If You Are Feeling Weighed Down

If you are Catholic, and trying to do it (i.e., be Catholic) well, and are paying attention, you probably feeling a little down about all the stuff going on right now.  I know I am.  I don't have anything really articulate to write.  The thing feels to me like a very dense storm cloud, fiercer than normal anti-Church nonsense.  It's very incongruous with the weather being so fine outside my window.  The cross is not ours to bear alone, though.  Please do not give up looking to Jesus, looking to heaven for help.

There should be some consolation in this: that our blessed Lord told us that we would be persecuted (Jn 15:20).  Now, don't get me wrong.  Getting called on sin - that's not persecution, it's a public service that we apparently need.  Being gleefully, ferociously stalked by self-appointed "watchdogs" who completely neglect their own house and who bay and howl for the House of God to be torn down to its foundations, head first - that is a little bit closer to what is meant by persecution.  At least, it gives us a watered-down taste of what our brothers and sisters in other countries face every day on a much more violent scale.  We should allow this animosity provoke us to prayer for our enemies and for our brethren whom they treat worse.
We should also take comfort in this prophecy of St. Peter, the first pope, who himself came against fierce opposition:

For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? (1 Pt 4:17)

If you find yourself fazed or perturbed, please remember these words of Teresa of Avila:

Let nothing perturb you,
nothing frighten you.
All things pass.
God does not change.
Patience achieves everything.
Whoever has God
lacks nothing.
God alone suffices.

 It's going to be OK.  Hold fast, pray, enter into the Triduum with your whole heart.  Remember Jesus.

Beautiful Snippets from the Fifth Sunday of Lent

From the first reading, Is 43:16-21:

Thus says the LORD,
who opens a way in the sea
and a path in the mighty waters,
who leads out chariots and horsemen,
a powerful army,
till they lie prostrate together, never to rise,
snuffed out and quenched like a wick.
Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not;
see, I am doing something new!

After starting with a reminder of God's powerful, demonstrated by mighty deeds in real history, the prophet tells Israel, and us, that God is going to set us on a new path, in which former sins are transcended.  The joy that His plans for us will bring is described in Ps 126:

When the LORD brought back the captives of Zion,
we were like men dreaming.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with rejoicing.

Our bondage to sin and its ugly consequences will be broken.  St. Paul tells us how much this new life should be worth to us in the Epistle, taken from Phil 3:8-14:

For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things
and I consider them so much rubbish,
that I may gain Christ and be found in him...
depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection
and the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death,
if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

St. Paul continues to encourage us with his own efforts:

...forgetting what lies behind
but straining forward to what lies ahead,
I continue my pursuit toward the goal,
the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.

He would like us to share in them, no doubt.  Not only that, he wants us to join him in forgetting our spotty pasts except in as much as they humble us and become fertile soil for wisdom.  But guilt and shame from our past must fall away.  And lastly, Jesus' beautiful, beautiful words to the woman caught in adultery, whom he saved from stoning (Jn 8:1-11):

Then Jesus straightened up and said to her,
“Woman, where are they?
Has no one condemned you?”
She replied, “No one, sir.”
Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.
Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”

Let's use these last two weeks of Lent to our great advantage.  Let's enter into it with our whole hearts, praying fervently for the grace to rise higher in Christ, leaving behind sin and the scars it leaves, to be transfigured with Our Blessed Lord.

Alice von Hildebrand Strikes Again!

InsideCatholic just reprinted a 2008 article by philosopher Alice von Hildebrand entitled, "When Is Stupidity a Sin?"  Here's a quote:

When a Catholic gratefully proclaims that the Church has the fullness of revealed truth, this assertion should be wrapped both in humility and gratitude. This is a key to a successful apostolate: "To be possessed by truth" is a clarion call to live it, reflect it, and thereby draw other hungry souls to its beauty.

Read it!

St. Patrick and the Snakes

I am rather inclined by nature to prefer natural explanations to supernatural ones, when it comes to understanding natural events or, for that matter, when it comes to analyzing claims of supernatural phenomena. I also understand the difficulties in interpreting historical accounts written by people more or less willing than myself to believe reports they have heard of the supernatural.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe in miracles as a possibility - and not just the "sunshine is a miracle" sort, either. I have made four pilgrimages to Lourdes and while there, I witnessed what seems to me to be the supernatural healing of a paraplegic. I also have had a couple near brushes with death that have given me great confidence in my guardian angel, whose existence I do not take to be figurative, but very, very real. Realer than my own.

All of this is said by way of disclaimer, because I want also to say that I think the account of St. Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland is probably at least somewhat allegorical rather than purely factual in nature.
The Ireland of Patrick's day, the Ireland that enslaved him and the Ireland that the missionary bishop evangelized, was not a nice place. Britain being the edge of Roman civilization, Hibernia (as they called Ireland) was the beginning of the shadows. Beyond that was the dark and brooding North Atlantic, which no man had sailed. The island did not have a government and laws, but had warlords and power. It did not have manorial estates or great cities like those found in the Roman world, but id did have slaves like the Romans had. It did not have elegant priests with elaborate cults to various gods gathered from around the world by explorers and soldiers; no, it had gods of its own, and fearsome priests who conducted deadly and secret rituals. Those fearsome priests fed their fearsome gods with the fearful blood of human victims.

I believe that the snakes in this allegory about St. Patrick represent the evil demons hidden behind the masks provided by the names of those Celtic gods. Wherever those dark gods have been worshiped - Hibernia, Mesoamerica, Phoenicia, and beyond - they have demanded blood, and they have shared a remarkable interest in the blood of virgins and children. The most virginal of virgins (except for the Virgin) and childish of children is, of course, a little baby. No blemish nor spot, on the skin or in the heart - the perfect sacrifice for demons that hate God, that hate goodness, that hate innocence and purity, that hate. I believe they hate babies for this reason, and I believe that they are trying to prevent the final return of Jesus Christ, whom they believe will return as he came the first time: a little child.

St. Patrick, who prayed and fasted, who was unsuccessfully poisoned and burned, who loved his enemies, drove the demons out of Hibernia. I bet the people, living long under those dark shadows, were immediately interested in self-sacrificial love as a, shall we say "viable," alternative to the scheming sacrifice of others that was taught by their own priests. When they saw that immense love in his own person, they were hooked. What is known is that within a few years of his arrival, many average folks and several chieftains in Hibernia had been converted by the ex-slave with the shamrock. He provoked fierce opposition from entrenched religious and political interests in doing so, but by the time he passed to eternal reward, St. Patrick seems to have converted almost the whole darned place. In any event, Hibernia was well on its way to becoming Ireland. Ireland is not the First Daughter of the Church (that is France), nor the Finest Flower of Catholic Culture (I am going to award that title to Italy), nor the Most Ardent Defender of the Faith (let's say Spain, which conquered the Moors). But I will say that Ireland, her recent religious malaise aside, is perhaps of all rocky and cracked places, the country with the most tenacious faith.

St. Patrick did that.

Think of our country. We have immense potential and tremendous accomplishments. We unfortunately have a recent fascination with solving our problems by killing them. Even our littlest little "problems" get killed without quarter or mercy by our modern, scientific, medical and judicial priesthoods. Our country is, I believe, in the feverish and menacing grip of very wicked spirits. They pervert our leaders, enchant our spokespeople, drowse our people, mutilate our laws, and are eroding our nation in so many ways.
St. Patrick might very well be a powerful intercessor for us.  Think on that over your drinks tonight.

St. Patrick, please drive away the snakes from our nation. Amen.

I Think He Means It

Bart Stupak (D-MI) has been saying all along that he and his ten pro-Democrat colleagues will not collaborate with the expansion of Federal funding for abortion. Nor will they vote for any bill that draws Americans into further material collaboration with that monstrous evil.



Coincidentally, Bart Stupak is a former state trooper, and he kinda looks like it, doesn't he? I mention that, because even though he has also practiced law, state troopers don't strike me as the sorta cats that are given to b.s. and clowning around. You hear him talk, and that kinda comes through. When he says that he and his little caucus aren't going to let abortion expand on their watch, I think he means it.

Keep praying, Christians.

Der Spiegel Reports on Christian Martyrdom

Spiegel Online reports that the Religion of Peace has actually been busy martyring Christians for some time now, wherever it can get its hands on them.  Check it out here.

John Donne's Holy Sonnet V

I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic sprite;
But black sin hath betray'd to endless night
My world's both parts, and, O, both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new land can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it if it must be drown'd no more.
But O, it must be burnt; alas! the fire
Of lust and envy burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me, O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of Thee and Thy house, which doth in eating heal.

The Slaughter of the Innocents Goes On...

Today, Monday 28 December 2009, is the feast of the Holy Innocents, those children slaughtered by Herod (Mt 2:16) in his demented plot to destroy the Christ Child, thereby winning the notorious distinction of being the first manifestation of anti-Christ in history.  The Church recognizes his little victims as something like martyrs, even donning red on their feast day in honor of their blood.  They did not voluntarily give their lives rather than deny Christ, yet their innocence poured out still bears witness to His.

In our times, anti-Christ has been powerfully active in many modern regimes.  The Nazis and the Soviets were both explicitly anti-Christian.  They were defeated, but we must not lull ourselves into thinking that anti-Christ was, or even that his plan was delayed.  The Evil One is crafty beyond our reckoning.  I believe that part of his plan was to discredit evil itself - he has done this by psychologizing sins into mere neuroses on the one hand, and by making us think that a plan or idea cannot be evil unless it is proposed by a short man with a funny mustachio and a German accent.  We are mistaken if we believe either of those two lies.  Sin is sin, and we are all guilty of it.  Some sins are small, and others are immense.  We must use our meager powers and whatever grace God gives us to resist it all.  We cannot compromise with it, and must realize that the Enemy always tries to sell us sin by bundling it with genuine goods, because only a lunatic would pick sin otherwise.  So intimacy and pleasure, both good, are used to sell adultery; adventure and profit, both good, are used to convince people to burgle or rob.

Now health care is being used to push abortion.  Make no mistake - unless the law specifically forbids the funding of abortion, it will be slipped in as one more entitlement.  If the developers of the health care proposals under consideration did not want abortions to be funded directly or with subsidies, they would include prohibitive provisions in their bills.  And I can think of no better way - nor can Uncle Sam - to encourage something, other than to pay for it.
Please pray for Bart Stupak (D-MI) and the group he is rousing to resist this atrocity, this holocaust to Moloch. Rumor has it that he and his group are already being brought under tremendous pressure from the highest levels.

Fellow Americans, we are capable of helping each other out without paying to kill each other's babies.  America, we can do better than abortion!

Does This Bother You?

Some "civil rights" groups have decided that it is important to get out the vote, and by correlation, to make sure as many (minority) people as possible are counted in the upcoming 2010 census.  Below, see one poster developed with the intention of deployment in Hispanic Evangelical churches.  The poster below, of course, is the English text; the both the English and Spanish versions are available here.

This poster should strike sincere Christians as problematic for a few purposes.  I will list off a few:

1. The poster is itself fairly clearly blasphemous, using the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary for merely secular, political purposes... that is, in vain; this sin is very serious; the quotation of scripture (Mt 1:18, "This is how Jesus was born,") for such purposes strikes me as a violation of the Second Commandment in a similar vein;

2. The secular-minded groups are very cynically using the churches for their purposes;

3. The "Christian" churches accepting solicitations to display these posters will apparently not mind either the blasphemy or being used, perhaps because of complicity in the motivations of the secular-minded groups;

4. The posters and the groups behind them neglect to mention the cultural-political background of the events in the early life of the Holy Family, in which the Caesar's census was very clearly a bad thing - a tool of oppression;

5. It is arguably a violation of the legitimate separation of Church and State to employ churches in purely political work, although because the Census office is not actually involved with the poster, I am not sure that it is... this requires some mulling over.

USA Today has a reasonably balanced news story about the ad campaign.  To register your shock and outrage, you might go to the feedback page on CivilRights.org's website.  In my gut I feel there are more reasons to object strongly to this sacrilegious propaganda, but I cannot think further now, because I am still sputtering.  Thanks to Mr. Dave Tenney for pointing this out to me.

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.

Another Reading from the Maccabees

Today's readings (2 Mc 7:1, 20-31; Ps 17:1bcd, 5-6, 8b and 15; Lk 19:11-28) are as gripping as yesterday's.  I have been partial to the Books of Maccabees ever since I read them.  The first reading is about the passion of a mother and her seven sons.  The selection for Mass cuts out vss 2-19 of the chapter, skipping over the deaths of the first six sons.  It does so for brevity's sake, but really the whole thing is worth reading.

The mother, after watching her first six sons die, is urged by King Antiochus to beg her last son to apostatize so that he will not die; in fact, Antiochus offers all sorts of incentives if he will abandon the law and God of his fathers.  The mother urges the son to spare her the grief of seeing him apostatize.  She let truth govern her emotions, rather than the other way around.  Amazing!

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.

What's Caesar Got Behind His Back?

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is hiding some data behind its back. Rather, it's hiding the data from the public. Our policymakers are given access to it, but we, the policymakers' bosses, are to be kept from seeing it.  It seems the CDC is recommending that the Federal government put the kabosh on abstinence-only sex education because their stats on its effectiveness are "inconsistent." 

Perhaps the results are inconsistent with their ideology.  The fact that "comprehensive risk reduction" approaches, ones that favor the use of prophylactic measures, show "limited direct evidence of effectiveness," doesn't seem to stop them from recommending those approaches.

It is telling that there will be no public scrutiny of the data until after public policy is set.  So much for transparency in government.

Our cultural powers are making ceaseless war upon the ways of life developed over eighteen or nineteen hundred years.  They feel Christianity responsible for the misery they experience in lives evacuated of meaning by the expulsion of God.  The economic powers that be are funding this war in order to enrich themselves.  Christians, it is our job, to show the beauty of the Christian way of living by our conduct of life.  While doing what we can to advance the Christian vision, we must brace ourselves for the likelihood that our triumph will not follow obvious victory, but apparent defeat.  Look to a crucifix for a role model.

All Called to Be Saints

Here is the first contribution of Rev. Mr. David Wells to this blog.  I have adapted slightly, with his permission, the homily that he gave on the Feast of All Saints, about two weeks ago.  Before long, his posts will appear with his own signature.  Enjoy!

The Marine Corps Marathon on a recent Sunday in D.C. and I know a few people who ran in the race.  One was a priest who used to be where I currently serve as deacon, at St. Jude’s, Rockville, Maryland; he goes by the name of Fr. Rob Walsh.  From what I hear, Fr. Walsh finished the marathon but it was not beautiful to behold.  Even with months of training, running a marathon is no easy feat.  Everyone who runs a marathon follows a training regimen, more or less strictly, so that when race day comes, they don’t get to mile seven and start looking for the nearest metro stop.  In other words, they have a goal—finishing the marathon—and a plan for how they will carry that out—their training regimen.

"My uncle was fond of saying that the goal of life is heaven.  “The goal of life is heaven.”  One spiritual writer puts it this way: “The ultimate failure in life is not to be a saint.”   Recently, the Church celebrated the Feast of All Saints.  We honor those who have reached that goal of heaven and we ask for their help and prayers to rally us on to the finish line.  The saints are like those people who cheer us on after they’ve finished the race, because they know that the award is well worth the struggle.  But even if we have the goal firmly established, how do we reach that goal?  The last thing we want is to be like that person who decides to run a marathon and has no plan for running it.

"Now the plan for going about reaching our goal of heaven is unique for each of us.  God has a distinct plan, a distinct mission, for each one of us.  But that being said, there are some things we all share in common.  There are certain things that if we keep them in mind and carry them out, will aid all of us in reaching our goal of heaven.  I’ve come up with three suggestions, but the Lord knows there are many other things.

"The first piece of advice I have is “keep your eye fixed on the prize.”  When you first begin training for the marathon and you’re sore and out of breath after a half mile; when it’s 95 degrees out and not a bit of shade on the route; and when those shoes everyone says you have to buy cost more than your last suit.  When you encounter all of these setbacks, if your goal is not fixed firmly in place—to run a marathon—you’ll soon give up and head back for the air conditioning.

"The saints recognized and always kept at the forefront that the goal of life is union with God in heaven.  This motivated not just their big decisions but was the motivating factor behind their small decisions as well.  We should think about heaven . . . a lot.  It should fascinate us.  The first reading from the Book of Revelation powerfully and symbolically illustrates the glory of the saints in heaven.  St. John asks who the persons wearing white robes and holding palm branches are.  He is told that these are the saints who suffered great tribulations on earth but whose robes have been washed by Christ’s blood and now glorify God forever.

"In the second reading, St. John reminds the community to whom he writes that they are God’s children now.  This great saint and mystic admits next, “What we shall be hasn’t been revealed.”  It’s beyond our wildest imagination and surpasses our greatest hopes what we shall be like in heaven.  And finally, in the Gospel, Jesus encourages his disciples to undergo suffering and face difficulties during this life, because they will enjoy great glory in heaven.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  The saints greatly look forward to heaven and to being with God forever.  We, too, must keep our eye fixed on the prize, and not get too distracted by our everyday problems.  This world is short, eternity is forever.

"The second thing we should keep in mind to reach our goal of heaven is that it’s possible.  It’s possible to be a saint.  No, this is too weak a statement.  It’s expected of us, it’s normal in God’s eyes.  Not only that, but God wants us to be saints and will give us every aid necessary in order to reach our goal.  Sometimes it feels like God is working against us, but this is never the case.  He’s our number one fan and supporter.   Pope John Paul II canonized more saints in his 25 years as pope than were canonized in the previous 450 years.  In doing this, he wanted to show us that not only is it possible to be a saint, it should be thought of as normal to be one.  We’re all called to be one.

"One of the things that makes this difficult is that we think the saints were superhuman and we could never equal their feats.  We don’t read souls, pray all day, talk with God in mystical prayer, or appear in two places at once.  Well, don’t worry, because the saints, apart from Mary, were far from perfect.  St. Padre Pio, an Italian, was known for being short-tempered.  St. John Marie Vianney failed out of seminary and was sent to the middle-of-nowhere city of Ars, France because it was thought there he could do the least damage.  St. Teresa of Avila got so mad at God once, she shouted at him, “if this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few!”  The saints weren’t great because they were superhuman or perfect, but because they realized they were sinners and relied totally on God.  Reaching our goal is possible, because God desires it, the saints root us on, and the Church is like our mother, giving us the spiritual nourishment to accomplish it.

"The third thing to keep in mind as we strive toward our goal is that we fail daily, but we should persevere nonetheless.  Discouragement is one of the most debilitating things for us as faithful Christians.  Scripture says that even the just man falls seven times a day.  Mother Teresa wisely said that she received so much grace because she was such a great sinner.  The great St. Paul tells us that he is the foremost of sinners.  But this doesn’t get him down.  He recognizes his sin, and then abandons himself to god’s infinite mercy.  After a century of two World Wars, countless other massacres, and many other evils, humanity is tempted to reflect and concentrate on its own sinfulness.  This couldn’t be any more false.  The message Christ gives us is that of mercy.  His mercy completely swallows up the worst of our sins if we turn to him with true contrition.  If we are faithful to the sacrament of confession, we are well on our way to reaching our goal.

"If we keep our eyes fixed on the prize of heaven, realize that it is not only possible but it’s expected of us, and if in spite of our failings we persevere in the race, we shall surely be among those who are with God forever in heaven.  This is our hope and this drives us on.  My brothers and sisters, let us enter the race, so that one day we may share the joy of the communion of saints in heaven.  My all the angels and saints pray for us and intercede for us."

Awesome, Deacon Dave! Thanks!

Bishop Tobin Lays the Smackdown

The Most Reverend Thomas Tobin, by the Grace of God bishop of Providence, has just given Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) a beat-down like he has perhaps never before received. The two have been quarreling about what it means to be Catholic. Apparently, Congressman Kennedy thinks that having a famous uncle or grandfather, or having been baptized as an infant, means that nothing one can do can make one "less of a Catholic." His shepherd disagrees and is unafraid to go at it with him.

Good for you, Bishop Tobin! God bless you for your charitable forthrightness, clear shepherding, and defense of the flock and its faith. May God bless you a hundredfold for ever curse hurled at you by enemies of Holy Church and our holy religion.

There's no need to go picking fights with people, but this bozo congressman picked a fight with the Church for saying that hey, maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't be eagerly supporting health care reform that funds the butchering of children.

Read the most reverend bishop's letter by clicking here. It is available online now, and will appear in print in Thursday's edition of the local Catholic paper. Between Bishop Tobin's stern (and sometimes eye-popping, to be frank) words to the congressman under his care and the words Archbishop Dolan (of New York City) to the New York Times, we are starting to see some bishops unafraid to brawl in public.

Fr. Robert Barron and the Vatican's Investigation of Nuns

People, Look East

"People, Look East" is one of my favorite Christmas songs.

It is also a good clarion call to the Church in the West.  We are complacent, and we have problems: complacency, corroded morale, secularism on the warpath against anything remotely healthy or humane, and so on.  But we are not being murdered in the streets.  For most of us in the West, the Apostle's words still apply: "In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood," (Heb 12:4).

That is not the case in the East.  The Chinese and Vietnamese governments have certainly been violently opposed to and contrived all manners of repressing the irrepressible growth of the Church in East Asia.  It is a little considered fact, though, that in what was perhaps his only remotely endearing quality, Saddam Hussein insisted on a peace that permitted the Church to continue in the region called Iraq, where she has existed since apostolic times, or shortly thereafter.  My studies in ancient Syriac (Suraya, in its own language) focused on literature from that region: from that region comes the earliest translation of the Bible.  At the time, it was called Chaldea (Kal-dee-ah), and from that name the Christians of the region derive theirs, although they call themselves Suraya.  The were more or less absorbed into the Nestorian heresy, but that heresy had more or less dwindled over a thousand years or so, and since 1553 they have been (back) in union with the Catholic Church.  It was these Chaldean Catholics that continued on in Iraq.  Under Saddam Hussein, one of them was even a foreign minister.

It is not so anymore.  With a sort of forced secularism removed from society, the sectarian violence that has engaged Sunni against Shiite has also engulfed the much smaller Chaldean community.  These people are our brothers and sisters in Christ, united in one Baptism, one Faith, one Church, sharing with us the Pope as supreme pastor on Earth.  And they are being tortured and murdered to death in the streets, their bishops assassinated in public, and their churches torched and razed.  Their attackers do these things with complete impunity.

For more information about the Chaldean Catholics, check out the Wikipedia articles - they are probably reasonably kinda accurate-ish.

They have their own website / newsource / blog.  Check it out, too, by clicking here if you have a few free minutes.  We can at least pray for our brothers.  We can try to find concrete ways to encourage them.  Perhaps we can find someway to get our godless government to pressure their corrupt government to stop its people from killing our people... er, I mean, its own people.

A Different Kind of Kingdom

Many of us work or have worked for company's whose environments were relaxed, where "business casual" is the attire, and where we are encouraged or required to call our supervisors and even the CEO by their first name, usually Skip, or Chip, or Don.  The purpose of this casualness is to make us feel comfortable, to feel at home, to think of the company as a family.  Yet, everyone seems hellbent on kissing Chip's butt in a way we rarely felt inclined to kiss Dad's butt.  In fact, when we kissed Dad's butt, he usually called us on it very quickly, didn't he?  "Ok son, now what's this all about?  What do you want?  Do you need money for a date?  Do you wanna borrow the car?"  But Skip, Don, and the other bigwigs and supervisors at our company seem to like having their butts kissed.  They are certainly aware that our desks are all straightened way a visit from them is anticipated.  The modern kings, princes, and petty barons are much smoother than maybe they were in medieval times, but they nonetheless manage to make themselves felt, as Jesus put it.

The readings from today's Mass (Is 53:10-11; Ps 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22; Heb 4:14-16; Mk 10:35-45), those of the XXIX Sunday in Ordinary Time, probably go in one ear and out the other of folks intent on being worshiped, the Don's and Chip's of this world.  But they might go misunderstood by those of us trying to be Christians, and should give a moment's hesitation to anyone engaged in "the culture wars."  Here's why:

James and John go up to Jesus and ask him if they can be the two top dogs in their kingdom.  In another account (Mt 20:20) it's their mom that does the asking.  How that fact got confused between St. Matthew and St. Mark might be an interesting sociological question, but it's not really relevant to the story or to the message for present purposes.  Anyway, Jesus basically asks them if they can handle it.  "Of course we can," they basically say, "easy."

Easy, indeed.  Now, the other apostles get all tangled up because they want to be the best in the kingdom, too.  Pandemonium ensues.  Jesus calms them all down by stumping them, as usual:

"You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many," (Mk 10:42-45).

Now, this is a different sort of kingdom, isn't it?  Not only is it a kingdom with a different goal than the kingdoms of this world, but it is a kingdom operating on a whole different set of principles.  Normal kingdoms depend upon and elevate the majesty of their king; ours depends upon and elevates the crucifixion of our king.  Normal kingdoms run on taxes; ours runs on widows' pennies (Lk 21:1-3).  And this all makes sense: a different goal often requires different means.  One packs different things for a trip to Ocean City than for a trip to Alaska, and one probably uses a different mode of transport.  The Kingdom of God is different than any of the kingdoms of men, not only because it is run by a different king aiming at different goals, but also because it uses different means.

How often do we who "fight to save the culture" fight using the very worst weapons developed by the very worst people in our culture?  We organize committee meets, develop marketing strategies or three year project goals, recruit workers, and bang! off we go.  Of course, our Blessed Lord chided us because we don't even do these things very well (in the parable of the dishonest steward, "for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light," Lk 16:8).  We use the means of the world to beat the world, but we do not use them well because our Christian faith and morals get in the way; for their own part, using the means of the world often ends up corrupting our Christian faith and morals, which are the whole point of the Kingdom of God.  Now, I am not arguing that committee meetings and marketing strategies are necessarily evil.  Evil is a very emphatic word.  But those things are emphatically not the way our Lord does things.  We are to make use of the things of the world (Lk 16:9) as appropriate, but never in a way that detracts from our true purpose.  Our true purpose is not to out-world the world, to one up the world at its own game.  Our purpose is to let God build up in us and through us a new sort of world - the Kingdom that is to come.

And that is a different sort of kingdom:

"The LORD was pleased to crush him in infirmity. If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life, and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him. Because of his affliction he shall see the light in fullness of days; through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear," (Is 53:10-11).

When we who want to change the world are willing to suffer whatever it please the LORD to visit upon us, as an offering for sin, then we shall see the world change.  If we really believed that our affliction would bring us "to the light," would we seek to dodge it.  If we believed that our suffering would justify many, would we be working so hard to do it with committee meetings?

What I am suggesting is not the abandonment of formal structures in the Church.  I am only urging a return to prayer, fasting, almsgiving, to penance, to service to the weakest and poorest, to those most mangled by the Kingdoms of this world.  I am not suggesting that we have stopped doing those things in the Church, not at all.  I only wonder if we haven't somehow gradually gotten our minds onto the wrong track, if maybe we haven't settled in a bit too much, those of us in the pews.  I am not denigrating petition-signing, election-time campaigning, and blog-writing.  I just hope they haven't taken the place of hairshirt-wearing and prisoner-visiting.  The ancient world was converted to Christ when they saw Christians picking abandoned babies up off the sides of roads, when they saw Christians nursing people with contagious diseases, when they saw Christians giving their own last bit of food to a hungry stranger, trusting in Providence for their own next meal.  The postmodern world will be converted to Christ when they see us lifting male prostitutes up out of the gutters, when they see us nurturing drug-addicted babies, when they see us living simply (and donating the rest of our salary) so others might simply live.

Well, in any event, I doubt many have been converted by seeing how we conduct our committee meetings.  Let's refocus our hearts.  And that, dear brothers and sisters, needs prayer.

Europe Is Not So Far Gone Yet

I tried to embed a video about pro-life demonstrations in Madrid. I couldn't get it to work, so check it out here instead. We make a big mistake if we think that the Church and authentic human values in general have died in Europe.

A Thought During a Long Run

During my distance run with my roommate tonight, I had a thought at some point. But I'll share that in a minute.  At the start, we offered our run for different intentions.  In the last miles, we started offering particular miles for different people and different intentions. That helps me, and perhaps him, to stay tough during my runs. Running is largely mental, and so is toughness. People whose first contribution to a conversation about long-distance running is, "I could never do that," probably won't. But they could, even in a wheelchair. During the Marine Corps Marathon last year one of the things that inspired me most and made me most emotional during the run was to see how men in racing wheelchairs, and without functioning legs, could keep up with the runners. Some of them were born without legs. Some of them lost their legs in the war. They tended to get passed on the uphills, but man, did they compensate on the way down! And ten dollars says that not one of them spent the race saying, "I could never do that."

So here's the though that occurred to me: "Toughness and gentleness are not at odds with each other, but in fact are complementary virtues." When we say someone is tough, we usually mean that he or she can take a beating, can get knocked around, and still get back up. "Tough" is a very different thing than "violent," or "aggressive," or "harsh," and its contrary opposite is not gentleness, I think, but weakness or cowardice. "Tough" might be a modern word for something like "having perseverance," or "having fortitude."

Now, someone who is tough knows how to take a knock and not get knocked down, or at least how to get back up. A tough person knows what it is to suffer in the way that a coward does not. A coward goes to any length in order to avoid suffering, perhaps because of fear that it will break him, or perhaps out of simple decadent complacency in comfort. This evasion of suffering can obviously lead very quickly into all sorts of sins. The coward refuses to suffer, never learns of what mettle he's made, never knows triumph, what the Bible calls glory, what we are all made for - perhaps because he cannot conceive even the hope of glory. When we reject weakness and suffering, we will begin to reject it, resent it, in others as well.

On the other hand, the tough person knows what it is to suffer. He has quite likely suffered amply, suffered in a way that a coward preempts by saying, "I could never do that." It is no coincidence that children come to birth before they come to the point of hurting their mothers' hearts. The woman's soul is prepared for suffering by the suffering her body has already learned to endure. This capacity can make them seem amazingly hard to a soul more repelled by pain. "How can she kick her own daughter out of the house, just for doing drugs, or bringing strange boys home overnight?" The tougher person knows that there is a good out there, worth attaining, and greater in goodness than the intervening suffering is in badness. So the tougher soul hardens itself to push through pain and suffering, and wins the prize. (Think of Rom 5:3 or 8:18.)

Precisely because these tougher souls, women in pangs and men in racing wheelchairs, know what it is to suffer, I believe they have a greater capacity to accept it in others. They may not choose to do so, but I think they have a greater capacity to be genuinely patient with others' weakness, suffering, and sorrow. They certainly have a greater ability to help others endure their own difficulties. In an unexpected way, the spiritually tough person is much better at being spiritually gentle. And precisely because our bodies and souls are so thoroughly interconnected, a lesson we learn in one can help us to live better in the other.

So many modern "solutions" to problems come from a rejection of suffering. "I could never carry my child to term, having it remind me of the man that raped me," and others, accustomed to similar thinking, ignore the child's humanity and innocence and concede abortion in cases of rape. It's easier. Less suffering. I-could-never thinking. "But grandma is so old and weak, and tired, surely this disease will torture her to death if we do not put her out of her pain," and others, accustomed to similar thinking, ignore the fact that rather than comforting and loving her, they will only do the work of the disease. It's easier. Less suffering. I-could-never thinking.

The insanity is here: the coward who betrays his comrades to avoid being shot in battle might very well be shot after the battle, and if he isn't, will probably wish he had been, so great will be his interior agony, his self-loathing, his division. For it is a plain truth that we are either at war with sin or at war with ourselves. We can never be at peace with sin because peace is contrary to the nature of sin. The part of our soul that wants goodness will then wage war against the part of our soul that has made a pact with sin, agreed to rationalize and protect it. And the agony of a house divided, of a war within one's soul, of doing evil and hating evil at the same time, is far worse than simply dying. But we often select it because it seems easier, more pleasant, better, especially in the short term. But in the long term, it is a worse sort of death. It is disintegration of the self, the death that does not die, and in the very end, it is hell. Likewise, after the glamor of sin has lost its luster, the couple that have divorced rather than dig into their problems are rarely happier, even if their daily lives seem more manageable. The father who has rejected his homosexually-inclined son "as a matter of scriptural principle," is not at peace.  Nor is the mother who tells the same son that such abnormalities are normal, in order to be nice.  They have successfully split Solomon's baby in two by choosing either to hate the sinner or to love the sin, but they have not successfully saved their son as both of them have intend.

And let's face it: our culture hates suffering. According to Yoda (in Star Wars - you know, the little green dude), suffering is the worst evil. So it is in Buddhism. But in Christianity it was suffering on a cross that saved the world. Aside from the purely natural benefits of enduring suffering to attain a great good on the other side of pain, we who are baptized into and united with Christ have an amazing opportunity; we can offer our suffering in union with His to help Him to redeem the world (Eph 3:13; Phil 3:10-11; Col 1:24; 2 Thes 1:5). That is amazing. And we must remember that people are not the enemy, nor is even suffering, but the I-could-never thinking is. Just as a physically tough person can help a physically weaker person to attain new heights, we Christians, who know that Christ is the Helpmate of us all, should help others to attain new height by persevering through the more profound difficulties that are spiritual and moral.

We not only have to fight for laws that outlaw bad "solutions" to very real problems, but we also have to help those who are spiritually weaker, more vulnerable, more afraid, to learn to endure the difficulties of life by enduring them together. That is what "compassion" means in Latin, "to suffer with," not "to magically make suffering go away." It is what our Lord did by becoming human, and it is how we humans are to serve the Lord. Right now, crisis pregnancy centers and old folks' homes seem especially the places to be - the front lines of our spiritual warfare against I-could-never thinking. The reply to such thinking that arises everywhere and especially in such places must always be, "Ah, but you can do all things with Him who strengthens you," (Phil 4:13). And it must be followed by, "And I'll help you do it."

Tying it all together, in those last miles of the run, my roommate and I prayed for the grace to be made tougher, and we offered our little, voluntary sufferings in union with Jesus' for people about whom we care a great deal especially some people that Jesus is currently asking to voluntarily endure involuntary sufferings. Because running is largely mental, and the mental is half of how we engage in the spiritual, the devil can certainly try to slip in, to break morale, entice us to sin. When a pain the hip or in the glutes interpreted itself as, "Wouldn't it be best to stop now?" I grit my teeth, prayed for Jesus' help, and said, "F*@# you, devil. Go to hell! This mile's for so-and-so. They need it and you're not going to get it," and I pushed into the pain a little. And like the pangs of childbearing, these littler pains pass too. Now, the devil defeated - at least for a few minutes - and the post-run milkshake-and-burger-dinner inhaled and the endorphins making my heart happy in spite of stiff legs, because of stiff legs, I am starting to feel a little sleepy.

Here's what I will pray, I think, before I sleep:

Heavenly Father, please make me tough, so that I can run this race of life the way you want me to, with a gentle heart filled with love for you and those you give me. And now as I lay me down to sleep, please refresh me for another day of service to you, and grant me in my service whatever joys are necessary to sustain me in it, and to bring others to you by it. I ask these things in Jesus' Name. Amen.

Sorry for rambling so long.  It was a long run - there was lots of time to think.  In case you're curious, there's just

I'm weak and liable to spend lots of the next nineteen days thinking, "I could never do that," rather than "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."  So let's keep praying, OK?