An Interesting Marriage Proposal...

Msgr. Charlie Pope, of our own Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., has an interesting proposal concerning marriage.  No, he's not getting hitched - he's already happily married to Mother Church.  So what's his big idea?  It boils down to this: if the world is going to redefine marriage to suit the homosexualist agenda, then the Church should come up with a new name for what used to be called marriage.

Happily, he has an idea for a new term, or rather, an old term.  HOLY Matrimony.
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Click here to read the rest of his marriage proposal.

DC vs. the Church

The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., announced on Tuesday that it had to close its adoption program
within the District of Columbia.  The decision to do so was made as the only feasible alternative to compliance with an unjust law promulgated by the DC City Council several months back.  The law prohibits discrimination against "married" gay couples in numerous matters, including adoption.  The fact that so many people cannot see the difference between holy matrimony and homosexual unions shows the depravity into which our culture has descended.

The Church in DC has very manfully despised the opinion of the world on this matter, and very maternally cared more for the authentic welfare of her children than for the esteem of reprobates.

It's time to get praying, very, very hard.

Living in Love

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.  And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.  But fornication and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is fitting among saints.  Let there be no filthiness, nor silly talk, nor levity, which are not fitting; but instead let there be thanksgiving.  Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure man, or one who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.  Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.  Therefore do not associate with them, for once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.  Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.  For it is a shame even to speak of the things that they do in secret; but when anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.  Therefore it is said, "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light."  Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.  Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.  And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, always and for everything giving thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father.  Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.  Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.  As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.  Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.  Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.  For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.  "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."  This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Ephesians, ch 5

What a terrible and potent thing is love!  How unsustainable is love between mortals.  It perishes with our lives unless it is sustained by the same thing, the only thing, that can preserve our lives unto eternity: divine love.  Therefore, "let love be genuine," (Rm 12:9) modeled upon, shored up by, and infused with the love of God.

Trying to Out the Church

You may be aware that the Church in Washington, D.C., has been at loggerheads with the City Government about whether it will continue to contract with the city for social services on the condition that it cease to "discriminate" against gay "marriages." You may have heard it as the Church trying to bully or blackmail the City Government by threatening to "stop serving the poor." That probably rings very hollow to you. Church has never stopped serving the poor, and she never will. The media, naturally, is all over the thing and supplying all the headlines and cursorily written stories it can to try to make the Church look bad.

Some people have been unhappy with this action or that of our Archbishop in the past, but anyone with eyes will see that he is clearly shepherding his flock strongly and well right now, against immense social pressure from a number of angles. God bless Archbishop Wuerl, and thank God for giving him to us at this hour! He has just recently served as a principal craftsman and signatory of the Manhattan Declaration in support of traditional marriage, the right to life, and the right to religious liberty. The statement, signed principally by 148 leaders of the Christian community in the US and Canada, and already by thousands more, basically says that we will not budge one inch on these issues, and will not be bullied or coerced.

But the enemies of life, of marriage, of Christianity are fighting back hard. A website (to which I will not provide a link because I do not want to encourage hits) has just been launched and is being publicized, inviting people to write in stories of homosexuality among the Catholic clergy of, or resident in, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. The site outrageously pretends to be an effort to help gay clergy to have a spiritual awakening through "new-found integrity." The site even contains a handy drop-down menu with a list of all the clergy to facilitate the process of blackmail and slander. Now who is blackmailing whom?

"Lastly, we encourage every Catholic priest to trust in God and in the power of the Christ to help you through this difficult, but important act of truth, faith and love.   It is not the intention of this site to complicate the lives of closeted gay priests, rather to help them make the difficult choice to stand up against the hateful and harmful new direction the Church hierarchy is taking the Holy Mother Church.


Disclaimer:  The goal of this site is not to force Catholic priests out of the closet against their will.  The goal of this campaign is to aggregate reports on every gay priest in the Archdiocese, so that we can work with them, one on one, helping them stand up to the the church hierarchy's stand on this important issue." - From the Blackmail Website

Yeah, right.

The measure is an attempt to coerce clergy into disobedience and apostasy, to sow dissension in the Church, to punish the Church for failing to bless sins of aberrant sexuality.  We need to show our support of our clergy.  Please, please, PLEASE take a minute to write a letter to your pastor or one of his associates, or to our Archbishop, and encourage them in this difficult challenge.  I also want to beg the rest of you to pray, pray, pray for God to act in this horrible situation to protect the Church. In addition to the Holy Mother of God, let's especially invoke St. Joseph and St. John Vianney, the great patrons of spiritual fathers and parish priests. We're all in this together now.

Please remember, "we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places," (Eph 6:12). No matter what dark powers threaten from their high places, Jesus Christ is LORD! In a timely reminder, today is the Solemn Feast of Christ the King.

More on the Manhattan Declaration

Click here to download the entire Manhattan Declaration.

Graham, Catania, and the Bit of Pork

The first readings each day for Mass for week come from the Books of Maccabees. Today's readings (2 Mc 6:18-31; Ps 3:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; Lk 19:1-10) document the passion of Eleazar, an old and respected leader of Israel, a scribe. Judea had been under a Greek dynasty for a hundred and fifty or so years, since Alexander the Great conquered it, together with the rest of the Eastern world. For the most part, the Greeks had not been too demanding: pay your taxes and don't cause a fuss. But King Antiochus IV Epiphanes had a different agenda. Let's put it this way. Epiphanes means manifest in Greek, and what he meant by calling himself (that's right, he picked his own surname against common convention) was that he manifested God. Uh-huh.  No joke.  He commanded that his whole empire - roughly what we would now call Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and western Iran - should be hellenized, made Greek, made to follow Greek customs.  This measure would secure their obedience to him.  Now, since they were the bigshots in town, the Greeks were exactly the sort of people that most folks kinda tried to imitate anyway.  No problem.


Except for the Jews.

They had this thing, called the Torah (they still do) which means something like Law or Instruction.  Its purpose was both to govern the people and to teach them goodness, to teach them God's will, God's mind, God's heart.  Less than four hundred years earlier, they had been in bondage in Babylon for disregarding it.  By the time of Antiochus, about one hundred and sixty or seventy years before Christ, the Jews had pretty well learned the lesson: stick to God, and things will go OK; abandon His way at your own risk.  But Antiochus the self-styled "manifestation of God" was not one to brook dissension.  He became furious at Jewish dissent and eager sought out Jews who would help him 'enlighten' (yes, that's the term he would have used, or maybe 'get up with the times') their countrymen.  That's where today's reading picks up.

Eleazar, the man of God, is commanded to break the Law of God by eating pork. He refuses on the grounds that to do so is immoral.   His oppressors, agents of King Antiochus, have known him for years.  They've been friends.  They ask him privately to pretend to eat the pork so that he can save his life.  He refuses on the grounds that to do so would set a bad example for the youth.  The king's men become furious and force feed him.  He spits out the pork and insists:

Even if, for the time being, I avoid the punishment of men, I shall never, whether alive or dead, escape the hands of the Almighty. Therefore, by manfully giving up my life now, I will prove myself worthy of my old age, and I will leave to the young a noble example of how to die willingly and generously for the revered and holy laws, (2 Mc 6:26-28).

Eleazar will not abandon God in order to please men, nor even to save his own life.  This attitude baffled the rulers of Eleazar's day, his "friends," and they flew into a rage and beat him to death at the age of ninety, entirely forgetting his service, their friendship, even his gray hairs.  They not only put him to death, but many others as well.  Why should he be so obstinate over such a small thing, a little piece of meat that everybody else is eating?

We must pray for our Church and its leaders.  The local church of Washington, D.C., right now needs the prayers of our brethren immensely.  Local officials in the city government have decided to get on the gay marriage bandwagon.  It is probably going to decide to attach to any funding or contracts it awards the stipulation that the recipient must not "discriminate" against gays, including failing to recognize their "marriages."  Those who do so will be ineligible to receive either assistance from, or contracts to work for, the city.

Catholic Charities of Washington, D.C., has long been the most effective provider of social services in the city, and the largest private one to boot.  It provides services to over 10% of the city's residents.  Many of those services are contracted to it by the City, a tacit recognition of the fact that the Church is able to do what the City cannot: mobilize volunteers and trained, certified workers to provide services efficiently and in a caring way for the city's neediest residents.

The problem is that the Church won't eat the pork.

Everyone else is doing it.  Nobody is making the Church change its teachings, after all.  It's free "to go right on hating gay people" (opines a local columnist).  It just has to pay spousal benefits to their sodomite cohabitants, that's all.  Oh, and, it goes without saying - not use those words, either.  Oh, and it can't refuse to help them adopt children, either.  If the Church won't acquiesce, then the City cuts it out of the help-the-poor loop.  Well, the Church will continue helping the poor, using as much of its own resources as it can, just as it always has.  The problem is that all those poor people that got helped by City money administered by the Church won't have anyone to serve them now.  Except maybe the City... which we know does splendidly with all the other services it provides: schools, roads, emergency rescue - all top notch in D.C., right?  Right.

Well, to keep the Church from bailing, the City and its propaganda wing, the Washington Post (it should be called the Washington Pravda), have decided to lampoon the Church and bash it as hard as it can.  In the Pravda, er, Post's online column's, Susan Jacoby has decided that the Church is "blackmailing" the poor, helpless government.  The goal is to pressure the Church into a compromise.  Headlines read such as, "Church threatens to cancel social services over gay marriage."  The truth is obfuscated: it is said that other dioceses have not stopped services in the face of similar legislation.  What is left unsaid is that the "similar legislation" in other states has included religious/conscience exemptions of the sort excluded by the DC City Council's bill.  Except in the case of Massachusetts, other states have allowed those with a doctrinal reason to continue operations.  In Massachusetts, the relevant dioceses have ceased the provide the relevant services, though almost everyone thought the church would open wide and eat the pork that Antiochus demanded to prove obedience.  The purpose here, as there, is to push the Church just a little bit further out of public life, to be able to say, "See how useless those hypocrites are!"  If you have any doubt about it, you have only to ask the leaders of these legislative movements.

The effort in DC is spearheaded by Jim Graham and David Catania.  Back in July 2000, the two openly gay members of the City Council were sponsoring a bill, without religious/conscience exemptions, that would have required all employers who provided health care to include coverage for contraception.  Graham commented, "My problem is surrendering decisions on public health to the church…I've spent years fighting church dogma."  That bill failed because the broader political climate prevented it from coming to fruition.  The climate has changed now, and the two seem to have the votes they need to continue their fight against "church dogma."

The complaint is sometimes made that our leaders in the Church are not strong enough, or outspoken enough.  They hobnob to easily with public sinners, it is said.  (Lol. I am glad they do not shun my company!)  But our leaders have a history of fighting as well - they will not be pushed or shoved.  When the Maryland legislature was poised to remove the legal protection for the confidentiality of the confessional back in 2003, (lovable, old) Theodore Cardinal McCarrick said, "If this bill were to pass, I shall instruct all priests in the Archdiocese of Washington who serve in Maryland to ignore it... On this issue, I will gladly plead civil disobedience and willingly -- if not gladly -- go to jail."  Archbishop Wuerl, now governing our archdiocese, has been as adamant.  The archdiocese will not put itself at the service of the City's welfare system if doing so is conditioned upon betraying its broader mission.  The Post has graciously given the Archbishop a chance to defend the diocese from its headlines in this op-ed piece, published today.  It is well worth a read.




Our role models in the Church, it seems, will not eat the King Antiochus' pork.

Brethren in Free America, please pray for us here who are being put to the screws by Epiphanes.

The Real Question of (Gay) Marriage

The Washington Post's On Faith religion blogs are asking whether New Hampshire's new law is a legitimate solution to the gay marriage question. The law simultaneously recognizes gay marriages, authorizes ceremonies to perform them, and protects authorized marrying agents (ministers, rabbis, and perhaps court clerks, etc.) from lawsuits stemming from refusal to perform them. I wrote the following response to one write-in respondent, LorenInCA. Because the WaPo often does not permit my responses to post in a timely manner, I have decided to post it here, on my own blog.

LorenInCA wrote, "The only equitable solution is to pull marriage away from the churches, codify it as civil institution, and allow each church to solemnize unions as they see fit and exclude any persons who don't share their particular credo." In doing so, I believe that she represents a growing consensus among those who do not object to gay marriage.

The question has been put all wrong. What prerogative has the state to "pull" away from religious bodies an institution that has always, until very recently and then only by a minority, been conceived as an essentially religious institution. It is no coincidence that less religious people marry their lovers less frequently or not at all. An argument to pull bar mitzvahs and baptisms away from religious institutions makes the point more obvious. It has been in the regulation of inheritances first, then of divorces, and most recently of taxation, that civil authority has codified marriage at all. The first case dates to ancient times, to be sure, but the civil codification of divorce and taxation (vis-a-vis marriage status) is certainly an innovation of the most recent century.

So I would like to ask LorenInCA upon what basis s/he would nullify the First Amendment's anti-interference clause in order to remove an essentially religious concept and institution from the religious bodies among which it grew up.

Secondly, I'd like to point out that the oft-used analogy between the homosexualist lobby-agenda and the African-American civil rights movement is a very, very weak one. Discrimination is a vital part of human life. We daily discriminate between things we will put into our bodies, for instance, and things we will not. The steak goes in, the styrofoam in which it is packaged does not. And so forth. But the key achievement of the civil rights movement in the U.S. was legally to exclude irrelevant or arbitrary criteria from civil decision-making processes. Specifically, but not only, racial characteristics (and then sex) were to be excluded as legal criteria for making decisions where they were, naturally speaking, irrelevant.

So refusing sale of a home to an African-American family on the basis of their race/ethnicity is forbidden, because it is not a relevant factor. Relevant factors in the sale of a home include income, credit history, etc., but not skin tone or hair color.

On the other hand, I, a balding white man, cannot model hair care products intended for African American women. Is that unfair discrimination? Of course not, because the factors mentioned, though superficial to my character, etc., are directly relevant to my natural ability to do the job.

It is in this legal context that we must position the question of gay marriage. And to address the question we must first ask, rather than assume, the question, "What is marriage? What is it for? What does it do?"

The religious context in which marriage arose has always posited marriage as stable location in which a couple could raise the offspring of their sexual union. That's all. It is not a question of whether Adam and Steve love each other; people do not need marriage or other institutions simply to love each other. The question is whether a gay couple meets the criteria natural to a marriage as it has always been conceived. I think the answer is fairly clear.

Moreover, the question is not one of whether Adam and Steve can inherit each other's property at death, visit each other in the hospital, name each other as beneficiaries of insurance policies, or appoint each other with power of attorney in the event of incapacity. All those questions have been settled decades ago by contract law. Of course they can do any of those things. There are tax benefits to marriage conferred by the government, again, originally to facilitate family stability and the rearing of offspring.

The ready availability of almost all the rights of marriage through contract or other arrangements makes me think that gay couples don't actually want marriage. Many homosexuals have spent most of their lives being scorned by those around them, from hurtful cries of "faggot" on the playground to devastating abandonment by their families that so often accompanies "coming out." I think that they want acceptance and approval.

And that's fine. I can accept gays living as they wish, and approve of them as persons, without reorganizing society to suit their demands. Moreover, as a grown man, I am not going to acquiesce against my conscience because they (or anyone else) may call me mean, cry really hard, label me a homophobe (which is a funny label, coincidentally - of what, exactly, is one supposed to be afraid?), or make bad historical analogies to the civil rights movement.

I stand on my conscience. Marriage is a religious institution, to be left to religious institutions for governance, and is oriented toward the rearing of the offspring of the married persons. It exists for no other reason, and ancillary benefits are themselves oriented toward that purpose. It is not fearful to refuse a demand or to defy public pressure or coercion. Society must not tolerate the hateful treatment of homosexuals, but nor should it let itself be guilted or bullied into acquiescence by them.

Life in Christ - Mary's Way

Tonight I am giving a presentation at my parish RCIA about "Life in Christ." The topic fills about 1/4 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, so knowing what to say and what to leave out for purposes of summary - well, it's been difficult, let's say. Anyhow, since today is the Annunciation of the Lord (formerly called Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary), it seems fitting to use Mary's words spoken on that day.

(Fra. Angelico's Annunciation, in the Convent of St. Mark, in Florence)

"Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done unto me according to your word," (Lk 1:38).

The shift of solemnity's title is not accidental. By changing it from "to the Blessed Virgin Mary," to "of the Lord," the Church has publicly emphasized just what, or better, who is being announced. It also opens the feast day to remembering the other annunciation. An angel of the Lord appears to Joseph, too, in a dream telling him not to fear taking Mary for his wife (Mt 1:20). Mary's "yes," was needed to give the Word flesh; Joseph's silent obedience was needed to give Him a safe and happy home, to train Him as a man, to prepare Him for His mission. By contemplating the heart of Mary, we will come to know Him who was germinated in her; by contemplating the heart of Joseph, we will honor her, and keep His presence safe in us. Their union, though virginal, was the most fruitful of any marriage because they nurtured, safeguarded, and brought Jesus to the world. Every married couple would do well to take their cue from Joseph and Mary.

Holy Mary and Joseph, pray for us.

The Birth of the Word that Made the World

When God created the world, according to Genesis 1, he did so by speaking a word. "Let there be light," He says, and again, "Let there be a firmament," and so on. The world that He made "very good," (Gn 1:31) quickly fell away from Him. It might be more accurately stated that Man, His finest creation, was seduced into a rebellion against Him by an evil spirit. Man, in his turn, brought the greater part of the material world with him.

God promised through the prophets to create a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth (Isa 65:17; 66:22), where justice and peace would "kiss," (Ps 85:10). Genesis recounts what we might consider a "false start" of sorts in this new creation: God floods the earth as if to wash away sin. The same account, of Noah and the flood, tells how the flood killed most human beings, but failed to kill sin living in each human being. A mere bathing of the world would not suffice - in this new creation, in which we would have not stony hearts, but soft hearts of living flesh (Ez 36:26), we would need a bathing of conscience (Heb 9:13-14).

The new creation would start with a new Man (Eph 2:14-16). And just as the first creation began with a word, so would the new creation. The new creation began when the Word became a man. So it is fitting that the first mass on Christmas day, at midnight, starts with an antiphon the first words of which are, "The Lord said..." The eternal Godhead, the divine origin of reality, the transcendent unmoved Mover became a little baby in the womb of a little woman in a little corner of a little province. And that virginal conception was the hidden beginning of the new creation. When He emerged from her womb, leaving intact her virginity unruptured by His miraculous conception therein, the new heavens truly made their first appearance on an earth being recreated by Him as His mother swaddled Him in her arms. The event was so momentous that heaven could not contain itself. Angels burst forth from heaven to celebrate and announce the fact.

St. Peter, after our Lord's death, resurrection, and ascension made more clear what sort of thing this new creation would be, continued speaking about it (2 Pet 3:13), echoing the very words of the prophet Isaiah before him. From the time of our Lord's ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, we have in the Church the means to share in our Lord's new way of existing, in the new creation. Baptism, firstly, is the sacrament by which we are scrubbed more deeply clean than the flood could manage. It washes us in the sacrificial blood of Jesus that wins the forgiveness of sins. Confirmation seals us and ratifies this new life in us. Penance restores that purification when we squander it, and the holy Eucharist sustains and strengthens it, and most perfectly unites us to Him. Marriage draws the otherwise-natural union of a man and woman into this supernatural way of living. Holy Orders configures men to represent Christ more perfectly to the rest of the Church. Anointing prepares us for the final transition from the last stages of this life, to the fullness of the life that Baptism begins in us.

This new creation in Christ, that every baptised person carries about in his soul, necessarily overturns the existing world order of sin, or else is overturned by it. The two cannot coexist forever. We must be standing with God and waging war, even if slow and faltering, against sin in our hearts and around us; or else we are standing in sin, and sinking, even if slow and faltering, into deeper and deeper sin until we can stand no more.

Christmas presents to us more than a new baby boy. It presents us with a challenge to choose between that Baby and all that He came to undo: sin, suffering, and death. We do ourselves a great disservice if, as we pay homage to the King, we neglect to mind His Kingdom.

That said, it's only a heavy thing if we do not want to choose Jesus. If we love goodness and are even willing to suffer a bit rather than sin, having God in our corner is very, very good news indeed. Merry Christmas.

A Saint for Our Financial Times

Pope St. Callistus I (14 October)

The Catholic Church has a saint for everything, even banking disasters. Don't believe me? Check out St. Callistus. Born a slave probably in the last quarter of the 2nd century, he showed a great deal of aptitude so that his master, Carporphorus, placed him in charge of one of the master's properties - a bank. This situation wasn't entirely rare - very wealthy men owned slaves, and they would pay for the training of their more intelligent slaves in a variety of fields. Callistus' master was a Christian, and most of the bank's clients and investors were also Christians - that was a bit more rare, and occured during a lull in persecution that lasted for a generation or so.

Anyway, Callistus blew it. In fact, he blew it so big that he split, got out of Dodge, took a road leading away from Rome. Carporphorus set off with guards in pursuit of him and when he apprehended Callistus on a ship in the Mediterranean, Callistus jumped overboard to escape. He was captured, brought back to Rome, tried, and sentenced to hard labor. Carporphorus eventually took pity on Callistus, who pled for an opportunity to gain new money from investors. So Carporphorus used his connections to secure Callistus' release from the labor camp. Callistus received an even more severe punishment, though, when in desperation he busted up a synagogue shouting at the assembled Jews and demanding money from them. Packed off to the mines, Callistus seems to have had the opportunity for prayer and reflection that he needed for a more sincere, deeper conversion. This conversion was perhaps inspired as he came into contact with Christians much worse off socially and economically who were being jailed and sent to the mines because of their religious beliefs. Whatever inspired it, his conversion seems to have been profound.

Providence had it that Callistus' name was inadvertently added to a list of Christians jailed for their faith, who were scheduled to be released as a result of secret negotiations between the Pope and the Emperor. When Callistus' release was made known to the kind-hearted Pope, he could not find it in himself to correct the mistake and have Callistus reincarcerated. Callistus was ordained a deacon and placed in charge of a large Christian cemetery outside of the city, a duty that he carried out very well.

After about a decade, a new pope, St. Zephyrinus, recalled him to Rome and gave him duties that kept him very close to the pope. St. Zephyrinus was a very loving man, but not very astute theologically. St. Callistus, on the other hand, was able to show his mettle by helping the pope weigh in about important controversies of the day. St. Callistus, the beneficiary of clemency on several occasions, helped the pope to articulate and defend the Church's already ancient belief that even the worst sins could be forgiven - even sins like adultery, murder, and apostasy. As an emancipated slave, and much to the irritation of many wealthy pagan and Christians in Rome, St. Callistus also successfully appealed to the pope to uphold the validity of marriage between slaves and freemen. This decision was important because it defended the equal worth of every human being and the sanctity of marriage as a divine institution rather than a mere social convention. Over the course of several years, the pope and the deacon became close personal friends as well.

When Pope St. Zephyrinus died in AD 219, Callistus was elected by the clergy of Rome to take his place. He was ordained a priest and then bishop, and installed as the new pope. A wealthy Roman priest, Hippolytus, rejected Callistus' election because he thought him too "soft" on sinners. Hippolytus got some dissenting priests to elect him instead, thus creating the first antipope. (Don't worry, Hippolytus would eventually repent and reconcile with one of Callistus' successors, receive forgiveness himself, and die in the good graces of God and the Church, and even be canonized a saint!)

St. Callistus was a bad investor and a troublemaker, and certainly seemed nothing but trouble and a bad investment to his master. Yet an influx of grace brought him from ruins and despair to new hope and a new life in Christ. In our own times troubled by economic structures founded on fundamentally sinful practices, doubt about the worth and meaning of every human life, and social mores contrary to Christian marriage, St. Callistus seems to be the perfect patron and intercessor!

St. Callistus, pray for us!

Assuming the Queen

This morning at Mass, Monsignor noted that in earlier days we were more aware that the Church celebrates the momentous occasion of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary bodily into heaven not only for one day, but for an entire eight-day octave (a week, including both the start and end day). The last day of that octave is today, the feast of the Queenship of Mary. Regular rosary-prayers (rosarizers, as I like to say!) will recognize these two events as the last two mysteries of the Rosary - the Assumption and Crowning of Mary. Just as Mary is the first payment on God's pledge to bring us to Himself, her coronation not only shows her utter preeminence among creation, but also His desire to glorify and ennoble us. Jesus Christ is King, and His deepest desire is to make us each princes and princesses in His Father's house.

Pause and think about that for a minute.

When I find myself anxious about the future, I try to remember the advice of my spiritual director. "You know rich people can buy pretty much anything, right? Well, remember your Father is loaded! Whatever the problem is, He's already got the solution worked out. Trust, Ryan, trust. Avoid sin and serve God, and let Him get His people to sort out the details."

The difficulty of faith, of trusting that the All-Powerful Lord of the Universe actually loves me and intends what is best for me, is that this world is so filled with crap sometimes. A line from the Hail Holy Queen says that we are "mourning and weeping in this valley of tears." It may be a bit dramatic, but not overly so. Life isn't easy. Sometimes the question, "God! Where were you!?" isn't entirely unreasonable. We need to ask God to increase our faith, as the man did whose daughter was gravely ill, "Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief," (Mk 9:24). That is because faith, hope, and charity are supernatural virtues - they have their origin in God, and directly lead us to Him. In fact, you might almost say that they are the stuff that the life of God is made of.

In the ancient near East, a king's wife wouldn't be queen - he had too many of them in his harem. Instead, his queen would be his mother, because she had been the wife of the previous king, and the one who secured her son's position as heir. Such women were naturally the objects of much more respect and affection than the king's wives would be - they were playthings or political maneuvers. The queen might approach her son, the king, on any number of topics with a much greater chance of a favorable hearing than almost anyone else in the realm. She was his mother, and raised him, and knew his heart. A little story at 1 Kings 2:13-19 shows an incident of this sort, in which Bathsheba approaches her son, King Solomon, on behalf of a man who has fallen from the King's favor.

The Lord Jesus is taking the whole Church to be His bride (Eph 5:32-33; Rev 19; inter al.) - that's a lot of woman! But He already has His queen, His mother, and she is always ready to approach Him on our behalf and to restore us to His favor. Of course, factually we know that Jesus loves us infinitely and is ever-ready to forgive us. Sometimes, though, we don't feel it, just as children sometimes fearing their father go to bury their heads in the skirts of their mother.

Next time you feel remote from Jesus, from God, and feel isolated and lost, ask Mama Mary, our Queen, to bring you to Him. She will.

Happy Birthday, Humanae

Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical on the regulation of births, had the 40th anniversary of its release today. Here are some excerpts and a link to the document:

1. The most serious duty of transmitting human life, for which married persons are the free and responsible collaborators of God the Creator, has always been a source of great joys to them, even if sometimes accompanied by not a few difficulties and by distress.

At all times the fulfillment of this duty has posed grave problems to the conscience of married persons, but, with the recent evolution of society, changes have taken place that give rise to new questions which the Church could not ignore, having to do with a matter which so closely touches upon the life and happiness of men.

2. The changes which have taken place are in fact noteworthy and of varied kinds. In the first place, there is the rapid demographic development. Fear is shown by many that world population is growing more rapidly than the available resources, with growing distress to many families and developing countries, so that the temptation for authorities to counter this danger with radical measures is great. Moreover, working and lodging conditions, as well as increased exigencies both in the economic field and in that of education, often make the proper education of a larger number of children difficult today. A change is also seen both in the manner of considering the person of woman and her place in society, and in the value to be attributed to conjugal love in marriage, and also in the appreciation to be made of the meaning of conjugal acts in relation to that love.

Finally and above all, man has made stupendous progress in the domination and rational organization of the forces of nature, such that he tends to extend this domination to his own total being: to the body, to psychical life, to social life and even to the laws which regulate the transmission of life...

17. Upright men can even better convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in this field is based, if they care to reflect upon the consequences of methods of artificial birth control. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men -- especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point -- have need of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.

Let it be considered also that a dangerous weapon would thus be placed in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies. Who could blame a government for applying to the solution of the problems of the community those means acknowledged to be licit for married couples in the solution of a family problem? Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be most efficacious? In such a way men, wishing to avoid individual, family, or social difficulties encountered in the observance of the divine law, would reach the point of placing at the mercy of the intervention of public authorities the most personal and most reserved sector of conjugal intimacy.

Consequently, if the mission of generating life is not to be exposed to the arbitrary will of men, one must necessarily recognize insurmountable limits to the possibility of man's domination over his own body and its functions; limits which no man, whether a private individual or one invested with authority, may licitly surpass. And such limits cannot be determined otherwise than by the respect due to the integrity of the human organism and its functions, according to the principles recalled earlier, and also according to the correct understanding of the "principle of totality" illustrated by our predecessor Pope Pius XII...

18. It can be foreseen that this teaching will perhaps not be easily received by all: Too numerous are those voices -- amplified by the modern means of propaganda -- which are contrary to the voice of the Church. To tell the truth, the Church is not surprised to be made, like her divine Founder, a "sign of contradiction", yet she does not because of this cease to proclaim with humble firmness the entire moral law, both natural and evangelical. Of such laws the Church was not the author, nor consequently can she be their arbiter; she is only their depositary and their interpreter, without ever being able to declare to be licit that which is not so by reason of its intimate and unchangeable opposition to the true good of man.

In defending conjugal morals in their integral wholeness, the Church knows that she contributes towards the establishment of a truly human civilization; she engages man not to abdicate from his own responsibility in order to rely on technical means; by that very fact she defends the dignity of man and wife. Faithful to both the teaching and the example of the Savior, she shows herself to be the sincere and disinterested friend of men, whom she wishes to help, even during their earthly sojourn, "to share as sons in the life of the living God, the Father of all men."

Thank you, Holy Father Paul. Sorry we didn't listen. Please pray we finally learn.

Read the entire encyclical at http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul06/p6humana.htm.

Wendel Berry on Marriage

I've excerpted this passage from the Winter 2007 issue of Communio, that I'm just now getting to. The article is a reproduction of a lecture given by Anne Husted Burleigh on Wendel Berry's worldview, particularly as it relates to marriage's role in society. The language is abstract, so you have to use your own experiences to "fill in the blanks," so to speak. Enjoy!

The beauty of marriage is that by way of its fidelity and incarnation it moves people away from the egotism of abstraction and allows them to meet the world in all its concrete goodness. Married people dare not dally in abstractions and individualistic dreams about freedom from responsibility. The very nature of their life requires giving and sacrifice. It requires that they take and make their place, that they tend it and send down roots in the place of their giving. Rootlessnesss and family life do not mix; but permanence, place, and family life do. Marriage does not unfold in thin air; rather it requires the protection of a particular incarnated place in which to thrive.

The concrete, particular, enfleshed, daily reality of marriage and family life, embedded in love and work and sacrifice and lived out in a particular place, reveals what the Incarnation of God's Word - that is, God himself enfleshed and dwelling among us as a man - means to the world. It means that the created world is suffused with God's imprint. The invisible is present in the visible. The work of God's hand, the things of the earth, are valuable and indeed sacred. The material world is good. It is blessed, a theme that Berry repeats over and over. A man, a woman, a child, soil, grass, books, barns, fields are good. Things - concrete, touchable, knowable, mysterious things - are good, and they are a gift. They are given to us to love, to care for, to reverence. Even though we may make a mess of things, we do not destroy the goodness that pervades the things of this world. In one of his poems Berry writes,

There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

It strikes me that Berry's thoughts on marriage, as Burleigh summarizes them, only really apply to a marriage open to life. Those married couples who, together, are only intent on pursuing self-actualization have yet to escape the trap of self. Abstractions can leave us trapped in the self because, as ideas in the mind, they are nearly infinitely manipulable. We can play all kinds of games with them to get what we want, or get out of what we don't like. It's harder to do that with the concrete reality of a crying six month old boy who's got poopy diapers in the middle of the night.