A Pilgrim's Progress

My niece's graduation announcement came in the mail today and got me musing. I remembered quite some years ago helping one of my bosses pack to move when we stopped to look at a class poster with all their pictures which his father's class had printed a good 80 years ago now on their graduation from Columbia University or its medical school. The poster imaged the progress those young grads saw in the world of their day and which they hoped to share as they went out into the world of work. The picture's backdrop was a huge factory with all sorts of billowing smoke stacks! For them, I guess, back before World War II that, smoke-spewing, unshackled industry, looked like progress.

This morning there was a short filler piece in the newspaper about economic recession in Spain and the danger stagnation in the Spanish economy represents for the whole Euro zone. Here in the U.S. you still hear (we seem to have forgotten Fanny Mae?) about economic recovery as involving increased consumption of all sorts of goods, of more money being spent on homes, cars, phones, electronics, vacations, and what all. "Shop until you drop" would seem to have replaced the smoking factory as the emblem of progress? There must be some school of philosophy out there which is built on the notion "I consume, therefore I am". It's hard to believe just how blind, passive or indifferent we can become. I read a book review recently where the author was raging against all the money spent on advanced education, preparing people for useless or consumption oriented careers. As bright young Columbia graduates of 80 years ago didn't see the danger in industrial pollution, it would seem we now have a world oblivious to the fact that it is on the verge of burying itself under the packaging of its unbridled consumption.

As bad as all that might be, since getting into a book by John M. Wynne, entitled "A Catholic Assessment of Evolution Theory", I have become much more sensitive not only regarding the use of evolution theories to deny the existence of God and His creative and saving will, but to all that more which would tie us still to 19th Century Protestant historical critical methods for interpreting Scripture to spite the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, methods for a time embraced by Catholic scholars but now judged both passe and harmful, as well as to the folly surrounding material gains and living on credit which continue to be passed off as progress, regardless of the lessons we should be learning from the ongoing world economic crisis.

On the one hand, it would be illusory to think that people would embrace the kind of subsistence farming my grandparents knew without being forced to do so. On the other hand, it shocks to think that people so readily live beyond their means indifferent to predictions as to when in the next 5 to 10 years both medicare and social security will no longer pay. The neighbor next door tells us he is moving to a new neighborhood in town where he'll have to go on a waiting list for internet service... they've reached their limit. What is progress? Is it a value? 

Society's love affair with a silly notion of progress as more and flashier consumption is, well, bad enough. My worry has to do with the abandonment of faith in the living God, regardless of whether that abandonment is ideological or practical. Let the horrible notion behind the word "creationism" stand for the whole and challenge us to think about what is happening to our world! We may soon be deprived of the word group "Creator, create, creation". How did a two-bit propagandist like Charles Darwin with his unsubstantiated stories from a trip to the Galapagos Islands ever gain such a hold on our world? Why should I be shackled to the babbling of a long dead bigot like Charles Darwin? What do I owe to a man whose wicked heart was set on destroying my universe as created by God, Who created me to know, love, and serve Him, so as to be happy with Him forever? Our world might gain more from a return to some early 20th Century smoke stacks (unfiltered).

If only we were as alarmed by some of the propagandists who distort God's world, depriving it and us of our Creator, as we are of polluting smoke stacks or radioactive fallout! "Creationism" is not an honest word; it is a slur on the way to denying Truth itself.

What would I put in the background on my niece's graduation poster today? It certainly wouldn't be smoke belching factory chimneys nor would it be the glitzy world of Marvel Comics and the endless possibilities of material opulence. Maybe "progress" is a dirty word in search of a new definition? Maybe the hopes and optimism of a graduating class can be depicted without reference to that word.

Same Old Same Old?

These days again, I had occasion to share with older parents about their pain over adult children who do not practice the faith of their upbringing. This tragedy of estrangement is nothing new, not even for the "good old days", when sometimes even within the rural or small town parish atmosphere, for whatever reason, a grown child might show up at Mass on Sunday so as to avoid criticism, but without really participating or investing anything of self in that attendance. It seems more frequent today, however, and more identifiable because of social mobility: the factor to consider being that number of children who leave home for college or a job opportunity and essentially never return to the neighborhood or parish where they grew up. They are on their own, far from home and supporting community, and many quickly abandon entirely the practice of their faith. A Georgetown study quoted in a book I am reading claims only 16% of post-Vatican II adults (born after 1961) attend Mass weekly. I have heard Father Robert Barron say in his videos that the largest religious body in the United States is made up of former Catholics.

The situation is certainly scandalous, but I am urged to ask again why it is so, especially feeling I owe a better explanation to the question as it arises from good parents' pain. How can people so easily abandon something like the Catholic faith, if as in the case of the parents I am talking about their children were indeed brought up in a faith-filled home? How can you cut yourself loose from God, Who out of His great love created and saved us? What washes out or blots out, what smothers the sense of the transcendent which was indeed palpable in these good homes?

Up until now I did not make much of those "man-on-the-street" videos, like one I saw from Ireland, where many who said they no longer practiced their faith cited science and the sophistication of the modern age as reasons for rejecting their childhood training in the faith. I'll grant you a certain pride or "intellectual" pride and crass materialism as things to turn one's head. For indeed to believe you need to be humble and not caught up in those things alone which you can quantify with your hand, tongue or eye. But are people really that brainless as to put faith in a scientific community which would sell off its own grandmother to gain recognition and more money for questionable, even frivolous research which knows no boundaries, Dr. Frankenstein?

It is hard not to draw the conclusion that our Western world is once again on the brink of total eclipse, as it was when Arianism ran rampant or when much of thought was tainted with the bazaar myths of Gnosticism. Has our world, at least in terms of its ordinary reflexes, not succumbed to the propaganda of atheism or of some sort of godless materialism? The follies of Bing-Bang and unsubstantiated Evolution theories continue to hold sway, untenable as they are, often based on lies and manipulation of data as they are, seemingly only to spite God and deprive Him of His creative will and existence.

I surely hope that home-schooling can save more than a few of our next generations for God. Are we again at a point where we need to pray harder for another St. Benedict and his sister, St. Scholastica, who will turn their backs on a world in shambles and begin through a rule of life to reclaim the world for civilization? I am glad about all the upbeat people out there who see signs of hope: small colleges with great books curricula and what not. At the same time I fear that National Geographic and the Discovery Channel play too big of a part in forming hearts and minds. The public school and university system is too jaded and Hollywood and Co. too intolerant. We need to take them all back a few notches.

This weekend, home in the States for annual vacation, I celebrated my first parish liturgies with the new English texts of the Third Edition of the Roman Missal. The parish is familiar and so to me the change for the better by comparison with last year is strikingly evident. More needs to be done, surely, and on many fronts if we are to save our children from the insipid bogs of "political correctness" and that 84% who choose to sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, as if Christ our Light had not already won the victory which gives us hope of life forever in God.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Mistaken For Christ

For some time now, but especially since St. Stephen's Feast and again today with the Holy Innocents, I have been resisting the urge to write something about our identity as Christians in the world and the role martyrdom may have to play in this our life. 


It might be presumptuous or an exaggeration on my part to say that what I want to do (reflecting on the example of St. Stephen but perhaps more on that of the Holy Innocents) is fundamental or basic and would have implications not only for the life of the individual but for the life of the Church in a society, that society being a world or the powers which be in that world which for the most part stand us over and against (threatened by the very thought of us, as Herod was troubled unto folly by the news of the star from the magi come to worship the Universal King). 


I capitulated and decided to write something when I read the little introduction to today's Mass in MAGNIFICAT speaking of the honor accorded to the babies around Bethlehem, they having been mistaken for the Anointed One of God and dying in His place! We don't belong, let us say, any more than the Lord Jesus, Who explained to Pilate that His Kingdom was not of this world. Christ's glory is in His being lifted up upon the Cross. He and we, if we follow Him, are indeed outsiders. His glory, our glory is in being relegated to the cave and manger outside Bethlehem, to being crucified outside of the city of Jerusalem and deposited in a borrowed grave. Is this indeed so for us; is our relationship to this century really adversarial?

"Arise, O LORD, confront them, strike them down! 
Let your sword deliver my soul from the wicked! 
Let your hand, O LORD, deliver me from those 
whose portion in this present life is fleeting. 
May you give them their fill of your treasures; 
may their offspring rejoice in plenty, 
and leave their wealth to their children. 
As for me, in justice I shall behold your face; 
when I awake I shall be filled with the vision of your presence." (Psalm 17:13-15)


Is it only King David, is it only the priest who has the Lord as his portion? Are we not all, the baptized, strangers or sojourners on our way to a better place? There is nothing of apathetic resignation in the awareness that the victory belongs to Stephen, to the Innocents and not to some Forbes list of the world's movers and shakers. One needs to tremble slightly at TV or radio commentary about the Vatican as the capital of Christianity. "My kingdom is not of this world." Jesus said it to Pilate.


We needs be shocked by the hateful bombings this year in Nigeria of churches on Christmas, shocked but not surprised. The old expression was that error has no rights. Perhaps it would be better to recognize soberly the absolute intolerance of relativism as ideology, of ignorance and prejudice unleashed and unrestrained, no matter how one dresses or candy-coats it. Very simply, the truth is indeed one and must be striven for, but finds few defenders even in the halls of justice.


We need only recall the Holy Father's discourse at the University of Regensburg (12 September 2006) to help us contextualize a discourse far from new to our world:


"In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to some of the experts, this is probably one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death..."


Jesus prophesied that those who follow Him will be drawn before kings and rulers and all matter of tribunal for the sake of His Name. For His sake, for the sake of reason and of truth, we cannot fail to defend the family, the down-trodden and the unborn. 


I'm going to stop short of a harangue and express the hope and prayer that as we cross the threshold of another calendar year, we might draw hope and courage for battle from the psalmist, rallying to the standard of the Infant King: "As for me, in justice I shall behold your face; when I awake I shall be filled with the vision of your presence."

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Winning Hearts and Minds for Truth

Here's a really important book that needs to be put on college reading lists, if they still exist (must reads for any self-respecting B.A.):

10 BOOKS THAT SCREWED UP THE WORLD 

And 5 Others That Didn’t Help 

BENJAMIN WIKER, PH. D. 

Author of Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists
Copyright © 2008 by Benjamin Wiker (Kindle Edition)

Some might accuse me of the equivalent of recommending the old "Cliff Notes" as a substitute for really reading English literature, but in an age where folks don't read much if at all this might be the book that makes a difference in terms of thought and right thinking.

Deep down what moves me is the desire to find and apply the sandpaper treatment to a world's callous which continues to keep consciences or hearts numb, dead, thick, uncomprehending, indifferent to the atrocity which is abortion. Read the book as a primer for appreciating Dr. Wiker's conclusions! 

I'm only going to quote two statements out of many I highlighted for myself from those conclusions:

By following the trajectory of these books that screwed up the world, we can wonder whether the advance of “science” over theology is an unmitigated good, and whether it is really progress. Perhaps it is bringing us to a new age of technological barbarism, wherein humanity becomes ever more religiously obsessed with health and sexual pleasure as pseudo-gods, sacrificing anything and everything to these twin deities.

The ideas of God and sin might all seem too mythical for this scientific age until we recall that whether the bad thinker is Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, or Freud, the authors we’ve covered in this book were mythmakers. They were enthralled by entirely mythical states of nature, entirely fictional alternative Edens, entranced by entirely impossible utopian paradises. Tens of millions of lives were offered up to the twin fictions of an alternative Garden of Eden and an alternative paradise, each taken and presented (falsely) as scientific fact.

Wiker's great service in this book is not unlike that performed by the little boys along the road in the children's story The King's New Clothes. Dr. Wiker points a finger at what are supposed to be the reasoned pillars of common parlance and shows them to be neither, but rather a gaping abyss, which leaves us little to hope from any self-sufficient geek's laboratory and clamoring for a better life through science (when hospitals weren't so sterile you didn't catch megaviruses). 

In his Hitler chapter Dr. Wiker attributes a modicum of conscience to some of the henchmen who were carrying out the final solution. Personally, I seriously doubt if their alcohol abuse and listlessness came from qualms over what they were doing; they were lost and that is how lost people behave: killing didn't push them to despair; despairing of life and hope pushed them to kill.

The equation just does not work, minus our Creator and Redeemer.