VATICAN CITY — On Nov. 17, Vatican's Paul VI Hall was crowded by 7,000 people surrounding Pope Benedict XVI, who sat on a white chair in the center of the hall.
The lights went off. Suddenly, a huge screen burst into color. A sensation of the extraordinary surged in the audience as we started watching a movie with the Holy Father about the previous Holy Father.
It was the premiere of “John Paul II,” a four-hour miniseries that will be broadcast Dec. 4 and 7 in the United States. In collaboration with RAI Italian public television and CBS in the United States, the mini-series was produced by Lux Vide, an Italian Catholic company well known for its religious movies.
Starring Academy Award winner Jon Voight, the film starts with the Polish Pope in his open campagnola greeting pilgrims at the Wednesday audience of May 13, 1981. Two shots resound in St. Peter's Square. The Pope falls into the arms of his personal secretary, bright-red blood gushing from his stomach.
As the ambulance speeds to the hospital, short memories of his childhood and election to the See of Peter flood John Paul's agonizing mind.
The 1981 assassination attempt serves as the axis of rotation for the miniseries’ reconstruction of John Paul's pontificate. After viewing the film, Pope Benedict reminded us of the words his predecessor wrote in his testament about surviving the attempt on his life.
“Divine Providence saved me in a miraculous way from death,” John Paul wrote. “He who is the only Lord of life and death has prolonged my life; in a certain sense, he has given it to me anew. From this moment on, it belongs to him even more.”
Suffering is one of the movie's main themes, as it was in Karol Wojtyla's life and pontificate.
“Why did God put this obstacle on my way?” asked John Paul in the movie after breaking his femur and being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
The answer is given by the same Pope in a 1996 confidence: “In these days of sickness, I came to understand better the value of the service to the Church the Lord has called me to undertake as a priest, as a bishop and as a successor to Peter — it also passes through the gift of suffering.”
The scenes were filmed in Poland's Krakow and Italy's Rome, Caserta and Terni, with a qualified cast of actors alongside Voight. Cary Elwes interprets Karol Wojtyla from ages 18 to 58, while Christopher Lee and Ben Gazzara play Cardinals Wyszynski and Casaroli respectively. It wasn't easy for Canadian director John Kent Harrison to concentrate such a fascinating and variegated pontificate in 200 minutes, but the outcome didn't disappoint.
“I can say that all those who at any level collaborated [in the making of the movie] have undoubtedly done so with great love for John Paul II,” said Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the late Pope's secretary for 39 years, in an interview with the Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana. “They wanted to make a respectful reconstruction of the truth, and I saw that they worked hard to achieve such a result.”
Pope Benedict agreed. “Over and above any specific evaluation,” he said, “I consider that this film constitutes a further proof of the love people have for Pope John Paul II, and of their great desire to remember him, to see him again, to feel him close.”
Undoubtedly, John Paul II, who stood out as a witness to truth, found a perfect successor in Benedict XVI, whose motto is Cooperatores Veritatis (cooperators of the truth).
At one point, the movie shows John Paul motivating a German cardinal to accept the leadership of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. When the name Joseph Ratzinger was pronounced, the audience clapped enthusiastically.
“Watching this film,” Benedict said after it was finished, “has renewed in me and, I think, in everyone who had the gift of knowing him, the sense of profound gratitude to God for having given the Church and the world a Pope of such a high human and spiritual stature.”
Legionary Father Alfonso Aguilar teaches philosophy at Rome's Regina Apostolorum University.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Fr. Alfonso Aguilar, Lc ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Our Lady's Upstate Acropolis DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:Last year, Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Syracuse, N.Y., celebrated two major anniversaries.
March 13 marked its 100th year as a cathedral. And Dec. 8, 2004, was the 150th Dec. 8 since Blessed Pope Pius IX decreed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Of course, that dogma has particular meaning in a cathedral that takes its name from it. And that's no less true in years that don't mark significant milestones.
Meanwhile the church has quite a colorful history.
It was in 1841 that the Diocese of Albany first purchased land for a Catholic church to be built in the village of Syracuse. The diocese bought more land in 1872 and hired L.J. O’Connor of New York City, a leading architect of the day, to plan and oversee construction. The new St. Mary's church was dedicated in 1885 — the year before Pope Leo XIII established Syracuse as a separate diocese.
The plans called for the installation of 124 stained-glass windows from Franz Mayer and Company of Munich and London. This is the same company that supplied the glasswork in the cathedral of Cologne, Germany, to which Pope Benedict XVI made a historic visit during World Youth Day last summer.
A rose window was also installed. It depicts Mary, Queen of Heaven, in the center. The Blessed Mother is surrounded by eight cherubim. In its entirety, the rose window is symbolic of the Holy Trinity, for Mary is shown being crowned by Christ the King; God the Father is represented by an old man with a long beard and the Holy Spirit by rays emanating from a dome.
Lit at night for pedestrian viewing, a practice common in European cathedrals, the rose window overlooks Columbus Circle. This features an 11-foot-high, 3,000-pound statue of Christopher Columbus, mounted on a high pedestal, which was erected by a group of Italian-Americans in October 1934. Columbus seems to be making his way toward the cathedral.
Above the cathedral's front doors are weather-worn sculptures depicting scenes surrounding the birth of Christ. One, for example, shows angels appearing to shepherds “keeping the night watch over their flock” (Luke 2:8-14). Mary is seated on a throne, holding the infant Jesus.
In 1886, when Syracuse became a diocese, Father Patrick Ludden was selected its first bishop. Bishop Ludden selected St. John the Evangelist Church, which was the fourth Catholic Church to be built in the area, to be his cathedral from 1886 to 1903. On March 13, 1904, Bishop Ludden designated St. Mary's Church as the new cathedral, and renamed it the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
Ever New
That same year, Bishop Ludden expanded the new cathedral by building a new sanctuary and installing five massive stained-glass windows along the back wall. These windows depict the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the Immaculate Conception.
The Immaculate Conception window was placed in the center of the sanctuary and overlooks the main altar, under which is a crypt to hold the diocese's deceased bishops. Bishop Ludden also retained noted architect Archimedes Russell to redesign the bell tower and to install new chimes.
Over the years, many renovations would be made to the Immaculate Conception Cathedral. In 1892, a new Roosevelt organ with 3,000 pipes was installed. The Roosevelt Brothers were known for having revolutionized the instrument with the development of the electro-pneumatic organ.
In 1957, Flemish carillon bells were installed. And in 1958, under the direction of Bishop Walter Foery, the façade was transformed: It went from dark Gothic to an ornamental, almost Baroque, design.
Inside, the interior was repainted. Excerpts from the Litany of Loreto, plus other Marian references and symbols, were inscribed along both side walls. A separate baptistery was added to the south side of the cathedral and decorated with ceramic mosaics to depict symbols of new life.
In 1978, Bishop David Cunningham oversaw a major renovation of the cathedral. The stained-glass windows were repaired to compensate for years of weather damage and the Roosevelt organ was also renovated.
When the ’78 restoration project began, a cluster of eight highly embellished windows were discovered. They illustrate saints and holy people significant in Marian theology. These windows, which are situated just below the Rose Window, had remained hidden from sight since 1896 by a protective covering for the organ pipes. The figures included Ruth, Esther, Elizabeth, Anne, Joachim, Zachariah, David and Isaiah.
Red, White and Blue
In 1986, the bronze tabernacle was removed from the main altar and mounted on a rose granite pedestal in front of the Sacred Heart altar, which is located to the left of the main altar.
A new main altar was placed in a more central position, closer to the congregation, and open on all sides in order to focus greater attention on the celebration of the Mass. Placed within the new altar are two relics, including one of St. Catherine Laboure — who was a member of the Daughters of Charity, the same order that once staffed the Cathedral school — and St. John Neumann, the first American male saint.
In addition, a new baptismal font was erected at the front of the church, close to the main altar. The three sacramental oils — oil of the catechumens, oil of the sick and sacred chrism — are placed adjacent to the baptismal font in a glass cabinet resting upon a rose granite pedestal. The colors here — white marble, rose granite and shades of blue — reflect the national colors of the United States: The Immaculate Conception is patroness of the United States.
A special chapel dedicated to Our Lady, featuring a unique bronze statue of the Blessed Mother in a sitting position, is located close to the south door, adjacent to a bank of votive candles. This sculpture was made by Jacqueline Belfort-Chalat, a Jewish convert to the Catholic faith.
The words at the top entrance within the chapel are taken from Matthew 28:19-20: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
A fitting passage to pray over come Dec. 8 — and all Advent long.
Joseph Albino writes from Syracuse, New York.
Planning Your Visit
For Mass, confession and prayer schedules, go to syrdio.org on the Internet.
Getting There
The Immaculate Conception Cathedral is located in the heart of downtown Syracuse at 259 East Onondaga St. For directions, call (315) 422-7203.
----- EXCERPT: Immaculate Conception Cathedral, Syracuse, N.Y. ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Albino ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: Campus Watch DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:Christ-Centered Success
Enrollment surged 70.6% from 1990 to 2004 at the 102 Protestant and largely evangelical members of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities.
That compares with 28% for all independent four-year schools, and 12.8% for all public, four-year campuses, according to data from the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
Within this breakdown, all Catholic colleges form part of the larger but-less-religiously robust grouping of colleges with discernable religious affiliation, showing a 27.5% enrollment increase over 1990-2004 period.
Rector Resigns
The major seminary of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, the institution also serves the Diocese of Brooklyn.
“The timing surprised some faculty members — coming a few weeks after a Vatican-ordered evaluation of the seminary,” said Newsday.
A diocesan spokesman said the move was requested by Msgr. Schneider for “personal reasons,” and that there was no connection to the visitation of American seminaries.
Orthodox ‘Healing’
Columnist George Bell noted that such occasions are a sign of the healing that has taken place between Catholics and Orthodox since Vatican II. There are so many such signs, said Bell, that Archbishop Demetrios, 77, “does not receive an honorary degree every time he visits a Catholic university — it just seems that way.”
So far, said the columnist, Fordham, Seton Hall, Notre Dame, New York's St. John's and six other Catholic colleges have proclaimed the archbishop an honorary doctor.
Responsible Speech
Some media coverage of the ban has focused on legal experts’ opinions about whether the students were being deprived of their First Amendment rights.
Said Msgr. Kieran McHugh, president of the school, “The intention is … to prevent sexual predators from preying on the students. There's such a thing as responsible and irresponsible free speech.”
Tuition Increase
Holy Cross was founded in 1966 as a two-year college but announced in 2003 that it was launching a bachelor's degree program.
Traditionally, many students enroll at Holy Cross hoping to transfer to Notre Dame, which is also located in South Bend. Both institutions are administered by the Holy Cross Fathers and Brothers.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Do You Really Want an "Open Mind"? DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:My barber is a good man.
From what he tells me, he is a faithful husband, a dutiful father and a loyal friend.
He is amiable, remembers my name, and is unfailingly pleasant. He is, however, a bit loquacious. But that is fine with me. I view it as part of his charm, and a welcome opportunity to pass the time in his operating chair as a captive audience of one.
More specifically, whenever I am patient to his beautifying art, I am invariably entertained by a steady stream of highlights from the world of current events. His most recent tonsorial performance featured some offhand comments about same-sex “marriage.” While he confessed that he is not entirely comfortable with men marrying men and women marrying women, he is, nonetheless, willing to go along with it because, as he puts it, “I have an open mind.”
A certain Jayne Mugglestone, 35, a British health worker, has been artificially inseminated with the sperm of a homosexual friend. She and her female partner plan to share their parental duties with the child's biological father and his boyfriend. This four-cornered arrangement may be unconventional, but should we not have an open mind and accept it?
How voracious, we might ask, is the open mind? Is there anything it might be closed to? Is there room in its wide, cavernous, yawning openness for a principle that might allow it to reject something?
“I have an open mind,” of course, has become a cultural cliché. What it really means is, “I am open to any trendy idea that blows in the wind, and am willing to accept it uncritically.”
There is too much emphasis, unfortunately, on the “I” and none whatsoever on that to which one is open. It is hard for me to hear this tiresome phrase without sensing the presence of too much ego and too little objectivity. “Pride,” as G.K. Chesterton has reminded us, “is the falsification of fact by the introduction of self.”
An “open-door policy” is good. But why have a door at all if it is always going to be open and never closed? Would not a “no-door policy” be even better? It is a truism that every door that is made to open is also made to close. Similarly, it is good to keep our eyes open. But the presence of eyelids suggests that there are times when their closing action is not only needed but also necessary.
The completely open-minded investigator would be even more inept than the fabled Crown Prince of Ineptitude, Inspector Clouseau. Reason, by nature, is a narrowing activity. Like a good investigator, it begins with a myriad of suspects, but by applying logic to the facts, whittles the list of suspects down to the one person who is guilty. Philosophers have often been compared with sleuths. Their actions are like swords that cut down the many imposters to reveal the unequivocal truth.
But what kind of detective is it that proceeds by enlarging the number of suspects?
“I have an open mind,” he says. “My job is to increase the number of suspects so that in the end, everyone is equally guilty or equally innocent.” Such is the portrait not of a philosopher or sleuth, investigator or detective, but of a madman.
The justification for having an open mind is not to keep it open until it devours everything and holds on to nothing. Rather, it is to take the first step toward discovering what is true or what is good or what is right. And then, when confronted with the natural object of the mind, it grasps it, apprehends it, comprehends it, or takes hold of it.
Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence would have been an unremembered piece of useless drivel had the third president of the United States said: “We are open to theories about human equality and the rights of every man to life and liberty, but we are equally open to theories of tyranny, oppression, and slavery.”
In saying, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” he was echoing the mind of St. Paul who advises us to “Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9); “Test everything; hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form of evil” (1 Timothy 5:21); “hold firm to the sure word as taught, so that he may be able to give instructions in sound doctrine and also to confute those who contradict him” (Titus 1:09).
The human mind has not completed its natural function while it remains in the state of openness. It is only when it closes itself on something true or good or right that it has completed the activity for which it was created. We will never enjoy or share anything of value with anyone unless we first take hold of it.
Perhaps I will give my barber a better tip the next time I visit his shop.
Donald DeMarco is adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Donald Demarco ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: A Canadian Texan Looks at Catholic Identity From Rome DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:Archbishop J. Michael Miller is the Pope's pointman on Catholic education.
As secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, the Canadian, who is former president of St. Thomas University in Houston, is in the center of the Catholic Identity debate. He spoke to Register staff writer Tim Drake. (Archbishop Miller on Europe's Seminaries, page 4.)
What's unique about the American Catholic higher education situation?
The enthusiasm and ability to think about the idea of new foundations is uniquely American. In many countries in Europe they have a difficult time imagining that they can launch institutions of higher learning. Americans are not held back by that. Different people come up with different takes on how they might do that. If they don't like what they can get, they found something new. The notion of subsidiarity is active in American Catholic life.
In the last 15 years there has been a renewed interest in Catholic identity. There are different takes on how to strengthen it, but you would be hard-pressed to find very many people who don't know what you're talking about. Fifteen years ago, the question might not have resonated. That's a big difference from the 1970s. That doesn't mean that there is a single response. The question is there. In the Catholic world, it's hard for someone to say that Catholic identity is not worth talking about. To cavalierly put it aside … not many people are doing that. I think the question is on the table with greater clarity than it was previously.
Jesuit Superior General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach once said, “For some universities, it is probably too late to restore their Catholic character.” Would you agree with that assessment?
As we say in the South, it “might could be true” in some instances. I don't like it as a header line. When something like that starts to be applied, as opposed to a general theory of course, real caution is needed.
What efforts can be taken to “re-Catholicize” such institutions?
For institutions that have become flabby over the years, in general, one of the things that would be wonderful to see is an honest assessment that uses real markers … some general ones where people would do an assessment with the kind of attention that we give to accreditation. We could turn to those kinds of tools that we are familiar with and ask questions about Catholicity, not in a bean-counter kind of way, but in a sober kind of way. There could be an assessment with accountability to see where an institution is at and where it wants to go. Without a solid assessment, you're not going to do anything.
It's pretty unlikely that all of a university's stakeholders would want to move away from Catholicity. You might find areas where one group is interested and the other is, but where you would get a constellation of stars where all of the people would want to withdraw, or move away from Catholicity, would be in extremely extraordinary cases.
Is it worth the effort?
Of course it is. The tendency in the States is sometimes to decide that you want to start something new, but you're not abandoning, you're just directing your apostolic intensity in another form.
Have you seen anything like the assessment you describe?
There is nothing. I've seen some things in other countries, such as Australia, where they do have some measures. It would be helpful if there was some kind of relatively commonly-adopted assessment so that you could do some benchmarking. A lot of the Ex Corde discussion got centered on the theology department and the mandatum, but that's not the only thing that makes a university Catholic.
What might such an assessment measure?
Those are the things that are really found in Ex Corde. Explicitly, there should be an effort to look at your faculty, and primarily at your curriculum. What about curriculum outside of the theology department? What about concerns of social justice? What are you expecting of the students? How will anyone recognize when they graduate that they have been to a Catholic school in how they think about things. How are liturgical life and student life?
Do you think that the discussion focused on the mandatum because it could be used as a measuring stick?
The whole question is much wider than that. I think it should be more opened up. Some questions were never fully engaged. I don't know whether the mandatum puts the role of the theologian and the bishop in the highlight, so it's attractive to the media with good guys and bad guys. To talk about the Catholicity of a curriculum is much more complicated. In that discussion the good guys and bad guys are harder to define, but I think that's where we want to move the discussion.
Who would need to develop such an assessment?
It would only be effective if it came from the university or an accrediting agency. To come up with something would take a process of years. A lot of this is in the doing. Ex Corde might have taken as long as 20 years. While an institution could come up with its own guidelines, the more it is shared the more other institutions can help you.
There seem to be a whole crop of new schools that are embracing the Church and her teachings and promoting that fact. What do you make of this movement?
In terms of the numbers of students they attract, they are still small, but they are exciting and uniquely American. Elsewhere in the world, institutions are connected with the state and people aren't used to making the enormous financial commitment necessary to start something new. America is pretty singular in the world.
Such institutions are wonderful endeavors and are often found where there is a huge lack of Catholic education, especially in the Southern and Western spheres. They aren't found in Philadelphia where there are 10 institutions. They are found in places where the Catholic infrastructure is not yet built up, and there are people willing to do it.
I hear from parents on a weekly basis who are concerned about the options available for their sons and daughters. What advice would you give to them?
If they own a computer, they can find out anything they want. Just as people spend hours researching programs, now you can get everything on a website. What is the school's self-presentation like? What are the student events and activities like? The student newspapers? Are there opportunities for daily confession or Mass? You can find out a million things other than what the glossy literature targeted to special interest groups tells you.
I don't think people are deprived of information. You just have to know how to mine it, and most students can. By doing so, they can build up a composite.
What of parents who feel stonewalled on the mandatum question?
You can find out what you want to find out. The professor doesn't have an obligation to tell anyone, but how he fields the question should tell them what they want to know.
The fact of the mandatum doesn't mean that is the best theology professor. Parents can't reduce it all to a single question, but must build up a picture of a place. Most places have their own reputations, and sometimes the reputations are a little behind. What the parents know is not what the students know. There is a public way that these institutions exist and make that known over time. They are not secret societies. Parents can decide if this is a place where their son or daughter will flourish.
In your recent lecture at Notre Dame you said that Pope Benedict XVI might encourage “evangelical pruning.” Could you explain that?
It suggests a serious effort, on the one hand, that has to go into assessing the Catholicity of your institution. You have to be willing to pull away … maybe some institutions have wrapped themselves in a language without serious accountability. You have to see things as they really are. That's much harsher. We get very defensive about it. If we reveal our weaknesses, people will attack us, rather than seeing it as the first stage of change. Institutions are reluctant in some ways to do that. They have development and enrollment goals. In some ways, for them, the fruit is always on the tree.
Another thing is the idea that you might have to let go of some ideas about yourselves and about what it means to be Catholic. Maybe some haven't been strong enough and think about being Catholic with a small “c.” Some might have lost sight of the rich doctrinal tradition that can best be passed on. It really calls for a kind of sobriety … to be hard-nosed, which you can only do in a climate of trust. That's difficult because to reveal your weaknesses, people will take pot shots at you. We don't admit our faults as a way to correct them. It's saying this is where we are, but this is where we want to be, and showing where you want to move people. To say, “We're all more Catholic than anyone else,” I don't think that serves the good. I understand why we do it.
But, you don't see this as being imposed by the Vatican?
The Vatican's authority is primarily a moral authority. The Vatican is hardly in a position to impose; it exhorts. At places like Catholic University, we have a more direct role and responsibility.
So, is the question of whether an institution remains Catholic largely up to the university itself?
No, the bishop is the ultimate one. He can withdraw it. To get into the Kenedy Directory or to belong to certain associations, one must be Catholic. That is in the bishops’ hands.
In your lecture at Notre Dame you say there are those who recommend prudence and patience. What of those who are losing their faith at such institutions in the meantime?
That's raising it to a real high bar. If an institution is one over time that can be shown where people are losing their faith, you're in serious trouble. That's scandalous.
If you were to have data that showed that this were, in fact, the case, then you’d have to act faster, if that fact could be established.
Tim Drake is based in St. Joseph, Minnesota.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Tim Drake ----- KEYWORDS: Inperson -------- TITLE: Hollywood Revival? DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:EDITORIAL
Christians keep Hollywood profitable.
That's what Barbara Nicolosi, who teaches Christians the art of screenwriting, told Godspy, an online magazine, in a recent interview.
“A Christian project saved the global box office from 2001 to 2003 with Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Then another Christian project, The Passion of the Christ, saved the global cineplexes in 2004. And yet another Christian story is going to save the entertainment industry this year with C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
That's the movie that opens Dec. 9 and is based on the novel by Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, the 20th-century Anglican author who brought many people into the Catholic Church, though he never joined them.
Nicolosi is right, but there's more: Christian audiences have always proved Hollywood's most lucrative.
Look at the highest grossing films of all time (adjusted for inflation).Three of the top 10 have Catholic themes: The Sound of Music, The Ten Commandments and The Exorcist. Half of the top 10 are family films.
The list of the top 100 is also full of surprises. Ben Hur comes in ahead of huge blockbusters like Return of the Jedi and Jurassic Park. The Bells of St. Mary's beats Return of the King and Spider-Man 2. And the amount of money taken in by The Passion of the Christ beats the legendary success of Revenge of the Sith, Harry Potter and the first two Lord of the Rings movies.
With that kind of record, Catholics ask, why doesn't Hollywood make more movies for us? But that's a little like asking, “If books by saints sell so well, why don't more authors become saints?” The better question is: Why don't Catholics make more movies for Hollywood?
After all, communicating about God through art is a Catholic specialty. Even more than other Christians, Catholics appreciate the value of sounds, sights and smells to teach spiritual lessons. The Church uses images, stories and significant actions to convey spiritual realities. So do artists.
It should be no surprise that, in the golden years of Hollywood, Catholic filmmakers like John Ford, Frank Capra, Fred Zinnemann and others dominated the new art form.
What happened after that? Some remained, but as dissenting Catholics. Others turned against the Church angrily and criticized it. In many cases, believers were squeezed out by an insular Hollywood culture. But sins of omission probably played the biggest role in leaving Hollywood bereft of Catholic influence.
After all, to end up with a Catholic artist whose work draws power from a sacramental worldview, you need to start out with a Catholic who has been told what the sacraments are in the first place. Polls suggest that, for the past two decades, the Church hasn't done a very good job of catechizing.
Thus, movies, like the other arts, are another casualty of the Church's failure to catechize Catholics in the 1960s and ’70s. But that may be changing.
The pontificate of Pope John Paul II brought about a seismic shift in the Church. Now, a seismic shift isn't an earthquake — it's a shift deep down in the earth that starts inevitable changes that aren't obvious until later. By teaching courageously and inspiring a youth movement, John Paul quietly but surely changed the direction of the Church at its most fundamental level.
After the long pontificate of John Paul, yesterday's energetic dissenters are out of energy, and the catechism teachers who were too embarrassed to catechize are more likely to be replaced by World Youth Day veterans excited by the faith.
And as young people are slowly becoming catechized again, they are growing up in a new cultural environment. Our children met Eucharistic adoration proponent J.R.R. Tolkien because he's a top draw at the theater. They associate Mel Gibson with Jesus Christ and the cross, not Mad Max and Lethal Weapon. For our children, an allegory about Christ is the movie sensation of this winter.
Yes, these improvements in catechesis and in the culture are small, incremental changes now. But if the number of Catholics who know their faith and see it validated by the culture keeps growing incrementally, it will one day hit a critical mass and begin growing exponentially.
We might be surprised to find that the seismic changes started by Pope John Paul II will move mountains in our lifetime.
Today, Christians are saving Hollywood at the box office. Tomorrow, movie theaters might just be one more place Christians save the culture.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: What's in a (Last) Name? DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:FACTS OF LIFE
Several surveys over the past three decades indicate a steady increase in the number of brides taking their husband's name at marriage. This reverses a trend, which started in the late ’60s and peaked sometime in the ’90s, of women keeping their own surname or hyphenating the two names together. The development shows “a return to romance, a desire to make marriage work,” according to Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin.
Source: The New York Times, Oct. 30
Illustration by Tim Rauch
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: But For a Curiously Empowered Witch ... DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:The big-screen debut of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a momentous event, in some ways evoking a perfect storm of The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and The Passion of the Christ.
Based on the beloved first volume of The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, it's a faith-inflected tale of a war of good vs. evil in a fantasy land with mythic creatures, like The Lord of the Rings, minus the obligatory large-scale story compression and PG-13 battlefield brutality of Peter Jackson's films.
As an ensemble story of 20th-century British schoolchildren caught up in a world of magic and danger, it evokes the Harry Potter stories, though without the moral debates about witchcraft and rule-breaking and the like.
And with its central motif of a divine being who defeats a chilly icon of evil by laying down his life to bring salvation before triumphing over death and evil, it recalls The Passion of the Christ, but without the troubling arguments about anti-Semitism or the almost unbearable brutality.
First-time live-action director Andrew Adamson (Shrek, Shrek 2) assembles a fine cast, with Georgie Henley as little Lucy Pevensie and Tilda Swinton (Constantine) as the evil White Witch particularly outstanding in crucial roles. Aslan, the great and terrible Lion who is the true King of Narnia, is an astounding digital creation, the quintessence of lion-ness more than an ordinary lion, voiced with authority and warmth by Liam Neeson.
Like Middle Earth in Peter Jackson's films, Narnia itself, held snowbound for a hundred years by the witch's magic, has been scouted or created in New Zealand, yet the Narnian forests and plains feel more intimate and less expansive than Jackson's immense vistas and endless mountain ranges.
Surprisingly, despite a lot of publicity concerning the film's fidelity to Lewis — not to mention education-oriented Walden Media's previous track record of ultra-faithful adaptations like Holes and Because of Winn-Dixie— the film follows its source material less closely than, say, the Harry Potter films. In many ways it's more of a Lord of the Rings-style adaptation, with the action ramped up, incidents changed, deleted or added, and characters reinterpreted.
Some of the changes made by Adamson and his co-screenwriters honor or even enhance Lewis’ story while adapting it to the needs of the screen. A case of briefly mistaken identity, suspenseful in the book, is given an exciting twist in the film; a character's decision to tell a lie is given more context in a way that makes perfect emotional and narrative sense. Purists will object to a number of added action scenes where Lewis had only an uneventful forced march, though in themselves these don't harm the essence of the story.
Other changes, though, do compromise Lewis’ story in basic ways. One of the most emphatic points of Lewis's story is the utter lack of parity between the omnipotent Aslan and the powerful but limited witch. The whole vision of good and evil at work in the story turns on the fact that the witch is never even close to being a rival or threat to Aslan, any more than Lucifer to Christ himself. In fact, the Narnia stories as a whole establish, and Lewis elsewhere confirms, that Aslan is not just a Christian allegory or “Christ figure,” but is literally meant to be the Second Person of the Trinity as a lion rather than a man.
Though the film never contradicts this, numerous changes undermine Lewis's systematic emphasis on the witch's limitations and Aslan's transcendence, making them seem more like comparable rivals than Lewis intended.
Significant plot points are omitted: The witch's initial ignorance about Edmund's species (“What are you? Are you a great overgrown dwarf that has cut off its beard?”); Mr. Beaver's confident assertions of the still-unseen Aslan's supremacy over the witch and all evil (“If she can stand on her own two feet and look him in the face, it'll be the most she can do and more than I expect”); even the notion of Aslan preexisting the witch, the Deep Magic, and time itself (“Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time…”).
Even more crucially, the film subverts Lewis's consistent portrayal of the witch's clear fear of Aslan. This is nowhere more glaring than in the parley scene: Where the book has the witch send her dwarf as an emissary to beg safe conduct from Aslan before she will approach him, the film depicts the witch fearlessly entering Aslan's camp on a royal litter with her dwarf acting as herald proclaiming her arrival. In Lewis, the parley ends with the terrified witch fleeing for her life at the sound of Aslan's roar; in the film, she responds to his roar by looking a little shaken and sitting down a bit hard in her litter before being carried off.
By the end, though, it's unambiguously clear that the witch has no power like Aslan's, and that he understands mysteries that are beyond her. Lewis’ point is thus ultimately affirmed, though it isn't clear throughout the story as Lewis intended it to be.
The cardinal motifs of guilt and consequences, sacrifice and redemption, death and resurrection remain embedded in the story. The witch's long winter (“always winter, and never Christmas”) lies on the land like the curse of the Fall, and Aslan's rescue-mission raid on the witch's house evokes the harrowing of hell.
And at least one touch, a strategically deployed echo of the sixth of Christ's seven words from the cross, suggests a deliberate nod to the story's religious meaning (likely the work of one of Adamson's co-writers, since the director himself has confessed that he didn't know the reference).
Though it brings Lewis’ story to life imperfectly, Adamson's film adds new dimensions to the experience of this story of wonder and redemption. Viewers unfamiliar with Lewis will experience something of his story and themes, and in many cases will discover the books for the first time.
Viewers who know the books will return to them after seeing the film, grateful to the film for what it adds to them — and to the books for what the film leaves out.
Content advisory: Recurring fantasy action and violence and some menace to children, including a basically bloodless but intense battle sequence. Might be a bit much for sensitive children.
Steven D. Greydanus is editor and chief critic of DecentFilms.com.
----- EXCERPT: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe gets much right ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: Into the Wardrobe: Bringing Narnia to Life DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:One of the most magical effects in the big-screen version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe isn't rippling computer-generated fur, ice castles or battle scenes.
It's the look of wide-eyed delight on the face of young Georgie Henley, who plays Lucy Pevensie, as she passes beyond the wardrobe for the first time into the winter wonderland of the Narnian wood.
That expression is what sells the magic of the wardrobe and the wood. Speaking with the Register and other newspapers in New York, Georgie explained how director Andrew Adamson got that look.
“They actually blindfolded me,” she explained. “They passed me down the stairs, man to man, you know, into Kelly Park,” a New Zealand equestrian center where the Narnian wood stood on a set the size of a rugby field. “They took off the blindfold, and I walked out, and it was actually amazing. So actually Georgie's first reaction is actually Lucy's first reaction.”
She wasn't the only one whose actual experiences paralleled the onscreen adventure.
“The making of this movie was in itself a through-the-wardrobe experience,” commented Anna Popplewell, the film's Susan. “Going so far away, doing such unusual things. It was fun, but it was kind of daunting.”
William Moseley, her screen “brother” Peter, added, “It was like we were a family, and we really felt close.”
Sometimes, it was a little too real. Asked about the hardest part of the shoot, Anna replied, “For me, probably, the Stone Table. We filmed it over a period of three or four days. And Andrew wanted very organic reactions and real tears, so, we were crying for three or four days. I ended up with a very blocked nose. But it was rewarding to do something like that as well.”
For Adamson, whose previous feature film work is limited to the two computer-animated Shrek films, working in the real world meant learning a whole new approach to filmmaking.
“In animation, as a director, you have to think about everything,” he said. “You have to think about blinks. You have to think about dust. You have to think about every drop of rain. In live action you get that stuff for free. There's a certain thing that just happens where you put a boy in armor with a sword on a horse and he's going to feel noble, he's going to look noble.”
On the other hand, real-world actors come with challenges of their own — for example, aging.
To address this, Adamson made the unusual choice to shoot the film chronologically rather than according to production convenience.
“The kids were going to grow, there was nothing I could do about that,” said Adamson. “Even though we joked about getting Skandar [Keynes, who plays Edmund] to start smoking. He grew six inches from when I cast him to when I finished the film. And also in the story, the Narnian air does make you more mature, it does make you grow emotionally, and I wanted to portray that physically.
“So even in the beginning, I sort of planned on, particularly with William, keeping him out of the sun, getting him to be kind of a soft British schoolboy, and then as we got into the production, getting him out training with the stunt guys, getting him out horse riding, and getting him into the sun, and letting him actually physically mature onscreen. So shooting chronologically allowed me to get the benefit of both those things.”
Not all the film was shot in the real world. Some of it was created on the computer screen, an approach Adamson knew all about, but had never worked with in a photorealistic context.
The most important hurdle, of course, was the lion, C.S. Lewis's stand-in for Christ, Aslan.
“We started developing the technology for Aslan about 21/2 years ago,” said Adamson. “I knew I wanted him to be a very real, very physical, believable character that you never thought about as an effect. You just accepted him as who he was, and he had a real screen presence.”
Getting the look right was only half the battle. Aslan also needed a voice, which the director found in Liam Neeson.
“It was an interesting and challenging character to cast — to create an omnipotent being that was still accessible,” said Adamson. “Liam pursued the role. He came to me, and he offered to read for me, which was an amazing opportunity. And even over the phone, listening to him, I could hear this resonance — [despite] this tinny little speaker — this resonance, but mainly this warmth in his voice that was really ideal.”
Adamson laughed when someone pointed out the number of mentor or authority figures Neeson has played lately in films like Batman Begins, Kingdom of Heaven, and Star Wars: Episode I. “He's just reached the age of sage.”
Although Aslan was entirely computer generated (except for the Stone Table sequence, where a puppet was used), many of the fantasy creatures, such as Tumnus the faun and the centaurs, combined actors with digital effects.
°One non-human character, however, had to be brought to life entirely by the skill of the actor: the evil White Witch.
Actress Tilda Swinton explained her take on the character this way: “I, in a way, don't play a character at all, because I'm not a human. I play the epitome of all evil, which is a free pass … into all manner of nonsense. But there have been stereotypes of evil before now, and Andrew Adamson and I early on shared a secret with each other, that we felt that the stereotype of evil that shouts and screams and gets all hot under the collar has never really frightened us. And we wanted to look for something different.”
Swinton added that “getting all hot under the collar doesn't frighten [children] because if anything, it makes them know that grownups get hot too…. But the thing that children find really unfathomable, because they never actually do it, is to be cold and to be emotionally disengaged and dominating and quiet as well.”
What about the next six Narnia books? Is Adamson committed to making them as well?
“There was a point a couple of weeks ago where I was committed to never making a film again, after a year of visual effects,” he laughed.
“If anything draws me into making a sequel, it'll be the kids,” he said. “If these kids do it again, I'll probably do it again, because I care too much about them. I can't imagine letting them go to another director. I’d be worried that they might treat them in ways that I don't want them to be treated.”
When might another Narnia movie come?
“I'm packing a long vacation,” said Adamson. “I have two kids now. I didn't when I started this film. So I want to spend some time with them.”
Steven D. Greydanus is the editor and chief critic of DecentFilms.com.
Did Filmmakers Miss the Faith?
A lot of thought and effort went into getting the feel, the look, the period and the characters of C.S. Lewis's beloved fairy tale The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe right for the screen. Yet, strangely, according to the unanimous testimony of the filmmakers, one crucial element of the book was not a consideration in adapting the story: the religious significance its author filled it with.
“I didn't really think a lot about the religious aspect,” director Andrew Adamson stated at a New York press conference. “I know C.S. Lewis never really intended it to be allegory, but he definitely wrote from a place of his own belief, and a lot of people get that from the book. People can interpret the movie the same way, they can apply their personal belief and interpret the movie the same way they interpret the book.”
Do the show's actors agree?
“A lot of people know that C.S. Lewis is a well-known Christian apologist,” said Tilda Swinton, whose chilly performance brings the White Witch vividly to life. “And for a lot of people for whom that's important, that religious allegory will be important. But there are many, many millions of other people for whom it's not. And it's all still theirs. But the Christians are welcome,” she added jocularly.
William Moseley, the film's Peter, offered a similar perspective.
“I think a lot of things come down to what you believe, and who you are, and your individual perception of good or evil. Whether that's religious, or whether that's just your personal point of view. When I first read the books, I didn't see the religious aspects a tiny bit. But then I was told that it was a religious story. And I still thought it's an amazing story.”
Anna Popplewell, who plays Susan, concurred.
“What you take from the movie in terms of a message is kind of what you'll take from the book. There's a lot of room for interpretation; it's a very simple and strong story.”
Producer Mark Johnson went so far as to claim, “Lewis himself never really saw these as Christian books. Obviously he is a Christian, and imbued them with a lot of his values, but they are not specifically that. So we wanted to be true to the books, so that if you find religious meaning in the books, hopefully you'll find that in the movie also.”
What does Johnson think the books are about, if not Christianity? Johnson cited “the strength of the family, compassion, and forgiveness” as “central to the book, and hopefully to the film too. And those are values that belong to everybody.”
When a member of the Christian press pointed out that the film places one of the seven words of Christ on the cross, “It is finished,” in Aslan's mouth, Adamson seemed surprised.
“I actually honestly didn't know that,” he admitted, and went on to offer a different, non-religious interpretation of the line. “I wanted a line where he could really just turn to Peter and say, ‘It's over. It's done.’”
Adamson was not enthusiastic about the attention the religion question was getting.
“We're getting a lot of interest in that, particularly from the press. At the same time, The Matrix— huge commercial film — is the resurrection story. He's the chosen one. He goes to his death. He comes back from death, and he saves the world. I don't think the [directors] had to [answer] quite as many questions about it as I do!”
Adamson has actually said that the Witch “has to be as smart, as strong and as intense as Aslan the Lion in her confrontations with him.” Asked about this, he conceded that “Aslan was always intended to be more powerful,” but added that he “wanted to make her a significant adversary, so that it wasn't just an easy thing for Aslan to deal with.”
Johnson called Aslan and the Witch “worthy adversaries,” although he argued that the film does depict Aslan as “the smarter of the two, because he's figured out the Deep Magic in a way that she hadn't.” Later, Adamson acknowledged that Aslan is “omnipotent.”
C.S. Lewis's omnipotent lion does come to life in grand fashion on the screen, along with much — but not all — of the book's religious meaning, whether the filmmakers realized it or not. For more, see the review on page 14.
— Steven G. Greydanus
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: A Balanced View of Vatican II DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:VATICAN II: THE CRISIS AND THE PROMISE
by Alan Schreck
Servant, 2005
311 pages, $20.99
To order: (800) 488-0488
AmericanCatholic.org
Lots of things have been taught and proclaimed in “the spirit of Vatican II,” but what the Second Vatican Council actually said remains, in many ways, the Church's best-kept secret.
Alan Schreck, professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, wants to lift the veil. His book, structured in Q&A format, makes the teachings of the 16 documents of Vatican II approachable to a broad range of readers. He also provides background on how the council came about and looks at the “crisis” that has prompted some to heap blame for the Church's problems on the council itself.
Pope John Paul II described the Second Vatican Council as “the great grace bestowed on the Church in the 20th century.” The Council was, after all, about what it meant to be a Catholic today.
Schreck emphasizes the bracing challenge of being a Catholic in the modern world. He puts special stress on the role of Catholic laity who, from the council's perspective, remain the Church's hope for setting the contemporary world ablaze for Christ. So just who are we?
“We are the people gifted with God's Word, who are challenged to know and live that Word as it comes to us in sacred Scripture and sacred Tradition and through the teaching office of the pope and the bishops,” he writes. “Our aim is that Christ may be truly Lord of all, in every aspect of life.”
Obviously, the best introduction to Vatican II would be for Catholics to read the council documents themselves. Since its documents remain, four decades after the council, “best kept secrets,” Schreck's book provides a good summary survey of each text's salient points. Key themes like the universal call to holiness, the Church as communion and People of God, the reform of the liturgy, the apostolate of the laity, the renewal of religious life, ecumenism and the theological anthropology of Gaudium et Spes are all elucidated.
Schreck also provides citations to post-conciliar documents to show the continuity of Catholic teaching, properly noting that the council's teaching should be read together with what preceded it and what followed it. Vatican II was about adaptation, not innovation. The council itself frequently based its reforms on appeals to a more broadly understood past. Liturgical renewal, for example, was supposed to be “reform by remembering,” recognizing that the Church's liturgical tradition did not reach back only to Trent.
My major criticism of the book is Schreck's somewhat superficial and imbalanced presentation of the sources of the “crisis” in the Church that some attribute to Vatican II. No one can deny the problems the Church has faced these past 40 years, but in perspective the Lefebvrists have been minor players in that crisis. To begin the book with extreme traditionalist critics of the council lacks perspective. “Catholic” theology faculties in the United States have not been roiling with people who say Pope Paul VI went too far.
Further, Schreck's analysis of the conciliar crisis is particularly disappointing when compared with his superior exposition of the council's promise. Lopping off the first 35 pages (the “crisis” part) would have sacrificed little and helped the rest of this book a lot.
Useful for parish discussion groups, adult religious education and general readers, this book fills a gap by making the teachings of Vatican II accessible in a way they haven't been till now.
John M. Grondelski writes from Washington, D.C.
----- EXCERPT: Weekly Book Pick ----- EXTENDED BODY: John M. Grondelski ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: Is the New Prescription-Drug Plan for Me? DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:FAMILY MATTERS
I'm a senior citizen on Medicare and have heard a lot about the new prescription-drug plan. But so much of the information is confusing. Can you help me understand my options?
It shouldn't be surprising that, when we combine the topics of insurance with a new federal program, there is bound to be some confusion. Having said that, the new Medicare prescription drug program will be a big benefit to many senior citizens. It's not unusual for drug costs to run several hundred dollars per month — often nearly $10,000 per year. With most seniors on fixed incomes, that is a difficult pill to swallow. So let's review the basics of the new plan.
The plan is available to Medicare participants, but obtaining drug coverage is not automatic. You will need to enroll through an approved provider. What's the benefit? Depending on how much you spend on prescription drugs each year, the savings could easily be in the thousands of dollars. Medicare estimates that for the average participant, about half of their prescription costs would now be paid for by the program.
The actual program starts on Jan. 1, 2006, but sign-ups are under way now. If you sign up by Dec. 31, you will be able to benefit from the plan starting with the new year. You can still sign up through May 15, 2006, with no penalty, but the signup will not be retroactive. Signups after May 15, 2006, may incur a penalty.
How does the program work? Medicare is working this plan through a number of private insurance companies, so you'll need to sign up with one of these providers. The plans vary, and you'll probably have an option of several to choose from in your area. Go to the Medicare website at medicare.gov and select “Compare Medicare Prescription Drug Plans” to review your particular options.
The plans will work very similar to other medical plans. You'll pay a monthly premium and cover an annual deductible, which will be no more than $250 in 2006. The plans will typically have a co-pay component to them in addition to the deductible. One important item to note is that not all plans will cover the same medications. The list of drugs that a plan will cover is called a “formulary.” Review the list to make sure your provider will cover your most frequently used and expensive medications. You'll also want to make sure that your favorite pharmacy is part of the plan you choose.
One of the more confusing features of the plan is what is called the “coverage gap.” This means that once you have incurred $2,250 in prescription costs for 2006, you will have responsibility to pay 100% of your prescriptions until you have total out-of-pocket costs of $3,600. Then your insurance will kick back in, typically with a very modest co-pay amount.
It appears that many of the basic plans will cost in the range of $25 per month. Combining that cost with the typical deductible of $250 means that this plan will start providing benefits if your annual prescription costs exceed $500. If your costs are much higher, the savings will add up more quickly.
Many seniors will find it difficult to do the research necessary to choose the best option for them. This is a great opportunity for adult children to be a big help to their elderly parents by doing the upfront legwork for them. It's a great way to live the commandment to honor our mother and father. God love you!
To bring Phil Lenahan's financial-freedom seminar to your parish, visit catholic.com/seminars/lenahan.asp.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Phil Lenahan ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: Letters to the Editor DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:How to Hold On to Hispanic Catholics
The juxtaposition of the two columns in the Commentary & Opinion section of your Nov. 6-12 issue — “Why Converts Choose Catholicism” and “Why Hispanic Heritage Month Wasn't Catholic” — struck me as providential, for the first article answers the second.
Hispanic Catholic immigrants come to the United States from what is a relatively conservative Catholic culture. They are solidly pro-life and pro-family, and have a love for the Blessed Mother. But just who are the first people they meet upon their arrival here? A cadre of pro-death social workers, teachers and healthcare workers armed with contraceptives and access to abortion. Planned Parenthood is so effective in this re-education program that I have never met a Hispanic immigrant who didn't apologize for their large family of origin, saying, “I won't have that many kids. After all, this is America. We don't do that here.”
Where is the Church in all this? The most welcoming members of the Church are often the liberal, social-justice types, who for all their charity toward the poor, subscribe to the contraceptive mentality. I have heard of an official Church delegation in a maternity ward of a Catholic hospital counseling the new mother to get on the pill as soon as possible. What resemblance does the Church in the United States bear to the Church in Latin America? Where is the commitment to principle that attracts the converts?
This strength of the Church — its high moral standards and demands placed upon its members — is not readily visible to the Hispanic immigrant, and so they begin to look elsewhere for the true Church.
Enter the local evangelical-Protestant pastor, who for all his lack of apostolic authority resembles the Hispanic's Catholic priest back home in his insistence upon basic doctrine and Christian moral standards. He knows what he believes, and places demands upon his flock. How unlike the weak-willed, condescending “self-esteem” homilies so often heard in Catholic Masses here!
Many Hispanics who “church shop” are just trying to find a church that seems like home. Sadly, that church often isn't the Catholic Church.
What's the answer to the bleeding of Hispanics to the sects?
First of all, don't negate, hide or apologize for the four marks: one, holy, catholic and apostolic. Our Church is, after all, the body of Christ on earth. It never will conform to the world.
Second, proudly and publicly display our Catholic faith by building the fraternities here that bolstered the Hispanics’ faith back home: groups dedicated to the different cults of the Blessed Mother, the saints, the Infant Jesus and exposition of the holy Eucharist. Third, celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe's feast day; she is, after all, the patroness of the Americas. Let the Hispanic Church members display all their cultural richness, as we have enjoyed in the older ethnic churches in this country, with their colorful feast-day celebrations and public processions.
Perhaps we, the second generation of European immigrants, will remember the glory of our childhood faith as well.
LETICIA VELASQUEZ
East Moriches, New York
All Religion Is Local
Let me start by saying how much I appreciate your publication. Your coverage of the recent Years of the Rosary and Eucharist was top-notch.
Sadly, I never heard about either of those yearlong events at my local parish. What good is it when the Vatican declares an event if the local parish does not participate? Is there a mechanism in place to report these shortcomings to Rome?
DAN CLABAUGH
Puyallup, Washington
We Believe as We Pray
Regarding “Do Catholics Understand The Real Presence” (Oct. 28-Nov. 5):
I ask, “Does anyone understand the Real Presence?” How can a mystery be understood? If it can, it is not a mystery.
Evidently the problem for the bishops was not about understanding or explaining but about presenting.
I would suggest that bishops and priests simply tell it like it is. We believe Jesus is really and truly present in the Eucharist because at the Last Supper he told us he was in the Eucharist and told his disciples they were to do as he did so he could continue to stay with us in the Eucharist. The Church has affirmed this truth for 2,000 years.
Secondly, the bishops and priests themselves should act as if they believe he is there, and also teach the people constantly about the Real Presence. Sometimes in our churches, the Mass is a stage for the priest and the choir and a community party instead of an act of adoration to our God. Sometimes there is little or no reverence when people are socializing before and after Mass and ignoring Jesus instead of preparing and thanking.
Bishops, as one of the people in the pews, I say we need example and teaching.
MARGARET SHEA
Camarillo, California
Nativity Scene Nixed
Regarding “Christmas Wins at Wal-Mart” (Nov. 20-26, 2005):
Recently during prime Christmas shopping season, I went to Marshall Fields (recently purchased by Macy's) in Chicago to buy a Nativity set for a wedding gift. I like to buy religious Christmas items for wedding gifts to remind couples of the joy of Christ's presence in their marriage. (“Loved the wedding…. Now invite me into your marriage — God).
After looking for and not finding a Nativity set, I asked a sales clerk if they had any. Looking very puzzled, the clerk responded that she hasn't seen any in the store and that she’d go ask the manager. The manager came back to me and said that the store did not carry any. A couple of other shoppers waiting to check out overheard our conversation, and one commented, “That's odd. You’d think they would have Christmas stuff in the Christmas section of the store.”
I, probably like the other nearby shoppers, hadn't even thought about the absence of religious Christmas items in the midst of the multitudes of items for sale such as ornaments, Santa items and menorahs.
This incident reminded me just how subtle the devil really is. He chips away slowly, subtly so that we don't even notice his creeping in, quietly eroding our acknowledging Christ's presence in our lives.
So although there is a “Christmas Wins at Wal-Mart,” we Christian consumers have to stay alert to all the additional ways the devil tries to creep into our lives without our even noticing it. So let's take a bit more discriminating look as we Christmas shop this year and charitably ask if a store could start selling Christmas items such as Nativity scenes.
In terms of sales, revenue and profits, I venture to say that retailers probably make more money from Christmas than Hanukkah and Kwanzaa combined. So doesn't it make sense then that Jesus, Mary and Joseph Christmas items should also be sold at stores?
KRIS CORTES
Flossmoor, Illinois
Keep Clear of Code
I found “Hollywood Has Faith in a Christian Market” interesting (Nov. 20-26).
The Christian market is a strong one. Because of our economic power, I would ask Christians to skip the forthcoming movie The Da Vinci Code because it misrepresents Christ's legacy and that of his followers.
I feel so strongly about this that I would ask Register readers to skip going to all theaters on the weekend that it comes out.
ROSANNE WILLIAMS
Little Meadows, Pennsylvania
Puzzled by Pick
In your Oct. 30-Nov. 5 issue, you had the movie Millions listed as a thumbs-up in your Video Picks and Passes section.
Seeing this in the Register, we trusted your expertise and let our children watch it. To our disgust, the movie was against many Church teachings that your critic failed to mention. After the movie was seen by our children, they told us what they found disturbing, and we took it upon ourselves to look it up on Screenit.com.
It's disappointing when we have to rely on a website instead of a Catholic newspaper for valid information. We're just confused on why you’d bother pointing out insignificant things like “Clare rhapsodizing about the infinitude of heaven” but failed to mention a sex scene.
ROMA GNIEWEK AND KIDS
Halfmoon, New York
Here, for the record, is the content advisory we printed for that particular film: “Millions contains fleeting but clear implication of a non-marital affair, brief depiction of juvenile curiosity in online lingerie ads; recurring strong menace; some mildly objectionable language, and could be okay for discerning older kids.”
Having noted this, we are planning to change the Video Picks & Passes design so that the content advisories will be more noticeable to readers.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Opinion -------- TITLE: Peace Is Dying in Sudan DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:GIDEL, Sudan — “Sudan is so complicated,” exclaimed Joseph Aloga Jargi, a local Catholic catechist serving frontline parishes in the war-ravaged Nuba Mountains of central Sudan. He was attempting to explain to an outsider the politics of his postwar country.
A member of one of Africa's most ancient indigenous cultures, the Nuba people, and the first Catholic in his largely Muslim family, Joseph, an early target of anti-Christian violence in his village, had fled the region during the first years of the civil war, only to return in the 1990s as ambitious Church-directed relief and development programs, under the direction of the local bishop, Macram Max Gassis, got under way.
These programs, ranging from water sanitation to catechesis, were carried out in a remote area the size of the state of Maine, without roads or electricity, and under the constant threat of militia raids and aerial bombardment by Sudanese air force bombers.
Ceasefires negotiated by former U.S. Sen. John Danforth, the Bush administration's Sudan envoy, in early 2002 brought a measure of peace, and increased aid to the Nuba region, a civil war frontline since the mid-1980s.
Today, more than 20 non-government agencies operate in the Nuba Mountains.
And even greater opportunities appeared on the horizon in those waning days of 2004, my first visit to the area since the end of the fighting. The parties to Africa's longest running civil war, the insurgent Sudan People's Liberation Movement and Army, under the leadership of its longtime chairman John Garang Mabior, and the Khartoum government, led by a military junta allied with militant Islamic political parties, were applying the finishing touches to the long-awaited comprehensive peace agreement that was eventually signed Jan. 9 in the Kenyan resort town of Naivasha.
(The initial euphoria didn't last. Garang's death in a helicopter accident in July, three weeks after he had been sworn in as one of the country's vice presidents, significantly clouds the prospects for political reform in Sudan, as well as for U.S. hopes for the unity of the country.)
It was a devil's bargain, most agreed, in that the “comprehensiveness” of the peace agreement expressly excluded Darfur, a California-sized province situated west of the Nuba Mountains, in which government-armed militias continued to mount full-scale attacks against agrarian African farming communities in the southern half of the state, killing thousands and displacing millions more. This took place despite international condemnations, press coverage and the presence of Organization of African Unity peace-keeping troops.
But the peace agreement signed in Kenya — the result of more than a decade of intensive negotiations sponsored by neighboring African states and bolstered by robust American diplomacy — does provide a much-needed respite for war-weary southern Sudanese, who have borne the brunt of more than 20 years of brutal conflict with the country's northern-led government, along with the peoples of central Sudan, who brought the insurgency to northern Sudan itself.
Sudan's civil war, sparked in 1983 when then-president Jafaar Nimeiri unilaterally abrogated a previous peace agreement with southern leaders and declared shari’a (Islamic martial law) the law of the land, has resulted in the deaths of more than 2 million in southern and central Sudan, and in the displacement of more than half the population of the south.
Despite the obvious benefits of the peace, “complicated” — Aloga's word — is a fair description of the situation I encountered in central Sudan earlier this year. And the months since the peace agreement was signed have served only to deepen those complexities.
For one thing, the Khartoum government, despite public talk of peace and reconciliation, continues, in contested areas like the Nuba Mountains, to attempt to advance by stealth what its forces were unable to achieve through the long years of war — namely, to impose Arabic culture and Islamic religion on the ethnically African cultures of central and southern Sudan.
Recently, a copy of a memo hailing allegedly from an official Saudi Arabian propaganda ministry has been circulating widely among Christian groups in Sudan. The memo purportedly details proposals for the large-scale establishment of “Islamic” schools and relief organizations in rebel-held areas, at a cost of some $28 million over the next few years, in advance of the vote on the political future of southern Sudan scheduled, according to the terms of the peace agreement, for 2011.
Borrowing a page from the missionary work of the Church, this Saudi-financed humanitarian push would, it is hoped, win good will for Islam and Arabism among largely Christian and animist insurgents, and, therefore, weaken, if not eliminate the now-popular drive for countrywide political reform or, worse, from Khartoum's point of view, eventual secession of these rebel-dominated areas from the north.
In the south, where there are few northerners and an independent political infrastructure in the making, such scenarios would appear to have little chance of success, but in the religiously mixed Nuba Mountains, such a push could prove deeply divisive.
In any case, Catholic Church leaders there are taking no chances. Aware that time may not be on their side, especially if insurgent-held areas of the Nuba Mountains find themselves eventually governed from Khartoum, the Diocese of El Obeid, under whose ecclesiastical jurisdiction the Nuba Mountains falls, has launched ambitious programs to build the region's first hospital, including surgical units and medical training facilities. The diocese will also build secondary schools to complement the English-language primary school system set up during the war. Most recently, it launched plans to establish an educational radio network for the region's long-isolated and marginalized population.
More than any other single situation, locals on the ground point to the crisis in Darfur as the symbol of the shape of things to come in Sudan.
In contrast to much of the coverage in the Western media, Darfur, they say, is less an isolated atrocity than a continuation of the cultural, racial and religious war northern elites have waged against non-Arab peoples in Sudan since the country's independence in 1956.
Fearful that ethnic Africans in the province would imitate their rebellious Nuba neighbors, the Khartoum government armed local Arab militias, the aptly self-described janjaweed (devils on horseback), who first attacked civilian farmers in the 1980s. Civilian defense groups formed, which, by 2003, had become guerilla movements that, following the lead of their central and southern comrades, launched their own full-scale rebellion against Khartoum's policies.
In recent weeks, other ethnic African communities in the north have joined the fray. The Muslim Beja, based in eastern Sudan, close to the vital Port Sudan link, have issued manifestoes calling for political reform, and have tussled with government troops near Kassala. Even the Nubians (not to be confused with the Nuba), an ancient, once Christian culture in Sudan's far north, who have, perhaps, been most politically identified with the Khartoum government over the years, are drawing back from the old political consensus, based on identification with the Arab world and Islam.
As Bishop Gassis remarked in an interview earlier this year:
“When people talk about Sudan as a north-south conflict, they're wrong. The conflict is now and has always been about ethnicities: An Arab Muslim elite pitting itself against African ethnic cultures, and this throughout the country. This is made clear when we consider that while the Nuba are religiously mixed and the southerners are mainly Christian or [animists], the people of Darfur are mostly Muslim. And yet this regime fights them. Why? For racial and ethnic reasons, because they are Africans, and not Arabs. This is the heart of the whole conflict, and this is the meaning of Darfur.”
Or, as a diocesan official succinctly put it: “We are now in just a small time of peace. No one knows what the future holds.”
Gabriel Meyer is an award-winning poet, journalist and novelist. His photo-illustrated book of essays, War and Faith in Sudan, was published this past September by Eerdmans.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Gabriel Meyer ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Defending Its Heritage DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:TIJERAS, N.M. — If the American Civil Liberties Union was looking for an easy win in its campaign to excise Christian symbols from public life, targeting Tijeras, N.M., was a miscalculation.
With a population of less than 500 people on the far side of the Sandia and Manzano mountains from Albuquerque, Tijeras attracts little attention from New Mexicans, let alone national organizations. That's why the community was shocked to find itself the target of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Yet attention it got, all because the village's official seal contains the image of a rosary, commemorating the community's origins with the Franciscan missionaries.
According to the ACLU, it also constitutes an illegal endorsement of religion. Tijeras must remove the rosary from the seal or face an expensive lawsuit the community can't win, said Peter Simonson, executive director of the group's New Mexico office. “The legal precedent is very clear on this matter,” he said.
While the ACLU has chosen not to oppose the three crosses in the seal of the city of Los Cruces because of “specific historical precedent,” he said the rosary on the seal of Tijeras is “just religious favoritism giving the government's endorsement to the Catholic Church.”
The Tijeras symbolism is especially menacing because it includes the rosary with a conquistador's helmet and sword, Simonson said. “The most likely to be offended are the Native Americans, because this symbol is not strictly about religion but how it was used in conquering the native population.”
Although Simonson said he's confident of victory, whether the civil liberties union is able to go forward depends on whether a village resident can be found to pursue the litigation. “This is no small thing, since there could be ostracism or retaliation by the community for just trying to protect their rights,” he said.
Simonson has reason to be confident of victory. In 1985, the ACLU successfully challenged the seal for Bernalillo County, where Tijeras is located, because it incorporated a cross and the Latin motto, In hoc signo vinces (In this sign is victory), first seen in a vision by the Roman Emperor Constantine before the crucial battle of the Milvian Bridge in Rome in 312 and later used as a motto of the conquistadors who brought European civilization to what is now the southwestern United States.
Hispanic Culture
However, if the ACLU was expecting that the mere threat of litigation would persuade Tijeras, they're wrong, said Mayor Gloria Chavez.
“My initial reaction to receiving the ACLU notice was disappointment because our seal is very pretty and it includes symbols representing everything the history of this town is about, but I thought we couldn't fight the ACLU.”
Chavez said it was the response from the town that changed her mind.
“It was overwhelming” in its support for keeping the rosary. This isn't just about religion, it's about the community's Hispanic history and culture, and she said the village is ready to fight to defend them both.
The public opposition to backing down and the David-and-Goliath aspect of the confrontation helped in another way. It created media attention and attracted the Alliance Defense Fund to volunteer its assistance, Chavez said.
“We're just a small village and can't afford an expensive lawsuit,” she said. “With the Alliance Defense Fund ready to pay the costs, we're able to fight.”
The ACLU, on the other hand, has the advantage of attracting donations that are tax-deductible.
Specializing in defense of religious liberties, support for pro-life advocacy and legislation in defense of marriage, the Phoenix-based attorneys said they were ready to provide a defense against any lawsuit the ACLU might bring.
Jordan Lorence, senior counsel for the fund, said they just won a New York case where a school district was refusing to rent school property for religious services even though they were available for other public and private events, and he said the Alliance Defense Fund was the leading litigant in the lawsuit to stop the mayor of San Francisco from issuing same-sex “marriage” licenses.
Lorence said Tijeras represents an ongoing campaign by the ACLU to “seek and destroy all religious references by government.” Although the organization often wins, sometimes they don't. By displaying several items depicting the history and life of the community, he said the rosary in the Tijeras seal “is a passive symbol that acknowledges history without attempting to establish a religion.”
Long Haul
However long the standoff continues, Lorence said, “We're here for the long haul because our long-term goal is to see a more balanced approach to the establishment clause of the Constitution.”
So is the Thomas More Law Center, which is appealing dismissal of its federal civil rights lawsuit against Los Angeles County, whose officials surrendered their own cross without a fight, in 2004. In a seal dominated by Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruitfulness, there was a small cross representing the birth of the city as a Franciscan mission.
By readily acceding to the demand of the ACLU to remove it, the county showed hostility toward Christians, said Richard Thompson, chief counsel for the center. Thompson said he wants them to recognize that Christians won't back down anymore.
He said hostility to Christianity has become customary with the support of the federal courts, which have collaborated in a “concerted campaign to eliminate religion from the public square.”
Thompson said, “Clearly, the cross and other symbols are religious in the sense that they represent religion and the effect that it has had on America. But this is acknowledgement of a historical fact, that this nation was founded on religious principles. It doesn't constitute establishment of a religion.”
Although the campaign against religion has been ongoing since the 1960s, he said, “Americans are religious people and American institutions pre-supposed religious beliefs. There's more understanding on the part of American citizens that this is a culture war that will be fought in the courts, and there's more support for organizations like ours that are willing to engage in that battle.”
As for Tijeras, “the seal has been here 30 years and it celebrates our heritage,” said Mayor Chavez. “It represents settlers who moved here 400 years ago. That's something the people of this village don't want erased.”
Philip S. Moore is based in Vail, Arizona.
----- EXCERPT: Village stands up to the ACLU over its depiction of the rosary ----- EXTENDED BODY: Philip S. Moore ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Drive Out of Fear DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:Talk about a moment I will always remember. My husband and I were spending a few days in Florida with my sister and her family, who had driven over from Oklahoma City.
My sister and I were in the condo, waiting for Noah, her grandson, to awaken from his nap. When he did, we knew exactly what to do. His mom — my niece — had left a fresh diaper, shorts, a life vest and baby sunblock. My sister and I carried the chubby fellow to a chair and changed him into fresh clothing.
As we gently ministered to him, rubbing the plump limbs with lotion, I thought of my sister's babies from years ago, whom she and I had burped, cuddled and changed, just like this. Then we carried the latest member of the new generation to the beach and watched him toddle behind his mom like a duck in a life vest. Soon, I thought, he'll be learning to swim.
Just then, I knew I, too, would be making a big change in my life: I would be breaking my five-year fast from flying.
For many years, I flew once a year to visit my sister and her family in Oklahoma. The joy the little ones expressed upon seeing me always astonished me. “Auntie Raine!” they would shout, and then jostle each other to spend time with me. They did not know that Auntie Raine despised flying with every fiber of her being.
You see, to a person like me, with zero knowledge of aerodynamics, planes are magical things. They remain in the sky thanks to the efforts of invisible elves. So couldn't the elves decide to take a coffee break at any moment and send the plane crashing to earth? Despite my trepidation, though, I continued to fly — until five years ago, that is, when my life descended into chaos.
Shortly after I had purchased a plane ticket, my doctor announced there was a suspicious spot on my mammogram. Terror kicked in, but I made the trip anyway. And had the most dismal flight of my life. All I could think about was the worst-case scenario: Surely I would die from cancer. And even though I’d promised myself that I would not cry, when I saw my sister at the airport I fell into her arms, weeping.
From that point on, whenever I contemplated flying again, I talked myself out of it.
But on the beach that day, as I watched my other nephews crashing about in the surf, I thought about the celebrations I had missed in the past five years. I thought about holidays and birthdays and baby Noah's birth. I thought about my niece's letters, which often say, “I think about you all the time.”
“Perfect love,” Scripture says, “drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). For the past five years, I realized, I had become a prisoner of fear. In the movie Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne can't become a hero until he descends into the bleak cave to confront his greatest terror. As for me, I will never be a hero, but I can try to be a better aunt and sister by getting over my fears.
And now that I've bought the ticket, I'm experiencing an unusual sense of peace. After all, even if the elves do take a coffee break, the trip will be worth it. How could it not be? It's motivated by love.
And who knows? Maybe when we face what frightens us, God sends us a special gift. The peace that St. Paul wrote about, the one that surpasses understanding.
Lorraine Murray's books are available at lorrainevmurray.com
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Lorraine Murray ----- KEYWORDS: Travel -------- TITLE: National Media Watch DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:Diocese Declares Parish-Union Contract Invalid
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Nov. 18 — An internal church court in Brownsville, Texas, found that the first union contract within a U.S. Roman Catholic Church is invalid, reported the AP.
The diocesan tribunal and a panel of three judges from outside the diocese had examined whether Church law recognized a contract signed in 2002 between Holy Spirit Catholic Church in McAllen and the United Farm Workers of America, which was representing lay employees in the parish. The panel held a Collegiate Ecclesiastical Court in June and made its decision Nov. 10.
Employees see the decision as disappointing, saying that the Church does not recognize the rights of workers. Some of the workers hope to take the case to the Supreme Court.
“Basically the judges felt the pastor who made the contract did not have the proper authority or license,” said Msgr. Herberto Diaz, chancellor for the Brownsville Diocese.
Catholic Social Service Agency Limits Services
Catholic Social Services said, for example, that it won't help a client procure an abortion, prescribe or purchase birth control pills, or counsel homosexual couples in strengthening their relationship.
The agency sees its newly defined policy as being consistent with Catholic moral teaching while also serving those in need.
“If anyone has a need, we will serve them, as long as their need is consistent with what the Church believes is a positive, life-giving lifestyle,” said Bill Jones, director of the agency.
Pro-Life Activists Call for Boycott of Fund-Raiser
“It's unacceptable for [Catholic Charities] to honor someone who stands in the public square and mischaracterizes our faith,” said Carol McKinley, spokeswoman for the pro-life group, Faithful Voice.
McKinley has asked the event's major donors to withdraw their sponsorship of the Dec. 9 benefit. At least one donor has already done so. Faithful Voice also plans to demonstrate outside the dinner.
Evangelicals Welcome Pro-Life Conference Attendees
CBC NEWS, Nov. 18 — A Montreal evangelical church welcomed the Canadian National Pro-Life Conference after St. Joseph's Oratory refused to host the Nov. 17 event — a day before it was to begin — because it had received threats from pro-abortion and homosexual activists, CBC News reported.
La Bible Parle, a French-language evangelical church located about 25 minutes from the oratory, opened its doors to some 300 attendees.
Holy Cross Father Jean-Pierre Aumont, rector of the oratory, reportedly said that he was worried about participants’ safety and possible damage to the oratory.
“This decision to cancel the contract at this last minute is a great capitulation on the part of the Catholic Church in the face of opposition to its pro-life, pro-family teaching,” said Luc Gagnon, president of the pro-life group Campagne Quebec Vie. He described the oratory's actions as “cowardly.”
In 2004, St. Joseph's provided a venue for a teaching session of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, founder of the sect Art of Living Foundation.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: The "Deep Magic" of Narnia and Christian Orthodoxy DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:Following the triumph of the movie version of The Lord of the Rings, a literary work that was described by its author, J.R.R. Tolkien, as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work” comes the release of the feature-film version of C.S. Lewis’ children's classic, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.
It is appropriate that the release of the movie version of Lewis’ children's story should follow in the footsteps of the success of the film adaptation of Tolkien's timeless masterpiece. Tolkien and Lewis were great friends, and Tolkien, a life-long practicing Catholic, was a major influence on Lewis's conversion to Christianity.
Following his conversion, Lewis became one of the most indomitable Christian apologists of the 20th century. His many books remain very popular among Catholics and Protestants alike and none of them are more loved than his children's series, The Chronicles of Narnia.
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was the first of the series to be written. It is certainly as “fundamentally religious” as is The Lord of the Rings, and, if anything, the Christian dimension is even more obvious. Whereas Tolkien “buries” or “hides” the Christianity within the story, challenging his readers to discover the buried or hidden treasure, Lewis allows it to float on the surface, making it unmistakable and unavoidable.
In The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and throughout the other six titles in the The Chronicles of Narnia, the Lion, Aslan, is quite clearly a figure of Christ. He is unmistakably and indubitably so.
This becomes particularly evident in Aslan's offering of himself to be sacrificed in the place of Edmund, who had betrayed his family and friends to the White Witch. The witch reminds Aslan of the “Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time” that “the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning.”
Aslan, as the Son of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea (God the Father), knows the Deep Magic but allows the Witch to tell him, no doubt so that others can hear: “You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill.” Here the White Witch reveals herself as a Satan figure, the primeval traitor to whom all treachery owes its ultimate allegiance. “And so,” she continues, “that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property.”
The witch knows that she can't be robbed of her rights by mere force. The Deep Magic must be obeyed. Primeval justice must be done. The sinner belongs to her. He stands condemned. With “a savage smile that was almost a snarl,” she gives the doom-laden ultimatum: “unless I have blood as the law says, all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water.”
“It is very true,” says Aslan. “I do not deny it.”
Aslan knows that the Deep Magic cannot be denied and that justice must be done. He offers himself to be sacrificed in the place of the sinner, Edmund.
In the chapter titled “The Triumph of the Witch” we see the “Passion of Aslan.” He has his Agony in the Garden; he is scourged; beaten; kicked; ridiculed; taunted. Finally he is bound and dragged to the Stone Table on which is written the Deep Magic. He is then laid on the table, the altar of sacrifice, and the White Witch raises the knife. Before striking the fatal blow she cannot resist the temptation to gloat:
“And now, who has won? Fool, did you think that by all this you would save the human traitor? Now I will kill you instead of him as our pact was and so the Deep Magic will be appeased. But when you are dead what will prevent me from killing him as well? … Understand that you have given me Narnia forever, you have lost your own life and you have not saved his. In that knowledge, despair and die.”
The irony resides in the fact that the witch (Satan) only has knowledge of despair and death; hope and life are beyond her ken.
“But what does it all mean?” asks Susan following Aslan's resurrection.
“It means,” replies Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who has committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the table would crack and death itself would start working backwards.”
Aslan, the sinless victim, saves the life of Edmund and, with him, the life of every other “traitor” (sinner). The death and resurrection of Aslan has redeemed the world!
Although the “Passion of Aslan” is the centerpiece of the Christian dimension in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, it is by no means the only example of profound Christian symbolism. To offer but one example, the chapter in which Aslan breathes life into the statues of the living creatures who had been turned to stone in the Witch's castle reminds us of Christ's harrowing of hell and his release of the souls from limbo.
The Deep Magic would re-emerge in the other books of The Chronicles of Narnia. From Aslan's creation of Narnia in The Magician's Nephew to the apocalypse of The Last Battle in the final book of the series, C.S. Lewis presents us with perhaps the finest children's literature of the 20th century.
If the new movie version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe succeeds in emulating the success of the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, it will show once again how the Deep Magic can penetrate even to the darkened heart of Hollywood.
The heart remains dark, however, and the White Witch of this world is already plotting her next move. The film version of The Da Vinci Code will raise its ugly head in the spring and we can expect a barrage of anti-Christian nonsense to accompany its release. The war is not over. It will not be over until time itself is over. Until then the darkness will wallow in its own despair, dragging the treacherous into its self-centered orbit, and the light will shine forth the deeper magic from before the dawn of time and beyond the end of time.
“The issue is now quite clear,” said the great Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton on his deathbed. “It is between light and darkness and every one must choose his side.” Chesterton chose his side, and C.S. Lewis chose the same side as Chesterton. Their choice was wise. Ultimately the side they chose is the winning side.
Joseph Pearce is author of C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church(Ignatius Press).
He is writer in residence at Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., and co-editor of the Saint Austin Review.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pearce ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: MIGHTY CHALLENGE DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:ROME — Is the vocations crisis in Europe continuing to deepen, or is the ancient heartland of Catholicism showing signs of the “new springtime” called for by Pope John Paul II?
The answer appears to depend on which statistics you look at — and which parts of Europe. Looking solely at changes in the sum total of priests and women religious in Europe, the Church would appear to be in a worse state on the continent than even the secular press would have one believe.
But a closer look also reveals regions where increases are being registered in a key area: vocations.
According to data taken from the latest edition of the Church's statistical yearbook, Europe was the only region to show a decrease in priests. The total number at the end of 2003 — 201,854 — was down 1,897 from the end of 2002.
Over the same period, the number of women religious in Europe fell even more sharply, falling by 9,397 to 338,688.
The troubling figures, published Oct. 23, by Fides, the Vatican's missionary news agency, also revealed Europe to be the only continent to show a fall in the total number of Catholics, declining by 214,000 to 279,701,000.
The publication followed reports a week earlier that the Church in Scotland is starting to recruit priests from abroad to make up a shortfall in the number of priests. Numbers of seminarians there have fallen 80% in the last 20 years.
In the Archdiocese of Westminster in England, there are projected to be just 471 priests by 2015, only about half the number in 1990. Other parts of Western Europe face similar crises.
Secularization in Europe is often blamed as the reason for such gloomy statistics, a fact highlighted again by Pope Benedict XVI during a Nov. 7 meeting with Austrian bishops.
“The process of secularization, ever more significant for Europe, has not halted, not even at the doors of Catholic Austria,” he said. “Identification with the teaching of the Church is declining in many faithful, and in this way the certainty of the faith is lost and reverential respect for the law of God weakens.”
But the picture is not uniformly bleak. The statistical yearbook revealed that although the total number of seminarians fell in Europe last year, there were actually more diocesan seminarians training for the priesthood than in 2002.
Even Ireland, the European country where the Church has experienced perhaps the steepest decline in numbers and influence in recent years, shows signs of hope. The country will have 75 new seminarians this year, compared to 63 in 2004.
“Although the number of seminarians is less than it was 10, 20 or 30 years ago, we certainly feel the beginnings of a leveling off in the number of people joining the priesthood,” said Brenda Drumm, communications officer at the Irish Bishops’ Conference. “We don't feel there's a spiral downward.”
Archbishop Miller
Archbishop J. Michael Miller, secretary at the Congregation for Catholic Education, is skeptical of claims of continuing steep declines in the numbers of seminarians in Europe as a whole. The decline “is by no means precipitous,” Archbishop Miller said, noting that young men are still coming forward as candidates for movements, religious communities and local churches.
“There are still approximately 25,000 men preparing for the priesthood in Europe,” Archbishop Miller said. “That's a veritable army at the service of God's people.”
By far, the largest numbers are in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland, where 95% of the population is raised Catholic and the Catholic faith forms a key element of national identity. Poland's seminaries have always been well attended, even during communist times. But it is unclear whether they will remains so as the country becomes more prosperous and, as a member of the European Union, more vulnerable to a secular Europe.
And despite hopeful signs that some seminaries are bucking the trend and attracting more vocations, the total number of serving priests and women religious continues to fall. Analysts of the phenomenon suggest it is in part a consequence of a general unwillingness among Europe's youth to make lasting commitments. This tendency not only reduces the number of candidates wishing to join the priesthood or religious life, but also contributes to an increasing number of priests and religious renouncing their vocations within 10 years of their ordination.
The strategy of inspiring more new vocations through innovations to the seminary system has so far yielded little fruit. Various approaches have been tried, including the recent move by the Archdiocese of Paris to divide seminaries into smaller groups. While the archdiocese temporarily attracted a large number of candidates with the new system, the sudden influx did not last.
Msgr. Peter Fleetwood, deputy general secretary of the Council of Catholic Bishops Conferences in Europe, said that some participants in the Paris seminary innovations resented an increase in monitoring of the seminarians. And the Vatican also reacted uneasily to the move as it departed from the traditional seminary system, he said.
The success of other changes in seminary practice has also faltered. According Msgr. Fleetwood, there has been “more and more emphasis on human formation, meaning maturity in various areas,” but he said it is “questionable” whether that has helped increase vocations to seminaries.
Eucharist Is Essential
Others suggest the solution lies at a deeper sacramental level. For Archbishop Miller, the key to fostering vocations is “encouraging prayer, especially adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.” He believes there must also be preaching that integrally links a priest's vocation with the Eucharist, and a fostering of activities to enable boys and young men “to think seriously” about whether they are called to be priests.
Archbishop Miller acknowledged that Europe's seminaries continue to wrestle with the issue, but he is optimistic.
“The pastoral care of vocations is a vital issue for the future of the Church in Europe,” he said. “Increasingly, there are signs that fostering priestly vocations is entering into the consciousness of ordinary Catholics and that they are taking steps to resolve this challenge.”
(Zenit contributed to this report.)
Edward Pentin writes from Rome.
----- EXCERPT: Europe struggles to reverse decline in vocations ----- EXTENDED BODY: Edward Pentin ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Touch of "John Paul The Great" DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:There's nothing like a good strong exposure to John Paul II to inspire a young priest in the ways of holiness and the New Evangelization.
“Rome really formed me as I was praying it would,” says Father Timothy Reilly, who was ordained in 2003 for the diocese of Providence, R.I. He looked to the influence of the Holy Father, the universal Church and the blood of the martyrs.
He vividly remembers serving Mass for John Paul II on two occasions. The first time was New Year's Day. The second was in the Pope's private chapel; afterwards, he was among the servers invited to greet John Paul.
“Please pray I become a holy priest,” Father Reilly asked as he knelt before the Holy Father. “Under my breath as I got up, I whispered, ‘Like you’. I knew the kind of priest I wanted to be,” he adds. “The Lord had literally placed him in front if me. I came away almost hoping that something would rub off from his hands to mine.”
That was on Nov. 5, 2001. Today, as parochial vicar at St. Francis of Assisi Church in Wakefield, R.I., Father Reilly brings many gifts that did rub off during five years in Rome, especially a deep love for the Eucharist, reconciliation and the saints.
“I feel like I've got to learn about the saints from his sermons,” says parishioner Sharon Clossick, who describes Father Reilly in two words: holy and humble. “The time he spoke on St. Maria Goretti really stuck out for me. He had allowed us to venerate a relic of her after Mass. And he's helped bring me and my husband, Joe, deeper into prayer. He's such a prayerful man and he gives us that desire ourselves to want to pray more.”
Preaching on the saints and putting a real face on these Christian heroes is part of Father Reilly's regular routine. “That's part of our heritage,” he says, “but it's been taking a backseat for awhile.”
His own devotion is part of emphasizing a better “front-seat” position for the saints. “I had a devotion to St. Maria Goretti that goes back to when I was in the seminary,” he explains. “I really immersed myself in the virtue of chastity and celibacy. She has been a very good friend to me as I tried to answer the challenges and joys of this state in life.”
Bringing the saints to the attention of people is also part of the New Evangelization for him.
“How often John Paul called us in his thrust for the New Evangelization to embrace the example of the saints,” he points out, “because that call to holiness and dignity and sanctity belongs to each of us.”
Back to Basics
For Father Reilly, this is all part of the challenge of preaching authentic Catholic spirituality from the pulpit. That means focusing on Eucharistic adoration, the moral teachings of the Catholic faith, the Rosary, confession and preaching on vocations.
“It's kind of a back-to-basics approach,” he says, “just being faithful to that and trusting the Holy Spirit is working through that.
“The faith is so real, so eternal,” he adds, “we don't need to make it ‘nifty’ or ‘catchy’ because the truth is the beauty and goodness we are naturally attracted and drawn toward.”
It works. When Joseph Clossick, his wife Sharon and their four children go out to breakfast with other young parish families after Sunday Mass, the conversation always includes the homily.
“It's a way for us to get together to talk about his homilies and the way he challenges us younger Catholics to live the faith more deeply,” says an appreciative Joseph, explaining the challenges are grounded in Church teaching. “It forces you to look at the issues, like the Terri Schiavo case.”
Last May, when the Clossicks lost their fifth child, Father Reilly was back in Rome studying. “All during that time he was in touch with us by e-mail,” Joseph recalls. “Even though he couldn't be here physically, he was in constant touch with us.”
To Father Christopher Mahar at Our Lady of Mercy Parish in East Greenwich, R.I., “Father Tim has the mind and the heart of the Church.”
Father Mahar vividly recalls Father Reilly as a deacon and later priest at St. Peter's Basilica. “I would see him praying before the Blessed Sacrament, going to confession and talking to people,” he says. “He loved to talk to pilgrims coming by St. Peter's Basilica. I recognized his voice before I saw him. These people on vacation and visiting had a personal experience of the Vatican from this young man talking to them — and listening to their stories.”
Father Mahar brings up the way John Paul II spent time listening to young people and married couples, and interacting with them.
“Father Tim would be a priest who emulates that,” he says. “He's a priest who [engages people] the same way Pope John Paul engaged people.”
At the Crowned With Glory and Honor Conference held at St. Francis of Assisi in November for more than 150 kids from grades eight to 12, parishioner Susan Meehan watched yet again as the source and summit of Father Reilly's priesthood was revealed. It happened during Eucharistic adoration.
“His look of love upon Jesus as he was carrying the monstrance from the church to the conference was so beautiful to see,” says Meehan. “Many of us commented on that. He was a beautiful example for the youth to see love for Our Lord in the Eucharist.”
Some kids later told her their favorite part of the conference was adoration.
“He said he hoped to imitate John Paul II and be like him,” says Meehan. “There are many of us who believe he is just like him. He touches our heart that way.”
Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Joseph Pronechen ----- KEYWORDS: Culture of Life -------- TITLE: People for Sale: Scandal Stops Stem-Cell Farm DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:SEOUL, South Korea — A plan to create a worldwide bank of stem-cell lines may be falling apart over illicit cloning. Woo-Suk Hwang, the leading South Korean Stem cell expert whose team cloned the first human being, used his own laboratory workers as potential mothers of his clones.
For Catholics, pro-life advocates and some feminists, however, the questions go far beyond the ethical breach in scientific protocol.
“We're calling it trafficking. It's trafficking in human body parts,” said Jennifer Lahl, national director of the Oakland, Calif.-based Center for Bioethics and Culture. “It's like buying and selling people into slavery. It's a bit of hyperbole, but it is. He is taking human embryonic stem-cell lines, human clones, and selling them.”
Hwang apologized Nov. 24 for ethical breaches at his lab and said he would resign from all his posts. The Korean government has launched an investigation, the International Herald Tribune reported. Hwang is also accused of providing monetary incentives for egg donations and failing to notify donors of possible health risks. He did not respond to an e-mail request for an interview.
At a press conference, Hwang said he had not known about the lab workers’ donations until the journal nature began investigating.
“We've been warning for years that if research cloning takes off it may well be used to exploit women in poorer countries to provide eggs for cloning treatments for the affluent countries,” said Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of pro-life activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C.
Hwang, a professor at the Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital at Seoul National University, announced the creation of the first cloned human embryo in 2004.
At that time, he began a 20-month long collaboration with University of Pittsburgh scientist Gerald Schatten, which ended abruptly shortly after the Oct. 19 debut of a foundation called the World Stem Cell Hub. Schatten accused Hwang of violating ethical guidelines.
Egg procurement centers were planned in London and San Francisco. But then the scandal erupted in mid-November and the San Francisco-based Pacific Fertility Clinic withdrew its support.
The announcement of the embryonic stem-cell consortium had been greeted with widespread interest but scant outright endorsement.
The cloning issue — technically, the retrieval of oocytes — is troubling for some research institutions. The University of California-San Francisco, for instance, is a leading embryonic stem-cell research center, but has not yet approved any protocols for the process, an official told the New England Journal of Medicine.
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine was created by voter approval of the Proposition 71 cloning initiative in 2004. Even it stopped short of endorsing Hwang's proposal to create and sell hundreds of embryonic stem-cell lines. University of California-San Francisco and Stanford University, both at the forefront of the field, also declined to participate in Hwang's venture.
But Proposition 71 mastermind Robert Klein appeared with Hwang in general support when he made his announcement in Seoul.
Prior to news of the scandal, Institute spokesman Adam Silber said that while the Institute did not have a formal statement, its interim president Zach Hall's “position is that the Koreans have been very accommodating in collaboration and working with them, and he's all for collaboration.”
Hwang's consortium would require scientists to pay a fee to obtain any of the hundreds of embryonic stem-cell lines he plans to create. The number of eggs required for these lines would number in the thousands or more, under existing technology. To create one human embryo in 2004, Hwang and his associates took 242 eggs from 16 women. Already, young women's eggs are regularly used by infertile couples seeking healthy ova for in-vitro fertilization efforts. In the U.S. young women are paid a standard fee of $5,000 which may go as high as $25,000 for their eggs, the New England Journal of Medicine reported.
In Europe, poor Romanian women are targeted by Europeans seeking egg donors for in-vitro fertilization efforts, said Dr. Anna Zaborska, chairwoman of the European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality. In a June speech to the parliament, the Slovak physician called it “one of the biggest scandals affecting young women at the dawn of the new millennium: biotechnological slavery.”
In the United States, the National Academies in April issued non-binding ethical guidelines calling for specific embryonic stem-cell oversight committees, condemning reproductive cloning and recommending that women be reimbursed only for direct expenses when donating eggs for research.
The National Academies also recommended that embryos be grown only until 14 days.
The U.S. government bars federal funding for research conducted on embryonic stem-cell lines created after Aug. 9, 2001. But, several states, including California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island, have passed legislation endorsing “somatic-cell nuclear transfer” (cloning) and in some cases funding it. The governor of Illinois legalized human cloning by executive order. Seven states — Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, North and South Dakota — bar human cloning. Virginia's law may or may not bar cloning.
In the United States, efforts to begin human cloning are under way. Harvard University scientist Douglas Melton is seeking final approval from the university's Institutional Review Board to create human embryonic stem-cell lines for diabetes research, said B.D. Colon, Harvard Stem Cell Institute spokesman. The committee should rule within weeks, with further approval to be obtained from the review board of the local fertility clinic supplying the eggs, Colon said.
While individual Harvard scientists had considered collaboration with Hwang, that is now “on hold,” and whether there could be future collaboration if Hwang is cleared of violations of clinical ethics is “up in the air,” Colon said.
In general, the legal and regulatory restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research in the United States made it appealing for U.S. scientists to participate in the Korean-led consortium, Harvard Medical School associate professor George Daley told the New England Journal of Medicine before the scandal broke.
“Given the access that they apparently have to a very willing set of egg donors, they may be much more efficient at generating these cells than anybody else,” Daley said.
“Not only are the embryos being used as a mere means to an end, but women are too,” said Doerflinger.
The House of Representatives passed a ban on human cloning, but it has not been brought to the Senate for a vote, although the legislation now has 33 Senate co-sponsors. A second House-passed bill would expand funding of research using “discarded” in-vitro embryos, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has promised its sponsor, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a vote in 2006. The two bills may be voted upon together as part of a parliamentary deal within the Senate.
In cloning, a woman's egg is emptied of its genetic material. The DNA of a donor cell is implanted, and the egg is stimulated to create an embryo.
An embryo is a very young boy or girl with his own DNA from the moment of conception, an immortal soul and a right to life. Stem cells usually are harvested after three to five days from a blastocyst — an early stage of development before implantation in the uterus — and the embryo dies as a result.
Scientists believe that cloning will allow them to create customized embryonic cells programmed with disorders that they can then use to study and develop treatments.
The drugs young women must inject for 10 to 14 days to hyper- or super-ovulate so they can donate 10 to 20 eggs instead of the normal one can be dangerous, with side effects even, in rare cases, resulting in death. The surgical procedure performed to extract the eggs is performed under sedation and is risky, Doerflinger said, citing a July 7 New England Journal of Medicine article.
“This is so unethical in so many ways,” Doerflinger said, referring to the lack of any known cures from embryonic stem-cell research while effective and ethical adult stem cell treatments number in the dozens. “Twenty years of exploitation of women and destruction of early human life to explore hypothetical treatments that may come in 10 or 20 years or may never come.”
Valerie Schmalz is based in San Francisco.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Valerie Schmalz ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: Materialists Explain Away God DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:I'm one of those people who likes to have things reasonably orderly. I like knowing what's going on and why.
At the same time, I also recognize that the world is a very strange place and that (according to our faith) God is the creator not only of what is seen (nature) but what is unseen (angels, devils, principalities, powers, etc.).
This is hard to say without sounding funny in a technological society. Nonetheless, as unpopular, superstitious and silly as it seems, the mere fact that we build better blenders and TVs than our ancestors does not mean they were fools and we are wise. We are not a thousand years smarter than the medievals, and history has not been leading up to us.
Nor are we really one inch closer to dispelling the supernatural than we ever were, even if we get 10 guys in lab coats to line up in a row to say otherwise.
But some people really don't want to believe that. And they very often end up trying to “think scientifically” while in reality turning science into a sort of religion.
The March of Science and the Rout of Religion has been a favorite theme in the West ever since the Enlightenment. Among simple people such as journalists, the myth goes something like this: People used to think lightning storms and diseases were caused by spirits. We now know that lightning storms are caused by electricity and diseases are caused by germs and viruses. Voila! The mystery is dispelled and the neat mechanism of the universe exposed. God turns out to be an old fraud like the Wizard of Oz and we needn't pay any more attention to the deity behind the curtain.
It's a favorite cultural trope and it finds a million little incarnations in our culture. Just the other day, I caught a particularly silly re-run of Star Trek: The Next Generation, for instance, calculated to make exactly this point.
Dr. Crusher's grandmother dies on a planet formed to resemble Scotland (don't ask). This gives the show lots of leeway for the art department to create the proper ambience for a ghost story: creepy old house, mysterious candles that summon the ghost, invisible poltergeist phenomena, mysterious voices, even a bodice-ripping romance between Crusher and the ghost, who is a dashing fellow in a vaguely 19th-century costume, with swept-back hair, smoldering eyes and a vague English accent that sounds like it drowned in the mid-Atlantic. It “haunted” Crusher's granny and now it wants to “haunt” her, promising bodice-ripping emotional bliss in exchange for union with her.
Sounds like the stuff of a cracking good Gothic novel, no?
Nah, that's all just set-up. It turns out (aha!) that the ghost is not really a ghost. It's some sort of dopey “energy creature” in a symbiotic relationship with organic life forms, etc., blah blah. The whole point of the episode is to say everything in the universe can be explained in such a way as to make materialist dogmatists happy.
There is nothing that is not matter or energy.
I pick this bit of cultural catechesis at random from the airwaves, but it's easy to find plenty of it anywhere. And it inexorably reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ Uncle Screwtape, the senior devil in the Lowerarchy of Hell, who writes:
“I have high hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to the Enemy [God]. The ‘Life Force,’ the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work — the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits’ — then the end of the war will be in sight.”
The attempt to get rid of spirit by calling it “force” or “energy” is one of the many ways in which our culture trains itself to avoid the ultimate spirit, who is God. I'm not arguing for the existence of ghosts here. I'm simply noting that our culture embraces the spiritual while pretending it is material.
The problem with this is that it paves the way for embracing devils by pretending they aren't devils but “energy emanations” or similar pseudo-scientific claptrap.
As Lewis pointed out in his novel That Hideous Strength long ago, calling a demon a “macrobe” or some such other scientific-sounding euphemism does not mollify the demon. It merely amuses it. Just so long as it can keep our minds on this world and off the Creator of all that is seen and unseen, the devil is happy.
Mark Shea is the senior content editor for www.CatholicExchange.com.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Mark Shea ----- KEYWORDS: Commentary -------- TITLE: Weekly TV Picks DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:DEC. 4 & 7
Pope John Paul II
CBS
Airing in two-hour installments Sunday at 9 p.m. and Wednesday at 8 p.m., this premiere miniseries bio of the late Vicar of Christ was blessed by Pope Benedict XVI after he saw a partial version of it in mid-November. In the first part, Cary Elwes plays the young Karol Wojtyla in his Polish years and in the second, Catholic actor Jon Voight plays him as Pope John Paul II, fighting Communism and the culture of death.
MONDAY, DEC. 5
Design on a Dime
Home & Garden TV, 3 p.m., 11 p.m.
In this episode, “Mexican-Inspired Christmas,” the design team helps Rudy and Maria Jimenez turn a plain room into a place of celebration, and Maria and her mom take part in the Christmas tradition of making tamales for all their relatives and friends.
DEC. 6 & 9
‘Peanuts’ Christmas Specials
ABC
On Tuesday at 8 p.m., the 40th-anniversary showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas adds on short 'toons that each feature a “Peanuts” character. On Saturday at 8 p.m., I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown! spotlights toddler ReRun Van Pelt.
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 7
Remembering Pearl Harbor
History Channel
Starting at 8 a.m., four specials, all re-airs, tell the story of the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The same slate of shows starts again at 2 p.m.
THURSDAY, DEC. 8
Meditations on the Immaculate Conception
EWTN, 6:30 a.m., 5 p.m.
“O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!” Franciscan Friar of the Renewal Father Benedict Groeschel speaks in praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
FRIDAY, DEC. 9
Christmas Animals
Animal Planet, 8 p.m.
We learn about lots of animals that are associated with Christmas — including, nowadays, reindeer and, tangentially, to say the least, even chipmunks.
SATURDAY, DEC. 10
Black Pharaohs, Golden War
History Channel, 6 p.m.
An inscription in the tomb of an ancient governor in El Kab, Egypt, says an invasion by Kushites “covered the landscape of Egypt.” Archaeologists cite this and other indications that the Kingdom of Kush fought the pharaohs and even ruled Egypt for a century.
SATURDAY, DEC. 10
Rick Steves’
European Christmas
PBS, 8 p.m.
Choirs, chapels, cathedrals and families abound in veteran travel host Rick Steves’ 90-minute special on Christmas customs, concerts and celebrations in Bath, Burgundy, Nuremberg, Oslo, Paris, Salzburg and Tuscany.
Vatican Beatifies Mexican Martyrs
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Nov. 21 — In Guadalupe, Mexico, the Vatican beatified 13 Mexican martyrs who died during a Roman Catholic uprising in the late 1920's that was crushed by the Mexican government, Associated Press reported.
Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, arrived from Rome to oversee the ceremony, and Pope Benedict XVI delivered a message by satellite to spectators in a 60,000-seat soccer stadium in Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city, 280 miles northwest of Mexico City.
The 1917 constitution that grew out of the Mexican Revolution tightened already tough restrictions on the church, banning public masses and religious garb. The revolutionary limits sparked the Cristero War of 1926-29 in which tens of thousands died fighting the government over religious restrictions.
Among those beatified was Luis Padilla Gómez, who was arrested, tortured and killed by soldiers for his religious work in 1927. Also beatified were Ezequiel Huerta Gutiérrez, Ramón Vargas González, José Sánchez del Río, who was stabbed to death at age 14, and priests José Trinidad Rangel, Andrés Sola Molist and Dario Acosta Zurita.
Pope Benedict Praises Pro-Life Activists
REUTERS, Nov. 16 — Pope Benedict warmly praised pro-life activists as the Italian government was considering deploying them into abortion businesses to try to dissuade women from killing their babies, Reuters reported.
Italy has for weeks been caught up in a national debate over whether to allow the use of an abortion pill, known as RU-486, which blocks the action of the hormone progesterone, needed to sustain a pregnancy.
Speaking Nov. 16 at the end of his weekly general audience to tens of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square, the Pope hailed the work of Movement for Life.
He lauded the group for its “courage” in opposing abortion. He told the group, “You are writing pages of hope for the future of humanity.”
First Vatican Envoy in Yemen Accredited
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, Nov. 21 — Munjed Hashem became the Holy See's first ambassador in the Arab country of Yemen, UPI reported.
Yemen and the Vatican began efforts to build relations a year ago when a Catholic Brotherhood delegation led by papal adviser Prince Carlo De Bourbon made an official visit in line with the late Pope John Paul II's bid to bridge the gap between civilizations.
There are currently two churches in the city of Aden in south Yemen. The government planned to build a third church in Sanaa in response to the late Pope's efforts, but the plan was strongly opposed by some Muslim groups.
A joint official statement stressed “the importance of dialogue between religions, and the need to encourage tolerance and rapprochement between peoples and civilizations to serve international peace and security.”
Cardinal Says Mass Is Not a ‘Performance’
ALLAFRICA.COM, Nov. 18 — Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, said, “People don't come to Mass in order to be entertained. They come to Mass to adore God, to thank him, to ask pardon for sins and to ask for other things that they need,” the African news service reported.
In an analysis of the recent Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist, Cardinal Arinze said an increasing number of Catholics have “a more Protestant concept of the Eucharist, seeing it mainly as a symbol.”
“Vatican II brought many good things, but everything has not been positive, and the synod recognized that there have been shadows,” Cardinal Arinze acknowledged. “There has been a bit of neglect of the holy Eucharist outside Mass.”
He added that there's “a lot of ignorance, a lot of temptations to showmanship for the priest, who celebrates facing the people. If he is not very disciplined, he will soon become a performer. He may not realize it, but he will be projecting himself rather than projecting Christ.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: Vatican -------- TITLE: Video Picks & Passes DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:THE NINTH DAY: PICK
(2005)
CINDERELLA MAN: PICK
(2005)
FANTASTIC FOUR: PASS
(2005)
CONTENT ADVISORY: The Ninth Day is subtitled, and contains horrific but restrained depictions of concentration-camp atrocities, some crude language and mixed perspectives on the role of Pius XII during WWII. It might be suitable for mature teens. Cinderella Man contains much brutal pugilism violence, recurring profanity, mild sensuality, and a couple of sleazy taunts. It, too, might be suitable for mature teens. Fantastic Four contains stylized violence, some sexually themed humor and innuendo, and at least one instance of profanity. Tolerable for teens and up.
One of the best films of the year, Volker Schlondorff's The Ninth Day, new this week on DVD, is a haunting moral drama inspired by the Dachau concentration camp diary of a Catholic priest who was strangely given a nine-day reprieve from imprisonment. Not a rah-rah apologetic for the role of Catholic leaders during WWII, if that would even be appropriate, the film dares to dig beyond rote charges and counter-arguments regarding ecclesiastical complicity with Nazism to explore various levels of resistance and protest — and their consequences.
The film pits wary, weary Abbé Kremer (Ulrich Matthes) against fresh-faced Nazi officer Gebhardt (August Diehl) in a battle not of wits but of moral strength. Their cautious interactions, which could easily have degenerated into mere philosophical chess matches, are saved from doing so solely by Kremer's refusal to play by Gebhardt's rules.
Another Dachau survivor, Viktor Frankl, went on to argue in Man's Search for Meaning that man's most basic drive is not for pleasure, as Freud thought, but significance. The concentration camps, Frankl felt, showcased humanity at its worst and most depraved, but also at its purest and most profoundly human. Few films illustrate Frankl's thesis as profoundly as The Ninth Day.
Another edifying new DVD release based on a true story, Ron Howard's Cinderella Man celebrates the rags-to-riches life of Depression-era boxer James J. Braddock (Russell Crowe). Refreshingly, unlike the stereotyped movie boxer, a morally checkered, socially alienated single man with a history of extracurricular violence and troubling relationship issues (Rocky, Raging Bull, The Boxer), Braddock is a wholly decent, self-controlled, devoted family man. He's not only Cinderella, he's Prince Charming, too.
It's too bad the film can't celebrate Braddock's virtues without demonizing his final opponent, heavyweight champion Max Baer (Craig Bierko), as a scowling, swaggering creep who provokes Braddock before and during the fight with indecent taunts involving his wife. Even so, this is one Cinderella story that goes the distance without turning into a pumpkin, and earns its happily-ever-after ending.
How bad is Fantastic Four, also new on DVD? So bad, execs have resorted to spinning it as a “funny family action film.” It's the Kangaroo Jack strategy: When your dumb, trashy film isn't good enough for teens and adults, reposition it as a kiddie flick. Our kids deserve better than Hollywood's garbage. Despite reaction shots from Dalmatians and whipped-cream-in-the-face gags, Fantastic Four is no more appropriate for youngsters than the dark, scary Batman Begins. The relentlessly one-note portrayal of Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, as a randy, insufferably egocentric tomcat and glory hound makes sure of that.
If none of the other characters is quite as insufferable as the Torch, none is much more interesting, either. Even Dr. Doom, on the printed page a towering Vader-esque iconic figure in cape and armor, is here reduced to a younger, duller Donald Trump, with ill-defined super powers. Had the filmmakers deliberately set out to insult, demean and trample upon Lee and Kirby's legacy, they could hardly have done a more efficient job.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steven D. Greydanus ----- KEYWORDS: Arts -------- TITLE: All This and Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Too DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:Sitting in a small office in a modest three-story building in busy downtown Sacramento, Calif., Barry Suggarman envisions a sprawling, tree-lined 450-acre university campus filled with 5,000 of the best students from around the country.
Adjacent to the campus is a small university village with shops, retailers and other services. To top it off, Mass is celebrated each day in a splendid campus chapel, and the Catholic faith permeates every classroom.
Some may call it a dream, but Sugarman, executive vice president of the University of Sacramento, calls it a plan whose time has come. And he has the studies, blueprints and funding to make it a reality.
The university, run by the Legionaries of Christ, began classes last January on one floor of that modest three-story building in the California capital, with graduate-level courses in education and liberal arts. Twenty degree students are enrolled, and all teachers work part-time. It's a small but necessary step, says Sugarman, toward accreditation — and the building of a reputation for academic excellence.
The next big step will be to purchase land for the campus on a former Air Force base on the outskirts of Sacramento. According to Sugarman, a developer has put together a group of investors to buy and build on the property.
In addition, the university already has 6,000 ordinary donors who send regular contributions, large and small.
“Right now the county is doing an analysis of the property and will report how many buildable acres will be made available,” Sugarman said. “After that, we'll be ready to buy.”
Academic Excellence
Legionary Father Robert Presutti, the university's president, said that the University of Sacramento is the first multi-discipline institution of higher education in the United States run by the Legionaries, which has U.S. houses of formation and seminaries as well as numerous apostolates and outreach programs for young people and families.
The congregation was founded in the 1940s in Mexico and now has headquarters in Rome.
The Legionaries of Christ have founded 14 universities since opening the Anahuac University in Mexico City in 1964. Besides the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Va., they currently direct nine universities in Mexico, one in Santiago, Chile and one in Madrid, Spain, as well as the Regina Apostolorum and the European University in Rome.
“Wherever we are established in the world, we consider higher education a key component of our work,” says Father Presutti. “It has always been a goal for us to open a university in the United States.”
Plans for the school began coming together almost 10 years ago, accelerating in 2000 when a $1 million seed donation came through. Sacramento was chosen because of the area's demographics, which suggest that California will need 700,000 more higher-education seats in the next decade.
Then, too, there's the fact that the capital city does not have a major private college or university.
Plans are to make the school a nationally ranked university that will attract students not just for adherence to Church teachings but also for academic excellence and contributions to high-level scholarship.
Key to the project has been the enthusiastic support of Sacramento Bishop William Weigand. In a July 2002 letter approving the establishment of the university, he wrote: “I have for quite some time been palpably concerned at the lack of a Catholic college or university within the metropolitan area of a diocese of our size. The Catholic population is growing even more swiftly than the general population, yet the nearest Catholic college or university is 100 miles away.”
He also wrote to the Catholics of his diocese, urging them to enroll in the new master's programs. The education course includes certification in religious education for use in Catholic schools and parish catechetics.
Dan Cairns, 47, a financial planner, enrolled in the education course because he wanted to learn to spread the faith and engage the secular culture.
“I have a great interest in teaching the faith to adults so they in turn can teach their children,” says Cairns, who is married and has three school-age children. “It's very clear to me that we're involved in a culture war and, for too long, I've been sitting on the sidelines.”
How will the university grow from a few dozen students meeting in a downtown office building to a sprawling campus with thousands of students?
Demographer's Delight
The growth will be gradual, says Sugarman, who has a doctorate in education from Columbia University in New York City. A major study commissioned by the university indicates that the growth in population and the number of Catholics in the area add up to a ripe evangelizing and educational opportunity.
“Because the public colleges and universities in California are so good, there is a lack of private institutions of high learning in the state,” he notes. “The demand for seats in the best public universities far exceeds the number of seats, and all demographic factors point toward a sharp increase in demand over the next decade.”
The University of Sacramento will fill the need for quality higher education in the state, he says. As a nationally ranked university, it stands to draw students from all around the country.
“It will be a gradual process, but we're committed to the task,” Sugarman says, adding that an “insistence on deep and strong growth in our faculty and student body … will give us a reputation not only for commitment to Catholicism but to academic strength that even non-Catholics will want.”
“There is no conflict between academic excellence and the Catholic faith,” Father Presutti points out. “In fact, the two are inseparable. Faith and reason are complementary and even necessary for one another. At the University of Sacramento you find both in harmony.”
Stephen Vincent writes from Wallingford, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: The University of Sacramento aims high ----- EXTENDED BODY: Stephen Vincent ----- KEYWORDS: Education -------- TITLE: South Carolina Parish Lives Vatican II DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:GREENVILLE, S.C. — The congregation, packed into the pews and standing in the aisles, sings in Latin with the choir.
After Mass, groups meet to feed the poor, visit the sick, bring Communion to shut-ins, and learn how to make the faith a part of their lives and defend the Church against challengers.
During the week, as many as 20 parish groups meet, from the traditional altar society to the newly formed Center for Evangelical Catholicism, which teaches a formal curriculum and sets the agenda for most other parish activities.
Welcome to St. Mary's Parish in Greenville, S.C., where, 40 years after the close of the Second Vatican Council (see Weekly Book Pick, page 13), Vatican II is not a nebulous spirit, but a daily lived-out experience.
In his four years as pastor, Father Jay Scott Newman has transformed the parish in the areas of liturgy, lay leadership, evangelization and ecumenism, according to the teachings of the council, with Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI as his guides.
Pope Benedict, who was a theological expert at the council, will celebrate Mass Dec. 8, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the conclusion of Vatican II. For many, it will be a time to reflect on how faithfully the council has been implemented around the world, especially on the level of people's everyday lives.
“There is a great amount of gibberish about the ‘spirit of the council’ that has nothing to do with the council,” Father Newman said. A convert from the Baptist faith, he studied for the priesthood at the Gregorian University in Rome, where “we had the Bible open in one hand and the documents of Vatican II in the other.” After his ordination in 1993, he put his learning into practice.
As he tells the story, 15 minutes after arriving as pastor of St. Mary's in June 2001, he moved the tabernacle from its place outside the sanctuary to the center spot behind the altar. By Sunday, he had prepared materials for a more reverent liturgy than the parishioners had experienced in a while. Then he set out to educate the laity on how to fulfill their duties as active members in the parish and evangelizing Catholics in the community.
“The first thing I did was teach an adult course in Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium,” the council's constitutions on divine Revelation and the life of the Church. “Everything we do in the parish is in some way a conscious expression of what I see as the council's authentic teaching, informed by the magisterium of John Paul II and Benedict XVI and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which John Paul called the final document of Vatican II.”
He also hired a full-time assistant, David Hottinger, who holds a master's degree in divinity from Harvard University and is the director of the Center for Evangelical Catholicism. Hottinger entered the Catholic Church eight years ago, with Father Newman as his sponsor.
The center he directs, Hottinger said, encourages Catholics to “embrace their faith not merely as a set of rules to be followed or intellectual propositions to be agreed with, but as a complete, comprehensive way of life, centered on Jesus Christ and the divine life to which we are called.”
Father Newman explained, “In the buckle of the Bible Belt, where Catholics make up only 3% of the general population, and with Bob Jones University only four miles away, you have to learn and live your faith if you are going to remain Catholic.”
The parish population has grown significantly since Father Newman arrived, with about 2,700 families registered and a total of almost 7,000 members.
Weekly collections have doubled over the past four years, to $28,000, the pastor said. A capital campaign to restore the small Gothic church for the parish's 150th anniversary brought $2 million in additional donations.
The parish, however, has far outgrown the cozy 450-seat church, where the six Sunday Masses, including one in Spanish, are standing-room only. Seeing the great number of young families and children who come on Sunday, Father Newman is planning for the future, raising funds for a new 1,200-seat church.
The elementary school, with 350 students, is the most important work of the parish, according to Father Newman, because it forms the next generation of Catholics. Much is demanded of the parents, as well. The school's mission statement warns that St. Mary's School “is intended only for children of families with deep commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and genuine respect for the classical forms and disciplines of Christian education.”
Jay and Kate Tierney came to the parish four years ago from another Greenville parish because their children were attending the school. The move has changed their lives. “We came because we wanted to have church and school in one place for our children,” Kate said, “but it wound up being a conversion experience. We were introduced to the whole idea of being evangelical Catholics, to live our lives as apostles.”
St. Mary's parish gained notice outside the diocese last year when George Weigel, the biographer of Pope John Paul II, featured it in his book Letters to a Young Catholic. Weigel had gotten to know Father Newman through mutual friends, and wrote about St. Mary's in a chapter on excellence in liturgy.
“St. Mary's, Greenville, is as good a place as there is in North America to experience what Catholic worship is and ought to be — and then to think about why and how we pray, as a community and as individuals,” Weigel wrote. “In the liturgy restored and renewed as Vatican II intended, the people of Greenville have come to understand that it is God who invites us to worship and empowers us to worship.”
To anyone who asks why Catholics go to church, Weigel would answer, “Go to St. Mary's, and the question will answer itself.”
Joann Miller, director of religious education, said, “I think in a lot of ways our church is living out the teachings of the council, especially in regard to the beauty and dignity of the sacred liturgy, which gives a center to everything else we do pastorally.”
Father Newman said, “The first thing I turned my attention to was the liturgy, because as Lumen Gentium says, the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life. As pastor, I have tried to order divine worship to the mind of the Church.”
“My second priority,” he continued, “was adult education. Most Catholics live their faith with the knowledge of a 14-year-old, or whenever they received their confirmation. When they find out the riches of the faith for adults, they are hungry for more.”
To bring parishioners into Catholic adulthood is Hottinger's goal.
“The Second Vatican Council highlighted the Church's teaching that every baptized Christian shares in the Church's apostolic mission to the world,” he said. “If that is so, the parish must become far more serious about training and preparing the laity for that mission.”
Stephen Vincent is based in Wallingford, Connecticut.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Stephen Vincent ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: IRS to Church: Be Thou Not Partisan DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:PASADENA, Calif. — The Internal Revenue Service is threatening to lift the tax-exempt status of a church for condemning President Bush's Iraq War policies during the 2004 presidential campaign season.
Defenders of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena deny any violation of tax law and claim fundamental issues of freedom of speech and religion are at stake.
“We are happy that the IRS goes to church,” All Saints pastor Edwin Bacon told the congregation at a Nov. 13 service. “What we will resist with all our might are all infringements on freedom of speech and freedom of religion.”
The offending sermon was delivered by the church's retired pastor, George Regas. Church spokesman Bob Long noted that Regas’ sermon was explicitly non-partisan. “He said, ‘I'm not going to tell you who to vote for,’ and ‘people of faith were voting for both candidates.’” What's more, Regas criticized both Republican President George Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, for their support on the war in Iraq.
This cut no ice with the Internal Revenue Service, said Long, who believes that Regas’ words (archived on the church's website) implied endorsement of Kerry.
Victor Omelczenko, media relations officer with the IRS in Los Angeles, said the agency never commented on individual cases. However, an April, 2004 news release issued by the Internal Revenue Service indicates that “even activities that encourage people to vote for or against a particular candidate on the basis of non-partisan criteria violate the political campaign prohibition of section 501 (c)(3).”
Churches and charities forfeit their exempt status even if they endorse or oppose specific policies at the same time or place as they associate these policies with particular candidates. An October 2004 release from the government agency indicates that 60 investigations were in the works for violations of 501 (c)(3).
Long admits that the lifting of All Saints’ tax-exempt status “would have a real significant impact on the church's operations, especially with a capital campaign coming up.” The action “inhibits our ability to speak truth to power.” Nonetheless, the church has refused the Internal Revenue Service's request for an admission of guilt.
The release also cites a federal court ruling in 2000 against the Church at Pierce Creek in Binghamton, N.Y., which took out full-page ads in USA Today and the Washington Times four days before the 1992 election condemning Bill Clinton's positions on homosexuality, abortion etc. and identifying the church as the purchaser of the ads.
The court rejected the church's claim that IRS regulations infringed the First Amendment right to freedom of religion. As detailed guidelines on political activities and tax exemption on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops website explain, “An exempt organization has a choice between involvement in political campaign activity and the benefits of tax exemption. Because of this distinction, courts have not been sympathetic to claims by religious organizations that the section 501(c)(3) political campaign activity prohibition violates First Amendment rights.”
IRS Inference?
But Marcus Owens, All Saints’ Washington, D.C., tax lawyer, says the situation at All Saints in 2004 is sufficiently murky for a freedom of religion defense. Instead of a clear endorsement of Kerry by All Saints, he said, “we have the inferential parsing of the English language by the IRS.”
The bishops’ conference declined to comment on the All Saints case or even discuss whether any Catholic churches have been targeted. However, Patrick O’Daniel, a Catholic tax lawyer in Austin, Texas, believes there have been no Catholic infringements — thanks to the bishops’ conference's exhaustive guidelines.
O’Daniel said the amendment responsible for 501 (c)(3) was the work of Lyndon Johnson, after winning election to the Senate in 1954 over a Catholic candidate he believed had received endorsement from Catholic organizations. Ironically, reports O’Daniel, in the same election Johnson wrote letters to Protestant pastors warning them of his opponent's faith and of a flood of Catholic immigrants that could follow his election.
O’Daniel fears that the IRS's crackdown on faith-based political action will have its biggest impact on churches that serve the poor and blacks.
“These churches are community centers that provide all sorts of services,” which are much more likely to be commenting on public policies than wealthier churches. The IRS's action, said O’Daniel, “is not a de jure infringement on freedom of religion but it is de facto.” Loss of tax exempt status would be “the death knell for a charity.” They would have to reincorporate themselves, he said, to regain tax exempt status.
However, Owens believes that churches could survive an adverse IRS finding because unlike charities they do not need an IRS designation to claim charity status. Only if a donor is audited, said Owen, might he have to make the case that a particular church he has given money to warrants exemption.
Steve Weatherbe is based in Victoria, British Columbia.
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: Steve Weatherbe ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: God Sent His Son to Save Us DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:Register Summary
Pope Benedict XVI met with 25,000 pilgrims in St. Peter's Square for his general audience on Nov. 23. Because of the large number of pilgrims who have been present at general audiences each week and the lack of a facility that is large enough, Vatican officials have been forced to hold them outdoors in St. Peter's Square in spite of the increasingly cold weather.
The Holy Father's teaching focused on St. Paul's canticle extolling God's plan of salvation, which is found at the beginning of his Letter to the Ephesians. He pointed out that the canticle, the form of blessing that is characteristic of the Jewish tradition, is “part of a constant flow of praise that rises up to God, who is celebrated in our Christian faith as ‘Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.’”
Pope Benedict then went on to refer to the three verbs that St. Paul uses in his hymn. The first describes God's choice of us as his adopted children. Because we are his children, we are also brothers and sisters of his son, Jesus Christ. The second verb describes the gift of grace that the Father gives us in his only begotten Son, who is a manifestation of the Father's love that envelops and transforms us. The third verb emphasizes that God's grace has been “lavished” upon us.
“Thus, we reach the infinite and glorious depth of the mystery of God, which has been revealed by grace to those who have been called by grace and love,” the Holy Father pointed out. “It is impossible to reach this revelation merely through the gift of human intelligence and abilities.” God's intention is to gather all creation and history into the fullness that he desires, “a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ,” thereby healing divisions and overcoming human weaknesses.
Pope Benedict XVI ended his reflections with a quotation from St. Irenaeus, who affirms that, since the Word of God truly becomes man, sin and death are defeated and all people are renewed in Christ.
Departing from his prepared text, the Holy Father ended his teaching with a spontaneous exhortation: “In keeping with the spirit of these words, let us pray: Yes, Lord, draw us to yourself; draw the world to yourself and grant us peace, your peace.”
Every week the Church prays the solemn hymn found at the beginning of the Letter to the Ephesians — the text we just heard — during the Liturgy of the Hours’ evening prayer. It belongs to a type of prayer called the berakoth (blessings), which we have already encountered in the Old Testament and which later spread throughout the Jewish tradition. It is, therefore, part of a constant flow of praise that rises up to God, who is celebrated in our Christian faith as “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
It is for this reason that the figure of Christ, in whom the work of God the Father is revealed and fulfilled, is central to this hymn of praise. In fact, the three main verbs in this lengthy yet compact canticle always lead us to the Son.
God Has Chosen Us
God “chose us in him” (see Ephesians 1:4): It is our vocation to be holy and to be his adoptive children, and to have, therefore, a fraternal relationship with Christ. This gift, which radically transforms our condition as creatures, is offered to us “through Jesus Christ” (see verse 5) as part of God's great plan of salvation in loving “accord with the favor of [the Father's] will” (see verse 5), which the apostle contemplates with awe.
The second verb, after the verb “to choose” (“he chose us”), describes his gift of grace: the “grace that he granted us in the beloved” (see verse 6). In Greek, the same roots, charis and echaritosen, appear twice in order to emphasize that God's initiative, which precedes every human response, is totally without cost. The grace that the Father bestows on us in his only-begotten Son is, therefore, a manifestation of his love which envelops and transforms us.
Finally, we come to the third main verb in Paul's canticle. Its theme is still that of God's grace, which “he lavished upon us” (verse 8). Thus, we find before us a verb denoting abundance, or, as we might say in accord with its original meaning, a verb that indicates an excessive giving, a giving without any limitations or any hesitation.
The Mystery of God
Thus, we reach the infinite and glorious depth of the mystery of God, which has been revealed by grace to those who have been called by grace and love. It is impossible to reach this revelation merely through the gift of human intelligence and abilities.
“‘What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him,’ this God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10).
The “mystery” of God's “will” has a central goal whose purpose is to coordinate all of existence and all of history, channeling it to the fullness that God so desires: It is “a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10). In this oikonomia (plan), that is, in this harmonious plan for structuring being and existence, Christ, the head of the body of the Church but also the axis in which “all things in heaven and on earth” are united, plays a dominant role. Losses and limitations have been overcome and the “fullness” that is the true goal of the plan that God has willed from the beginning has been attained.
Renewed in Christ
We find ourselves, therefore, before a grandiose portrait of the history of creation and salvation, which we now wish ponder using some words from St. Irenaeus, a great doctor of the Church from the second century, who, in a brilliant passage in his treatise, Against the Heresies, developed a well-structured meditation on exactly what Christ has united.
Christian faith, he affirms, recognizes that “there is only one God the Father and one Jesus Christ, Our Lord, who came through this plan of salvation and united all things in himself. Man, whom God has formed, is also among all these things. Thus, he has also united man in himself — he who is invisible becoming visible, he who is incomprehensible becoming comprehensible, and he who is Word becoming man” (3, 16, 6: Giá e Non Ancora, CCCXX, Milan, 1979, p. 268).
It is for this reason that “the Word of God” truly “becomes man,” not in appearance because in that case “his work would not have been true.” Instead, “he was what he appeared to be: God, who unites in him his old creature, who is man, in order to stamp out sin, destroy death and give life to man. Because of this, his works are true” (3, 18, 7: ibid., pp. 277-278). He became head of the Church in order to draw all to himself at the right time. In keeping with the spirit of these words, let us pray: Yes, Lord, draw us to yourself; draw the world to yourself and grant us peace, your peace.
(Register translation)
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News -------- TITLE: World Media Watch DATE: 12/04/2005 12:00:00 PM CATEGORY: December 4-10, 2005 ----- BODY:Vietnam to Ordain 57 Catholic Priests
The ceremony will be presided over by senior Vatican envoy Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, said Vatican deputy spokesman, Passionist Father Ciro Benedettini. The ceremony was scheduled Nov. 29 at St. Joseph's Cathedral in Hanoi.
While predominantly Buddhist, Vietnam has an estimated 6 million Catholics, the second highest number in Southeast Asia after the Philippines. The government recognizes only a handful of officially sanctioned religions or denominations, which has drawn sharp criticism from international human rights organizations and governments.
Like China, Vietnam has no diplomatic ties with the Vatican, and their relations have been strained over Hanoi's insistence on having the final say in most of the Church appointments, a policy the Vatican has staunchly rejected.
Church Crusades Against Moral Decadence
Cardinal Julius Darmaatmadja, chairman of the Indonesian Conference of Bishops, said the Catholic community as an integral part of the nation and the state had to shoulder some of the burden, because they had contributed to this moral decadence.
“The Catholic Church has been deeply concerned not only about problems and issues coming to the surface, but also about the root causes of moral deterioration,” Cardinal Darmaatmadja said.
The cardinal Darmaatmadja, who is also the archbishop of Jakarta Archdiocese, said the role the Catholic community would play in building this new culture would be discussed at a synod held November 16-20 in West Java. Some 400 bishops, priests and laymen from 36 dioceses across the country participated at the conference.
“Responding to moral decadence, many have been apathetic and many others have become angry, which has made us vulnerable to acts of fundamentalism,” the cardinal said. “The Catholic Church does not want either, therefore it is trying to help create the new human character and culture.”
School Offers Pregnancy Tests to 11-Year-Olds
Simon Viccars, the headmaster of the school, Leon School and Sports College, which has 700 pupils aged between 11 and 19, said, “We have decided to offer pregnancy testing for those young girls who have a need,” he said. “We have not consulted parents on this. We have taken the lead. It has been backed totally by the school's governing body and we have consulted the local health authority.”
Hugh McKinney, chairman of the National Family Campaign, said: “Schools need to be reminded that sexual relations with children under 16 is a criminal offence.”
Nick Seaton, of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “Children go to school to learn English, maths and science, not to have pregnancy tests. It is sending out the wrong message. Teachers are being turned into social workers and schools into social services departments.”
McKinney added, “Schools should not be in involved in issues likepregnancy testing. This is a subject for medical practitioners and parents to discuss,not for schools to provide.”
----- EXCERPT: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- KEYWORDS: News --------