Jesus Christ, our rock and our salvation

“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined” (Matt. 7:24-27).

I am keeping it direct and simple today. Sometimes it is good just to let the Lord speak for Himself and for us to just listen to Him. So, on this last Sunday prior to Lent let's listen to the Lord with simplicity of heart.

Kermit Gosnell and the Gospel of Life, or taking an unpopular stand

Since it's unexpectedly turned into social justice week here at Καθολικός διάκονος, I thought I would post something today on an issue that presents a real conundrum for a lot of Catholics, namely the case of the abortion practitioner, Kermit Gosnell. I would suggest that a necessary prologomena to this post is my post from last Saturday, the title of which is taken from Romans 12:17, "Repay no one evil for evil." To summarize, if we are truly followers of Jesus Christ, we must forgive, but forgiveness is not only a process, in many cases it is only made possible by the grace of God, that vengeance is the Lord's, as St. Paul tells us, and that mercy does not cancel out justice, even in the kingdom of God, as Pope Benedict wrote about with great insight in his encyclical letter Spe Salvi.

What Kermit Gosnell stands accused of is atrocious. I have no problem calling it evil. Elizabeth Scalia, who blogs as The Anchoress has a post that details Gosnell's alleged doings, which constitute a whole lot more than being responsible for the death of a woman for whom he performed an abortion and brutally killing babies who survived his botched abortion attempts. Specifically, as The Anchoress details, "Prosecutors in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania announced today they will seek the death penalty for abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell, who faces charge[s] related to killing a woman in a botched abortion and killing babies infanticides." As a result of being charged with first-degree murder, prosecutors let Gosnell's attorney know "that they will seek death by lethal injection if a jury finds Gosnell guilty" on this charge. Additionally, "Gosnell faces a third-degree murder charge related to the death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar from a botched abortion Gosnell performed. Mongar died November 20, 2009, after overdosing on anesthetics prescribed by the doctor." Gosnell stands accused of a lot more than these crimes. Elizabeth provides a link to the Grand Jury report, which I provide here for the sake of ease with a warning that the contents are horrifying.

Kermit Gosnell

This is clearly a case when we realize that it’s not easy to take an unpopular stand, even when it’s right, but as followers of Jesus, even in a case this gruesome, we must oppose the death penalty. In his encylical Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II saw rising opposition to the death penalty as great sign of hope, writing, "Among the signs of hope we should also count the spread, at many levels of public opinion... evidence of a growing public opposition to the death penalty, even when such a penalty is seen as a kind of 'legitimate defence' on the part of society. Modern society in fact has the means of effectively suppressing crime by rendering criminals harmless without definitively denying them the chance to reform" (par. 27).

Now, it is inadvisable to write about the death penalty without addressing the issue of moral equivalence. Probably the greatest consternation that arises as a result of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernadin's seamless garment of life proposal is that it seems (only because many don't take the time familiarize themselves with what Bernardin actually proposed) to establish in the minds of many Catholics a moral equivalence between abortion and the death penalty. Of course, there is no moral equivalence between the taking of an innocent, helpless human life and that of a person who is guilty of murder, or, as with Gosnell, multiple murders. In this country, insuring that the person facing the death penalty is actually guilty of the crime he is accused of, or often convicted of, is very problematic, to say the least, but that is a justice issue for another day.

This certainly becomes an issue at election time, when we routinely face a choice between candidates who oppose abortion, but who support the death penalty and vice-versa. Well, because they are not morally equivalent, if your decision comes down solely to this issue, which it usually does not, proportional reasoning indicates you go with the candidate who opposes abortion and supports the death penalty. This is just one case study in how difficult it is to bring our faith to bear when exercising our rights as citizens in a representative democracy, which requires us to use proportional reasoning.

The "clinic" where Gosnell provided "Family Planning" services

Also in Evangelium Vitae, JPII states,

"The problem [of the death penalty] must be viewed in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human dignity and thus, in the end, with God's plan for man and society. The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is 'to redress the disorder caused by the offence'. Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfils the purpose of defending public order and ensuring people's safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behaviour and be rehabilitated."

"Therefore, he continues, 'It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent'.

"Finally, In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: 'If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person'" (par. 56; CCC par. 2266-2267).

I would apologize for posting such long extracts of papal teaching, except that when it comes to these so-called "hot button" issues that tend to stir up a lot of emotion, it is important for both of my readers to know that I am not merely offering my own opinion. It is also good to be reminded, in this case as well as the one raised by recent efforts to eliminate or severely limit the right of workers to collectively bargain, that we shouldn't only appeal to church teaching when it suits our personal politics, that is, fits with our preconceptions. How does this challenge us to follow Christ with ever more fidelity? More importantly, we must ask ourselves how advocating for Gosnell's death affects our witness to the inherent dignity of all human life, created in the imago dei, which even the most heinous sins cannot completely efface; the radicality necessitated by the Gospel about which I posted last Saturday.

A friend reminded me today of something Don Giussani said that synthesizes and summarizes this all very well: "The Mystery as mercy remains the last word even on all the awful possibilities of history."

I'll have the filet o' fish with no tartar sauce, please

Prompted by a post on Deacon Greg's blog, known in these parts simply as The Bench, my mind turned to something I originally posted back on 6 October 2006, which only serves to remind me just how long I have been at this weblog thing- In the words of Homer Simpson, "The internet? Is that thing still around?" This being the last Friday before Lent, a time during which Friday abstinence becomes obligatory for Roman Catholics, I thought it was opportune to re-post this more than four years on. To the best of my knowledge, the Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence issued by the U.S. bishops in 1966 has never been superseded or amended:

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In November 1966, on the heels of Pope Paul VI's Apostolic Constitution, Paenitemini, in which Paul proposed to renew "penitential discipline with practices more suited to our times," the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops set forth a Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence. This statement by the U.S. Bishops still constitutes the normative application of the Holy See's directive for Catholics in the United States. Today being Friday, let us explore this a little and see what fruit it bears.

Some preliminary notes are required before wading in to what our bishops teach. In the early Church, Sunday was the day on which Christ's Resurrection was celebrated. Of course, it remains so today and has throughout the Church's entire history, but even observing Sunday as the Lord's Day seems to be imperiled (see Pope John Paul II's Dies Domini). Appropriately, elements of the Jewish Sabbath are observed by faithful Christians on Sunday, the Lord's Day, just as Christian fasting finds its roots in Jewish practice. Another early Christian observance, in addition to the little Easter of each Sunday, was a little Good Friday, a memorial of the day on which Christ died for us. While we feast on the resurrection, we fast and abstain in solidarity with Christ's suffering as an act of penance and solidarity with each other and those who suffer, on the crucifixion.

Fasting is one of many ascetical practices that is currently poorly understood and, hence, little practiced. Ascetical is derived from the Greek word askesis, which means "exercise, training, discipline." This is the kind of thing St. Paul is writing about in passages from his letters, like 1 Corinthians 9,24b-27, in which he writes: "Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win. Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. Thus I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train it, for fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified." The ascetical life, writes Fr. Thomas Ryan, CSP, in his book The Sacred Art of Fasting: Preparing to Practice, "is either the project of appropriating the divine gift of grace or, more frequently, the work of purification." He continues in his recovery of the word ascetic by stating that ascetical "practices are methods designed to restrain the influence of sin and maximize union with God". If there is one area of the work of Richard Foster and Dallas Willard, both of whom I admire very much, I take issue with, it is their unbending criticism of asectism, seeing it and writing about it as if it were a dirty Catholic word. Just as many evangelical Christians devalue the word religion, so too with ascetism- those nasty old practices of monks and nuns in the Dark Ages, that are a distortion of Christ's teachings. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Foster's and Willard's work goes on to show.

Fr. Charles Cummings, O.C.S.O of Holy Trinity Abbey in Huntsville, Utah (just a little North of me, a community that has nurtured and strengthened me over many years), writes in his book Monastic Practices, as quoted by Fr. Ryan, "The more I try to make Christ the center of my life and thoughts and actions, the more I feel every pull and tug that draws me back from the radical, loving surrender of myself. I am not totally free to run toward the one I love. Instead, I feel enchained, entangled by a thousand little threads that together form a strong rope binding me to myself. Detaching myself from these bonds is largely a matter of self-discipline and asceticism. Paradoxically, [the spiritual life is fraught with paradox]self-discipline sets me free for God. Self-discipline is a training in freedom. I am free to take something comfortable and pleasurable, or to eat and drink more, or to sleep longer, but I am also free to refrain from these things and not let myself be held bound by them" (bracketed words are mine).

I hope that lays a little necessary groundwork before returning to the issue of Fridays as penitential days. Last Friday I quoted from a recent document by the U.S. Bishops on penitential practices and provided a link to their pamphlet. Today I want to return to that point in time when Friday abstinence from meat was rescinded as a requirement of Church law in order to show that what the bishops, and the Pope, were hoping for was for Catholics to freely enter into Fridays with a renewed fervor, not to abandon penitential practices altogether. With no further adieu, let us see what we have been taught.

"Christ died for our salvation on Friday," begins the 1966 statement. "Gratefully remembering this, Catholic peoples from time immemorial have set apart Friday for special penitential observance by which they gladly suffer with Christ . . . Since the spirit of penance primarily suggests that we discipline ourselves in that which we enjoy most, to many in our day abstinence from meat no longer implies penance, while renunciation of other things would be more penitential." We might well ask, What other things? Here are few suggestions, alcohol, television and movies, desserts, or, for married couples, by mutual agreement, sex. Those are just for starters, try giving up one of those things, thus whittling away at the threads of the rope that binds us, as described by Fr. Charles. Do these things with prayer and almsgiving. As an example, if you typically spend $10 or $20 having a few cocktails on Friday, give that money to the poor. Fasting and abstinence undergird prayer and almsgiving, these practices do not replace them. In fact, fasting and abstinence are incomplete without praying and giving because the practice, the discipline, is not an end in and of itself, is a means to an end- loving God and neighbor.

"For these and related reasons, the Catholic bishops of the United States, far from downgrading the traditional penitential observance of Friday, and motivated precisely by the desire to give the spirit of penance greater vitality, especially on Fridays, the day that Jesus died, urge our Catholic people henceforth to be guided by the following norms.

"Friday itself remains a special day of penitential observance throughout the year . . . Friday should be in each week something of what Lent is in the entire year. For this reason we urge all to prepare for that weekly Easter that comes with each Sunday by freely making of every Friday a day of self-denial and mortification in prayerful remembrance of the passion of Jesus Christ. . . Among the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance which we especially recommend to our people . . . we give first place to abstinence from flesh meat. We do so in the hope that the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law . . . Our deliberate, personal abstinence from meat, more especially because no longer required by law, will be an outward sign of inward spiritual values" [sounds quite sacramental...hmmm].

The bishops continue, "Fridays, please God, will acquire among us other forms of of penitential witness which may become as much a part of the devout way of life in the future as Friday abstinence from meat . . . Let it be proved by the spirit in which we enter upon prayer and penance, not excluding fast and abstinence freely chosen, that these present decisions and recommendations of this conference of bishops will herald a new birth of loving faith and a more profound penitential conversion, by both of which we become one with Christ, mature sons and daughters of God, and servants of God's people".

All emboldened words are my emphasis. So, this Friday let us ask ourselves, how are we doing? How well are we exercising our freedom as children of God in Christ by virtue of our baptism? Are we achieving the maturity that God, through the Church, calls us to, or are we still children waiting to have rules imposed on us? Are we lazy, waiting to grow spiritually with no effort? Would we expect to be able to run a marathon, play professional sports, build a beautiful table, with no training or effort? Just a few questions to ponder.

"When it's said and done we haven't told you a thing..."

"... We all know that crap is king/Give us dirty laundry."

After these weeks of world and national upheaval, when news organizations either report on themselves, remain content to read Charlie Sheen's Twitter feed, or take sides and skew the news all the while trying to convince us they are "fair and balanced," when very few in the media, excepting a few, like Matt Taibbi, who once again reports in Rolling Stone on the dangerous travesty that is Wall Street, even seem to care, or to know enough to let us know what is happening, I have no choice but to post the Eagles' Dirty Laundry as our Friday traditio. Well, I do have a choice and I choose Dirty Laundry.

Did you know that average pension for a retired public sector employee in Wisconsin is $24,500 a year? Did you also know that 15% of what that state spends on pensions goes for fees to Wall Street firms?

Here are a few paragraphs from Taibbi's most recent RS piece, which I urge you to read in its entirety:

"Last year, the government deported 393,000 people, at a cost of $5 billion. Since 2007, felony immigration prosecutions along the Mexican border have surged 77 percent; nonfelony prosecutions by 259 percent. In Ohio last month, a single mother was caught lying about where she lived to put her kids into a better school district; the judge in the case tried to sentence her to 10 days in jail for fraud, declaring that letting her go free would 'demean the seriousness' of the offenses.

"So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It's not a crime. Prison is too harsh. Get them to say they're sorry, and move on. Oh, wait — let's not even make them say they're sorry. That's too mean; let's just give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine instead. But don't make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don't ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in pay and benefits last year. What's next? Taxpayer-funded massages for every Wall Street executive guilty of fraud?"

Scripture is not silent on these matters. Look at what the prophet Amos, a non-institutional figure, like Cesar Chavez and Dorothy Day in our time, had to say to the rich cheaters of ancient Israel:

"Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end, saying, 'When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and sell the chaff of the wheat?'

Former CEO of Lehman Bros., Dick Fuld, one of many responsible for the melt-down

"The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: 'Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who dwells in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?

"'And on that day,' declares the Lord God, 'I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day'" (Amos 8:4-10).

I am convinced that when people today ask "Where are the saints?", they don't see them because they're looking for a warm little institutional figure, somebody who is harmless, just the kind of person that Dorothy Day was worried about being dismissed as.

Archbishop Dolan on telling the truth to yourself and to others

Below is a post from Archbishop Timothy Dolan's blog, The Gospel in the Digital Age. I am putting it up in its entirety because, as he usually does, Archbishop Dolan hits the nail on the head, that is, he simply tells the truth. Let us approach Lent, which is a mere week away, in this same manner:

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I’ve known for a long time that I should lose some weight. So, last week, I visited my doctor, and he showed me a gross, disgusting, dripping ball of yellow wax. “This,” he said to me, “is what ten pounds of fat looks like. This is what you’re carrying around in your body.” Was it upsetting? Unnerving? Sobering? You bet it was. It was also true, and it was effective, as it strengthened my resolve to get my weight under control.

Being confronted by the truth can often be unpleasant. That’s why those who fight so hard to eradicate world hunger will show us what hunger does, with a picture of a starving child, covered with flies and sores. Does it disturb us to face that truth, an image we’d rather not see or think about? It should, even as it spurs us to action.

It’s the same with smoking. I’m sure you’ve seen those television commercials that graphically portray the effects of smoking. It’s unpleasant to look at open heart surgery, or a pair of diseased lungs, or to see a person who has lost fingers, toes, or the esophagus, all due to smoking. The ads are nauseating, even hideous, to see. But the New York State Department of Health, among many others, sponsors these kinds of ads because they know that they can help to save lives.

Another ad has been generating some fierce reactions. Here in New York, a billboard was recently displayed, that simply stated “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.” This message was accompanied by a photograph of a young, African-American girl.

Is that message unpleasant? Is it upsetting? Does it get our attention?

Yes!

Because the message is somberly true. The City of New York’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recently released its vital statistics from a year ago which showed that 59.8% of African-American pregnancies in New York City ended in abortion. That’s even higher than the chilling city-wide average of 41% of pregnancies ending in abortion. (I joined other community leaders from a diversity of religious and ethnic backgrounds at a press conference sponsored by the Chiaroscuro Foundation about this a few weeks ago.)

So why has the billboard suddenly been taken down? What was it that moved many of our elected officials to condemn this ad and call for the gag order. Are they claiming that free speech is a right enjoyed only by those who favor abortion or their pet causes? Do they believe that unpleasant and disturbing truths should not be spoken? Or are they afraid that when people are finally confronted with the reality of the horror of abortion, and with the toll that it is taking in our city, particularly in our African-American community, that they will be moved to defend innocent, unborn, human life?

Perhaps I’m more saddened by this intolerance right now because on Monday I will be celebrating the funeral mass for Doctor Bernard Nathanson, that giant of the pro-life movement, who died earlier this week. If you don’t know Dr. Nathanson’s story, you should. At one time, he fought hard to promote and expand abortion on demand in this state and in our country. He was one of the founders of the National Abortion Rights Action League. He ran what he called the “largest abortion clinic in the Western world,” and bragged about personally performing thousands of abortions. But, when Dr. Nathanson was confronted with the undeniable truth, when he could see the unborn baby in the womb through the use of ultrasound technology, he abandoned his support for abortion and became a crusader for the protection of the life of the baby in the womb.

His courage and bravery should be an inspiration to us, especially when we have to face unpleasant and sobering truths.

"By persecution pruned, watered with blood"

"... The domed interior swallows up the day.
Here, where to light a candle is to pray,
The candles' flame shows up the almond eyes
Of local saints who view with no surprise
Their martryrdoms depicted upon walls
On which the filtered daylight faintly falls.
The flame shows up the cracked paint - sea-green blue
And red and gold, with grained wood showing through -

Of much kissed ikons, dating from, perhaps,
The fourteenth century...
Thus vigorously does the old tree grow,
By persecution pruned, watered with blood,
Its living roots deep in pre-Christian mud.
It needs no bureaucratical protection.
It is its own perpetual resurrection..."

From a poem by John Betjeman, this excerpt is from Bishop Kallistos Ware's The Orthodox Way. I am very happy that this lovely bit of poetry is my 1,800th post here on Καθολικός διάκονος.

There really is something about Mary

This is something I wrote awhile back when I was maintaining a blog for our parish RCIA program.

One question that just about everybody who becomes Catholic asks is, who is Mary according to the Church? Do you pray to Mary? Do you worship Mary? Another question is about the pope being infallible. Do you believe that everything the pope says or writes is infallible, that is, absolutely and irreformably accurate? I want to address all of this questions in short order. So the answers, respectively, are: Mary is the Mother of God; In a way, yes; No; No.


More seriously, it is important to note that since the dogma of papal infallibility was formally promulgated by Pope Pius IX at the behest of the fathers of the First Vatican Council in 1870, despite the fact that many would argue the council participants were papally coerced, there has only been one infallible teaching: Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven, which was promulgated by Pope Pius XII in 1950.

The role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the oikumene (i.e., economy) of salvation is inarguably important because being chosen as the woman through whom the divine and eternally begotten Son became human is important, to say the least. Another Marian dogma, her Immaculate Conception, was promulgated by Pope Pius IX (Pio Nono) in 1854, some years prior to his summoning of the First Vatican Council, which was never completed. With all that it is useful to define terms. As regards God, Mary, and the Saints the terms involved are all Greek:

latria= worship
dulia= venerate
hyper-dulia= super venerate

Latria is due to God and God alone. Dulia is how we approach the Saints. Praying to the Saints is not exactly the same as asking someone else to pray for you, it is significantly more than that, but certainly stops well short of latria. Hyper-dulia is due only to Mary. It falls somewhere between latria and dulia. This status fully recognizes the unique role of our Blessed Mother in God's oikumene (=economy of salvation).

By calling Mary our Mother as well as Mater Ecclesiae (Mother of the Church), hyper-dulia takes on something of the status of the fourth commandment about honoring one's parents, falling as it does between loving God and loving your neighbor. Because of her unique status, which is further set forth in the twin dogmas of her Immaculate Conception and her bodily Assumption, she is uniquely position to intercede for us.

Indeed, there's something about Mary. Of course, this can only be realized by praying the rosary, entrusting your intentions to her and seeing what happens.