonolithic Borg" thing. Nothing could be further from my experience. The Dominicans are nothing if not celebratory of immense diversity and ordered freedom of the intellect. (I remember one priest making fun of St. Ignatius remark that he would believe black was white if the Pope commanded it. A Dominican has too much common sense for such absurd authoritarianism.)

And right there--right THERE--we may have a reasonable explanation for the current crisis of fidelity within the Jesuit order and its institutions. What happens when a rope or a bridge, drawn incredibly taut by immense pull, suddenly snaps? It flies away from the center point of the breach at immense speed. What happens when an incredibly potent machine gets a bird inside of it when running at high speed? It destroys itself (and does significant damage to the plane). Or apply the metaphor to a boat--the Barque of Peter, perhaps... Thank God (literally) that the survival and running of the Church does not depend upon the Jesuits, or the Dominicans, or any of the Popes, or any human thing. We'd have seen it destroyed long since. But here, in this little remark, I think I can see suddenly clearly the heart of the issue. Simply: Ignatius crafted a hugely potent tool, with massive potential for good or evil. He harnessed that tool to the Papacy with the most stringent vows of obedience possible, hoping to hold the whole together. But vows are vows, and men are men. Anything under such intense pressure--such minds, such skill, in some of the most brilliant and capable men the world has ever seen pulling against the bounds of obedience--runs the risk of breaking out. The formation was too intense. The expectations, too much. The engine got the large stone of modernism in it and tore out fundamental pieces of itself. The effects are still being felt. Things were rusting for some time before. There had been decay, as is only to be expected in human organizations. But Ignatius's work held together...till the mid point of this past century.