There is no tension between doctrinal orthodoxy and pastoral sensitivity. Quite the opposite: the latter requires and presupposes the former. To suggest otherwise is, at best, misguided and, at worst, mendacious. Yet, in recent months some “progressive” voices inside and outside the Catholic Church have again attempted to resurrect this false dichotomy.

Curiously, such a mindset is often aware of the “inconvenient truth” that no one, not even the Roman Pontiff, has the authority to change the dogmas of the Catholic Church. Therefore, they seek to drive a wedge between the Church’s pastoral practice and her doctrine. A “pressing pastoral situation” is often wheeled out as justification.

This project, however, fails on three counts. First, it misrepresents the teaching of the Church and, in particular, the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Second, it misrepresents the relationship between the Church’s dogma and her pastoral practice. Third, it misapprehends the nature of dogma itself. We must take our lead from Pope Francis himself in rejecting such erroneous and unhelpful notions.

''The false dichotomy between dogma and pastoral reality has as its root cause a lack of faith. The teachings of the Church are not an arbitrary imposition that infringes the legitimate freedom of individuals; nor are they a merciless burden imposed upon the weak.''

The Teaching of the Second Vatican Council

God reveals Himself to us in Jesus Christ, and, in order for the intelligible content of that revelatory event to be passed on from one generation to the next, there must be a correspondingly intelligible formulation and statement of that content. The formulation of Revelation’s content into statements is what we mean by a dogma. Dei Verbum is the Council’s document on Revelation. From it emerges a rich and subtle teaching on the nature of Revelation, and this, of course, has implications for how we understand the Church’s dogmas. It teaches:

In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature. Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends and lives among them, so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself. This plan of revelation is realised by deeds and words having an inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them. By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and thesalvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.

Note first of all that the intelligible content of the faith is affirmed: “the teaching and realities signified by the words”. And hence the necessity of dogma is validated. However, the document goes on to stress that the person and activity of Christ is not to be separated from the message He bears. “This plan of revelation is realised by deeds and words having an inner unity” (italics added). Though we human beings must use concepts to grasp the content of our faith, in the end God does not reveal a series of ideas: He reveals the “mystery” of Himself in the person of Christ, who is “the fullness of all revelation”. With this teaching Dei Verbum definitively shuts the door on the idea that Revelation, and consequently dogma, can be reduced to a series of disembodied ideas. Given the“inner unity” of their relationship, the falseness of any attempt to divide theory, or dogma, from the realm of activity, ie the realm of lived pastoral reality, is clearly evident.

Moreover, God’s Self-Revelation in Christ is not some sort of inert reality that we just impartially observe. It is dynamic: it accomplishes something. The purpose of Revelation is that “man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature”. Revelation, and its subsequent formulation into dogma, changes the final goal of our lives. But this new goal, coming “to share in the divine nature”, is not tacked on to the end of our earthly existence as an afterthought; rather, this new goal changes the whole trajectory of our earthly lives. Already in this life, it points us towards heaven. And this comes about through a real novelty in our lives here and now: a new and personal relationship.

Recent Popes have been at pains to stress the personal nature of Revelation. Pope Francis in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, quotes his predecessor with approval. “I never tire of repeating those words of Benedict XVI which take us to the very heart of the Gospel: ‘Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.’”

As we have seen, our faith does have an intelligible content, but it cannot be reduced to a mental yes to a series of ideas. It is a living relationship with a person. This is why the Council teaches that in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ “the invisible God out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends and lives among them”. Every relationship with another person that is in any way real has an influence on how we live our lives. When one becomes a parent or a spouse, certainly one gains a great deal, but one also has to give up old ways of living and patterns of behaviour. In a similar way, when we enter into relationship with God who reveals Himself to us in Jesus Christ this will have real consequences for the way we live our lives.

The Second Vatican Council teaches, and the continuing Magisterium of successive popes bears witness to, the indissoluble link between God’s revelation, our final end and the way we live our lives here and now as us Christians. Dogma, doctrine, call it whatever you will, is indissolubly linked to the pastoral reality of the Church’s life.

Blessed John XXIII’s opening address to the Second Vatican Council has been mentioned already. In that same address he put it quite succinctly:

The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously. That doctrine embraces the whole of man, composed as he is of body and soul. And, since he is a pilgrim on this earth, it commands him to tend always toward heaven.

The Relationship Between Dogma and Pastoral Practice

In fact the word “pastoral” contains within itself an intrinsic link to the doctrines and dogmas of the Church. Its origins are to be found in the Latin term pascere which means “to feed”. In the 21st chapter of John’s Gospel, Christ uses this verb three times, telling Peter to feed His sheep. This raises a question: on what should Peter feed the Lord’s flock? Catholics will immediately think of the Eucharist. While this true, there are reasons why one might legitimately expand the meaning of pascere a little.

In Ephesians, when St Paul is talking about the various ministries in the Church, he gives a list in which he seems to place “pastors and teachers” in the same category (Eph 4:11). One should not perhaps make too much of this, but it does seem to imply that the pastoral dimension of the Church extends to teaching as well, that is, to the feeding of our minds with sound doctrine. This insight has a particular and pressing resonance for all those who have any sort of teaching role in the Church. And it is worth remembering that this applies not just to ordained bishops and priests, but also to catechists and teachers and, in a most particular way, to parents.

Ideas, theories, doctrines have a momentum of their own. Wanted or unwanted they have an impact upon our lives for good or for ill. To take just one example, five hundred years ago, during the Reformation, there was a debate over just how broken human nature truly is. Certain extreme Protestants held that human nature is entirely corrupted by sin. Catholics, by contrast, held and still do hold that “human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded” (CCC 405). At one level this is an abstruse argument about the finer points of theological anthropology. But follow the arguments to their logical conclusions and they have powerful implications. If human nature is totally corrupt then everything that flows from this nature, our ability to think, our capacity forlove and friendship, our sexuality – all of this is totally corrupt and depraved and to be avoided. But if, as the doctrine of the Catholic Church has it, human nature is wounded but not totally corrupt, then these human realities of reason, affection and sexuality, while they are affected by the wound in our nature and so must be redeemed, remain essentially good. Far from being scorned and rejected these expressions of our human nature are to be valued and cherished.

Doctrines and dogmas, if we really believe them, inevitably affect our self-understanding, our values and our grasp of the world around us. Trying to divorce doctrine from life, dogma from pastoral reality, is unworkable. Either we must simply give up believing the dogmas in any sort of real way, or our approach to life will become schizophrenic.

Dogma

The false dichotomy between dogma and pastoral reality has as its root cause a lack of faith. The teachings of the Church are not an arbitrary imposition that infringes the legitimate freedom of individuals; nor are they a merciless burden imposed upon the weak. The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ – that institution which, despite the failings of her human members, Christ founded and which he continues to will. And, in the words of Blessed John Henry Newman, we “hold in veneration… her teachings as His own”. The teaching of the Church is the teaching of Christ. This is not an encumbrance or an impediment; it is, as He promises, “the truth which will set you free” (Jn 8:32).

Turn on the news of an evening or pick up a newspaper and we are assaulted by the plethora of social ills that afflict our society. And, of course, our hearts go out to those who are suffering in whatever way. But there is not one of these problems that will be solved by a Gospel bowdlerised for so called “pastoral” motives. Only Jesus Christ in His fullness, undiluted by our ingenious “pastoral” accommodations, can alleviate the sufferings of our brothers and sisters. We have an obligation to offer the fullness of what we have received.

The notion that doctrine and pastoral practice are in conflict cannot stand. In has no precedent or place in Church teaching. It is untrue and unsustainable. We and the world need the truth in its fullness. We need Christ, who is “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6).

“I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one” (Jn 17:20-21)

From the moment Pope Benedict announced his retirement voices in the media and from within the Church have been calling for reform. Many of the more theologically aware commentators have articulated their reform agenda by invoking the principle of collegiality. This notion, “the principle of collegiality”, appears to have a pedigree within Catholic theology and as such it lends a certain degree of respectability and intellectual clout to those clamouring for reform. No doubt some degree of reform is needed: the Vati-leaks affair and its aftermath was a disedifying spectacle. However, using the principle of collegiality as a catch-all slogan is problematic. Quite simply, its meaning is vague. It is open to a variety of different emphases and interpretations, some of which may be helpfuland foster the renewal of the Church at an institutional level, others of which may well prove a hindrance to the process of renewal.

Certain interpretations of the principle of collegiality use it to bolster the autonomy of individual bishops in their dioceses. These interpretations become unhelpful when they locate a conflict of interests between the autonomy of the local bishop and the norms of the universal Church. Advocates of this view would argue that the local bishop needs a heightened autonomy over and against the norms of the universal Church. The local bishop, who is directly acquainted with the exigencies of his local situation, should be able to establish for himself and for his own diocese local norms concerning ethical issues, ecumenical practices and questions such as who may be admitted to the sacraments and under what circumstances.

All too often in these interpretations the principle of collegiality degenerates into code-speak for the enactment of the by now very tired canon of dissent: contraception, married clergy, women priests, weird made-up liturgy
and all the usual suspects – which in passing we note have been tried among our separated brethren and have not brought renewal.

Advocates of this view find their justification in a particular account of the relationship between the First and Second Vatican Councils. Pastor Aeternus, one of the documents of Vatican I, had stressed the primacy of the Pope by declaring that “full power has been given [to the Pope] by our lord Jesus Christ to tend, rule and govern the universal Church”. This, they contend, had reduced local bishops to little more than legates of the Pope.

They then claim that Vatican II, and in particular chapter 3 of Lumen Gentium, was an almost revolutionary pushing back against the excesses of Vatican I. In this narrative the full implementation of the principle of collegiality would radically assert the autonomy of the local bishop and would be no more than the logical conclusion of the process set in motion by the Second Vatican Council.

However, to view the relationship between these two councils through an optic of conflict and revolution is simplistic and misleading. Rather, in chapter 3 of Lumen Gentium the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council complemented the teaching of Pastor Aeternus on the primacy of the Pope by noting “the collegiate character and aspect of the Episcopal order”. It is certainly true that Vatican II’s teaching on the “collegial union” of the bishops balances the earlier assertions of Vatican I. Moreover Lumen Gentium also teaches that “the individual bishops … are the visible principle and foundation of unity in their particular churches” and as such individual bishops enjoy their own proper authority in their diocese.

Nonetheless, an explanatory note was added as an appendix to Lumen Gentium: “‘College’ is not understood … as a group of equals who entrust their power to their president, but as a stable group whose structure and authority must be learned from Revelation.” It is quite a step from the authentic teaching of Lumen Gentium to conceiving of the relation between the authority of an individual bishop and that of the universal Church in terms of a power struggle. This is fundamentally mistaken. A local bishop’s authority is simply not in competition with the universal Church. This would impose categories of power and authority drawn from the sphere of earthly politics upon the Church, which is the mystical body of Christ.

Even if one were to go down this route, asserting the authority of the individual bishop in this way would, paradoxically, in the long run only weaken and undermine the bishop concerned. Certain matters of ecclesiastical discipline may legitimately vary from place to place; but when one asserts the autonomy of an individual bishop to such an extent that his authority can be exercised against the norms of the universal Church, ultimately one fractures the unity of the Church. A divided Church is a weakened Church – and a weakened Church means that all her members, bishops included, are weakened. These readings of the principle of collegiality fail on two grounds. One is theological; the other, which is perhaps more direct and compelling, is empirical.

The College of Bishops

Dealing with the theology of the college of bishops, it should be noted that Lumen Gentium talks not so much of the “principle of collegiality” as of the “collegiate character” of the episcopate, and of the “college” of apostles or bishops. That might seem a hair-splitting distinction but invoking the “principle of collegiality” gives the impression that it is a maxim to be acted upon; that it summons us unto praxis. Lumen Gentium doesn’t imply that bishops must be empowered to enact collegiality; it simply assumes the college of bishops as a given feature of the constitution of the Church.

The meaning of this feature has perhaps most eloquently been explained by the then Cardinal Ratzinger in a paper he gave on Lumen Gentium in Rome in 2000. He wrote:

“The Constitution on the Church has notably treated the episcopal ministry in chapter three, and explained its meaning starting with the fundamental concept of the collegium. This concept, which only marginally appears in tradition, serves to illustrate the interior unity of the episcopal ministry. The bishop is not a bishop as an individual, but by belonging to a body, a college, which in turn represents the historical continuity of the collegium Apostolorum. In this sense, the episcopal ministry derives from the one Church and leads into it.”

Where some commentators invoke the “principle of collegiality” in order to fragment the Church and her teaching, actually the “collegium Apostolorum” bears witness to the unity of the Church. At a single moment in time the bishops are united synchronically in one college; and across the ages they are united diachronically to the original twelve apostles and to all the bishops who have come in between and will come in the future. As the Church is one, so too is the college of bishops.

Furthermore, the Church’s unity is not arbitrary or contingent upon the accidents of history. Understood properly the Church’s unity is a much deeper reality. It is an expression of God’s basic intent throughout the whole of his dealing with humanity. Unity is the one of the keynotes of salvation history. This is an insight that is perhaps best expressed again in the words of Cardinal Ratzinger, this time in 2001 writing in America magazine:
“The basic idea of sacred history is that of gathering together, of uniting – uniting human beings in the one body of Christ, the union of human beings and through human beings of all creation with God. There is only one bride, only one body of Christ, not many brides, not many bodies. The bride is, of course, as the Fathers of the Church said, drawing on Psalm 44, dressed ‘in many-coloured robes’; the body has many organs. But the superordinate principle is ultimately unity. That is the point here. Variety becomes richness only through the process of unification.”

One would be very hard pressed to make a case against Ratzinger’s interpretation of salvation history but his case is absolutely clinched by the words of Christ’s priestly prayer in John’s Gospel. “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one” (Jn 17:20-21). On the night before his passion Christ prays not only for the unity of his apostles but for the unity of “those who will believe in me through their word”; that is, the Church down through the ages.
The unity of the Church and its expression and concretisation in the unity of the college of bishops is foreshadowed throughout salvation history and explicitly desired by Christ. To invoke whatever cognate term of the college of bishops one desires in order to undermine the unity of Christ’s Church is intellectually incoherent.

The Lessons of Recent History

One of the features of the unity of the Church is a special role for the successor of St Peter. But the primacy of the Pope should not be conceived of as in competition with the authority of the local bishop. Our Lord commanded St Peter to “strengthen your brothers” (Lk 22:32) Too often advocates of the principle of collegiality cannot see beyond the categories of capitalist politics. In recent years we have seen a quite breathtaking instance of the successor of St Peter “strengthening his brothers”.

On 19 March 2010 Pope Benedict XVI wrote a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland addressing the child abuse crisis and instructed that it be read out in every parish in Ireland. The successor of St Peter had no direct responsibility for disciplinary matters in the Church in Ireland. Certainly, from a secular media point of view, to associate oneself unnecessarily with this scandal was an inconceivable, even borderline suicidal, course of action.

A canny politician would run a mile from a scandal if he could plausibly deny bearing any responsibility in the matter. Pope Benedict could most certainly do that. But the Pope is not called to be a canny politician; he is called to be the successor of St Peter and to strengthen his brothers. And so he knowingly and willingly placed himself at the eye of the storm in loving service of the Church. He wrote:

“Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Church in Ireland, it is with great concern that I write to you as Pastor of the universal Church … For my part, considering the gravity of these offences, and the often inadequate response to them on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities in your country, I have decided to write this Pastoral Letter to express my closeness to you and to propose a path of healing, renewal and reparation.”

Of course this was not a thoroughgoing enactment of structural reform in the Church in Ireland. And no one would deny that this was needed. Such reform would follow and it will probably take many years to bear fruit. However, the Pope’s symbolic, prophetic act definitively shattered any possibility of a cover-up; and it definitively placed child protection at the top of the agenda for the Irish Church. In the end the crisis was simply too big for the Irish ecclesial authorities and they needed to be strengthened by St Peter’s successor. In the long run the Pope’s authority was not exercised at the expense of the Irish episcopate, but rather in order to renew and to strengthen it.

Those who conceive of the principle of collegiality as a strengthening of the local bishops over and against the interventions of the successor of St Peter should think again. The recent history of the Irish Church shows us that the college of bishops does not need to be more fragmented. Rather, it needs to be united – and united with its head, the successor of St Peter.

Reform of the Curia

At this point the proponents of the “principle of collegiality” might reply that the real issue is not so much the relationship between the Pope and the bishops but the tension between individual bishops and the unpastoral bureaucrats of the Roman Curia. We must be wary of simplistic caricatures but this, we think, raises a valid point. The precise administrative procedures that guide the relationship between the Roman Curia and diocesan bishops can and probably should vary depending on circumstances that obtain at that point in the Church’s history. The details of any such reform should be left to those with sufficient experience and the requisite competence for these matters. Pope Francis’s decision to set up an advisory body of eight Cardinals from around the world to look into thesematters is to be welcomed.

However, the notion that one can be loyal to the Pope while loathing and at every opportunity obstructing the work of the Curia is questionable. The Roman Curia is an instrument that serves the successor of St Peter. While the Pope cannot be held responsible for the good manners or personal probity of every individual that works for the Curia, nonetheless Christus Dominus, one of the decrees of the Second Vatican Council, clearly states: “The Roman pontiff makes use of the departments of the Roman Curia which, therefore, perform their duties in his name and with his authority for the good of the churches and in the service of the sacred pastors” (italics added).

The Real Issues

Ultimately, those most vociferously advocating the full implementation of the principle of collegiality are not interested in the finer points of ecclesiology and the Church’s nature. But we would go further and say that neither are they really interested in the balance of power between the Roman Curia and individual diocesan bishops. If the Roman Curia were to abandon the teaching of the Catholic Church on sexual ethics, divorce and remarriage and the reservation of the sacramental priesthood to men only, you could be quite sure that many of the voices now clamouring for the reform of the Curia would then be raised in jubilation, in praise of the same Curia.

The real issue is a crisis of faith. We should have great sympathy with many of those calling for curial reform, because what drives them is their encounter with painful pastoral realities: broken families, broken lives and all the carnage wrought by sin. It is easy to sympathise with those who, faced with these realities, might look somehow to ameliorate or water down the demands of the Gospel. However, to do so is a mistake for two reasons.

First, it misunderstands what the Church has to offer. The Church’s mission is not to offer clever and comforting human accommodations. She must offer the only thing she ever has to offer: Christ. Second, it misconceives the true solution to the situation. Clever and comforting human accommodations cannot undo or protect us from the devastation of sin. Only Christ can redeem us from sin, and we have to be honest and admit that the protection he offers us from sin is not comfortable and safe: it is the protection of the cross, in which we must all have a share.

“The value of the service rendered by the Roman Curia to the universal Church is not predicated upon the merits and talents of those who work therein”

It is quite possibly true that some of those who work in the Roman Curia may be insulated by their position from many of these painful realities, but the value of the service rendered by the Curia to the universal Church is not predicated upon the merits and talents of those who work therein.
The Roman Curia serves the successor of St Peter and his presence strengthens the Church. His voice, in union with the college of bishops, stirs our consciences. It is tempting to shy away from this authoritative teaching especially when what is taught is an unpalatable or challenging truth. And we are capable of all sorts of clever dissimulation to justify our avoidance of the truth. We can invoke this or that respectable sounding theological principle and we are even capable of convincing ourselves that we are acting out of conscience. But we are not: we are shying away from the cross of Christ.

This Year of Faith has been given to us as an opportunity to renew our faith in Christ and in His Church. If we allow ourselves to be distracted by theological sophistries we run the risk of squandering this opportunity. Pope Francis has reminded us in his weekly catechesis that the Holy Spirit “enlivens and guides the Church, and each of us within the Church”. He goes on to exhort us in these words: “Let us renew each day our trust in the working of the Holy Spirit, open our hearts to his inspiration and gifts, and strive to be signs of unity and communion with God in the midst of our human family.”

“The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones”
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Act III, Scene ii)

Introduction

These past few weeks have been momentous in the life of the Church. First we were all taken by surprise at the resignation of a wise and holy pope whom we loved and respected. There followed a period of uncertainty, which in the UK – and especially in Scotland – descended into real spiritual turmoil when the indiscretions of Cardinal O’Brien came to public attention. To use Jesuitical terms this period of desolation has now given way to a period of consolation. We have a new Pope, and that is a source of deep spiritual joy. We hear Peter’s voice anew and he is among us again to “strengthen his brethren”. Coupled with this deep spiritual joy is a more superficial (and no doubt more transitory) source of consolation. For the time being at least Pope Francis seems to be playing quite well inthe secular media. People have warmed to him and they like the little anecdotes about him paying his own hotel bill and getting the bus with his brother cardinals. There is a mood of buoyancy and optimism abroad. However, while we may enjoy this period of optimism for as long as it lasts it should not blind us. The Cardinal O’Brien affair may for a time have passed from the front pages of the newspapers but it has done deep and lasting damage to the Church’s credibility and public standing. And it has tarnished the image of the priesthood. Moreover, this wound to the Church’s credibility has been self-inflicted within the context of a society that is in the grip of despair and desperately needs to hear anew the message of hope that the Church has to offer.

A Society Gripped by Despair

Surely the frenetic busyness and dynamism of our modern culture is diametrically opposed to the sullen inertia that usually characterises depression and despair. How then can we claim that our society is in the grip of despair? Paradoxically this frenzied activity is precisely its manifestation. So much of this activity is a fruit of an interior restlessness. Think how we are bombarded by music and noise and how often now we are distracted by the new social media, and seldom to any good purpose. It has a sort of narcotic effect that for a moment distracts us from or takes the edge off the interior restlessness of our hearts. Moreover, our society is marked by an excessive curiosity. One thinks of the cult of celebrity. It is no longer sufficient for an actor, entertainer or athlete to dotheir job well. The tabloids feed us with every juicy detail of their private lives and relationships. Are the drunken antics of some B-list pop star in a night club really newsworthy? But the very fact they are printed and read speaks of a distorted and twisted curiosity that is rampant in our culture.

The controversy generated around the Leveson Inquiry bears witness to a curiosity into the lives of others that is too invasive. Perhaps a more obvious example is the prevalence of pornography. With pornography, images of what we intuitively recognise to be a private and intimate act are exposed to the gaze of curious voyeurs. Yet our culture is saturated with pornography. Finally, our culture is characterised by an instability of purpose in its members. We are forever travelling here or there to find ourselves. We pass from one fleeting experience to the next, always chasing something yet more vivid. We see the tragic absence of any kind of stable purpose played out in the lives of so many families where spouses have either never made a commitment to each other or have not held firmto it. These three characteristics of our culture – interior restlessness, excessive curiosity and instability of purpose – are described in classical moral theology as the offspring of acedia.

Acedia is sometimes translated as sloth. But it doesn’t mean laziness so much as a sort of spiritual apathy. This spiritual apathy is the fruit of a sadness with oneself and with the world. It is an unwillingness to aspire to greatness. Once one has settled upon one’s own mediocrity and despaired of doing or being anything great, one sets one’s heart on nothing more than distraction.

Intellectual Roots of Acedia

The roots of this spiritual sadness that has now thoroughly invaded the soul of modern man are to be found in a misunderstanding of what science has revealed to us about the modern world. The spectacular advances of modern science have unfortunately been appropriated by many of our culture’s leading intellectuals to impose an ideology of materialism within our culture. Materialism is not the necessary conclusion derived from the scientific method. It has, however, been presented as such. The popular perception is that science has rendered the existence of God at best superfluous and has destroyed any illusion about mankind being in any way special. God is not in his heaven; the earth is no longer at the centre of the universe; and man is nothing more than an overdeveloped primate. Thisnow prevailing world view has of course crushed the better spiritual aspirations of many in our culture and thereby given rise to a real sadness of soul in many of our contemporaries. The frenetic activity and noise that characterise western culture are a distraction because if we were really to accept the philosophical presuppositions of our culture then we could not help but conclude with Betrand Russell’s description of our plight. “There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendour, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment then nothing.” It would not do to dwell on dark thoughts like these, so we distract ourselves.

Unfortunately, we Catholics are not entirely blameless in this regard. The presentation of theology, that is the way in which the Church’s teachings have been integrated with secular sciences, has not kept up with the discoveries of modern science. The bringing together of what God has told us in Revelation about Himself, and about who we human beings are, with the knowledge derived from the scientific investigation of the material world is what we would term a synthesis of knowledge. The Church has tended to and even now still does rely upon a synthesis that was worked out in the Middle Ages principally by the great saint and scholar St Thomas Aquinas. Hence we would talk of the Thomistic synthesis. More than half a millennium has passed since this synthesis was elaborated. During thisperiod our knowledge of the natural sciences has progressed and there are now significant tensions between the Thomistic synthesis and what the scientific method has revealed about our world. To cite just one example, it is difficult to see how this synthesis, relying as it does upon a basically Aristotelian concept of nature or form as a static unchanging reality, can accommodate the discoveries of modern science.

For St Thomas, and for Aristotle before him, that which makes an individual a particular type of thing is its form, which it shares with every other individual in the same class of thing. Thus, in St Thomas’ system we are able to recognise this and that individual as both being horses because they both share in the form of “horseness”. Hence there is a constant reality, the form of horseness that relates different individuals. This would seem to function well enough for individuals that are alive at the same time, but what about individuals that live in time periods far apart? The theory of evolution presupposes that those individuals that we now call horses are part of a continuum of development that changes over time. If the nature of horseness is a static constant, as it seems to befor St Thomas and Aristotle, the question arises: can this philosophy really give an adequate account of the continuum of development in life forms that lies at the heart of the theory of evolution? And if it cannot, how can this philosophy mediate the Catholic faith to a culture now thoroughly imbued with a scientific world view?
In the Faith movement we would argue that the philosophical framework that underpins the Thomistic synthesis must be renewed. The teachings of Christ that have been hung upon this framework and that have found in it a serviceable explanatory tool cannot in themselves change. But we are now at the stage where we need to elaborate a new framework, a new synthesis that will have the explanatory capacity to integrate the findings of modern science with the content of our Catholic faith.

By no means is this to dismiss the seminal contribution of St Thomas Aquinas to Catholic theology. The synthesis that he elaborated has served the Church admirably. Moreover, many of the basic presuppositions of his approach to reality have an enduring validity. But were St Thomas Aquinas alive today he would not be teaching by rote from a textbook first published in the 13th century. Just as then he sought to integrate the rediscovered philosophy of Aristotle into a new synthesis with the Catholic faith so too today he would be striving to integrate the findings of modern science with the perennial truths of the Catholic faith.

In the absence of a synthesis that is capable of reconciling the findings of modern science with the Catholic faith, our culture has lost sight of the dignity of human life and the greatness of our vocation. In one of the prayers of the Mass the priest says: “May we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” This is the great goal for which we human beings have been called into existence. It is the loss of this vision which is the occasion of the spiritual sadness that infects our culture. It is the loss of this vision that has made us become so shallow and dissipated.

Lack of Vision Within the Church

We should not imagine that the loss of this vision of the greatness of the human vocation is confined to those outside the Church. Many inside the Church have lost sight of it too, and it has had a catastrophic effect in our seminaries, our convents, our monasteries, our parishes and our families. It is not our purpose here to comment upon the faults and failings of any individual. That is a matter for their own (and our own!) consciences. However, in recent years the scandals in the Church have become so frequent and so widespread that they seem to point the discerning observer beyond the moral failings of isolated individuals. The culture of moral laxity that has invaded the Church and that has born its fruits in the lives of particular people is at heart not a moral crisis but anintellectual crisis. When the philosophical synthesis that was used as the vehicle to expound the teachings of the Church gave way it seemed to throw into question many of the certainties of our faith. It appeared as if we could no longer know our faith with certainty. And from this point the logic is clear. If you can’t know the faith with your head, then you can’t love the faith with your heart. And if you don’t love the faith with your heart you certainly won’t live the faith in your life.

Outside of the Church

When acedia reaches maturity its final fruit is despair. Josef Pieper distinguishes this creeping sensation of spiritual sadness from despair proper. Despair is finally an intellectual decision, a fixed purpose, that leads to an obstinate refusal of God and of the destiny he offers to us. Counter-intuitively this obstinacy in despair is actually a manifestation of pride. Individuals within the Church, often high-ranking, have been and are, and no doubt in the future will be again, at fault. Nonetheless it is this pride that explains something of the vehemence of the secular world’s reaction against the Church. It is one thing for Catholics to be dismayed at Church scandals, but why should the secular world that has never given any credence whatsoever to the Church take such fierce delightin the destruction of the Church’s credibility? The mere presence of the Church, which for all the faults of her members remains the abiding presence of Christ in the world, reminds the secular world of something it would rather forget. The presence of the Church reminds us of the greatness of our vocation as human beings.

The great tragedy is that the Church, which should be the bearer of hope to a fallen world, has been assailed by scandals at precisely that moment when our culture needs to be inspired by hope. What then must our response to these scandals be, both for the sake of the Church and for the sake of those outside the Church?
Hope

In this context our response must be a deepening and renewal of the virtue of hope in our lives. Hope is the virtue that is proper to the human condition in this life. Everything in this life is passing. We cannot hold on to anything definitively in this life. Hope is that virtue by which we strive after something great, recognising that we cannot yet lay our hands definitively upon the prize. In this life we are called to something great. We are called to overcome the limitations of our sinfulness and selfishness and to share the divine life of Christ. But we cannot yet grasp fully and with unfailing security the reality of the divine life to which we are called – in this life we must recognise that we are still marked by the effects of sins, that we still experience weakness andfrailty. Moreover we encounter Christ in a veiled way in this life. Christ comes to us hidden in sacraments and mediated to us at the hands of sometimes unworthy ministers. Only at the end of this earthly pilgrimage do we hope to grasp Christ fully and finally. Until then, hope requires us to be at once daring and humble.

We need to be daring because we must continue to aspire to the greatness to which Christ calls us. We cannot settle for safe mediocrity. St Augustine teaches us in his Confessions that we were made for God, not for mediocrity, and so it is incumbent upon us to be daring and to aspire unto God. The psalmist cries out: “Let us see your face, O Lord.” And it is this for which we must dare to hope.

At the same time we must remain humble. We must recognise who we are and we must take responsibility for that. We must remember that we are sinners in need of God’s mercy. This is not some sort of masochistic exercise in self-hatred. It is rather a sober estimation of our true predicament. Even when we seem to be making great strides in holiness if we slip into presumptuous pride it is possible for us to fall from grace. It is by no means a foregone conclusion that we will get to heaven. And we need to implore God’s mercy again, remembering the words of the psalmist: “A humbled contrite heart you will not spurn, O Lord.”

True hope avoids the extremes of despair and presumption, both of which actually are forms of pride. But for it to do so, the poles between which hope oscillates in this life are humility and daring. And we must cultivate both of them.

Motives for Hope

Ultimately, true Christian hope is not in the things of this world. True Christian hope is to hope in Christ. We do not hope that the circumstances of our lives will turn out favourably for our comfort; rather we hope that through the trials and tribulations of this life God’s salvific will for us will be worked out. Yet God knows all too well our frailty and is too generous to leave us entirely without consolation, to leave us entirely without motives for hope.

We have noted the intellectual roots of the crisis that at present afflicts the Church. In all humility we believe that this is the right diagnosis of the problem. That in itself provides grounds for hope because if we understand the root causes of the problem we can get to the heart of the matter rather than dissipating our energies in addressing only the symptoms. The past half century or more has been a period of both confusion and daring innovation in the world of academic theology, with various great thinkers trying to work out new theological systems. Some of these innovations have proved fruitful. Others in the long-term, though perhaps sincerely meant, have proved destructive of the faith. However, this state of affairs bears witness to an undeniable fact. Those in the Church whoare really thinking and trying to grapple with what it means to be a Catholic in the 21st century are increasingly beginning to see the need for a new synthesis.

“ In the Faith movement we are trying to contribute to this project. We humbly believe that we are just now beginning to see the tantalising beginnings of such a renewed vision of the Catholic faith. This vision is fully orthodox. It vindicates both the spiritual and material nature of man. It does not collapse the distinction between grace and nature. And it places Christ at the very centre of the universe: Christ is the master-key to the meaning of the universe. But it also integrates the Catholic faith with modern science. It shows how modern physics points us towards a creator. It provides a framework that enables us to give an account of both the Big Bang and evolution as integral parts of God’s one providential plan for his creation.

Those of us lucky enough to be involved with Faith youth conferences and Faith Forums have first-hand experience of how this vision can inspire and reach out even to young people immersed in our secular culture. It has the capacity to inspire us with great hope because it gives us a renewed vision of the greatness of our vocation. The whole of the universe is made for the Incarnation when God steps into his own creation. We human beings, as spiritual, find our fulfilment in God but, as material beings, we desire to encounter him aterially. We are patterned upon and made for the Incarnation. Hence we have good reason to be very daring.

This approach to the Catholic faith can provide the intellectual basis of a renewal of Catholic theology and catechesis. And the more people know their faith the more they will see the beauty of their faith and therefore love their faith. The more people know their faith the more they will realise that this Catholic faith is a firm foundation upon which they can build their lives. This renewed vision of Catholicism is unashamedly intellectual, but it is not an exercise in navel-gazing academia. It has the capacity to inspire a renewal in the life of the Church. And in so far as this vision renews the Church it will make the Church an ever more credible witness to Christ. This vision is then a motive for hope, not just for the Church but for the whole
of our society.

These are daring claims and they need to be balanced with humility. This project of a renewed vision of Catholicism that integrates the faith with modern science is only in its infancy. It is not yet a fully developed theological system. If we were to characterise it as it stands now it would be a useful catechetical tool. Much painstaking work remains to be done to elaborate this system. Doubtless this will take time, and errors may well be made along the way. And even once this system is fully elaborated it will need then to be communicated. This itself will be an intellectual endeavour requiring a new set of skills from those involved. We must be humble and recognise that much remains to be done. Nonetheless even now, in the infancy of this project, we should be inspired with greathope.

Our Lady

Hope must be our response. And we have good grounds for this hope. However, we must recognise that this project of elaborating a theological vision, if it is to be truly Catholic, must be nurtured and discerned in prayer. In this month of May we should look to Our Lady as the model of Christian hope. We see that Mary’s life is marked by her humility and her daring. In her Magnificat she says God has looked on “his servant in her lowliness”. And by these words we see Mary’s great humility. Yet in the very next line of this great outpouring of Mary’s soul we see that Mary is also daring and conscious of the greatness of her vocation: “Henceforth all ages will call me blessed.” In that most beautiful of marian prayers, the Salve Regina, we call Mary Spes nostra, Our Hope. We should entrustthe infancy of this project, a time of great hope, to the prayers of Mary our mother.

The word synthesis implies something more than harmonious co-existence. Our regular readers would not be flabbergasted to learn that we aim for that something more when we write about science and religion. We do that because we believe in what John Paul II called the "profound and indissoluble unity between the knowledge of reason and the knowledge of faith" {Fides et Ratio, 16).

Our editorial argues, among other things, that the object of modern science is not a radically delimited subset of the physical realm, and thus that scientific methodology, properly understood, is just a part of that exercise of human reason which is ultimately in profound synthetic harmony with faith. If one attempts to reduce science to something that, for instance, has no effect upon metaphysics you undermine the dynamic interweaving of the personal actions of faith and reason, which comprise the personal relationship with God in Christ.

This thoroughgoing approach to faith and reason means that, as ever, we publish pieces that reveal what we think are aspects of the effect upon our church and society of the 20th century collapse of an agreed and coherent vision of the faith to hand on to our seminarians and our people.

Fiorella Nash shows how the ungrounded slogans of the anti-life mentality can impact upon the harrowing reality of mothers dying in childbirth. Cormac Burke shows how it is surprising that we, as a culture and even in the Church, need to be reminded of the purposes of marriage concerning procreation and mutual growth in generosity. William Oddie shows how the abuse crisis reveals a Church shamefully embroiled in a particularly decadent strand of our society, and so points to our own need of purification and penance.

Our philosophical discussion with Fr McDermott on whether the universe is ultimately rational shows a mutual, and we hope heartening, search for synthesis. Yet it also shows some of the divergent metaphysical approaches which characterise modern Catholic thought and, in as much as they put a brake upon coherent vision, also slow up the new evangelisation to which we are called. It is a further sign that we must wait upon the Lord with patience and penance.

For as John Paul II expressed it: "This unity of truth, natural and revealed, is embodied in a living and personal way in Christ... He is the eternal Word in whom all things were created, and he is the incarnate Word who in his entire person reveals the Father" [Fides et Ratio, 34].

Edmund Adamus has been the director for marriage and family life in Westminster diocese since March 2012 and was its director for pastoral affairs from 2003. His work covers marriage preparation, marriage support and enrichment, and help for couples in difficulty. He also promotes the doctrine of parents as the primary educator of their children.

On 13 May 2004, in an address to the Italian Senate entitled “Europe: Its Spiritual Foundations of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (who one year later would be Pope Benedict XVI) proclaimed these words, indicating the contemporary challenge facing the family:

Believing Christians should look upon themselves as a creative minority and help Europe espouse once again the best of its heritage, thereby being at the service of the whole of humanity.

The words “creative minority” might well describe the Christian family: a household of Christocentric faith with an explicit matrimonial and sacramental identity.

Christian social teaching speaks of the option for the poor. But if our social fabric is to retain anything of a civilised identity, then we must proclaim a radical option with the family in order to “safeguard … its task of being the primary place of humanisation”.¹ I say option with the family because the family is the “chief subject” (not object) “of social rights and obligations”.²

The phrase “civilisation of love”, which describes the domestic church, that is, the family, means that in order to be a citizen of such a civilisation, one has to be – in every sense of the word – civil.

''Thus fidelity, the bonds and ties of marriage and home, the unconditional love of parents for their children, the value we attach to small, domestic things – all these become the building blocks of a society that coheres.''

In transmitting values, conscientious parents striving to love their children authentically, know how important it is to inculcate virtues. Pope Paul VI invites us to ponder what it means to communicate in truth and freedom in his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, on the subject of the Church. It describes four qualities essential to authentic dialogue, which when applied to the family (particularly to the role of parents) make it more evident why John Paul II compared their role to the ministry of priests.³

Four Qualities of Authentic Dialogue

The first quality necessary for genuine dialogue is clarity.

“Clarity [says Pope Paul] demands that what is said should be intelligible. We can think of it as a kind of thought transfusion  … all of us who feel the spur of the apostolate should examine closely the kind of speech we use. Is it easy to understand? Can it be grasped by ordinary people? Is it current idiom?” (Ecclesiam Suam n81)⁴

Parents often have to exercise this quality in communicating with their children. A careful choice of words, as well the appropriate facial expression or physical gesture, in all the stages of a child’s development, deepens self-awareness. The apostolate of dialogue takes place par excellence in the family and enlivens its sense of mission, which for parents is the divine mandate to carry out the ministry of love, the “love that casts out fear” (1 Cor 13:7).⁵

The second quality of authentic dialogue is meekness. This is the virtue required to combat anger or frustration in the home. As the encyclical puts it:

It would indeed be a disgrace if our dialogue were marked by arrogance, the use of barbed words or offensive bitterness. What gives it its authority is the fact that it affirms the truth, […] avoids peremptory language, [and] makes no demands. It is peaceful, has no use for extreme methods, is patient under contradiction and inclines towards generosity. (Ecclesiam Suam n81)

Here, we must not confuse meekness with weakness.⁶ The father of the family must be always strive to be a gentle-man. The mother must display a true Marian spirit towards her children, “treasuring all these things in her heart”, but she must never allow caution to be a prelude to inaction. To be meek, therefore, is not to be weak. To be meek is to foster a sexual complementarity in which the masculine virility of the father and the feminine tenacity of the mother both work to preserve the peace and harmony of the home.

The third mark of true dialogue is confidence, which can only be sustained through prayer in the home.⁷

Confidence is also necessary; … not only in the power of one’s own words, but also in the good will of both parties to the dialogue. Hence dialogue promotes intimacy and friendship on both sides. It unites them in a mutual adherence to the Good, and thus excludes all self-seeking. (Ecclesiam Suam n81)

The more the family becomes familiar with gathering in prayer, where sacred words are uttered, the more communication within it will bring “peace to … homes”.⁸

The final quality required for authentic dialogue is prudence:

the prudence of a teacher who is most careful to make allowances for the psychological and moral circumstances of his hearer [Mt 6:7], particularly if he is a child, unprepared, suspicious or hostile … [who] is always at pains to learn the sensitivities of his audience, and … [who] adapts himself … to the susceptibilities and the degree of intelligence of his hearers. (Ecclesiam Suam n81)

This is particularly important for the moral formation of adolescents, who with the exuberance of youth display a natural thirst and energy for social justice. Their formation presents an urgent challenge, as the youth of today are exposed to a language of “rights” without responsibilities, especially with regard to the unborn (whom Pope Benedict described as being among the “poorest of the poor”)⁹ and to freedom of sexual expression.¹⁰

Fundamentally, it is a question of the way in which truth is nurtured in the family by the parents. When parents exercise their “unrenounceable authority”¹¹ as a service to the well-being of their children, the children’s gifts of love, respect and obedience become their specific contribution to the building up of both Church and society.¹²

The family is a microcosm of the nation, so parents need to learn the art of statecraft. Fathers especially can take as their model the patron of statesmen, St Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England in the 16th century, who was once described in The Sunday Times newspaper as “the most saintly of humanists, and the most human of saints”.¹³

He was a husband and father who personified and embodied with joy the deepest sense of duty, to encourage his family and others to flourish as human beings. Though renowned for his wit, he never lost sight of the seriousness of his role or lacked paternal vigilance in exercising it.

St Thomas More embodies and personifies truth serving freedom precisely because his ability to excel as a lawyer and statesman was based upon his fidelity as a husband and father. Furthermore, it was his authentically English identity which added unique value to his and his country’s contribution to humanising culture and civilisation. But what is this “Englishness”?

England’s Role in the Economy of Salvation

There is a long-established maxim in this country that “an Englishman’s home is his castle”. It was established as common law by the lawyer and politician Sir Edward Coke (pronounced Cook) in The Institutes of the Laws of England, published in 1628:

For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man’s home is his safest refuge].

This enshrined in law the popular belief expressed in print by several authors in the late 16th century. It was even argued that outlawed English Catholics still enjoyed the protection of this maxim, at least culturally if not always technically. Henri Estienne wrote in 1581 in The Stage of Popish Toyes: conteining both tragicall and comicall partes:

The English papists owe it to the Queen that “your house is your Castle”

What was meant by “castle” was defined in 1763 by the British Prime Minister William Pitt, also known as Pitt the Elder, who said:

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter.

The principle was also imported into the United States, where Henry W Grady, a journalist and writer on the US Constitution, proclaimed:

Exalt the citizen. As the State is the unit of government he is the unit of the State. Teach him that his home is his castle, and his sovereignty rests beneath his hat.¹⁴

From time immemorial, the English have had a passion for the sovereignty of hearth and home. They have the widest variety of chimneys in the world as well as more garden sheds than anywhere else.¹⁵

I am convinced that one of the reasons the English have such an innate sense of natural justice about the authority they feel ordained to exercise within their own four walls is that long before England became a political reality, she existed as a spiritual realm. At the time of the arrival of St Augustine (the Apostle to the English) in AD597, a one-nation entity did not exist. Augustine and his monks first worked in the kingdom of Kent under the patronage of King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha (later Saints Ethelbert and Bertha). It was not until long after the synods of Whitby and Hertford (AD664 and AD672 respectively), which made England a united spiritual realm, that the country began to cohere into one political reality – a process only completed in the 10th century, under the descendants of King Alfred the Great.

During his visit in 1982, Blessed Pope John Paul II referred to Great Britain as having an “exalted destiny in justice and in peace”, and I believe we have clung to this sense from our earliest times. We British like to pride ourselves on being exemplars of fairness, supporting the underdog and coming to the defence of those who are treated unjustly, whether at home or abroad.

I believe, along with others, that one of the sources of that sense of liberty is and has been our cultural and spiritual association with the Blessed Virgin. England has the unique title “Dowry of Mary”. In the 14th century King Richard II dedicated the kingdom to Our Lady and used the title with papal approval.¹⁶ The word dowry, from the Latin “dos”, means gift; and a dowry is a gift that traditionally formed the basis of material security for marriage. So in a sense England, as given or “gifted” to the Mother of God, has a special role to play, both as a nation and as a culture, in sustaining the matrimonial family. But what the king decided to do formally and solemnly in the 14th century was inspired by sentiments that already ran deep in the national psyche and consciousness of the English people.

Richeldis de Faverches was a Saxon noblewoman who lived in the small village of Walsingham, in the east of the England. She had a deep faith in God and devotion to Mary and was renowned for her good works. In 1061 she was rewarded by a vision in which she was shown the house in Nazareth where the Archangel Gabriel had greeted the Blessed Virgin. Mary asked Richeldis to build a replica of that house in Walsingham. This is how Walsingham became known as England’s Nazareth. The shrine rapidly became one of the most popular in Europe and later helped to develop and deepen the idea of England as the Dowry of Mary.

But it wasn’t just the intense devotion of the English to our Lady that characterised the English sense of national identity. It was also the fact that the replica Holy House of Nazareth depicted for them their profound and long-held appreciation for the homestead as the sanctuary of family rights and duties founded on sacramental matrimony. Walsingham, in a sense, crowned in the physical context what the English had for centuries – perhaps sub-consciously – understood to be the source and summit of all liberty and justice, the marital and family home. In 597 AD, the evangelisation of Britain under Pope St Gregory the Great was able to happen precisely because that faithful married couple St Ethelbert and St Bertha, King and Queen of Kent, by their material – and more importantly their moral – power, enabled it to happen. In other words it was the witness of the primary agents of the evangelisation of culture, a husband and wife, that made the work of St Augustine and his monks possible.

We shouldn’t be surprised at this. In 1992 the Institute of Economic Affairs published a book on the crisis of the family entitled Families without Fatherhood. Its authors, Norman Dennis and George Erdos (neither of them Catholic) quoted The Ecclesiastical History of England by the Venerable Bede to remind readers of an earlier time when society had been in an equally parlous state. When St Augustine arrived in England, he wrote to Pope Gregory to describe the aggression, lawlessness and promiscuity, the broken families and the neglect of children, which his monks had encountered there. All these things, he felt, made his work futile.

The Pope told him to concentrate on teaching the Anglo-Saxons about marriage and its many benefits. Augustine and his missionaries did so – and, according to Bede, England recovered. So we see that a renaissance of marriage and family life based on natural law has taken place once already in Britain, serving the good of society and upholding the absolute sacredness of human life from the moment of conception to natural death. Despite all the odds, it can be achieved again with God’s help.

Such a renaissance emphasises that in marriage the spiritual precedes the material and that the vows are intended to be made in the heart before the two are united in one flesh. The reason the English took to their Marian devotion with such intensity and fervour is that, in their cherishing of marriage from the sixth century onwards, they could instinctively perceive how Mary was the exemplar (through the power of her own assent to God) and the national emblem of the way in which the spiritual precedes the physical. This is especially true of a vow – in particular the marriage vow, which gives rise to the physical establishment of the home as the microcosm of society, shaping a universal commonwealth.

The fact that England had this Holy House, that it was Mary’s land, that it honoured marriage as Pope St Gregory wished, led over centuries to that long continuity of our institutions, in which Christian values became writ large in national life. And just as out of the small house of Nazareth came a child who grew into a man who was the salvation of the world, so out of this domesticity, grounded in the pre-eminence of the values of the spirit, came the fidelity to a sense of covenant with God in justice and freedom. It is the seed of family life inspired by the Gospel of Life within the cell of the home, symbolically venerated in Walsingham, which multiplied through generations to make a Christian society; and strong cultural traces of that society remain in British life even today. There is no need for me to enunciate the many and diverse risks facing the family. The message of the 2008 World Day of Peace puts it succinctly:

Consequently, whoever, even unknowingly, circumvents the institution of the family undermines peace in the entire community, national and international, since he weakens what is in effect the primary agency of peace.

Thus fidelity, the bonds and ties of marriage and home, the unconditional love of parents for their children, the value we attach to small, domestic things – all these become the building blocks of a society that coheres. The 19th-century Irish poet Thomas Moore wrote that “the ordinary acts we practise every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest”. If the family really is the domestic church and parents the primary educators and protectors of their children, then we must be more creative in promoting and supporting them as the first and best of teachers in the home, the school of human virtues.

Against the backdrop of what was once a strong national conviction, and which even today is not completely obscured – namely, the intrinsic link between the free choice of the heart in marriage and the collective appreciation of Our Lady’s consent to become God’s mother – is the whole idea of voting. The word vote, which comes from the same root as vow or votive (as in votive candle), expresses both liberty and the protection of liberty, for a vow always emphasises and underpins the primacy of spiritual values in the interior world of choice, love and truth.

This deep sense of natural justice afforded by the state for the home is echoed by Pope Benedict’s analysis of John of Salisbury (c1120–1180), an English author, educationalist, diplomat and secretary to St Thomas Becket, the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury. In a thesis entitled Policraticus (the Man of Government) John of Salisbury claimed that natural law is characterised by “equity”, that is, the attribution to each person of his own rights. From this conviction stem precepts that are legitimate for all peoples, and in no way can they be abrogated. In his general audience of 16 December 2009, Benedict XVI said:

The theme of the relationship between natural law and a positive juridical order, mediated by equity, is still of great importance today. In our time, in fact, especially in some countries, we are witnessing a disturbing divergence between reason, whose task is to discover the ethical values linked to the dignity of the human person, and freedom, whose responsibility is to accept and promote them.

Perhaps John of Salisbury would remind us today that the only laws in conformity with equity are those that protect the sacredness of human life and reject the licitness of abortion, euthanasia and bold genetic experimentation, those laws that respect the dignity of marriage between a man and a woman, that are inspired by a correct secularism of the State, a secularism that always entails the safeguard of religious freedom and that pursues subsidiarity and solidarity at both the national and the international level. If this were not so, what John of Salisbury terms the “tyranny of princes”, or as we would say “the dictatorship of relativism”, would end by coming to power: a relativism “which does not recognise anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires” .

Given the ethic espoused in Policraticus, we can see how England moved towards and beyond the formulation and application of the Magna Carta in 1215. That great charter of the liberties of England was once described as “the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot”.
The 800th anniversary of Magna Carta will occur in 2015. It presents a wonderful opportunity to rediscover and revive the “concealed heart of the English identity”,¹⁷ namely, the home as the seedbed of virtues and the sanctuary of life. The modern European family may have chosen to ignore its Christian roots, but Benedict XVI is correct when he says that “the roots remain alive”.¹⁸
If we do not reclaim justice for the family then the stark warning of Blessed John Paul II, the pope of the family, in Familiaris Consortio speaks for itself:

Families will be the first victims of the evils that they have done no more than note with indifference.

Keith Riler is the pen name of a financial analyst who has written for this magazine, First Things, the daily internet publication The American Thinker, LifeNews and Texas Right to Life. In this thought-provoking article he stresses the personal nature of evangelisation in our relativistic culture.

In paragraph two of the Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei, Pope Benedict writes that there is “a profound crisis of faith that has affected many people”.

What has this to do with Me?

Just because my neighbour doesn’t grasp truth, love and the beauty of being a joyful son of God, what’s it to me? A libertarian would reply: “Relax, these are victimless crimes and it’s none of your business.” On the other hand, if your children were in spiritual crisis, you undoubtedly would do everything possible to return them to virtue, faith and happiness. So, what’s the right answer?

A modern saint advises:[1] “The holiness to which we must aspire consists in identifying our will with Christ’s. ‘He who does the will of my father … he shall enter.’” And we know that the will of the Father is our loving communion with Him.

Last November Pope Benedict explained why we should bother with our neighbours: “The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.” Bothering with our neighbour is the charitable thing to do because it brings him that for which he searches.

The Pope also looked at it from our perspective. In “placing myself at the other’s service, even to the point of self-denial,” is “a dynamism that refers beyond the self; it is the experience of a good that leads to being drawn out and finding oneself before the mystery that encompasses the whole of existence.” We know Jesus/God is the “mystery that encompasses the whole of existence” and if we are to have him, we must place ourselves at the service of the other.

Most importantly, the Word of God guides us. From Matthew 28: “Jesus came and said to them: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you….”

With “all nations” Jesus is very clear. There’s no exempting the West. Nor is “later” a viable response. Jesus used the present-tense action words “Go” and “Make.” These are imperatives.

So the simple answer to “What has this to do with me?” is “everything” because Jesus said so; because there is no Christianity without the cross; and, because, from Luke 14, “whoever does not take up his cross… cannot be my disciple.”

The Catechism (point 851) states simply: “God wills the salvation of everyone through the knowledge of the truth.” And again Pope Benedict: “On this pilgrimage, let us feel like brothers and sisters of all men, travelling companions even of those who do not believe, of those who are seeking, of those who are sincerely wondering about the dynamism of their own aspiration for the true and the good.” This brings me to cafeteria Catholics.
Cafeteria Catholics

The clarity of Jesus’ “Go and Make” command and an awareness of my own weak apostolate conspire to suggest that I am a cafeteria Catholic, picking and choosing what suits me by neither “going” nor “making” disciples consistently. But today I can begin again with a renewed charitable responsibility for others. And where better to start than with my neighbours in the pew. You may be surprised how much fruit that pew can yield.

Consider two examples: Catholic belief about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and, in an American context, Catholic views about the Obama Adminstration’s Health and Human Services edict, which demands that sterilisation, abortifacients and contraception be included in virtually all health plans, even those provided by Catholic employers.

A National Catholic Reporter survey found that 37 per cent of American Catholics don’t believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

And about the HHS contraception edict, Public Discourse recently commented:

“If the mandate remains in effect, it could cause a schism or a break in the American Catholic Church. It does not take too much imagination to see how this could happen. It is not a secret that many American Catholics disagree with the Church’s teaching on the immorality of contraception… it is hard not to suspect that a few Catholic institutions, perhaps administered by Catholics who privately reject the Church’s teaching on contraception, would simply choose to abide by the mandate … would put themselves in open rebellion…”

This comment suggests that many Catholics, both church-going and not, do not fully understand that marriage is both unitive and procreative; that marriage is a calling, chastity a virtue and its opposite a sin.

If The National Catholic Reporter and Public Discourse are correct, our neighbours in faith are shortchanging themselves, distanced from the Body of Christ and perilously endangering their eternal outcomes.

The Autonomy Project

This à la carte rejection of core tenets is just a failure to see one’s self as a true son or daughter of God. It is the widespread and growing choice by many of the wayward path of the prodigal son (the swine husks part, not the returning part). By it we try to make ourselves gods, choosing the apple and rejecting God in what Cardinal Pell calls the modern autonomy project.

As Rodney Kissinger SJ points out in his meditation on the Trinity, there is no rugged individualism in the Trinity: three persons, one divine nature. If God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit aren’t autonomous, where do we get the idea we should be?

Servais Pincknaers explained it well in his book The Sources of Christian Ethics. He distinguished disordered freedom, or freedom of indifference, from ordered freedom, or freedom for excellence. Freedom of indifference is a freedom identified with the will, with the power of self-determination – there’s no longer an attraction toward the good, exercised in love and desire. On the other hand, Pincknaers described freedom for excellence as a rediscovery of real freedom, one within the pre-existing moral order. Consider this example from the book:

“Think about the study of music. We know how music is taught – piano, for instance. For a child with a musical predisposition, there will be lessons, a teacher who will explain the rules of the art and develop talent by dint of regular exercises. In the beginning, the child, despite a desire to learn, will often feel that the lessons and musical exercises are a constraint imposed on the freedom and attractions of the moment."

“With effort and perseverance, the child soon makes notable progress and will come to play with accuracy and good rhythm, and with a certain ease – even the more difficult pieces. The child may become an artist, capable of executing with mastery whatever may be suggested, playing with precision and originality, delighting all who hear. Further, this artist will compose new works, whose quality will manifest the full flowering of talent and musical personality.

“Here we see a new kind of freedom. Anyone is free to bang out notes haphazardly on the piano, as the fancy strikes him. But this is a rudimentary, savage sort of freedom, with an incapacity to play even the simplest pieces. The person who possesses the art of playing the piano has acquired a new freedom based on natural dispositions and a talent developed by regular, progressive exercises. This new kind of freedom is subject to the constraint of rules, of course, but is far more real and is supported by the rules as it develops. We call this freedom for excellence.”

According to Pincknaers, whereas freedom of indifference opposes virtues and natural inclinations, freedom for excellence presupposes them, takes root in and draws strength from them through a sense of the true and good, uprightness and love, a desire for knowledge and happiness. The more we develop our virtues, the freer we become. It is neither indifference nor autonomy. It is filialism, being a good son or daughter by free choice, and by which in Pincknaer’s words we will “delight all who hear.”

Sodom, Gomorrah and the Apostolic Buffet

CS Lewis cautioned that everyday we walk on the “razor edge between these two incredible possibilities: To appear at last before the face of God and hear the appalling words: ‘I never knew you. Depart from me.’ To be left absolutely outside – repelled, exiled, estranged and unspeakably ignored; or, we can be called in, welcomed, received and acknowledged with ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’”[2]

Through the seductive but incredibly empty choice of autonomy, many are choosing to be left absolutely outside, to eventually hear: “I never knew you. Depart from me.” We are in peril.

In secularism these many find the key to their desire for radical autonomy. This immodest desire was reawakened when the Enlightenment took an arrogant wrong turn, when we moderns began to confuse the knowledge of how things work with from whom they came, when we began to mistake discovery for creation and when we began to reject all but what we could measure and thus pretend to own. We are fallen and pride has led us to take credit for things we didn’t do. When that happens, gratitude disappears.
And this is old stuff. Recall the serpent’s promise: “You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

So we must turn, a person at a time, from “the worship of our own creation, where we see the work of our human hands as projections of our own ultimate greatness, and return to worship the God who has made us.”3
Pope Benedict’s recent resignation is so instructive here. We become attached and put ourselves at the centre of things. We derive personalities and meaning from our roles as banker, lawyer, engineer, executive, or whatever. I for one would suffer some crisis of worth without my profession and this is a sure sign of my failure of detachment and trust. The Pope’s decision on the other hand, to shed his role as the Vicar of Christ because of concern over his ability to execute the mission, is stunning and awe-inspiring in its other-oriented, humble, self-denying, trust in God’s will, in his being sent and in the mission being bigger than the emissary.
Contrary to Pope Benedict’s witness, secularism disdains limits and aggressively attacks virtue, truth, humility and anything other than self as centre. The fuel for this attack is provided by relativism, the weak foundation on which secularism is built. Relativism replaces a loving dialogue with the transcendent other with a self-obsessed monologue.

Again, this is nothing new. Pilate cynically asked: “What is truth?” In Jean Jacques Rousseau’s own words, secularists seek to “force us to be free” – free in particular from truth. Secularists aim to convert the city of man from a virtue-based community to a wilderness of wildly autonomous selves, and any soul can be confused by and get swept up in its false promises. |

This is a very aggressive and proactive effort. Consider the gay marriage movement. In 2008, California already had a civil union law in place that granted full rights to gay couples, including hospital visitations, health care coverage, rights to make medical decisions, rights to inherit without a will, rights to use state step-parent adoption procedures, rights to use sick leave

to care for a domestic partner and rights to be appointed as administrator of an estate. Nonetheless, activists pushed for a redefinition of marriage.

The autonomy project is engaged in forceful thought-policing in its war on objective truth and on the religion that most defends that truth. As Archbishop Fisichella says in his book The New Evangelisation:

“[T]he process of secularism has engendered an explosion of claims of individual liberty … in which the human being has come to occupy the central ground. … God becomes a useless hypothesis and a competitor not only to be avoided, but to be eliminated. This radical change has taken place in a relatively easy fashion, the accomplices being often a weak theology and an approach to religion founded mostly upon sentiment….” [4]

And I propose that these accomplices do not just reside in atheism or “I’m spiritual but not religious” palaver, but in a weak, sentimental theology held by many of those who regularly attend Sunday Mass and with whom you may be friends. As a result of this process and its easy accomplices, many goods are under attack and we should defend them. Consider the following goals of the modern autonomy project:

"Partner"

Secularists, both dabblers and those fully practising, are sadly deluded and have had their reason darkened by the aphrodisiac of radical autonomy. The goals above directly contradict the decisions of a happy life. Many of us have chosen marriage; their “freedom” suggests promiscuity. We have chosen sobriety; their “freedom” suggests substance abuse. We have chosen children; their “freedom” suggests we eliminate them when inconvenient

We are called to highlight the joy that comes from the good choices and the misery that comes from the bad ones. And it is relatively easy to point out that the rights of children trump the rights to children; that fidelity, stability and happiness are highly correlated; or that the life of a porn addict is miserable.
The organisers of the twice-yearly 40 Days for Life prayer vigils, which have now spread from the US to the UK, send a daily update during their campaigns. From a recent email:[5]

(Fort Collins, Colorado): “What do you get out of this?” The question, from a young man smoking a cigarette outside the Planned Parenthood building, was directed at the volunteers who offered him an information card.
“We do not get anything,” replied Scott, one of the volunteers.“We are here to help you.”

So the man told his story. He has a two-year old daughter … but his wife was inside for an abortion. “Everyone should have a choice,” the man insisted – throughout all nine months of pregnancy.

This father’s reason has been darkened by “pro-choice”, an unthinking cliché for freedom. His wife is with child yet he says with a straight face, “Everyone should have a choice,” omitting the one most affected. We live in a culture where the loving and responsible thing no longer even occurs to some people – that being: “You exercise the freedom to have sex; responsibly embrace the result.” Pregnancy is not a surprise result of sexual intercourse. Loving responsibility is the difference between freedom for excellence and freedom of indifference. The obvious must again be said, and we need to say it.

Again from his book, Archbishop Fisichella says:

“Secularism has put forward the thesis of living in the world … as if God did not exist. Nevertheless, having removed God, our contemporaries have lost themselves. … If God is relegated to a corner, the darkest and the furthest away from life, the human being becomes lost because there is no longer any meaning in relationship with oneself, much less with others. Therefore, it is necessary to bring God back to human beings of our time.”[6]

In the chart above there is murder, substance abuse, sloth, infidelity, exploitation, addiction, disease and loneliness. These are the fruits of the modern autonomy project. Disobedience has created isolation and misery, again.

On the bright side, the victory is already won and we are pilgrims en route to the banquet. We are in this world but not of this world, and if we stay on the pilgrim path and do God’s will, we will see God.

But apostolate is God’s will and modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah is a target-rich environment. Attune your eye to the modern autonomy project and its wayward participants, and you will find yourself at a veritable apostolic buffet, with ample opportunity for deposits in the Vatican soul bank. This brings
me to correction, something we must do.

Correction

From Matthew 18:14-17:

“So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the Church; and if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

And from James 5:19-20:

“My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

The Word Among Us recently offered practical guidance:

“Do you have a plan for how you are going to share the gospel? Do you have some idea of the people you are going to share it with? Try this approach. Choose five people, and pray for them. … Ask the Lord to open their hearts and give you opportunities to share your faith with them."

“Ask him, also, to lead you in what to say. You may end up telling one person how you met the Lord. You may invite another to Mass or adoration. Or you may ask another why he or she doesn’t believe, and just plant a seed. Don’t worry about the outcome. Just trust that the Lord will lead the right people to whatever ‘net’ you are casting.”

Conclusion

Eternity is a great reward and that reward, being in the presence of God, is the consummation of uniting ourselves to God’s will, of a lifelong way of the cross, of having the humility and courage to do what’s right, and of activity. We must strive to be perfect, as good sons and daughters of God, and this includes bringing others to the same eternal reward. As the old saying goes: “You may be the only Bible some people ever read.”

So we must embrace responsible freedom, a responsibility to God our father and to all of our brothers and sisters. In this is love. As the Catechism says, “Charity … is always … the soul of the whole apostolate” (point 864). And (point 776): “God desires ‘that the whole human race may become one people of God, form one Body of Christ, and be built up into one temple of the Holy Spirit.”

And from Romans:

“But they will not ask his help unless they believe in him, and they will not believe in him unless they have heard of him, and they will not hear of him unless they get a preacher, and they will not have a preacher unless one is sent. …”

And we are sent.

But this is also a war: a war of self-defence that we wage internally through our development of an interior life, and a war of charity that we wage externally through the apostolate and the Holy Spirit-guided return of our prodigal brothers and sisters. Said differently, it’s a war we wage by being both Martha and Mary, prayerfully introspective and active.

The Second letter to the Corinthians says:

“Though we live in the world, we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God.”
Finally, from Pope Pius XI: “Let us thank God that he makes us live among the present problems. It is no longer permitted to anyone to be mediocre.” Therefore, we follow our thorn-crowned Captain into the world in which we live and we “go and make disciples of all nations.”

Notes
[1]St Josemaria Escriva, The Way, point 754.
[2]CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory.
[3]Emmanuel magazine, November/December 2012, Editorial by Paul Bernier.
[4]Rino Fisichella, The New Evangelisation, p. 29.
[5]40 Days for Life, Day 9 email, February 20, 2013.
[6]Rino Fisichella, The New Evangelisation, p. 31.

The renowned composer James MacMillan discusses the current state of Church music and the renewal taking place within it.

In recent months much has been written on the subject of music in Christian worship. For example, there was a heated discussion on the subject on the Letters pages of my local (secular) newspaper, The Herald, in Glasgow. Such discussion reflects a healthy and deep-seated concern for sacred music among members of almost all Christian denominations.

In the context of Catholic liturgy, music adopts a particular significance and missionary purpose. The Church would stop being the Church without its liturgy. The liturgy is the pinnacle and summit of our entire Christian life. It has to be of our highest and best, whatever the circumstances. Hence our liturgical music has to be more than mere utility music. Before he was Pope, Joseph Ratzinger said: “A Church which only makes use of ‘utility’ music has fallen for what is, in fact, useless… For her mission is a far higher one. As the Old Testament speaks of the Temple, the Church is to be the place of ‘glory’, and as such, too, the place where mankind’s cry of distress is brought to the ear of God. The Church must not settle down with what is merely comfortable and serviceable at theparish level; she must arouse the voice of the cosmos and, by glorifying the Creator, elicit the glory of the cosmos itself, making it also glorious, beautiful, habitable, and beloved.”

He went on to say: “The other arts – architecture, painting, vestments, and the arts of movement – each contribute to and support the beauty of the liturgy, but still the art of music is greater even than that of any other art, because it forms a necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy, because it is so intimately bound to the sacred action, defining and differentiating the various parts in character, motion and importance.”

It is therefore regrettable that discussion on the subject of Church music can often become polarised, with some debaters appearing entrenched in their positions. This need not be so, and is mostly occasioned by a lack of understanding.

Unfounded fears need to be allayed. Nobody is proposing a reversion to a rose-tinted status quo ante in our Eucharistic celebrations. Reference to tradition does not in any sense represent the thin end of an extremist, ultramontane or Lefebvrist wedge, nor does it posit a stale and arid musical uniformity. Least of all do frank appraisals and suggestions for improvement seek to denigrate the sincere efforts of parish musicians over the past few decades. On the contrary, every effort should and must be made to support liturgical formation in ordinary parishes.

Thus our discussions must be characterised by Christian charity; emphatically not by a false charity which seeks simply to appease or mitigate doctrinal error – but rather by a true and informed witness, a caritas in veritate. In contrast to members of other Christian denominations, as Catholics we owe fidelity to the Church’s Magisterium. For that reason, discussion should at all times be guided and nourished by Church teaching, allowing for a freedom of enquiry framed by a distinctly Catholic ethos. In this regard, a meaningful discussion can proceed only upon acceptance of the Second Vatican Council and two clearly defined premises.

Gregorian Chant

The first of these premises is that Gregorian chant is the official music of the Roman Church – a rich gift from history and the foundation of all Western music. This has been the case since the early Church, when it was collated by Pope Gregory the Great. The chant developed symbiotically with the liturgy itself. Chant began as part of the Jewish tradition, in which Christ and his apostles were raised. Thus chant is not really a musical style as such, but an expression and audible embodiment of the liturgy itself. It is not one option among many, but the actual musical medium of the Roman Rite. Sacrosanctum Concilium states that “all other factors being equal, chant should be given pride of place in liturgical celebrations”.

Music for a sacred ritual needs to project sacredness. In the liturgy “sacred” means “the glorification of God and the sanctification of the faithful”. Gregorian chant gives an elevated tone of voice to the texts of our sacred praises, conveying the special character of the words and the holy nature of what is being enacted and undertaken. The chanting of the holy texts raises them up from the mundane and presents them “as on a platter of gold”, in the words of Fr Josef Jungmann. Gregorian chant is unlike anything from the everyday world and conveys the clear impression that there is something uniquely holy in the actions of the liturgy. Gregorian chant is holy.

It is also universal as it is supra-national and thus accessible to those of any and every culture equally. It rises above those forms of music which are associated only with localised cultural experience, and it operates separately from styles which are associated with high, artistic, classical derivation and aspiration. Therefore it is essentially anti-elitist and simultaneously pure. Gregorian chant is for all.

The beauty of music is a crucial element in the “edification and sanctification of the faithful”. Beauty is the glue which binds together truth and goodness. To paraphrase Hans Urs von Balthasar: without beauty, truth does not persuade and goodness does not compel. The general function of music in the liturgy is to draw together a diverse succession of actions into a coherent whole. That is what makes Gregorian chant beautiful.
The Gregorian sound, and the practice of chanting, whether by specialists or by non-specialists, gives the most perfect context for the hearing of the words of the sacred scripture. It provides an elevated tone of voice that takes the texts out of the everyday and confirms them as sacred. It provides a goodness of form, which is in itself beautiful. And this, in turn, adds a sense of delight to prayer. It takes our divine praises into the realm of the transcendent and the eternal, and it is the music’s sacred character which enables this. There is a melodic and rhythmic freedom in chant which is hard to find in any other music. Chant not only enhances the text, it also breaks free from the restraints of metre. It is the antithesis of “rock” and pop with their incessant and insistentlymind-numbing beat. It embodies the ethereal and spiritual aspects of the liturgy. It is the free-est form of music.

Latin: The Normative Language of the Liturgy

The second premise for a fruitful discussion of Church music is that Latin is the primary and universal language of our Church. Its primacy was in no sense revoked, or even questioned, by the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. Latin also remains the primary language of our Divine Liturgy. The Novus Ordo Mass (often referred to as the Ordinary Form), promulgated by Pope Paul VI, remains in essence a Latin Mass. Vatican II mandated the use of vernacular translations for pastoral reasons, but always envisaged that Latin would remain the primary language of the Mass. Pope Benedict gave particular prominence to this in his own ministry, as reflected in his public celebrations of Mass. This is not to say that the use of the vernacular in liturgy and liturgical music is a mistake. Onthe contrary, it is to be positively encouraged.

Deviation from these two objective realities based on either ignorance or well-meaning idealism puts Catholics at odds with the strong currents of Church guidance.

New Initiatives in Church Music

My own activities in the field of liturgy have centred on my involvement with Glasgow’s Dominican community. Since 2005, I have served as choirmaster at St Columba’s in Maryhill. Our little choir comprises volunteers from within the parish, many of whom cannot read music. When we started, the congregation was accustomed to singing four vaguely apposite hymns slotted into the liturgy; in short, they were singing at Mass, rather than singing the Mass. Over the past seven years this approach has been altered to give chant (mostly in the vernacular) “pride of place”, as instructed by Vatican II.

Moreover, instead of replacing the Mass Propers with hymns, the assembly have starting singing these important prescribed texts, using a range of accessible resources. Of course the ideal source to which we aspire is the Graduale Romanum itself, the single most important book for any Catholic choir and the definitive source of Gregorian chant. Much of this chant is, however, beyond our choir at this stage in its development, which is why we have sought out a range of other chant resources – staging posts, as it were, on our path of liturgical betterment, and with the congregation’s involvement foremost in mind.

There’s the Graduale Simplex, published by the Church for smaller churches just like ours, with a range of Mass Propers for each liturgical season. There are also many exciting chant adaptations in English, clearly devised for congregations, which are well within the capabilities of ordinary parishes. The Graduale Parvum, now being completed by the Blessed John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in Birmingham, offers simple and extremely usable chant Propers in both English and Latin, drawn from a range of authentic Gregorian sources. Our congregation is gradually assimilating some of these. Then there’s the Simple English Propers by Adam Bartlett: easy, freely composed chant Propers for every Mass of the year. We use at least one of these almost every Sunday. Our choir isbecoming more fluent in this idiom all the time. Recently, we have been able to introduce Communion antiphons from the Graduale Romanum. A richly rewarding American publication is By Flowing Waters by Paul F Ford; it’s a large and full collection of chant-based liturgical song. Those who find their prayer heightened by the modality and supple rhythms of chant will find great riches in these collections. Whether in Latin or the vernacular, chant is an integral and important part of our Christian heritage and living tradition.

A step in its direction is a step towards a deeper look at the meaning of liturgical renewal and its musical implementation. This music is for those parishes and communities who are serious about the liturgy, and singing the liturgy.

You might be wondering how parishes with limited financial resources could possibly acquire all this material. The good news is that everything I’ve mentioned, and much more, is available free on our website – www.thechoirofstcolumbas.com – where it can be downloaded, reproduced and used with no copyright restrictions. In this Year of Faith, Pope Benedict invited all of us to read and study the documents of Vatican II, so that we might become ever more convinced and convincing witnesses to the unchanging truth of the Gospel message. He reminds us that the council “formulated nothing new in matters of faith, nor did it seek to replace that which is ancient”.

We are now also providing sound clips, articles and links to dozens of sources of expert information. We also host a forum for parish musicians to share experiences and advice on best practice, to which everyone is welcome to contribute. Future practical events, including a conference, are being planned.
Since launching at the end of December 2012, the site has attracted more than 5,000 views from readers in more than 25 countries. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. While our increasingly global readership gives us great encouragement, we are especially keen that our efforts become known here in the UK, where we believe there is a real need for such practical support. Please visit our homepage, send us a message, connect with us on Facebook or Twitter, and tell any interested friends. We are here to help.
The internet allows parish musicians to take ownership of their development, unfettered by redundant and exclusive structures, which hark back to a more restricting and controlling age, long before the arrival of instant communication and clear accountability.

Defining Terms

The long-running debate over science and religion is frequently hampered by the different ways in which the words "science" and "religion" are used. At the outset of any discussion it is best to pin down as far as possible what we intend by these terms.

What Do We Mean By "Science"?

The word "science" has its roots in the Latin for knowledge or wisdom. At its broadest, it simply refers to any systematic study of reality. This is how the word was used from medieval to early modern times. Natural science referred to the study of the structure and workings of material realities, the wisdom that frames the material order. Theology was considered to be the highest of all sciences because it studied the highest wisdom of all, revealed by God. Theology is the study or contemplation of God as the source of all Wisdom. In the medieval system, the various sciences were held to have their own proper subject and method, but they were not thought of as ultimately separate. In fact theology was called the "Queen of Sciences" because it considered reality in the light of theultimate Illumination afforded by the Self-revelation of the Divine Mind, the highest point of synthesis.

In the modern world the word "science" is used almost exclusively of the natural or material sciences. Even within that context it has come to have various interrelated but distinct meanings. It refers to the methodology and conduct of particular experiments and research. It also denotes the various theories that unify multiple areas of discovery and insight such as relativity, genetics and evolution. Often it can indicate the understanding of the world around us at the conceptual or philosophical level which has been revealed in a fuller light by scientific research. Examples of such "science" are the Copernican revolution, the atomic and molecular understanding of matter and the periodic table of elements, and the vastly enhanced image of the cosmos afforded by contemporaryastrophysics.

What Do We Mean By "Religion"?

The word "religion" can be even more diverse and diffuse in its meanings. It encompasses those aspects of human life and culture that are concerned with the ultimate meaning and destiny of human nature and the relationship of the individual and of society with the supernatural. In our own thinking, the religious instinct is natural to human beings; we are drawn to the Divine in whose image and likeness we are made and in whose environing wisdom and love we find our proper harmony of life and our deepest fulfilment. In Catholic theology this upsurge of the human spirit is itself prompted by the initiative of God's grace and completed by the revelation that culminates in Jesus Christ who is God manifest in the flesh.

However, in popular parlance the word "religion" encompasses a wide array of phenomena with sometimes overlapping areas of belief and practice, but with many contradictory doctrines and features too. Some religions, like Buddhism for example, do not believe in a personal deity, and some involve little or no definite doctrine at all, being little more than tribal and family ritual traditions with no formal belief structure. Those religions that have sacred writings do not all make direct claim to divine revelation and authority, and many hold mutually exclusive doctrinal and moral teachings. Some religions have historically involved practices, such as ritual prostitution and human sacrifice, which are deeply abhorrent to the Abrahamic faiths. Viewed simply as a human phenomenon, therefore,there is really no such single thing as "religion". It is not a univocal term.

What Do We Mean By "Synthesis"?

So when we discuss the possibility of a synthesis between science and religion, what do we mean? We do not mean that laboratory research and theological enquiry can be freely intermingled or combined indiscriminately. It remains true that each of the sciences has its own proper subject matter, its own area of competence and its proper methodology. But do they connect in any way? Can their conclusions be brought together within a unified world view?

Today, far from being seen as the queen of sciences, theology has effectively been excluded from any synthetic understanding of the world. The view that everything about reality, including humanity, is built on an exclusively material base has been steadily gaining ground. Religion is increasingly dismissed as at best mythological and at worst wholly irrational or irrelevant.

When we speak of synthesis, what we mean by "science" is the philosophy of science based on the truths uncovered by scientific discoveries. And by religion we mean Christian, specifically Catholic, theology based on the truths revealed by God in Christ and defined by the Church. However, let us note straight away that these are not just academic concerns. For science and theology are concerned not just with theories but with the objects of these studies - the worlds of matter and of spirit.

How, if at all, do material reality and spiritual reality connect and interact? Do they form a unified whole with a single purpose? Can we discern an overarching Wisdom that informs the identity and goal of both as a single, integrated reality?

There are several possible positions on this question:

1. Opposition - Competition
2.  Identity – Conflation
3. Separation - Coexistence
4. Synthesis without confusion

Opposition - Competition

In this position, science and religion are thought to make mutually exclusive truth claims. Either science explains everything or religion does. Radical creationists can be found on the religious side of this divide, although not all who are called "creationists" go as far as to dismiss all science as opposed to faith. On the scientific side are the secular materialists who deny a priori the existence of anything transcending the material cosmos. As the Oxford University chemist Peter Atkins puts it in his new book On Being:

"If absolutely and unreservedly everything is an aspect of the physical, material world, then I do not see how it can be closed to scientific investigation ... The scientific method is the only means of discovering the nature of reality."

Atkins even argues that "the substrate of existence is nothing at all", because the total electrical charge of the universe is zero due to the balance of positive and negative particles. "Charge was not created at the creation. Nothing separated into equal and opposite charges". Since matter is really nothing, he concludes that nothing really matters or even really exists.

Like most atheist scientists he shows himself to be a very poor philosopher. With rather obvious sleight of mind he has made "Nothing" into a Something with cosmic potential. The scholastic mind of the middle ages called this materia prima and recognised that it cannot exist except in relation to a principle of form - a principle of organisation and identity. Even if there are only positive and negative charges at the beginning, there is already a system and a context, a meaning that encompasses those mutual definitions. And where there is meaning, there is Mind.

The tendency of most Western scientists is to be reductionist, looking for the key to existence in the lowest common components of matter/energy. Yet in doing so they fail to notice that the most basic concepts of their science depends on matter embodying organised information at every level. To reject reductionism in this way is to be open to the question: What is the Prime Principle of Organisation?

Within the terms of its own reference as an enquiry into material things, experimental science cannot address the question of the ultimate cause of the universe. It is not within its remit. However, in its broader, philosophical sense, scientific thought cannot escape the question of creation because it is about the Cause of all causality. Faced with the ultimate question of where the ordered energies of the universe and ordering laws of science themselves come from, many atheist materialists simply abdicate the search for truth and say that there is no reason.

Others, like Atkins' fellow Oxford academic, Thomas Nagel, are more honest in admitting that this refusal to face the ultimate question thrown up by scientific enquiry is based on a desire to avoid its conclusion and a positive will to disbelieve:

"...even if in due course science has to throw in the towel and, heaven forbid, concede that the universe was created by God, I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that." {The Last Word by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press, 1997)

The material creation is not merely neutral towards God, it positively points towards its Creator. The science or wisdom we discover within the constitution of matter can and does bring us to recognise that higher Wisdom who creates and sustains it to an end and purpose which is indeed beyond the remit of natural science.

Identity - Conflation

The second possible position with regard to science and religion is to identify them more or less completely by seeing the evolving universe as driven by a single energy which runs through and builds into everything that we call matter and everything that we call spirit. This is explicitly the thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin within Christian theology, and also of many variants of New Age thinking. For him all spiritual realities, including the soul of man and indeed Christ Himself, are the product of matter in evolution, because evolution is itself the product of God who immerses Himself in matter; and the "spiritual energy" that is latent in all physical energy crystallises into the presence of the Divine. Such a world view can be found in more subtle and nuanced forms in thethought of other major thinkers in Catholic theology.

The all-embracing sweep of this way of seeing the world has its attractions, but when matter and spirit are identified in this way, it has some serious implications which are not compatible with orthodox Christianity. The process of cosmic evolution becomes the measure of all reality, spiritual as well as physical. The moral law and doctrinal truth are no longer objective, but are ever-changing as human nature itself evolves. Most serious of all, the literal Divinity of Christ is compromised, and the distinction between God and creation is blurred - a mistake that can eventually lead to pantheism.

By the same token, the objectivity of scientific law and scientific enquiry is also compromised by conflating matter and spirit at every level of creation. Matter is determined by laws that can be expressed mathematically. Even the so-called - and much misunderstood - uncertainty principle, and quantum physics as a whole, work according to precise levels of mathematically expressible variability within a defined system. Scientists are rightly suspicious about attributing spirituality to material processes or bringing religious ideas directly into the laboratory.

Separation - Coexistence

For some, this has led to a third option with regard to science and religion: saying that they do not contradict but simply coexist in their separate arenas. They may coincide in persons who are scientists and also believers, or in private encounters between individuals, but there is no possibility of, or need for, a synthesis between our scientific and religious world views.

It was Stephen Jay Gould who first suggested that science and religion represented parallel and non-overlapping magisteria, or sources of authority. The chief problem with this world view is that it allows for more than one "truth" about reality, truths which merely coexist in discrete personal and cultural worlds. There are Christian philosophers and theologians who do espouse this sort of post-modernism, but it is quite incompatible with orthodox Catholicism. However, scientists who promote the idea of non-overlapping magisteria are often just dismissing religion as something subjective, leaving science to deal with the realm of the objective.

The problem is that when we say that science and religion can simply coexist in their own worlds we fail to answer the new atheists who are winning over vast numbers in our society. They know that science is highly successful at unlocking the secrets of the physical world; and unless religion can be shown to engage with the new horizons uncovered by the scientific world view, they will remain unconvinced. Our primary mission as Christians is to evangelise the unbelieving world. We cannot do that if we abdicate any claim to truth or wisdom outside our private "religious" world. We must answer the claim that God is made redundant by science. Not only can we do that, we can go much further. We can show that the Wisdom revealed in Christ makes fuller and more rational sense of our world andof our own existence than the secular world view.

We do not say that history and religion merely "co-exist". We say that Christ is "the key, the centre and the purpose of the whole of human history" (Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, n.10), as well as unlocking the very meaning of all creation. In Catholic thinking, the history of the universe and the history of salvation are not unrelated events.

Synthesis Without Confusion

Is it possible to make a new synthesis in which the place of theology as queen of all the sciences, including the sciences of matter, is revindicated? Synthesis does not imply confusion, but a clear understanding of how things correlate within a unified perspective. Not only does Scripture affirm and the Magisterium define with certainty that Nature points to God's existence (Vatican I, Dei Filius 2, Romans 1:19-20), the Catechism tells us that scientific (CCC 283) and spiritual questions are "inseparable" (282), because "the universe, created in and by the eternal Word ... is destined for and addressed to man ... called to a personal relationship with God. Our human understanding, which shares in the light of the divine intellect, can understand what God tells us by means of hiscreation" (299). Faith then leads us "beyond the proper domain of the natural sciences" (284) to seek God Himself. So "the revelation of creation is inseparable from the revelation and forging of the covenant of the one God with his People" (288). Finally all orders and all the laws of reality, "visible and invisible", are brought together under Christ as Head (Ephesians 1).

Science studies the world from the point of view of its physical components. Theology studies the same world from the point of view of what it tells us about God, and of what God has told us about creation, about ourselves, and about Himself.
the point of view of what it tells us about God, and what God has told us ..."

Revelation, as the highest Wisdom, synthesises and illuminates all the insights of the lower sciences. So, while scientific enquiry and theology retain their own proper methods, there's only one reality, illuminated by both reason and revelation. If it comes from the Mind of God, synthesis must ultimately be possible. Unless you say there's no such thing as Truth, just different "truths" that "coexist".

All Things Together Under Christ

We can and we must show people that the laws that control and direct the vast unity of our cosmos point positively to God. Indeed we would go further and say that the whole cosmos was created as a cradle for Christ and we would expect everything in the material universe to bear witness to that fact if we could but understand it properly. The very laws of matter are aligned upon the Incarnation as their ultimate goal. This will not be predictable from studying the laws of matter themselves. The full meaning of entities does not lie in their lowest common denominator, but in their highest goal and principle of unity. All the specificities of matter in development will be found to make their most perfect sense and find their fulfilment in the coming of God in the flesh. Matter itself iswritten on the principle of prophecy - that is to say that it is a manifestation of a wisdom and order that is fulfilled in the higher gift and event.

We do not want to mix up science and religion indiscriminately as disciplines, but we do urgently need to show how they interrelate within an overarching vision of God's creative wisdom and purpose. We have minds that not only enquire but successfully unlock the secrets of the universe and put them to use in our own new creations of technology. The fact of Man as a spiritual being of mind as well as matter is the ground of both religion and science. And religion as a fact of Nature and a necessity of Nature in human history logically precedes science. The very fact that human beings are scientists derives from the transcendence of humanity over Nature and bears witness to that transcendence. Religion embodies the seeking for the highest wisdom that can direct and fulfil the humanspirit.

But, as we have already noted, the question is deeper than science and religion as human activities. We need to know what the relationship is between matter and mind. This is not an academic question, for the two orders of reality meet in our own human nature. The laws that frame our physical world and our own physical bodies, and the higher laws that frame our spiritual identity and destiny are not mutually irrelevant categories. We are one being. It is all the work of the One God.

Edward Holloway wrote:

"The failure to relate body and soul accurately in the processes of evolution is a cardinal misfortune in the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a mistake which vitiates, indirectly, the various other aspects of his synthesis. In fact there is a way in which we can show how man can be one with the process of evolution and its crowning glory, and at the same time a 'special creation', without juggling with words and meanings. Likewise the cosmic equation of energies which is the universe becomes intelligible once we see that it is centred on a truly transcendent Mind which is not identified with the flow of matter-energy itself.

Mind is that which controls and directs substantially and of its nature: Matter-energy is that which is controlled and directed substantially and of its nature, by Mind." (Catholicism p. 11)

This is the core principle of what Holloway names "The Law of Control and Direction".

"The Law of Control and Direction ... is not a law of matter in a specific sense. It is not the law of this or that event and effect. It is a Law in Matter that is cosmic and all-inclusive, so that the entire universe is one equation of meaningful development in mutual relativity of part on part at all times and throughout all space." (Catholicism p. 64)

Scientists already intuit that the various laws of matter/energy are really a partial expression of a unified law that makes the universe a single "equational" reality. It is the very thrust of science to connect everything on a mathematical as well as an experimental level. We can go much further and say that the whole cosmos will only make sense, even as a material equation, within a higher Wisdom or "Law" that relates all creatures to the Creator; relates body and soul in Man as one creature without confusion of orders, and Man to God as his true environment; and, finally relates all Creation and the whole of humanity to God Incarnate in Christ as their source and their goal.

Conclusion

Galileo's famous quip that "the Bible was written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go" is, of course, true. Similarly, the stars cannot reveal the depths of God any more than they can redeem us from sin and draw us into the fullness of Divine Intimacy. Yet the heavens do proclaim the glory of God (Ps 19) and the human mind does begin to recognise its Creator though created things. Moreover, Christ sheds light on the meaning of all things and brings them to perfection: even the stars of the night sky find their ultimate purpose as the crowning glory of the vocation of matter through Our Blessed Lady, through whom God becomes Incarnate as Lord of all Time and Space, as we graphically proclaim every Easter on the Paschal candle.

While scientists like Brian Cox give popular and compelling accounts of the wonders of the universe (see his BBC2 TV series of that name), and atheists like Dawkins and Hawking claim it all disproves God, we need to show how science and religion come from one Wisdom and lead to the One Wisdom Incarnate, Jesus Christ. Science and religion do come together "in persons", but it needs to be in persons who can give answers to a sceptical world and restore the full Catholic vision of Creation in Christ.

See our first Road from Regensburg entry for some relevant Papal comments.

Among the priests of his time, Pope John Paul II was unusual in that he owed much of his spiritual formation to lay people. His lack of clericalism was doubtless due to the influence of his father and, later, of a Krakow artisan with a gift for teaching the spiritual life. Clare Anderson co-authored John Paul II, Man of Prayer, which is due out in May. She will also shortly co-present an EWTN series on the influences that shaped the life and work of Blessed John Paul II.

“It’s not difficult to be a saint!”

Nothing very surprising about that sentence, you might think, although the reality might be a struggle for most of us. But in 1935, when spoken from the pulpit to a Sunday congregation in Krakow, the idea was revolutionary to at least one hearer. Sanctity was for priests and religious. Lay people could aspire to great goodness by going to Mass, saying their prayers and doing good to others. What else was there? Yet that Salesian priest made it sound almost easy…. For the fair-haired young man with the intense expression, hearing these words was to change his life.

Jan Leopold Tyranowski was born in Krakow in 1901 into a middle-class household. His father owned a tailoring workshop but the family had other plans for their elder son. Jan duly became an accountant, a discipline which suited his orderly mind. An introvert and a loner, he liked to walk the Beskid mountains on his own and indulge his talent for photography. Everything interested him, from science and gardening to learning foreign languages. He also took an interest in the new science of psychology, especially the emerging theories of personality types. Rumour later had it that he had received psychiatric treatment himself.

“He was one of those unknown saints, hidden amid the others like a marvellous light at the bottom of life, at a depth where night usually reigns. He disclosed to me the riches of his inner life, of his mystical life. In his words...''

In 1930 a chronic stomach ailment, possibly worsened by stress, compelled him to give up accountancy and join his father’s tailoring business. Working from home, he was much happier than in an office of people. His faith began to deepen and he joined Catholic Action, becoming a familiar face at parish events. Yet despite all this “busyness” he still felt that something was missing.

Then came the sermon in 1935 with its irresistible challenge. Tyranowski suddenly knew that to be a saint was his vocation and he felt called to deeper conversion. Thirsting for greater union with God in his spiritual life, he approached one of the parish priests for advice. It is greatly to this priest’s credit that he was able to give excellent help. He lent Tyranowski a manual of prayer commonly used in seminaries at that time, Ascetical and Mystical Theology by Adolphe Tanqueray, which Tyranowski devoured, coming back for more. Finally he came across the works of St Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. The work of this last writer was to be Jan’s constant companion until his death 12 years later.

John of the Cross is not an easy read; his poetry is highly symbolic. Whether writing in poetry or prose, St John’s topic is prayer beyond the beginning – at that point where consolations dry up and the first fervour of the spiritual life has worn off. His remedy is complete detachment from everything that is not God: “If you desire that devotion be born in your spirit and that the love of God and the desire for divine things increase, cleanse your soul of every desire, attachment and ambition in such a way that you have no concern about anything” (Sayings of Light and Love 28).

Becoming detached from possessions, the soul mysteriously gains a clearer knowledge of them, and a better understanding and appreciation of them. The soul that is no longer intent on possessing things finds a freedom of spirit, and curiously “those whose joy is unpossessive of things rejoice in them all as though they possessed them all” (Ascent of Mount Carmel). St John’s message is clear: to possess God fully, you must desire God and God alone and pursue only those things that lead to him.

Tyranowski, possibly because he was supporting his mother, became intent on living the contemplative life in the lay state. Shortly after hearing the sermon he took a vow of chastity, and, convinced that God was calling him to a more hidden life, began to detach himself from church activities. At the same time, his accountant’s mind organised a daily routine according to a quasi-monastic rule. A fragment of card from 1941 shows something of this. He rose at 5am and attended early Mass with Holy Communion, followed by spiritual reading and the rosary. A frugal breakfast would be followed by more prayer and reading, including Scripture. At 2pm he would start his work, meditating on the virtues of faith, hope and charity. Dinner was at 5.30pm, followed by the Angelus and more meditation and reading. Bed would follow at 8.30 pm.

Such a regime might seem oppressively prescriptive but it suited Tyranowski so well that his confessor Alexander Drozd later described him as a spiritual mountaineer, so advanced in the spiritual life that he was difficult to direct. The Salesians of St Stanislaus Kostka parish would say “Look, there goes the saint” and “The glory of God dwells in Rozana Street” (where Tyranowski lived at number 11). In his chosen way of life, Tyranowski practised the presence of God both in work and in prayer. This would have been almost impossible in a busy office.

Earning one’s living by simple manual work while being constantly mindful of God is of course not new; the desert fathers wove baskets while they prayed. In one of the paradoxes that surround the spiritual life, the ascetic, having reached spiritual maturity and wisdom, would find himself attracting followers who went to him for guidance and advice. He would become what the Eastern church calls a “staretz”. Tyranowski certainly never entertained any ideas about advising others; by temperament and inclination he was a loner. If the life of a tailor working from home was chosen to facilitate his prayer life, it is also possible that his choice was a convenient one for an introvert with little self-confidence. Had he chosen his hidden lifestyle as a way of avoiding having to deal with people?

The Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 would change his life in more ways than one. Eleven of the Salesians in the parish were to die in concentration camps; only a couple of elderly priests were left to take charge. The church today bears witness to the terrible sacrifice; a row of faces, forever young, gaze down from the walls of the side chapel. A successful preached retreat in 1940 had led to a discussion group and afterwards there was a feeling in the parish that the momentum should not be lost. Something permanent was needed, but by then the priests were already stretched to the limit.

In the days when priests were plentiful, parish work was solely a clerical responsibility, but now one third of all priests in Krakow had been deported. Towards the Salesians, whose special charism is work with youth, the Nazis were especially ruthless. In what might be called an early example of collaborative ministry Jan Tyranowski was asked to form a Living Rosary group among the youth of the parish. Jan was initially terrified, protesting that  he was no speaker and wouldn’t know how to communicate with young people. Do not be afraid, the Lord will help you, he was told.

And so Jan would wait by the church door, observing the young men as they attended Mass, silently discerning who would be suitable for his Living Rosary. He cut a strange span, with his rather high voice and intense manner; many of the young people thought him odd, a religious eccentric. Several times he was suspected of being a German spy.

The Living Rosary group met in the parish church to pray the rosary together. In addition, small cells of 15 young men would be formed, under a leader who reported back to Tyranowski; one of these leaders was Karol Wojtyla. Each member had to pray one specified decade of the rosary daily – so each cell would cover the entire rosary every day. As well as this, Tyranowski began to meet with members individually in his apartment for direction; he was concerned about the spiritual well-being of everyone in the group entrusted to him, giving generously of his time. Using his wisdom and powers of discernment, Tyranowski was able to lead many young people into a deeper relationship with Christ. He recommended books, different ones to different people, in accordance with their temperament and level of spiritual attainment

It is interesting how sometimes God works through his enemies, using them unwittingly to do his will. By depriving the St Stanislaus Kostka parish of most of its priests, the Nazis gave it Jan Tyranowski, who discovered that he had a talent for nurturing souls. His apostolate numbered a few hundred at most, and had Karol Wojtyla not been among its members, no one outside Krakow would ever have heard of Tyranowski or his work. Yet his influence was profound. From among the members of his Living Rosary group came 11 vocations, including a future pope.

The Holy Father would never forget the influence Tyranowski had on him; he had a small picture of him in his bedroom in the Apostolic Palace and credited him with bringing his vocation to fruition at a time when he wanted to be an actor. He would write: “He was one of those unknown saints, hidden amid the others like a marvellous light at the bottom of life, at a depth where night usually reigns. He disclosed to me the riches of his inner life, of his mystical life. In his words, in his spirituality and in the example of a life given to God alone, he represented a new world that I did not yet know. I saw the beauty of a soul opened up by grace” (from Be Not Afraid!, a book-length interview with André Frossard).

Mieczyslaw Malinski (Pope John Paul II: The Life of My Friend Karol Wojtyla, 1979) describes a rather fusty apartment, the sitting room full of ancient furniture, books, old portraits and pictures. People came in groups or singly. It was in this place that the young Karol Wojtyla would be introduced to John of the Cross and told that anyone can be a saint. As he was with himself, Tyranowski was a hard taskmaster – a notebook was to be ruled with columns under headings such as “Scripture reading”, “Morning prayer”, “Afternoon recreation” etc. Each day the columns would be filled with a tick or a cross and once a week the list would be discussed with Tyranowski.

It is easy to imagine that the young Wojtyla, the child of an army officer, would have taken to this manly, no‑nonsense approach. In any case, the intention was not to enforce a military-style routine, but to lead each young person into a continual encounter with God. When Malinski mentioned Tyranowski’s oddness to his friend, Wojtyla replied protectively that he seemed the most normal person in the world.

Karol’s father died in 1941. He had no immediate family left and now no country either; under the shadow of the Nazis and their daily cruelty he must have felt utterly alone and bereft. However, Tyranowski may have stepped in as a tentative father-span. The two certainly became good friends. They were a familiar sight, walking side by side along the bank of the Vistula river talking about the things of God. When Karol laboured at the chemical plant outside Krakow during the German occupation, Tyranowski would sometimes accompany him on the long walk to work in the early morning. It was safer to discuss religious matters in this way, with no eavesdroppers around.

It’s hard to forget the conversations with him. One of these that remains in my memory was a time when this simple man, who complained to his confessor that he does not know how to speak, talked late into the night about the nature of God and indeed what life with God is. He didn’t quote others’ words but drew on his own experiences… he was the apostle of God’s greatness, the beauty of God, the transcendence of God. (John Paul II, My Friends, Rome 1993)

Jan Tyranowski was not to be present at the ordination of his friend in November 1946. That year he had developed tuberculosis in his arm, and it had spread throughout his body. The arm was amputated, but the disease could not be stopped. After a long and agonising illness borne without complaint, he died on 15 March 1947, embracing the crucifix. Sadly his spiritual son, Karol Wojtyla, was abroad at the time. In his memoir Gift and Mystery, the Pope wrote that his friend was given the death that he had wished for. To surrender one’s life in this way as a spiritual offering for others takes a heroism that is beyond most of us.

In 1997 the cause for his canonisation was opened by the Salesians and the remains of the brave little tailor were taken from his family vault and placed in the church of St Stanislaus Kostka in the Debniki district of Krakow. They are kept in a casket inside a glass case. The house at 11 Rozana Street has a small plaque indicating that he once lived there, but it is now a children’s hospice and can only be seen from outside.

Malinski would write: “I can safely say that if it wasn’t for him neither Wojtyla nor I would have become priests.”

Servant of God Jan Tyranowski, pray for us.

Robert Colquhoun, Campaign Director of 40 Days for Life in the United Kingdom, argues for a reallocation of the Church’s resources in favour of chastity education.

The Fallout From the “Swinging Sixties”

Callum Brown’s book The Death of Christian Britain challenged the conventional belief that secularisation was a process that started with the Industrial Revolution. It noted the importance of the 1960s sexual revolution in the secularisation of Britain. Brown states: “As historical changes go, this has been no lingering and drawn-out affair. It took several centuries – in what historians used to call the Dark Ages – to convert Britain to Christianity, but it has taken less than forty years for the country to forsake it.

Doctors must discover the illness of their patients before they provide a cure. Likewise, Christians must discover what has led to the rapid de-Christianisation of our nation before we can propose a successful evangelisation plan and implement it. A N Wilson recently wrote an article deploring the terrible effects of the sexual revolution for his generation, acknowledging how much misery had been spread and how the damage done had appalled him.[1]

Other writers have suggested landmark events for the transition in cultural and religious practices for our nation. The abortion legislation of 1967 was a decision of colossal consequences. Philip Larkin had said that sex began in 1963. The Lady Chatterley’s Lover controversy marked a major watershed in standards for our nation.

The effects of the sexual revolution are all around us today. The traditional understanding of marriage is being redefined in legislatures around the world. We have nearly 200,000 abortions every year in this country. Just under one in two marriages end in divorce. We have 800,000 children living without a father span in their life. Contraception is widely used, even among practising Catholics. Sexually transmitted diseases have reached epidemic levels as young people have contracted chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis. According to Family Safe Media 42.7 per cent of Internet users have viewed online pornography.[2] The problem of the sexual abuse of minors is widespread. Operation Yewtree has disabused the media of the illusion that child abuse is confined solely to the Catholic Church.

Perhaps most shockingly the NSPCC has recently highlighted the problem of children being sexually abused by other children. More than 5,000 children were reported to police in England and Wales as abusers in the last three years.[3] From the 1960s onwards powerful voices in our culture have propagated the myth of “free love” without consequences: the notion that anything goes provided “we both consent to this and we aren’t doing anybody else any harm”.

Actually, when stories like those referred to above come to the fore it is clear that the sexualisation of our society is far from being a victimless phenomenon.

The actress Raquel Welch, now 72, has lamented the free sex ethos that has wreaked havoc on marriage and family life. She once said: “Seriously folks, if an ageing sex symbol like me starts waving the red flag of caution over how low moral standards have plummeted, you know it’s gotta be pretty bad. In fact, it’s precisely because of the sexy image I’ve had that it’s important for me to speak up and say: Come on girls! Time to pull up our socks! We’re capable of so much better.”[4]

In short, we have reached a crisis regarding the meaning and the purpose of love, marriage and sexuality in our nation. The Bishop of Portsmouth, Philip Egan, has stated that Christians have failed in their attempt to present a beautiful vision of marriage and family life. He states: “It could be argued that the Church herself is in part responsible for this in that we have failed, since the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s, to explain attractively and imaginatively the alternative vision of life and love that Jesus has taught and which he promises is the true way to human happiness and eternal life.”[5]

In terms of its rapidity and far-reaching consequences, the fallout from the sexual revolution might be considered analogous to the fallout from Henry VIII’s divorce crisis for our nation. Britain is now considered post-Christian, and the sexual revolution has helped to facilitate the country’s de-Christianisation more than any other factor. For young people today, if they have an “issue” with the Catholic Church, in an overwhelming number of cases, the issue will be about sexuality and marriage. In short, misunderstandings about Church teaching on sex are a major reason why young people are not more involved with their faith. The sexual revolution has provided a crisis in the transmission of faith.

The Church’s Response to the Sexual Revolution

The scandals that have arisen from the clerical abuse of minors have undermined the Church’s moral authority to teach on sexual ethics. However, the Church would betray her mandate from Christ to preach the Good News if she failed to speak on this matter. The sins and failures of her members – some of them very prominent – in this regard should spur the Church to repentance and renewal. Rather than lapsing into shamed silence the Church should redouble her efforts: she should direct her attention to this area and should allocate substantial resources to sex and relationships education, to dynamic programmes that meet the complicated pastoral challenges in the field of sexual education in order to provide young people with a healthy vision of human sexuality.

If we as Christians cannot adequately understand and teach with confidence what we believe, why we believe it and how our faith can transform lives then we need to consider whether we are fit for mission. Marriage, young people and evangelisation are the three areas that constitute the future of the Church. The issues that directly concern those who are the future of the Church must be reflected in the allocation of the Church’s material resources.

If dynamic growth is to take place, Church leaders must be committed to a generous allocation of material resources to confront directly even the most contentious social challenges of the age. If generous amounts of financial support were allocated to help fledgling pastoral ministries, and – bearing in mind that financial resources, while necessary, are neither the only nor the most important means at the Church’s disposal – if these issues really and truly became the focus of our petitionary prayers, I believe that many congregations would be overflowing rather than dwindling. Certainly in parts of the United States a more forthright proclamation of all aspects of the Good News, including the challenging area of Catholic sexual ethics, has led to renewal and growth.

What is Already Out There?

The challenge of the Gospel in 21st-century Britain is to present the vision of love and life that leads to fulfilment. The Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, has called us to be a creative minority to change the world. Paul VI said the world listens more to witnesses than to teachers, and if they listen to teachers it is because they are witnesses.

There is a vast array of pastoral programmes that can provide exciting and effective responses to the problems associated with the sexual revolution. Below, I present just some of the most successful pastoral programmes that are providing a beautiful vision of the Church’s teaching on love, marriage
and sexuality.

Rachel’s Vineyard is a post-abortion retreat ministry, helping women find hope and healing around the world. The healing weekends offer a supportive, confidential and non-judgmental environment where God’s love and compassion can be experienced on a profound level. It creates a place where men and women can share, often for the first time, their deepest feelings about abortion. Overall, it is a place of reconciliation. Participants, who have often experienced deep anger towards themselves or others, experience forgiveness. Peace is found and lives are restored.

Jason Evert has been giving talks on chastity for more than a decade in the US. His humorous and thought-provoking presentations have helped young people to see sexuality as a gift, with sex as something worth saving for marriage. He has written more than 10 books on love, sex and marriage and has provided excellent catechesis for teenagers on the theology of the body. This powerful ministry has helped many young people decide to value and make strong decisions about their sexuality, inspired to live for greatness and iving romance without regret.

40 Days for Life is a locally organised community initiative encouraging Christians to pray for an end to abortion. Prayer vigils are organised outside abortion centres and community outreach is conducted, taking a positive and upbeat pro-life message to all parts of the community. As a result of the initiative, more than 7,500 lives have been saved from abortion; 33 abortion facilities have closed; crisis pregnancy centres that offer real choices for life and for unborn babies have flourished; previously uninvolved church communities have become active in supporting the pro-life cause; new leaders have emerged in the pro-life movement; and a whole variety of newcomers have got involved in pro-life activities.

Birthchoice is a franchise of medical crisis pregnancy centres based in California. They exist to give encouragement, comfort, information, options and hope to young women who are pregnant. They provide an ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, a warm body to hug and a place free from judgment where you can share your concerns with caring medical professionals who have helped thousands get through difficult circumstances. A leading abortionist stated that if their model of crisis pregnancy centres went national across the US, it would provide one of the biggest challenges for the abortion industry.

Courage is the Catholic Church’s only pontifically approved ministry which is specifically committed to providing spiritual support for persons with same-sex attraction. It supports those who are striving to live chastely, offering help to grow in understanding with others towards living more fully the Church’s teachings. The group aims to foster a spirit of fellowship in which people can share their thoughts and experiences to ensure that nobody faces the problems of homosexuality alone. This helps individuals to live lives that may serve as good examples to others with homosexual difficulties, to be mindful of the truth that chaste friendships are not only possible but necessary in celibate Christian life and to encourage one another in forming and sustaining holistic and life-givingchaste relationships.

These pastoral programmes have in common the presentation of one aspect of the Good news that God presents to us about life and love. Sex was created to be open to life. But when sex is turned from this important purpose it often leads to death. Thus the very thing that causes life has now become the source of death for millions, simply because of the refusal to follow God’s plan. Let us find simple and dynamic ways to present God’s plan for love and life in a way that is credible and appealing to our contemporaries.

[1]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2257379/Ive-lived-greatest-revolution-sexual-mores-history-damage-appals-me.html
[2]http://www.familysafemedia.com/pornography\_statistics.html
[3]http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/22617414
[4]Lifesitenews.com, Aging Sex Icon Raquel Welch: Contraceptives Shattered Marriage, the ‘cornerstone of civilisation.’ May 12, 2010-11-15
[5]http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=21893

Cheryl Ann Smith, the director of Madonna House Robin hood’s Bay and a member of the Madonna house community for 32 years, gives an insight into the life and spirituality of Catherine Doherty, founder of the Madonna house movement.

Servant of God Catherine de Hueck Doherty was a lover of Christ. Refugee, spurned wife, oft-maligned champion of the poor, holocaust of divine love, Catherine Doherty was a white martyr of the Gospel. Pioneer of the Catholic Lay Movement, forerunner of the new ecclesial communities, founder of the Madonna House Apostolate, Catherine Doherty was a prophet and poet of the Holy Spirit.

Childhood and Early Years

Who was this woman? Catherine was born in 1896 in another age, another world, the Orthodox world of pre-revolution Russia. She was born into a deeply Christian family in a society whose warp and woof was the Church. She described her childhood as idyllic, but as soon as she stepped into adulthood, innocence was shattered. Marrying her first cousin at the all-too-early age of 16 years, unhappiness broke into her heart. Only a year later, she and her husband were called into the front lines of the First World War, and she plunged into the horrors of war. But she did so with spirit and courage, and was decorated for bravery.

Both Catherine and her husband, Boris de Hueck, were born into aristocracy, and when the Russian Revolution exploded many of their family were killed. The couple fled to Finland. Catherine described hiding in the mire of pigs to escape the Red Army, only to be captured and condemned to death by slow starvation. Hovering between life and death she promised God: “If you save me from this, in some way I will offer my life to you.” The White Army rescued them, and in the spirit of divine forgiveness they refused to hand over their tormentors.
The Move to Canada and then New York

Catherine and Boris made their way to England, where Catherine joined the Catholic Church, and then they sought asylum in Toronto, Canada, where their son George was born. Ground down by the poverty they experienced as refugees, Boris’s inability to work and the cruelty of his infidelities, Catherine chose to move to New York City to earn a living for her little family. She described living in Ma Murphy’s boarding house, where six women rented a room with two beds. Life was bleak, and she was tempted to despair.
Eventually she found work as a lecturer with the Chautauqua Circuit, and she shed her rags for riches again. However, one night she heard Christ gently laugh: “Catherine, do you think you can escape from me that way?” Thus began a period of voluntary poverty during which she received strange words from God, words from the Gospel that spelled a way of life.

Friendship House

With the Bishop of Toronto’s blessing, she provided for her son and then entered the slums during the Great Depression, meaning to live a Russian-style life of a poustinik (see note at end of article): praying, begging for her own needs and those of the poor, and serving her neighbours however she could. God had other plans, however, and soon a little community gathered around her, and the group, which she called Friendship House, spread to other Canadian cities.

This was during a period of the Communist scare. Catherine had a heavy Russian accent, lived among the poor and preached to anyone, including the Church, about the sin of not caring for these little ones of God. She did not mince words; she threatened many who belonged to “the establishment” and was eventually driven out of Canada.

It was then that she met Dorothy Day, who became a life-long friend, and Fr Paul Wattson of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, who paved the way for her to open a Friendship House for African Americans in the enclave of the Harlem slums in New York City. Through him, she became a Third Order Franciscan.
This was in 1938. Again a community gathered around her and again Friendship House was invited to other cities, where Catherine’s voice tirelessly cried out for social and interracial justice. In those days, when the attitudes of slavery still cast their ugly shadow, she risked martyrdom. In one public talk she expanded Christ’s challenge: “I was black in the United States of America and you did not feed, clothe, educate Me.” She was nearly lynched. A quick-thinking janitor hid her in a rubbish bin and wheeled her out to safety.

Combermere and Madonna House

But the more painful rejection came from within her own community. Catherine had a particular vision of this movement of Friendship House that was inspired by God and emerged from her Russian background. This vision was not shared by the American members who had been formed by democracy. In addition, Catherine had received an annulment from her first marriage and had secretly married Eddie Doherty, the top-paid reporter in the United States who had fallen madly in love with her, with God and with the Catholic Church. Understandably, this was a shock to the Friendship House staff, and the rift widened. In 1947 they rejected Catherine and her ways. Catherine and Eddie then retired to a house in the backwoods of Ontario, Canada, outside a tiny village called Combermere.

From that place of humiliation and failure, Madonna House was born. Once again, people found their way to Catherine, as they do when Christ is alive and calling. In fairly short order, a community of laymen, lay women and priests dedicated to Our Lady were given permission by the Church to live together in poverty, chastity and obedience. Catherine and Eddie took the same promises. Within a few years, Bishops were asking for Madonna House staff to open houses in their dioceses, to live the Gospel of Love through soup kitchens, prayer houses, houses of hospitality and friendship. We now number about 200 members, and have 19 houses in Europe, Russia, North America and the Caribbean. In addition, more than 100 associate deacons, priests and bishops find their home in our spirit, and live itout wherever they are posted.
Madonna House is a microcosm of the Church: we are a blend of the East and West; we are men and women, clergy and lay, young and old, intensely active and deeply contemplative.

Catherine’s Spirituality

With this background now painted, we ask the question: What is the spirituality of Catherine Doherty? Thousands of holy men and women have been lovers of Christ, white martyrs of the Gospel and prophets of the Holy Spirit. What makes Catherine Doherty unique? Let us allow the Holy Spirit to answer through phrases He whispered to her through formative years – phrases that she eventually pieced together and called her Little Mandate from God. This is the mandate that serves as the guiding light of her spiritual family, Madonna House.

Arise – go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me.

Little – be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike.

Preach the Gospel with your life – without compromise!

Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you.

Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me.

Love… love… love, never counting the cost.

Go into the marketplace and stay with Me.

Pray, fast. Pray always, fast.

Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour’s feet.

Go without fears into the depth of men’s hearts.

I shall be with you.

Pray always. I will be your rest.

When Catherine first began to sense Christ calling her to a deeper life in Him, she turned to Scripture. It seemed that every time she opened a Bible, whether at a friend’s house or in the public library, it was to the words of Christ to the rich young man: Arise, go, sell what you possess, give it to the poor and follow Me (Mk 10:21). It became clear that she was to leave everything and follow Christ, but it was to be in the Russian way of giving her wealth directly and personally to the poor. Then she was to follow and serve Him there. This way of identifying with Christ in the poor was ingrained in her Russian background. Catherine recalled her parents hosting a dinner party for dignitaries when the butler announced: “Christ is at the door, sir.” Her parents left the table, seated atramp at the kitchen table, and personally served him a fine meal on china plates. For them, this tramp was Christ.

This first paragraph of the Little Mandate offers the heart of Catherine’s motivation: her beloved Christ called her to take up His cross, to share in His suffering, to love unto death as He did, for the sake of His poor. This was to be a full offering, a full renunciation, a full identification. This was the only possible way she could withstand the martyrdom that was to come.

As we in Madonna House follow the Divine Pauper in our promise of poverty, we rely on our Heavenly Father for all our needs; hence we live by begging. We may keep money we have brought to the apostolate, but we may not spend it without permission. We live as simply as possible, to identify with the poor and to give of our surplus each year to those in greater need. However, as Catherine taught us, physical poverty is the kindergarten level of this promise. True poverty demands a complete stripping of self, a total reliance on God at every level of our being.

Little – be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike. Although she was an intellectual, a cultured, educated woman of the world, Catherine followed the example of the One who emptied Himself to assume the condition of a slave (Phil 2:7). As she wrote: “My devotion to the Child of Bethlehem helped me. He had surrendered his intellect, his God-like intellect. He had become a child.” And, catching glimpses of the immensity of the Blessed Trinity as she led a hidden mystical life where Christ showed her the agonies of hell and the glories of heaven, Catherine knew her littleness beside His majesty. Like St Thérèse of Lisieux in the years just before Catherine, she was called to spiritual childhood.

Preach the Gospel with your life – without compromise! Catherine knew the value and power of words. She was a mesmerising speaker and a prolific writer. But she was convinced that our life and heart are the greatest witnesses to the Gospel. And only when we are ready to lay down our life for Christ and His poor, only when we are ready to live the Gospel of Christ without compromise, will we be true evangelisers. As she wrote: “Words are not enough! Words die before the Word. I can only prove my love for him by loving my neighbour, for my neighbour is He Himself.”

Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you. It was the Holy Spirit who gave Catherine the words to challenge the modern pharisees, and to withstand the resulting threats. It was the Holy Spirit who gave her the grace to embrace celibacy while still so in love with her husband Eddie. It was the Holy Spirit who gave her the courage to tend the wounded in wars, to enter the slums without a penny, to live as the only white woman in a black enclave, to endure the failure of two apostolates and to begin again, to push herself beyond her limits to preach the Gospel of Love.

Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me. This inspired line offers a way of holiness. When Catherine began her apostolic life in the 1920s, most lay people were not yet aware of their call to union with God. They believed that to be the domain of Religious. This was not in Catherine’s Russian heritage, and she set about to teach and give witness to the call of every child of God to be one with Him. Every action can be a holy act, if offered out of love for God. This was why Catherine laboured for the Catholic Lay Movement, why she insisted we live in the marketplace and don’t wear habits. We are ordinary people living the nitty-gritty of everyday life in union with Christ. This is a universal call and it can sanctify the world.

Love… love… love, never counting the cost. In Madonna House hangs a sign that proclaims I am Third. I am called to love and serve God first, then my neighbour, and lastly myself. God is a jealous lover, a consuming fire who wants nothing less than our whole heart. From this wellspring of love we are mandated to love, to forgive, to lay down our lives for others. And only from this place of union can we see and love ourselves as God wishes.

This demanding call is at the heart of our life. When Catherine wrote the Constitution for our Apostolate, she placed at the beginning the law of love, for “the primary work of the Apostolate is that we love one another… This is the greatest work of the Apostolate. We must love God. We must love ourselves according to the will of God. We must love one another. This deep love of humanity requires an enlargement of heart that is so great that man could not aspire to it unless God showed him the way. We must pray for that enlargement of heart because we must become an inn for all those besieged by robbers, and where is the man or woman today who isn’t?”

Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always, fast. Catherine eloquently spoke of our call to be contemplatives in the marketplace in a letter written in 1957. “I have mentioned the need for contemplation. While on a human level our Apostolate is one of the most active imaginable, I think it has also been destined by God to be deeply contemplative. Unless we become contemplatives, how will we ever be able to face a lifetime of doubts, temptations and fears? Unless we enter the great silence of God and his peace, how will we be able to face the daily pain that grinds us like sand? Resting on his breast, listening only to the sound of his heartbeats, we will hear, in proportion to our inner stillness, the depth of his love for us.

“We are a new breed of contemplatives. Our monasteries are the busy streets of new pagan cities… We are a new breed of contemplatives, and our bells are the poor, knocking ceaselessly at our blue doors. We are a new breed of contemplatives, and we must learn to rest on the heart of God, listening to the perfect harmony of his heartbeats while we go about his business in the midst of the most discordant music the world has ever known.”

Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour’s feet. Catherine wrote: “I would be hidden as Christ was hidden in Nazareth. I considered Nazareth to be the centre of my vocation. Only by being hidden would I be a light to my neighbour’s feet in the slums.” Catherine Doherty was a great woman, a holy woman. And yet she remains largely hidden in the Church. Her spiritual child, Madonna House, is also hidden in the shadow of the great orders and international movements in the universal Church. We are hidden in God. And somehow, by our life of atonement, prayer, uncompromising love, we become an unseen light. We can go without fears into the depth of men’s hearts for I am with you. It is Christ who lives and moves in us, when we allow Him access. We can bring Him, then, into the places of greatestdarkness, poverty, need. We can bring His light.

Pray always. I will be your rest. Catherine always dreamt of living a poustinik vocation, but God called her to love and serve as Jesus did, and to take her vigils at night, as He did. In her cabin was a cushion with the Russian words “I sleep but my heart watches”. Catherine’s heart rested always on the breast of her Beloved, giving her the grace and strength to love, love, love, never counting the cost.

Our Lady, the Trinity and the Church

In this short introduction to Catherine Doherty’s spirituality, three other elements must be presented: Our Lady, the Trinity and the Church. At the end of a talk about Madonna House given in 1956, Catherine was asked why she hadn’t spoken of Our Lady. After all, the Apostolate is dedicated to Her.

Her response? “All the things I have spoken to you will happen to you if you go to Jesus through Mary. She possesses the secret of prayer, the secret of wisdom, for she is the Mother of God. Who else can teach you to burn with the fire of love except the Mother of fair love? Who else can teach you to pray except the woman of prayer? Who else can teach you to go through the silence of deserts and nights, the silence of pain and sorrow, the solitude of joy and gladness, except the woman wrapped in silence?

“Sometimes it is difficult to speak of the self-evident… Our Lady of the Trinity and Our Lady of Madonna House are one and the same… Perhaps my silence about Mary was a tribute to the woman wrapped in silence. But I conclude by saying that all that we do in this Apostolate we do through Mary. All of us are consecrated to her as her slaves (a form of consecration given by St Louis de Montfort). That’s why we are free. And that is why we can dedicate ourselves so utterly to her Son, because it is she who shows us the Way.”

Towards the beginning of her Constitution, Catherine wrote that the essence of her spirituality, which was formed in Russia, is the Trinity. She described a mystical glimpse she was given of the Trinity as fire, flame and movement and herself as both enveloped by, and enveloping, the Trinity. Because she had been given this glimpse, she wanted her life (and ours) to reflect that vision. And thus we are three branches in Madonna House: lay men, lay women and priests, living one life. In this we model ourselves after the Blessed Trinity and after the Holy Family in Nazareth.

When writing elsewhere about living in community she said: “The Community of the Trinity is simply the Community of Love: God the Father loving God the Son, and this love bringing forth the Holy Spirit. In order to form a community, we must make contact with the Trinity first. Then and only then can we make a community with others… The secret of becoming a community is a total involvement in the other, and a total emptying of oneself so that each can say, I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me. Then the Christian community has come into existence. Then, like the Holy Spirit who truly formed it, a community becomes a fire burning in our midst and, from this fire, sparks kindle the earth.”

Catherine was deeply loyal to the Church, for she understood it to be the Body of Christ. From the age of 11 years, she consciously offered her life for priests, even if their humanity was at times scandalous. When she was a child, she found the local priest one day drunk in the gutter. Deeply shaken, she ran to her mother who calmly asked Catherine to help her bring the priest to their home. After she had washed him and put him on the bed, she called Catherine to put a lily in her brother’s chamber pot. It was a lesson Catherine never forgot: the humanity of the priest might be in the gutter, but Christ remained the pure lily in his priesthood.
Catherine was always obedient to the Church and willingly suffered for the Church. After Vatican II, when the Church seemed to be torn apart she wrote: “The Church is in agony. The remedy: greater love, greater understanding, greater compassion, greater empathy for all who are confused, suffering, leaving the Church, tearing the seamless robe of Christ in the process. The world has become a Coliseum once again. Those who understand that true renewal begins with themselves … will be ground into the invisible wheat of the bread of Christ. Having eaten of the God of love, they must now be ready to be consumed themselves as holocausts and as martyrs. This invisible shedding of blood may be the seeds of both a new faith and the finding of a lost one.”
Catherine de Hueck Doherty died on 14 December 1985, the feast day of St John of the Cross. The similarities between these two followers of God are striking, especially their adherence to the path of Love in the midst of darkness and rejection. Was it on that day that the title Catherine of the Cross was first heard? It is indeed apt.
Lover of God, white martyr of the Gospel, prophet and poet – this is Catherine of the Cross.
Madonna House has a field house in Robin Hood’s Bay, North Yorkshire, England, where currently five members offer a house of hospitality and prayer. There are two prayer rooms available for retreatants, and the Chapel is available for an encounter with God. People are welcome to phone, write or come for prayer or counsel.

Madonna House
Thorpe Lane
Robin Hood’s Bay
YO22 4TQ
01947 880 169
rhb@madonna1.plus.com

*Poustinia is a Russian word for desert and it refers to a way of prayer that is more Eastern: silence, solitude, fasting and prayer with only the Scriptures as spiritual food. The poustinik is not a hermit, however, and expects to serve his neighbours according to their need. Catherine first brought this word and concept to the West in 1975, as she published her book entitled Poustinia.

It is now a fairly common word, having been integrated into the Western contemplative world. Catherine went on to publish a series of books introducing other Russian concepts, calling us to breathe with both lungs. She is thus a sturdy bridge between the East and West.

Mgr Burke shows how some of the fairly self-evident foundations of Christian marriage have become obscured. He is a former Judge of the Roman Rota, the High Court of the Church, and now lectures at Strathmore University, Nairobi, Kenya. His best-known books are Covenanted Happiness and Man and Values, both published by Scepter Press. His website is: www.cormacburke.or.ke

Marriage is a vocation; it is the vocation to which the vast majority of people are called. It has two clear purposes or, as the Catechism says, a "twofold end...: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life" (n. 2363). It is a call both to faithful love and to fruitful love.

1. The first purpose is that spouses grow together in goodness, and in that openness to goodness which prepares them for heaven. This means specifically that they are meant to grow in loving God (the first commandment) by means of growing in love for each other throughout their lifetime.

2. The second purpose is that they carry on God's loving work of creation. In other words that, as co-creators with God, they bring children into the world and rear them in the setting of family love, so as to prepare them for a life that can lead to Heaven.

These essentially linked purposes are clearly indicated in the scriptural accounts of the creation of the sexes and of the institution of marriage.

The First Purpose of Marriage

The first purpose of marriage is established in Genesis 2:18: "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him". The "good" that God seeks for husband and wife is that their marriage takes each one out of self-centredness, teaches them to love (for love must be learnt) and so leads them to holiness.[1]

Marriage is presented in the Bible as a covenant that shares in the very love of God: "The covenant between the spouses is integrated into God's covenant with man" (CCC 1639). A covenant is a specially firm expression of faithful love.

Just as God's covenant of love with his people is unbreakable, so too God has designed the covenanted love of man and woman in marriage to be indissoluble (cf. Compendium, 340). So he declared in Matthew 19:5-6: "A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."

It is easy - it should be easy - to understand his reasons. In the first place, so that the spouses learn to love. Marriage is not a haven of love, but a school of love. Indissolubility keeps the spouses at the life-business of learning to love each other - "with their defects", as St. Josemaria Escriva constantly put it.

Enduring commitment to what is worthwhile, loyalty to others, generosity in self-forgetfulness, service to some real ideal: there lies the witness the world needs from Christians today and especially from spouses. Lack of generosity, fear of commitment, lack of faithfulness are the scourges of modern society. Each putting self first, and not ready to be bound by any real ties of commitment to others, however noble. Come out of myself? Commit myself in a definitive fashion? No way! And so each one remains stuck in self, centred on self, imprisoned in self. Such an attitude, if it becomes definitive, is Hell.

To come out of self-love is not easy, and yet it is essential. If I retreat from the generous dedication demanded by a permanent and worthwhile commitment, I am falling back into that false self-love which always wants to put self - one's comfort or preference or sterile independence - at the centre of one's concerns. That is the lot not only of those who divorce but also, even if to a lesser extent, of those spouses who remain together but have given up on the effort to love.

The Second Purpose

The other end of marriage is no less evidently established in Genesis 1:27-28: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply..."

It was for this purpose also that God created man and woman: to multiply his image in the children born of their marital union. This means that he gave them a mission, an extraordinary and privileged mission, to carry on the work of creation. To be co-creators with Him; for while husband and wife together give rise to the body, each soul has to be created and infused by God.

To be amazed at this human power to procreate is not only supernatural, it is natural. What greater thing can someone do than to create life? We see scientists today, with quasi-divine pretensions, endeavouring to do this artificially. But spouses can already do it in a natural way.

And yet how little this sharing in the divine plan and power is appreciated today. Here there has been a submerging or silencing of some fundamental truths that need urgently to be recalled and reproclaimed. On the one hand, motherhood, along with virginity, is what has most inspired men with respect for women. On the other, women in general have always seen motherhood, despite what it demands of them, as the most fulfilling element of their lives. In the measure in which, over a few decades of radical and ever-more frustrated feminism, many women have lost the sense of the greatness and privilege of motherhood, they have lost the natural respect of men.

Disadvantaged Children

What a pity and impoverishment if parents forget this truly God-given mission and privilege: to endeavour that their children grow in an atmosphere of dedicated and generous love. The lack of experience of this in childhood is surely a significant contributory factor to selfishness and sadness in adulthood.

So many of today's children are disadvantaged, in the lack not so much of material things as of the experience of a family life that could turn them into mature, generous and responsible young persons. Instead of that, what do we see? More and more young people who are turned in on themselves, mean or vain, prone to greed or jealousy, lacking self-control, inconstant. It is particularly in well-off families that one finds such underdeveloped children. The fault in large part lies with the parents; and that in two ways.

On the one hand is the fact that the parents are physically absent from the home for so much of the time. Parents can be so absorbed in being a success as professionals that they become a dismal failure as parents; or devoting so much time to earning money, perhaps precisely so that their children can go to good schools, that they have no concern or energy left to create that type of family life which forms children more than any school, however good.

But there is also the absence of other brothers and sisters, not only sufficient in number (three or four or five) but also close enough in age (with a gap of no more than a couple of years down the line), so that they can grow up in the rough and tumble that should be an essential component of family life. Yes (the point needs to be emphasised), some brawling and fighting between the children may be bothersome for the parents (do they marry so as never to be bothered?), but it is an integral part of family education. Without this children will be less likely to learn that it is selfishness to want always to have one's own way, meanness never to wish to share, and fatal to bear grudges (because God will not forgive those who do not learn to forgive). And how otherwise can parents fulfillthat indispensable part of their role which, through their presence on the family playing field itself, is to be referees or arbiters of those natural sibling squabbles, gradually preparing their children to grow up into open, fair-minded and responsible members of adult society?

The Family Project

Marriage is approached more and more selfishly today. Far too many people look on it as simply a way that should be satisfying to me and, on balance, should make me happy, because it will bring me more satisfactions than burdens.

This whole approach is deeply flawed. It is not that people expect too much of marriage; they expect the wrong thing. Such an approach is too small, too self-centred. It looks on marriage for the companionship or security or ease or pleasure it seems to promise, not for the mission it entails. It reduces marriage to the comfortable and shared calculations of two people, when it is meant to be an open-ended adventure involving three to begin with: husband and wife and God...; and all that this can lead to.

Two phenomena in particular show how the approach to marriage has become more and more calculating and self-centered over the last century: divorce and contraception. Faithful unity - for as long as it suits me. Fruitful union - to the degree that suits me.

Easy annulments have been described as the 'Catholic equivalent' to divorce. However, our purpose here is not to consider divorce but rather to reflect on how the contraceptive mentality has spread also among Catholics. In other words, more and more Catholics have become infected with the mindset that regards children as "optional extras" in marriage, that is, as something that it might be nice to have (one or two, that is) but would be a nuisance or a burden if had in any greater numbers. What is perhaps most significant here is not those Catholics who, in violation of the Church's clear teaching, make use of contraceptives, but the quasi-exaltation of family planning by natural means as if this represented some sort of ideal for Catholic married life, and not, as in fact it is, arecourse that the Church allows, because Nature itself allows it, when a couple have serious reasons for depriving themselves - and their present children - of the gift from God of a further child.

Natural Family Planning

In contrast to 50 years ago when Catholics marrying normally planned to have a large family and rejoiced at the prospect, many Catholic couples today regard such a plan with a certain fear, thinking it would hinder their self-fulfilment and bring them burdens rather than joy. Sadly, they seem to have lost the sense of the divine adventure in which they are involved and the privilege, integral to their vocation, of being co-creators with God.

The Church has always taught the greatness of generous family planning. It is a sign of the times - a sign of how much we are influenced by the times - that Natural Family Planning is practically always understood as a way of limiting the size of a family. Is that a truly 'natural' approach? Here we seem to have forgotten that the essential reason why Natural Family Planning is termed "natural" is to mark the borderline that distinguishes it from "unnatural" and immoral family planning through the use of contraceptives. In that sense, NFP marks a "moral minimum", a way of avoiding children without sin - when there are serious reasons to do so. Certainly these grave reasons can exist; but the clear teaching of the magisterium is that NFP is natural only when such reasons exist. Withoutthose serious reasons Natural Family Planning would be "unnatural" and morally wrong.[2]

If this sounds surprising, it is a sign of how the notion of marriage has been reduced and dehumanised. After all, what is natural for a married couple in love is to have children. To avoid having a child, without serious reason, is a sign that their mutual love is marred by calculation and self-centredness; at the same time it implies a rejection or at least a limitation of their divinely given mission. It is to show a lack of trust in God or a failure to respond to the greatness of the trust God wants to place in them.

[Perhaps one should add that, in some places at least, young people are let down by marriage preparation courses which fail to emphasise, in all its beauty, the call to generous co-creation inherent in the married vocation.]

The Inferiority Complex About Being 'Just' a Wife or Mother

Motherhood and home-making are looked down on today. They have little status. This opinion is profoundly unchristian. It is one which Christians, especially Christian women, need not only to despise but to counter proudly and vigorously with their words and their deeds; i.e. because they have thought things out and are acting according to their own values instead of yielding to peer-pressure.

It is true that many women today (though not so many men) raise their eyebrows when they hear of or meet a married woman with five or six children. How should one interpret this? That they look down on her? Or that, though they don't admit it, they look up to her? Is it not rather the latter - that they envy her as someone more fulfilled, more generous than they are? That should be the conclusion of the more perceptive mother of a larger family; unless she gives way to the silly embarrassment or the groundless inferiority complex that her critics would like to induce in her. If they pretend to pity her it is because they don't want to face up to the fact that they are the ones to be pitied, that she is more of a woman and has chosen the better part.

Here I would like to address the Christian working mother directly. When you are tempted to give way to the idea that motherhood has no status in today's world, ask yourself: what status does it have in God's eyes? Whose opinion matters most to you? And the same applies to the status of being a home-maker.

On what do people base their idea that running a home is inferior, humanly speaking, to exercising a profession or running an office - or being run about in an office?

Well, in a professional or office job one is more independent. Really? In which jobs? At home you are the boss in running things. What percentage of women are bosses in their job or office? What is their position towards their patients or clients: that of bosses or of servants?

But work at home is so boring compared with work in my office? Do you really think so? Make a list of the non-boring things, the really exciting things, you experience each day in your office. And reflect that where love is present, boredom disappears. You can put love for God into your professional work, but maybe you don't feel quite so motivated to put into it love for your boss or your colleagues. But you can, you should, have plenty of motives to put not only love for God, but love for your husband and for each one of your children, into your work at home.

But, for a consumer society, a mother or a homemaker does not earn anything, whereas in a job you earn your own money and so have more self-respect and also stand on terms of equality with your husband.

Do you want to be equal with your husband, or be loved by him? A good mother earns nothing?? Think of the respect that she earns from her husband or her children![3] The respect, indeed the envy, she earns from her neighbours -even if they won't admit it.

But - in terms of money, she earns nothing. So what? You are deprived of what money can buy? Can money buy respect, or God's good pleasure or the sense of true human fulfilment?

Some take it as evident that motherhood or home-making are inferior jobs simply because they are not paid. Does this argument have much weight with you? If you measure the worth of a job by how much money it earns, if money is your standard of worth, then you do not have a Christian approach. Human work is worth what it is worth before God. Our Lord chose a job that was certainly not well paid. If we let ourselves measure the worth of jobs, or of our 'quality' of life, just in financial terms we have a materialistic outlook and not a Christian one. Christians value things differently and teach others, beginning with their children, to do the same. If you are not deeply convinced of that, you will never succeed in your vocation to be a good wife or mother.

The Career Woman

But surely - another may object - the Church today insists that the world needs to be evangelised by the witness of ordinary Christians in their professional work; and that is what I want to do. Indeed; but your objection seems to imply an opposition between your "professional work outside the home" and your work in the home, as if the latter were not work - which is obviously false - but also as if it were not professional - which it certainly is.

Raising a family is a job and a profession as much as any other; one with its challenges, satisfactions, disappointments... It is a profession in the most noble sense, and one that you should be especially proud of. In fact it has a dignity to it that cannot be rivalled by any other human calling. If you don't realise and rejoice in that, something is seriously missing in your human formation and outlook.

In all societies until our own, motherhood, along with virginity, has been considered the special dignity and glory of woman. God wished that dignity to be supremely expressed in his own ideal woman, Mary, Virgin and Mother. Modern radical feminism despises this ideal.[4] The true feminist is proud of being a woman and seeks to develop a truly feminine identity. Women who are not proud of being women have indeed an identity problem on their hands. They need to ask themselves: Am I glad that I am a woman? Why? How feminine am I? Is the way of fulfilment that I have in mind a feminine way or a masculine way? Do I think of fulfilment or success mainly in terms of being higher on the professional or social ladder? Am I happy to serve or do I wantto be the boss?

Service, love for the spirit of service, is the key to solving the problems implied here. Only the person - man or woman -whose approach to life is one of service can live an admirable and fulfilled life. This is elementary for a Christian. Mary, the greatest woman and human person ever, is proud to see herself as ancilla Domini, handmaid of the Lord. Jesus comes as one who serves and says that if anyone wants to be great, he or she must serve. Most people are far from thinking in these terms today, and so are far from any true greatness and perhaps indeed of salvation. As Christians, service has to be the ideal of our life. If it is not, then we are not following the way of Christ; and whatever hopes we may have for our salvation, sanctity in this life is clearly out of thequestion for us.

Joint Enterprise Between Husband and Wife

It often happens that two friends decide to set up a joint enterprise because they realise they are well suited to work together in something that interests both of them. That very seldom means that both want to do exactly the same job. On the contrary, usually they realise they somehow complement each other. One can be a good manager or accountant, the other a good advertiser or salesman. And, if they trust one other, I doubt they will squabble too much over what each one gets paid. As long as each enjoys his or her job, as long as they appreciate the result of their joint efforts and remain good friends, money matters will work themselves out.

Suppose it is a husband and wife who set up as partners or managers in a wholesaling or retailing business. Do they first sit down to calculate how much each one will be paid? Or do they not rather think that as a joint venture the profit will accrue to both, even though each will no doubt be assigned different responsibilities? Well, that is exactly what a couple, if they are normal, set about when they marry: to engage together in the joint venture of setting up a family.

The problem today is that in that marvellous shared family venture, parents have let themselves be brainwashed into thinking that their roles must be equal, not complementary, that they can measure each one's performance by the amount of money each earns, that the bread-winner is more important than the home-maker. But this is simply senseless. It shows that they have not thought for themselves or that they do not know what marriage is really about or why, in this case, they have married.

It is no exaggeration to say that the family is the crisis area in society. The health of any society depends on the health of the family, and in general today the family is very, very weak. It is the mission of parents to make it strong. It is a God-given task that was never so urgent and that God must bless and reward as never before.

Notes

[1] Some writers, especially among canonists, have taken the bonum or "good" of the spouses to mean essentially their human fulfilment or a satisfying marital life. This is groundless, both theologically and canonically "Good" in this expression has much the same meaning as in "common good" or "good of the people". Taxes or traffic laws are meant to be for the good of the people, including those who find them burdensome.

[2] Suggestions that Church magisterium no longer teaches that serious reasons are required for practising NFP have no foundation. Humanae Vitae says, "those are considered to exercise responsible parenthood who prudently and generously decide to have a large family, or who, for serious reasons and with due respect to the moral law, choose to have no more children for the time being or even for an indeterminate period" (no. 10; cf no. 16). Pope John Paul was emphatic in teaching that "[t]he use of the infertile periods for conjugal union can be an abuse if the couple, for unworthy reasons, seeks in this way to avoid having children, thus lowering the number of births in their family below the morally correct level.This morally correct level must be established by taking into account not only the good of one's own family, and even the state of health and the means of the couple themselves, but also the good of the society to which they belong, of the Church, and even of the whole of mankind. Humanae Vitae presents responsible parenthood as an expression of a high ethical value. In no way is it exclusively directed to limiting, much less excluding, children. It means also the willingness to accept a larger family" (General Audience, Sept 5,1984). In his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, he taught: "In its true meaning, responsible procreation requires couples to be obedient to the Lord's call and to act as faithful interpreters of his plan. This happens when the family isgenerously open to new lives, and when couples maintain an attitude of openness and service to life, even if, for serious reasons and in respect for the moral law, they choose to avoid a new birth for the time being or indefinitely" (no. 97; emphasis added). The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) says, "For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children..." The Compendium of the Catechism of 2005, in answer to the question, "When is it moral to regulate births?", replies: "The regulation of births, which is an aspect of responsible fatherhood and motherhood, is objectively morally acceptable when it is pursued by the spouses without external pressure; when it is practised not out of selfishness but for seriousreasons; and with methods that conform to the objective criteria of morality, that is, periodic continence and use of the infertile periods" (no. 497).

[3] Men admire motherhood. More than women do today. Nothing makes a husband look up more to his wife than the fact that she is the mother, the dedicated mother, of his children.

[4] What it proposes instead is in effect a masculinisation of women, who are then left with no feminine identity and are even ashamed of being considered "feminine". A feminism that despises what is feminine is a contradiction in terms.

John Gavin SJ is the assistant professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts. He previously taught theology and Greek at the Gregorian University in Rome and at the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Pontifical Oriental Institute.

"Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning" (CS Lewis)
How can an artist depict ritual? On the one hand, any rite possesses perceptible signs and symbols that the artist may pluck from the temporal flow and convert into permanent images: light, water, incense, bodily gestures, garments and sacred spaces may inhabit the canvas or fill the fresco. On the other hand, the full spiritual import of a religious ceremony, informed by text and tradition, eludes even the most devoted artist. How can one convey the experience, the emotional impact, of passing through the material and into the transformative spiritual realm?

In early Christianity, mystery, a quality that modern technocracies have laboured hard to erase, still surrounded the rite of baptism. Initiates, after a lengthy period of preparation, would enter into communion with the Church during an evening ritual replete with natural and biblical symbols. Stripped of their old garments they would plunge naked into the pool of rebirth and emerge with the prelapsarian image restored: baptism realised the platonic ideal of becoming "like God". The fourth-century poet Ephraem the Syrian could sing of the newly baptised: "They go down sordid with sin; they go up pure like children, for baptism is a second womb for them. Rebirth in the font rejuvenates the old, as the river rejuvenated Naaman."¹

''Jonah and Daniel, escaping their respective perils, pass through death and return to the paradisiacal state. The shame of nakedness has left them and they, like Christ, abandon their garments in the tombs of a former life.''

Robin M Jensen explores the intersection of art, ritual, text and tradition in her new book Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity: Ritual, Visual, and Theological Dimensions. For some years Jensen has made important contributions to our understanding of the creative vision of nascent Christianity. Her Understanding Early Christian Art has served as a fine introductory text to the field, while other works, such as Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity, tackle the complex theological problems surrounding the Christian desire to portray the divine. This latest volume demonstrates the importance of early images not only for the study of Christian origins, but also for contemporary theological reflection.

The Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar said that the theologian must practise his discipline "on his knees", and perhaps one may apply this principle to the art historian as well. At the very least, the interpreter of early Christian art must have a spiritual, or even empathic, relationship with the artist who sought to convey his or her transformative experience. Being biblically or culturally informed is not enough. Jensen succeeds in her efforts because she understands that, in baptism, "visible images and actions, along with verbal recitation of ancient stories, prayers, hymns, all contributed to making an invisible presence more palpably sensed" (Jensen, Baptismal Image 3). She strives to see the artistic works with a baptised imagination.

As Ambrose, the fourth-century bishop of Milan, told the recently initiated: "You must not trust, then, wholly to your bodily eyes; that which is not seen is more really seen, for the object of sight is temporal, but that other eternal, which is not apprehended by the eye, but is discerned by the mind and spirit" (Ambrose of Milan, De mysteriis, III, 15).

Jensen identifies five themes inherent to the sacrament of initiation: the cleansing from sin and sickness; incorporation into the community; sanctification and illumination; death and resurrection; and new creation. These represent the various facets of the baptismal experience that liberate one from despair and thrust one into a new mode of existence. Any successful artistic representation of such an event, therefore, must encompass varied levels of personal transformation.

The surviving examples of baptismal imagery from the first five centuries can certainly confuse the average viewer, since they reflect this often obscure synthesis of faith and experience. For instance, two easily recognisable scenes from the Jewish scriptures, Jonah emerging from the belly of the whale and Daniel standing unharmed in the lion's den, grace the walls of catacombs, churches and sarcophagi. If the interpreter remains at the level of text for the hermeneutical key, these depictions easily convey God's beneficence and protection - themes that suggest baptism, though not necessarily.

Other details, however, invoke the imagination and lead towards a fuller sacramental interpretation. Why, one may ask, are Jonah and Daniel often shown in the nude? Such a detail does not appear in the biblical narrative. The artist may have simply followed classical conventions for depicting heroes: naked, muscular and triumphant. Yet, the ritual-experiential dimension points towards a sign of rebirth and resurrection. Jonah and Daniel, escaping their respective perils, pass through death and return to the paradisiacal state. The shame of nakedness has left them and they, like Christ, abandon their garments in the tombs of a former life. The fact that these images are often found on sarcophagi or in catacombs indicate that Jonah and Daniel anticipate the victorious rising of the baptised Christian: death cannot hold one who is an adopted child of God.

New Testament scenes also contain elements that puzzle the modern observer. Take, for instance, the shrinking of biblical protagonists. The dramatic raising of Lazarus provided rich details for the narrative artist - "Lazarus, come out!" - and proved a popular subject for catacombs, glasses and other objects. But who is the small child often standing at Jesus's feet? Not just another member of the crowd, but Lazarus himself! Not only has the reeking corpse returned to life, but the man has recovered his lost youth. Jensen links this rejuvenation of Lazarus to other images, such as the depiction of Jesus as a child in the baptism by John in the Jordan, or Adam and Eve portrayed as infants at the moment of creation. The Christian who views Lazarus restored recalls his or her own rebirth andliberation from the tomb through the power of the sacred waters. Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meum!

And then there is the menagerie that populates the sacred spaces: fish, lambs, deer, doves, and sea monsters. The fish - ichthus - had become a Greek acronym summarising the fundamental Christian truths: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. Yet, it also represented the baptised newly caught in the net of faith and rescued from the turbulent waters of the world. Jensen quotes a marvellous fourth-century inscription from southern France, the Epitaph of Pectorius:

Divine race of the heavenly fish, keep your heart holy, having received the immortal spring of divine waters. Comfort your soul, friend, with the ever-flowing water of wealth-giving wisdom. (Jensen Baptismal Imagery 73)

One also finds deer that, having long yearned for running waters, at last quench their thirst from the four rivers of paradise; lambs washed in flowing fountains, joyful members of a new flock; and the pure-white dove, the Spirit, who descended upon Jesus during his baptism and now hovers over the Christian faithful. Baptism transforms the believer's understanding of the natural world, which now preaches the Gospel in the language of paradise. One need only consult the fantastic bestiary in the Formulae spiritalis intellegentiae of Eucherius, the fifth century bishop of Lyon, to discover the riches of creation's peculiar idiom: the birds are saints, the pelican is Christ, the turtle is the Holy Spirit, the hen is the Church ... (Ciccarese, Animal! 42-55). Eucherius gives more thanallegories; he immerses the reader in the wonder of a new heaven and a new earth.

Architecture also speaks to the imagination that is open to other worlds. Everett Ferguson offers ample material for consideration in his monumental Baptism in the Early Church. For example, he takes one on a tour of the baptistery in the early-third century house church of Dura Europos (Ferguson, Baptism 440-443). In the baptistery, protology and eschatology intersect in images that demonstrate the restorative and transformative power of sacramental immersion. In one fresco, Adam and Eve confront the serpent, reminding the viewer of humanity's pristine origins and the necessity for freedom from sin; in another, Christ the shepherd stands in paradise, symbolising the liberation from death through divine union. As the initiate stood in the central pool, he or she could also look up at thestarry sky depicted on the ceiling, recalling the cosmic significance of the sacred rite. Through art a remodelled home became the site of reformed persons.

The fourth-century baptistery of San Giovanni alle Fonti in Milan stands out for its most important bishop, St Ambrose, and his most famous initiate, St Augustine. Its octagonal shape, typical for such dedicated sanctuaries, makes reference to the "eighth day", the day of the resurrection. St Ambrose's verses, once inscribed on the baptistery's walls, proclaimed the meaning of the sacred space:

With eight chapels [niches] the temple rises high for holy use; the font is eight-cornered, which is appropriate for its gift. With this number [eight] it was fitting the hall of holy baptism to erect, by which true salvation returned to the peoples in the light of the rising Christ, who releases from the prison of death and raises up the dead from their graves; and, freeing from the stain of sin the guilty who make confession, he washes them with the clear flowing water of the font. (Ferguson, Baptism 638)

The images that surround the sites of early Christian baptism, therefore, not only conveyed interpretations of the rite, but also contributed to the believer's very experience. While the water and trinitarian formula remained the essential instruments of grace, the art and architecture shaped the participants' disposition. The principle of ex opere operato - the effectiveness of the sacrament does not depend upon the spiritual state of the celebrant, but upon the proper performance of the rite in the Church - does not preclude the importance of a spiritual openness on the part of initiate and celebrant. Thus, on the night of the Easter Vigil, flickering candles illuminated the artistic signposts that guided the imagination on the road from the confines of temporal existence to the eternalfreedom of the eighth day.

Our age, now sadly bereft of biblical literacy, is left to ponder these once startling images. Historical reconstruction and critical tools will help us to interpret them. But will we be able to see them? Such a vision calls for an imagination baptised in the font of spiritual wonder.

Works Cited and Reviewed:

Ephraem The Syrian. The Harp of the Spirit. Trans Sebastian Brock, London: The Fellowship of St Alban and St Servius, 1975.
Ciaccarese, Maria Pia, ed. Animal! Simbolici: Alle origini del bestiario cristianio I. Florence: Centra di Studi Patristici, 2002.
Ferguson, Everett. Baptism in the Early Church: History, theology, and liturgy in the first five centuries. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.
Jensen, Robin M. Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity: Ritual, Visual and Theological Dimensions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012.
Jensen, Robin M. Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005.
Jensen, Robin M. Understanding Early Christian Art. London: Routledge, 2000.

Dr William Newton, associate professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, discusses the relationship between philosophy and theology.

As a professor of theology, I am more and more struck that, among the students I teach, the difference between an average student and a good student comes down to a competence in philosophy. In this short essay, I wish to explain why this is so. In essence, it requires that we see more clearly the relationship between the science of philosophy and the science of theology and why strength in the former goes a long way in achieving mastery of the latter.

Making Theology a Science

In the first place, philosophy is needed in order that theology might be a science at all. This is because a science is a body of knowledge that has its own set of principles and, on the basis of these principles, derives further conclusions. This is true of mathematics, biology, engineering, and so forth – and it is also true of theology.[ ]Now, while the principles of the science of theology are not known by philosophical reasoning (they come by revelation), the further conclusions that flow from these principles are derived with its help.

The principles of the science of theology are given in the articles of the Creed and in Sacred Scripture and they are known by us through faith, not through philosophical reasoning: you cannot, by unaided reason, conclude that the doctrine of the Trinity is true, for example. Nonetheless, from the starting point of these principles (received by faith) further conclusions can be drawn, and this is done by philosophical reasoning.

For example, when St Paul says, “Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (1 Cor 15:12) he is arguing from the principle of faith that Christ has risen from the dead to the conclusion of the general resurrection by mounting a kind of syllogism.

Another example would be the conclusion that Christ has two intellects. This is not directly revealed to us. However, it is revealed that He is God and that He is man. After all, we say that we believe in “Jesus Christ His Only Son our Lord … Who was incarnate from the Virgin Mary.” Starting from these two revealed truths, we reason that, since both God and man are rational, and since Christ is God and man, he must have both a divine and a human intellect.

In moral theology, the derivation of conclusions from revealed principles with the help of philosophical reasoning is very common indeed. For example, it is revealed to us that man has been created in the image of God (Gen 1:28).

From this we can conclude that man is different from all the animals and, accordingly, one man cannot own another man (as he can own an animal). This would lead to the conclusion that chattel-slavery is immoral.
Faith Seeking Understanding

The second service that philosophy renders to theology is that it allows a deeper penetration into the truths that are already known by revelation (through faith).

Take, for example, what the Creed says about the Father: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.” Without some philosophical understanding of what is meant by the word “Creator” this whole sentence is basically meaningless. Creation is normally taken to mean that something comes to be out of nothing (ex nihilo). The philosophical concept of creation, therefore, aids us in making sense of revelation.

Furthermore, it might be asked whether the Creed means to tell us that only the Father is the Creator and that the other Persons of the Trinity are not involved. Again, philosophy comes to our aid. Creation is an action on the part of God and all actions presuppose a certain nature capable of that action. For example, to think rationally (an action) presupposes a creature with a rational nature. This means that the divine act of creation is attributable to the divine nature (rather than to divine personhood). This leads to the conclusion that, since all three divine persons are of one nature, all three Persons are involved in creation. Philosophy, again, helps to solve the apparent problem.

Another common way that philosophy aids theology and deepens our understanding of revealed truth is through the “analogy of faith”. This is when a truth known by revelation is compared with one that can be known by reason; the analogy allows for a clearer understanding of the fittingness of the revealed truth. Take, for instance, St Augustine’s use of a human being’s mental capacities as an analogy of the processions of the Divine Persons in the Trinity: just as the Son proceeds from the Father and the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, a concept in the human mind is conceived (or born) in the intellect and from this breaks forth a movement of love in the will.[2]

The Corrective Power of Philosophy

The third way that philosophy comes to the service of theology is built upon the fact that truths known by sound philosophy and truths known by revelation alone cannot contradict each other. Truth is truth and (as is self-evident) something cannot be both true and false in the same respect and at the same time. Another way to reach this same conclusion is to note that God is the one source both of revealed truth and human reason.

Two important consequences follow from this. First: a philosophical conclusion that is clearly contrary to revealed truth – such as that the universe had no beginning – cannot actually be a sound philosophical conclusion because it contradicts certain revelation. This helps to guide both the development of philosophical thinking as well as the thinking in natural science. Second: a theological position that is clearly contrary to a sound philosophical conclusion cannot be true, either. For example, if it was proved beyond any doubt that the universe was not created in six days then this would mean that an interpretation of Genesis to the contrary would be false. This would not mean that Scripture is in error, only that our interpretation of it was faulty.

To pick (somewhat at random) another example of how sound philosophy acts as a corrective to unsound theology, we could imagine someone holding the opinion that bilocation (as experienced by some saints) implies the simultaneous location of a person (body and soul) in two places at once. This in untenable because the human body – like all corporeal things – fills space and is, by that, located in a single place. This means that we need to find another explanation of this supernatural phenomenon.

The Hedge and Fence of the Vine

The fourth invaluable service rendered by philosophy concerns the defence of the faith. Let us use, again, the example of the Trinity: that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God. We have already said that this truth is beyond the grasp of unaided human reason and that we come to it by way of revelation.

What happens if an opponent of the faith objects to this dogma claiming that it is a contradiction because, as he understands it, the dogma claims that three equals one and, as any first grade student of mathematics knows, three does not equal one, but three.

“The philosophical concept of creation, that something comes to be out of nothing, aids us in making sense of revelation”

How does the defender of the faith respond to this? He turns to sound philosophy. With the aid of philosophy, he points out that the dogma of the Trinity says that three persons have one nature and then points out that person and nature are not the same reality, so there is no contradiction, at all. He would need, of course, to explain that the notion of person pertains to who is there, whereas the concept of nature pertains to what is there.
However, here it is important to note what exactly has been achieved in the defence of this particular dogma. We certainly have not demonstrated the Trinity because how exactly three persons can share the same numeric nature is not evident to us; we have no experience of anything like it. We have shown, however, that the objection is itself unsound and that the objector does not prove the Trinity to be a contradiction. We have rebutted his objection to our position without proving our position: still, this is very helpful.

Anyhow, the point should be clear: the objection raised by the opponent is defeated by philosophy and not by theology. Moreover – and this is of equal importance – the opponent is defeated by the application of what might be called “the perennial philosophy” because the categories employed are those of nature and hypostasis (person). These ideas were first developed by ancient Greek philosophers, then refined in dogmatic controversies of the early centuries of the Church, and subsequently taught systematically by the scholastics, especially St Thomas.

It has to be said that this confluence of a certain school of philosophy with theology has been amazingly fruitful. So fruitful that, according to John Paul II, it points to the agency of Divine Providence:
“In engaging great cultures for the first time, the Church cannot abandon what she has gained from her inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought. To reject this heritage would be to deny the providential plan of God who guides his Church down the paths of time and history.”[3]

Wider Implications

Finally, it ought not to be thought that the utility of the perennial philosophy remains confined to the ivory tower of academia. For good or for bad, philosophical ideas beat a path down the corridor of history: they have practical consequences in the way people live their lives. For this reason, Leo XIII styled his great encyclical on the importance of the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas as a social encyclical.[4] He reminds us:

“Whoso turns his attention to the bitter strifes of these days and seeks a reason for the troubles that vex public and private life must come to the conclusion that a fruitful cause of the evils which now afflict, as well as those which threaten, us lies in this: that false conclusions concerning divine and human things, which originated in the schoolsof philosophy, have now crept into all the orders of the State, and have been accepted by the common consent of the masses.”[5]

How true: it can hardly be denied that much of the muddled thinking about matters of human sexuality that “vex public and private life” finds its origin in defective philosophical theories (such as nominalism) that deny the reality of natures, particularly human nature. This is turn removes the foundation of a universal and objective sexual ethic.
But if the root of the problem is bad philosophy, the solution surely is clear …

[1]St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.1 a.2.
[2]Cf. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.27; St Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate.
[3]John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 72.
[4]Leo XIII, Apostolic Letter, 19 March 1902.
[5]Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris, 2 [emphasis added].

Dudley Plunkett, senior academic tutor at the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham, offers
a reflection on beauty as a path to God in the light of the New Evangelisation.

While the Church must always continue to develop its exposition of the Faith through theology and apologetics, it should by no means neglect the power of beauty to affect human thinking, feeling and judgement. Indeed, beauty can have its own power to bring people to faith from rational argument. As the Catechism puts it: “Truth can also find other complementary forms of human expression, above all when it is a matter of evoking what is beyond words: the depths of the human heart, the exaltations of the soul, the mystery of God.” (CCC, 2500) While intellectual conclusions can change convictions, something more is needed to bring about a personal relationship with the Lord. There is therefore a link to be made between beauty, seen ultimately as an attribute of God, and the pursuit of theChurch’s evangelising mission. This insight, though commonly cited, including in the Instrumentum Laboris for the 2012 Synod on the new evangelisation, remains however somewhat nebulous. Can believers take hold of it during the Year of Faith in a way that empowers them “to radiate the word of truth that the Lord Jesus has left us” (Benedict XVI, Porta Fidei, 6)?

How Beauty Impinges on our Rational Consciousness and Feelings

Not everyone is consistently aware of beauty, and yet it is always there for those whose minds and hearts are open to it. In the end it is for a person to perceive that they need beauty, that it pleases, satisfies and inspires them. They are made in the image of God and have a soul that is only completely content when it contemplates the beauty which is absolute, in eternity, and which is the reflection, in time, of the God who unites goodness, beauty and truth, most visibly in our earthly existence through Jesus Christ. Ultimately, therefore, our sense of beauty stems from the incarnational faith that God has given us in Christ; now God has a face… and it must be absolutely good, beautiful and true.

From such contemplation we sense a magnetism that characterises beauty. So, whether we are walking through natural scenery, visiting an art gallery, encountering a special personality, participating in a liturgical ceremony, uncovering secrets of the scientific or mathematical world, in all these ways we scarcely realise what has happened until it is there before us and suddenly evident to us with its compelling quality of perfection. We are drawn to it with our intellectual faculties and our emotions. Natural awareness of beauty can vary with our state of preparedness, but we can all recognise peak experiences of beauty that awaken or startle us and remain long in our memories. At first they may be taken merely as aesthetic moments, such as communing with nature, savouring memories andimages, meeting mysteries, the heightened sensing of musical sounds, odours, colours, the thrill of acute poetic expression, or moving encounters with other human beings; but on further reflection people often cite such experiences as having a spiritual quality and as hints of the divine.
Beauty, a Way to God

Although the Church has preserved a tradition as a patron of the arts for more than a millennium, and the great mediaeval cathedrals in particular have portrayed Christianity through their paintings, sculptures, and perhaps especially their windows, Catholic teachers are now refocusing on literary, cultural and artistic beauty as a conscious resource for the transmission of the faith. In his remarkable personal appeal to artists, Pope John Paul II suggested how beauty in the work of artists can be a bridge to the transcendent: “Even beyond its typically religious expressions, true art has a close affinity with the world of faith, so that, even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience” (John Paul II, Letter to Artists,1999, 10).

More recently, the Pontifical Council for Culture has linked evangelisation and beauty by proposing that “the via pulchritudinis can open the pathway for the search for God” (PCC, The Via Pulchritudinis, Pathway for Evangelisation and Dialogue, 2006). Beauty can evangelise because it has the potential to convince, not by rational argument but through an intuitive or spiritual engagement. Beauty invites to contemplation, and to prayer, as it leads us back to its source. God has created a world which sacramentally reflects and expresses his love, his beauty and the truth about himself.

The Catechism makes clear the interpenetration of these divine attributes: “The practice of goodness is accompanied by spontaneous spiritual joy and moral beauty. Likewise, truth carries with it the joy and splendour of spiritual beauty.
Truth is beautiful in itself” (CCC, 2500). In discovering beauty, therefore, we come closer to God in all his attributes, for we are able “to see through perceptible beauty to eternal beauty” (VP, II.1).

Evangelisation in Need of Renewal

John Paul II introduced the expression the “new evangelisation” early in his pontificate, and returned continually to the theme. It was then taken up by Pope Benedict and the whole Church. By way of a summary of what the term has come to imply after 30 years of use, we can say first that evangelisation has always been the mission of the Church empowered by the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit (John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, 45). Pope Benedict then took the initiative of creating the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelisation, and made this topic the theme of the 2012 Synod of Bishops as well as an important aspect of the Year of Faith. Because of the “profound crisis of faith” in the world today (PF, 2), the Church is proposing not merely a continuationof the mission ad extra and ad intra but a renewal of the whole concept of evangelisation so that it is addressed through an energetic dialogue with secular cultures.

One project stemming from this idea is the PCC’s Courtyard of the Gentiles, inspired by the Temple in Jerusalem but also redolent of Paul’s Acropolis experience in Acts 17. It involves planned encounters between believers and non-believers of cultural distinction held in various cities, the first at the Unesco building in Paris and subsequent ones in Stockholm and Assisi. However innovative such experiments are, it is clear that, in John Paul II’s words, the “fervour, methods and expression” of evangelisation must continue to be renewed. Until the recent past the main emphasis has been on apologetics, catechesis and other reasoned approaches, but there are complementary steps to be taken towards the expressive and inspirational by featuring less rational and doctrinal means, such assacred art, that can in their distinct manner explore the way of beauty.¹

Evangelising Culture and the Way of Beauty

A strongly emerging feature of the new evangelisation that has been consistently emphasised by Popes John Paul and Benedict has been the evangelising of culture through the patrimony of the Church, the talents of artists and the efforts of believers to show the relevance of the Gospel to the world at large. The “evangelising” of culture denotes the general impact of the gospel on human values and ways of being, though it involves many of the same approaches as when individuals are the focus, such as personal witness, proclaiming the Word, apologetics and dialogue, as well as the appeal to emotional and spiritual sensitivities.

The practical challenge faced by those who wish to evangelise contemporary culture through the way of beauty is to envision how it might effectively challenge and transform secular values and ways of understanding. One could turn to many artists for a precedent for a newly evangelised culture comprising imaginative activities that are open to the transcendent, a culture that integrates human creativity in art, literature and science with the call to holiness, to a life that acknowledges truth, goodness and beauty as having their source in the divine. God is the author of beauty that is beyond words, beyond the rational, as the Catechism affirms: “Even before revealing himself to man in words of truth, God reveals himself to him through the universal language of creation, the work of hisWord, of his wisdom; the order and harmony of the cosmos – which both the child and the scientist discover…” (CCC, 2500). We are being encouraged to lift our gaze beyond those aspects of beauty that enchant us in nature, art, science, and also the human person made in the image of God, to perceive the link to the truths of faith and to God.

The Christian believer is being prompted even more directly by the practice of prayer, the experience of worship, the contemplation of the Word of God in Scripture and by so many other epiphanies of God’s glory, to discover the divine source of goodness, truth and beauty. Such insights promise benefits even for our earthly existence. Is it not certain that the spiritual qualities and reflections of the divine to be found in cultures by no means negate human riches of intellect, aesthetics or sensitivity? In fact, are not human cultures enhanced and renewed by their openness to the Spirit, so that just as a spiritually refreshed culture can encourage belief, so those who have found God through such renewal can become open to new aesthetic, scientific and philanthropic inspirations?

Notes
¹For several years the Maryvale Institute has run a successful Art, Beauty and Inspiration course that explores the use of art in understanding the Faith. A similar approach has been employed in recent catechetical courses, such as Anchor and Evangelium, in which religious ideas and understandings are approached initially through paintings rather than verbal explanations.

Fiorella Nash FAITH Magazine July – August 2011

Fiorella Nash argues that, faced with the terrible suffering of some mothers, the pro-abortion lobby can prefer to spin rather than help, and that pro-life people need to try to reverse the emphasis. She highlights a campaign trying to do that. An award-winning novelist, her latest acclaimed book, Poor Banished Children, is published by Ignatius Press.

I have admitted to friends on more than one occasion that when an obstetrician strode into the delivery room where I had been in the throes of an obstructed labour all day, I felt as though I were being rescued from a torture chamber. This is not what my most acerbic critic would call my 'fondness for hyperbole'. If anything, it is a ludicrous understatement. The obstetrician in question did not rescue me from a torture chamber, he rescued me - and my baby - from death sentences. Without the emergency intervention that followed, the baby would have suffocated in the birth canal in which he was trapped and I would have bled to death, which would at least have killed me within hours rather than over several excruciatingly painful days in the case of the obstructed labour.

I am acutely aware that I owe my life, and the lives of two out of three of my children, to the intervention of highly skilled doctors, midwives and paediatricians, and the proximity of well-equipped operating theatres and intensive care units. But I am also aware that every year, hundreds of thousands of women and babies experience no such reprieve from the preventable death sentence imposed when labour goes wrong and there is not even the most basic health care available to ease their suffering and save their lives.

In Britain the maternal mortality rate is 8.3 per 100,000 births (and this is by no means the lowest rate in the developed world). In Malawi it is 1140.1 per 100,000. Global spans are difficult to gauge because of poor reporting in some countries and differences in methods of reporting; for example, some countries will classify maternal mortality as the death of a woman within 21 days of birth, others 42 days; some include only direct causes - sepsis, haemorrhage, obstruction - whereas others will include indirect causes such as malaria and anaemia. Estimates therefore vary between 350,000 and 600,000 deaths a year but whatever span aid agencies quote, statistics alone cannot convey the full horror of young women dying unattended, in terrible fear and agony, leaving behind devastatedfamilies and other children whose own survival may well be jeopardised by the loss of a mother.

The greatest tragedy of all, however, is that these deaths are almost entirely preventable.

The Exploitation of Suffering Women

Maternal mortality has been rightly described as 'an international disgrace' but almost as grave a disgrace is the determination by pro-abortion groups to hijack the issue in order to promote abortion around the world. The abortion lobby has a long history of exploiting the suffering of women while claiming to act in their best interests. This is evident when it comes to the subject of abortion and rape, for example. Abortion is touted as the compassionate response to rape as though being physically invaded by a masked, anonymous male (usually), or given pills that cause bleeding and severe pain are cures for a brutal and traumatic act that will haunt a woman all her life. Every abortion practitioner knows that the overwhelming majority of abortions are carried out on social grounds andthe abortion lobby is unapologetic about its belief that abortion should be available 'on demand and without apology', yet it uses rape survivors as an emotive smokescreen to cover its unsavoury agendas and exploits their suffering for political and ideological gain.

The same is increasingly true of maternal mortality. Abortion continues to be touted as a women's health issue, from pro-abortion marches entitled "March for Women's Lives" to the emotive slogan shouted in the direction of many a pro-life demonstration: "Right to life, that's a lie! You don't care if women die!" Marie Stopes International's latest propaganda effort in the field of abortion and contraception promotion comes under the seemingly compassionate label of "Make Women Matter." But abortion has nothing to do with saving women's lives. As far back as 1992, a group of Ireland's top obstetricians and gynaecologists signed a letter in which they wrote:

"We affirm that there are no medical circumstances justifying direct abortion, that is, no circumstances in which the life of a mother may only be saved by directly terminating the life of her unborn child."

Where there sometimes is confusion (and I would venture that the abortion lobby is quite happy to encourage this confusion) is in rare cases where an obstetrician may be forced to intervene to save a pregnant woman's life, at the risk of losing the child. This is true of cases such as ectopic pregnancy, where the embryo becomes stuck in the fallopian tube and part of the tube has to be removed (usually along with the embryo) to prevent the woman from dying or in the case of pre-eclampsia at the other end of pregnancy. However, pre-eclampsia generally occurs after the baby is capable of being born alive and though premature delivery is almost always riskier for a baby than being carried to term, the odds are very much in favour of a baby's survival. Neither of these cases involves thedeliberate ending of a baby's life and cannot be labelled abortion. To do so is to fail to understand the principle of double effect.

Tellingly, countries such as Ireland and Malta where abortion is banned have some of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world.

Women do, however, die as a result of abortion and it is the "unsafe abortion" argument that is being used most aggressively to promote abortion around the world. Our own Department for International Development uses unsafe abortion as its major line of defence in promoting and funding abortion, claiming that unsafe abortion is a major cause of maternal death. International organisations including the World Health Organisation list 'unsafe abortion' as a significant cause of maternal death after haemorrhage and sepsis but the category is misleading for a number of reasons.

First, this category usually includes deaths as a result of spontaneous abortion, otherwise known as miscarriage, giving a distorted picture of the number of women who are dying as a result of induced abortion. Second, it should be noted that it can be extremely difficult even for a trained doctor to determine whether a woman in the first trimester of pregnancy is experiencing life-threatening complications as a result of miscarriage or abortion. The symptoms are so similar that an online abortion group which sells pills to women in pro-life countries instructs women who suffer complications: "If you live in a place where abortion is a crime and you don't have a doctor you trust, you can still access medical care. You do not have to tell the medical staff that you tried to inducean abortion; you can tell them that you had a spontaneous miscarriage...The symptoms are exactly the same and the doctor will not be able to see or test for any evidence of an abortion."

Third, we should note the loaded use of "unsafe" here. Any medical procedure which involves the ending of one or both human lives involved is by definition unsafe and it is unsafe whether it occurs in Nairobi or New York. The abortion lobby has been very successful in creating a false association between 'safe' and 'legal' abortion (a favourite line of pro-abortion politicians is that abortion should be 'safe, legal and rare') with the implication being that if abortion were only decriminalised in every country of the world, maternal deaths as a result of abortion would be virtually eliminated. But any medical procedure involves a level of risk and abortion is no different, legal or otherwise. In developed countries (where abortion is most likely to be legal) 8.2\% of maternal deaths arethe result of abortion complications; in India, where abortion is legal, mortality from abortion accounts for around 16\% of all maternal deaths. South Africa, which has had abortion on demand for years has witnessed a fourfold increase in maternal mortality since a UK-funded abortion organisation set up clinics around that country. As SPUC's Peter Smith commented:

"It is farcical for the government to talk about safe abortions in situations without sterile surgical facilities, safe blood transfusion or emergency back-up. Running abortion clinics in slums, shanty towns and the bush will harm or kill women as well as killing babies." Women in Britain and women in South Africa have access to legal abortion, but in the end, a woman experiencing abortion complications in Britain can get emergency help within minutes; a woman living in an isolated settlement in South Africa can't. If the abortion lobby is going to highlight the risks to women of unsafe abortion, the logical response would surely be to campaign against a medically unnecessary procedure and to work instead to offer women the assistance they need when facing a difficult pregnancy?"

The desperate "they will do it anyway" argument is illogical and insulting to women. Some 10\% of 15- and 16-year-olds self-harm, the global mortality rate from suicide works out as approximately one death every forty seconds and the rate is rising, but it would be heartless and inhumane to suggest that vulnerable people should be taught how to cut themselves safely or to commit suicide in a way that inconveniences others as little as possible. The key question is, is it good?

A Pro-Life Response

It is not enough simply to condemn the actions of anti-life forces for exploiting the suffering of women to promote the ideology of abortion. The tragedy of maternal mortality needs to be addressed, not exploited, and it requires a courageous and honest response. It is for this reason that SPUC has launched The Mayisha Campaign (Mayisha meaning Life in Swahili) to raise awareness about maternal mortality, dispel the myths put about by abortion groups and lobby the Department for International Development to adopt an ethical foreign policy which respects the lives of both mothers and their babies. Abortion is not the sad necessity or the empowering procedure it is presented as by groups like Marie Stopes International and International Planned Parenthood Federation. It needs to berecognised as part of the problem. Dr Robert Walley, the British-born founder and director of the international organisation of Catholic obstetricians and gynaecologists MaterCare International, puts it succinctly when he says:

"Unfortunately, the international safe motherhood initiative has accepted the current culture of death prevalent in obstetrics and gynaecology, as abortion is included as the solution to maternal health problems. All of this points to a real poverty - the lack of love and compassion."

The staff and volunteers at MaterCare International (MCI) know something about love and compassion for the forgotten mothers of the developing world. They provide life-saving assistance to mothers in Kenya and Ghana and have been providing emergency help in Haiti since an earthquake devastated that country in January last year. They are forced to work without state funding and are entirely reliant upon donations from members of the public. MCl's mission statement links their work directly with Evangelium Vitae by "improving the lives and health of mothers and babies both born and unborn, through new initiatives of service, training, research, and advocacy designed to reduce the tragic levels of abortion worldwide and maternal and perinatal mortality, morbidity in developingcountries."

It was Dr Walley, who has witnessed first-hand the horror of young mothers dying for want of appropriate medical facilities, who suggested that to the Seven Sorrows of Mary an eighth sorrow should be added: the suffering of thousands of women who die giving birth to their babies and the millions who, in despair, turn to abortion.

As Catholics, we know instinctively that maternal mortality is a tragedy and that abortion is not the answer, but I believe that we are under an obligation to turn that knowledge into action and offer hope to mothers around the world who face the prospect of giving birth in fear and trembling rather than with joy. Whenever anyone tells me that a situation in a foreign country is none of their business, I ask how they would feel if their own sister were facing death for want of medical care that they themselves take for granted. This is not just an attempt to make people feel guilty. Feminists talk about the universal sisterhood while being prepared to show a remarkably callous attitude to women who fail to meet the entry requirements. Catholics must speak of sisterhood and show the worldwe mean it.

For more information about the work of the Mayisha Campaign or MaterCare International, check out:

http://mayishacampaign.blogspot.com/

http://www.spuc.org.uk

http://matercare.org/

Science and Religion News

Consciousness and the Self

There is a belief among many atheist scientists that self-consciousness, and indeed the concept of the self, is completely explicable in materialist terms; that this is yet another nail in the coffin of theistic belief. Christian doctrine holds that the self results from the divinely created, spiritual, individually distinguished soul. Self-consciousness, of course, will involve physiological and psychological factors and any insights into these will be welcome. We believe that we are still “ourselves”, so to speak, even when unconscious, and that our “selves” continue after death.

''The self and self-consciousness are, of course, not identical. When we are anaesthetised we are not conscious, yet we are still ourselves.''

In the journal Physics of Life Reviews, Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose suggest that quantum vibrational computations in microtubules (components of a cell’s structure) are “orchestrated” by synaptic inputs and memory, and terminated by “objective reduction”. Consciousness results from fine-scale activities inside the brain’s neurons. This “orchestrated objective reduction” has received corroboration from a research group in Japan, confirming a “proto-conscious” quantum structure of reality.¹ In their paper Hameroff and Penrose write:

In our model, quantum coherence emerges, and is isolated, in brain microtubules until the differences in mass-energy distribution among superpositioned tubulin states reach a threshold related to quantum gravity. The resultant self-collapse, irreversible in time, creates an instantaneous “now” event. Sequences of such events create a flow of time, and consciousness.²

Essentially, they are arguing that a detailed working out of quantum mechanics pertaining to the microtubules could explain our “unitary” sense of self-consciousness.

Susan Greenfield, a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University, holds that the mind consists of the physical connections between neurons, evolving slowly and influenced by our past experiences. This “explains” why each brain is unique. She believes that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, like the “wetness” of water, the result of molecular interactions.

The self and self-consciousness are, of course, not identical. When we are anaesthetised we are not conscious, yet we are still ourselves. What’s needed is an over-arching philosophical perspective that can account for the human self as a coherent being within the universe, linked to matter, yet not determined by it. In Fr Edward Holloway’s system, mind is that which controls and directs; matter is that which is controlled and directed.

By contrast, the views outlined above seem to ignore centuries of well argued, admittedly sometimes contradictory, explanations of being and reality from philosophy, particularly epistemology (theory of knowledge) and metaphysics (theory of being). While scientific theories can (usually) be tested by experiment and/or observation, philosophical theories are tested by their self-coherence and their conformity with reality. The idea of a sort of “emergence” of complexity, self-consciousness etc, whether described by quantum physics or not, invites the question why the universe allows such self-development, such self-complexification. There is a fundamental distinction between the self as a philosophical reality and self-consciousness as describable by biochemical (and quantum) science.

Questions relating to our free will and its impairment are important, so this sort of research should spur on Catholic scientists involved in neurobiology, and Catholic philosophers/theologians, to enter into a constructive debate with scientists such as Penrose and Hameroff. Both sides need to display humility and a willingness to study what may be foreign to them. Catholic philosophers and theologians must familiarise themselves with current scientific thinking through serious study, and not just settle for a nodding acquaintance with some scientific ideas. For their part, scientists should humbly accept that it may be worth reading what philosophers and theologians have had to say about things such as reality and self-consciousness, accepting that these are philosophical ratherthan purely physical principles.

The Catholic physicist and philosopher Dominique Lambert offers some illuminating considerations:³

Many, many great scientists are writing books on their activities, but books which are in fact philosophical works…Science produces metaphysical questions and, in fact, great scientists tend to solve these problems… The problem is to believe that these solutions belong to science, or to believe that a philosophical solution is given immediately by science. It’s not true. We cannot say biology leads to atheism because we cannot extract from science something that is not scientific. But we can say, for example, that a religious, theological point of view can illuminate scientific research and can help to extract some coherent meaning… In the Catholic Church, we have a theology of creation whose point of view … gives to evolution an additional meaning which is not directly present in thescientific research, but that scientific research is coherent with this point of view.

Printing Cells

As outlined in the previous Cutting Edge column (Jan/Feb 2014), 3D printing of cells offers impressive possibilities for medical treatments and research. In the journal Biofabrication (Vol 6, No 1), Barbara Lorber, Wen-Kai Hsiao, Ian M Hutchings and Keith R Martin outline a technique for printing new eye cells that could be used to treat sight loss. A “proof of principle” work was carried out using animal cells, though more tests are needed before human trials can begin.

Notes
¹http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20140017222508.shtml
²http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/orchor.html
³http://www.strangenotions.com/lambert

General Ideas

Prudence, in modern usage, is not a very highly considered virtue. It suggests a general cautiousness, a reluctance to take risky decisions, a preference for the easy life. As such, prudence seems just one step removed from cowardice, self-concerned calculation or simple laziness.

But that is not what is implied in this virtue. Prudence is the ability, usually acquired by experience and reflection, to take the right decision in the right moment. And that often leads to action, and even risk rather than inaction. What, for instance, does the idea of a prudent general suggest? One who is always strengthening his defences, never venturing to engage the enemy in battle? No; the prudent general knows not only when to be on the defensive, but also when to attack, and does not delay the moment of doing so.

In general prudence implies the ability to exercise good judgment and common sense, especially in the conduct of practical matters. By itself it does not carry out any actions, being concerned solely with knowledge and decision. Yet all our actions should be regulated by it. Otherwise they will be imprudent actions, that is, inspired by bad judgment. And if one makes imprudent choices in important matters, one will have to pay the consequences.

Inasmuch as prudence signifies the ability to choose or to decide wisely or rightly, it relates both to freedom and to values. Without freedom we are unable to choose, or are obliged to make one choice – which is really to have no choice. Prudence also relates to values, for the prudent person must be able to weigh the worth of the choices before him, so as to choose the best in each circumstance. Only the imprudent person freely chooses what is of less worth or what is completely worthless or even harmful. Naturally, given the defects of our nature, we may be attracted by something that does us harm; but prudence, backed by fortitude, will help us resist that temptation.

Imprudent choices have a tendency to lessen freedom and may even undermine it completely. For instance, the person who freely starts to over-drink may become an alcoholic and so, like any addict, lose his or her freedom. At the same time there is little point in being prudent and free if there is nothing worthwhile to choose or to decide upon. In practice, therefore, prudence is a virtue only if there is a real value in what you choose or decide upon.

Given the intimate connection between prudence and freedom, prudence may at times restrain a person from a free but irresponsible action, for example betting his month’s earnings on a race-horse. But there are also cases where prudence should impel a person to take a considerable risk. Leaving military strategy behind, let us imagine a man caught in a cove surrounded by cliffs and with the tide rapidly rising. He sees that the only way out is a narrow steep and slippery path up the cliff; and he realises that that too will soon be submerged in the rising water. He may be afraid of heights and fearful that he will slip; but the only prudent decision, to be made quickly, is to take that path.

Or take a more commonplace, but not for that less important, case: that of a young woman in her late twenties who cannot decide between two suitors both of whom she likes. She had better make up her mind, or else face the likelihood of remaining a spinster for the rest of her life. We will return to the topic.

Let us try to take a prudent look at some main areas where this virtue needs to be exercised.

Prudence About the Purpose of Life

We all have the awareness that we are alive, but at the same time that we are constantly changing. What am I becoming? What will I be? What am I meant to be? What is life all about?…
How can one be prudent about life if one does not know what life is for? If, like a modern atheist, you believe that life has no purpose except personal enjoyment, you use your life for selfish enjoyment and put an end to it when the loneliness such a life induces seems to outweigh whatever satisfaction it formerly gave you. And that is the last prudent or imprudent decision that you make.

If you believe that life, which is so fleeting, continues for good or for bad into eternal life, then your prudence tries to direct every passing thing to ensuring that good eternal life. If you are a Christian, you try to remember the gospel idea of building up treasure in heaven rather than on earth. Especially you should try to make sense of that key phrase: “Whoever loses his life for my sake, will find it.” Which brings us to the question of self-fulfilment.

Prudence About Self-Fulfilment

The Cambridge Dictionary Online defines self-fulfilment as “a feeling of satisfaction that you have achieved what you wanted”. It is hardly a good definition. Self-fulfilment is surely something much more than just a feeling. Besides, if what you want is an ice-cream and you manage to get and eat one, can that achievement be raised to the level of self-fulfilment?

No. If taken seriously, self-fulfilment implies something much more than any passing feeling. Collins Dictionary seems closer to the mark when it says that it is “the fulfilment of one’s hopes, dreams, goals, etc”; or (under “self-realisation”) “the fulfilment of one’s own potential or abilities”.

From a Christian point of view, one’s hopes or dreams don’t necessarily correspond to one’s potential. We all have the potential for heaven, for sharing in the joy of the Lord, in his infinite goodness and love. But we also have the potential for hell, to become a tight little ball of despairing self-centredness. We have the potential to grow without limit, but also to shrink into almost nothing. Prudence will make us ponder these alternatives of growth or shrinkage in our different choices.

Here I could, but intend not to, go into the matter of feminine prudence or imprudence in regard to expenditure on dress. If the motive for over-expenditure in this matter is vanity, that represents an obstacle to true self-growth. It is always a sign of immaturity if a woman thinks too much about what others think of her. But let us look at some more important issues.

Prudence Regarding the Choice of a Profession and of a State in Life

If it is important to be prudent in smaller choices or decisions, it is much more important to be prudent in the bigger ones. We don’t make the choice to be born or not to be born; others make it for us. Nor do we choose the family we are born into. Again that depends on others. Let us dwell on two major choices that we do make: that of a job or career, and that of whether to marry or not.

Job

A job can seem attractive because it gives a certain financial independence. And later on, in marriage, it can seem necessary because it gives an important financial support. In any case, most women today want to have a self-supporting job or career and train for it. However, given the worldwide rate of unemployment, prudence may dictate training not for the job you would like most but for the one most likely to gain you employment. A person well qualified, but for only one thing, may end up without any job at all.

Better-off people may be in a more fortunate position. They can choose to study for a job or career with almost sure hopes of employment. They may be able to choose the school or university where they want to pursue their studies, and may even be in a position to change career if the one they take up is not to their liking. For them, however, perhaps the most important exercise of prudence regards the motive for choosing one career over alternatives that may have occurred to them.

For many such people today, and especially for their parents, the prudent and possibly the decisive motive is the amount of money any particular job is likely to pay. The greater the salary, the clearer the choice. Is that really prudent motivation? Is it the wisest criterion by which to make a decision that is so going to affect one’s life? Later on, will one feel it was wise to have chosen a job which pays well but at the cost of being left bored or unhappy for most of the working week?

The idea of job satisfaction has a history behind it that goes back well into the last century. Few people, if any, expect to find an occupation that will perfectly satisfy all their aspirations. Yet more and more do want a job that they can reasonably enjoy even if it pays less.
Nevertheless the income factor remains paramount in peoples’ minds, and even takes on a snobbish element when it is allowed to determine social status. Many women who would like to be a nurse or a teacher choose to work in an office instead, because that way they will be more socially acceptable. Does that show prudence, or simply the lack of an independent mind?

Marriage

What is the prudent approach to marriage? We will leave aside the case of the person who chooses a celibate life for God’s sake instead of marrying. Such a choice, to those who don’t feel drawn to it, may seem imprudent or downright mad. Those who have that calling would disagree.

However, most people don’t have such a calling. Rather, they feel a call to marry, even if at the same time they sense that it is a very problematic calling.

To marry, or not to marry; that is the question. Not much of a question, of course, if one regards marriage as a temporary sexual liaison to be broken at the will of either of the parties. Then it is no big deal; and (morality apart) requires no more prudent consideration than might be advisable regarding any other temporary association.

But most people, admit it or not, would like to think of marriage in much more human terms – as the voluntary union for life of a man and a woman who intend to create a family together. That is a venture filled with idealism and human attractiveness, calling, as it does, for complete mutual dedication. If seen so (and only seen so does it merit being called a marriage), then getting married is definitely a matter that calls for a prudent approach.

To many people the commitment to marry seems so scary that they conclude the prudent thing is not to marry. But that means to deprive oneself of companionship, a home, a family, the fulfilment of one’s desires for maternity or paternity. Is it prudent to so deprive oneself? The matter is not easily resolved, as one can see.
Let’s take it from the girl’s point of view, as she might weigh the matter. Here is this boy. He likes me and I like him. Yes,

I think we could be happy – well, with a relative but real happiness – together. He could be a good husband and
a good father.

Besides, the respect we have shown to each other in our courtship so far (how important this consideration should be!) tells me that we will be faithful to each another.

And then, the beauty and privilege of having children. The joy of having a child, my child, feeding at my breast. Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair, one of the great novels of 19th-century English literature, expresses this joy so: “It was her life which the baby drank in from her bosom. Of nights, and when alone, she had stealthy and intense raptures of motherly love, such as God’s marvellous care has awarded to the female instinct” (chapter 35).
Further, there is the unique parental experience, backed by prayers and concerns, of being a chosen instrument to help one’s daughters or sons grow to maturity as God wants. The joint venture, with my husband, of building a family with personality, capable of bringing back true values to a valueless world.

But then the bother of children too. Pregnancies, child-birth, nights short of sleep, cleaning up this and that. School fees, no break from home life… Yes, there are pros and cons to be prudently weighed here.
Of course, a further issue arises: that of the job or profession of which we have just spoken. Is it not natural to want to pursue a profession, to have a certain independence, to succeed in life, to be someone of worth? Yes, but isn’t there a tension, felt strongly by women (though apparently not in the same degree by men) between family and profession? A prudent woman will want to see how or if this tension can be resolved.
Which is more important – family or job? Which contributes most to personal fulfilment or to social status? Which should come first? Can they be successfully combined? Insistent questions for many women today that call for prudent and adequate answers. Here are a few considerations that may be worth pondering.
Regarding the social status a job may give you. Are you sure you will be a “success”, in other words that you will become someone important in your future job or profession? How many of your age-mates are likely to become CEOs or doctors or professional consultants? How many are more likely to get stuck part-way up the ladder – as a secretary or an accountant or an assistant manager, at the beck and call of their superiors?
Is their job more important or more independent or more satisfying than running a home and family? Social opinion, which professes to look down on home-running and family, would probably insist that they are. Would you, in your prudence, disagree? And if so, would you have enough fortitude to act in defiance of social opinion?
Regarding fulfilment. Success in professional or business life, if it comes, takes a lot of hard work (and perhaps a bit of ruthlessness). Success as a wife and mother also takes a lot of work, as well as a lot of selflessness. Which will fulfil you more? The answer depends on so many factors that your prudence will have to take into account. Let us mention a few of the more fundamental ones.

Men like doing things, especially in the field of external action. Achievement there, even at an intermediate level of work, easily gives them a sense of fulfilment. Women are more interested in people than in things, and like to do things that have to do with people. Hence their interest in certain aspects of medicine, in human relations, in teaching, in design, and the greater sense of fulfilment they can draw from these fields. A woman would need to study her character, and basically consider how feminine she is, before going into such fields as engineering, surgery, industrial production, the armed forces… To be blunt about it: is a woman tough enough, hard enough for such jobs? And if she is, will she not become less feminine before herself and before men?

If, as some researchers hold, women tend to be less competitive than men1 then they may more easily find themselves left lower down in the professional climb-the-ladder exercise; and so give way more to dissatisfaction, jealousy, or a victimisation complex.

But, you may say, can motherhood and professional career not be combined? They can, but at the probable cost of being mediocre in one or, more likely, in both. The idea of being successful in both at the same time is just not realistic – for the simple reason that it is a competition between two jobs each of which can be a “success” only on the basis of a full-time dedication.

How is it today that so many women are not prudent or deep enough in their thinking to see through and disregard the cliché according to which an office job is freedom, while home-building is slavery, the first is enhancing while the second is degrading? A few comments on this cliché.
All jobs imply some effort or service. In a job or profession, one serves one’s clients or patients or bosses; but one serves. In home-making, one serves one’s family. The first is service for pay or for self-centered ambition; the second is service for an ideal and for love. In which can a woman hold her head higher?

Motherhood and Home-Making

The last 60 years or so have seen a co-ordinated world-wide campaign against motherhood, against the privilege and dignity, the beauty and fulfilment that it represents. Motherhood and home-making are looked down on today. To choose them is to accept the traditional woman’s burden – this is a central tenet of radical feminism – and so to be unfree.

Earlier I cited the Cambridge Dictionary Online definition of self-fulfilment as “a feeling of satisfaction that you have achieved what you wanted”, and rejected it as inadequate. Now consider the one example the dictionary gives of this definition: “When the options are unemployment or a boring job, having babies can seem like the only means of self-fulfilment”.

The editors appear to put mother hood almost at the bottom of self-fulfilling choices, just one place above unemployment or a boring job. Another small reflection of the almost total discredit into which motherhood has gradually been thrust over the last century. What prudent analysis can we make of such a mind-set?

Prudence – ie Discernment – in the Understanding of Motherhood

No true feminism can be developed which does not give a central position to motherhood. Woman’s nature is much more essentially – biologically, and therefore (given the harmony of nature) psychologically – geared to motherhood (conceiving, bearing, nurturing) than man’s is to fatherhood. Moreover, to fear and avoid a vocation to motherhood, when that vocation is there, is an immense block to the fulfilment of womanhood, and an immense impoverishment for humanity.

Let us listen to observations from two famous but very distinct thinkers. One is Pope John Paul II, holding that motherhood develops the richest aspect of feminine character: attention to others. He says: “[The] unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings – not only towards her own child, but every human being – which profoundly marks the woman’s personality.
It is commonly thought that women are more capable than men of paying attention to another person, and that motherhood develops this predisposition even more. The man – even with all his sharing in parenthood – always remains ‘outside’ the process of pregnancy and the baby’s birth; in many ways he has to learn his own ‘fatherhood’ from the mother” (Apostolic Letter of 1988, Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 18).

For her part, Margaret Mead, the American anthropologist, already in her 1949 work Male and Female, held that the natural feminine longing for and pride in child-bearing can be eradicated but only through intense social conditioning. “The simple logic of [the biblical] ‘breasts that do not give suck’ [considered as a privation] can only be escaped by the most elaborate forms of cultural learning.

Girls can be placed in learning contexts where every one of them will wish to be a boy and resent being a girl; girls can be placed in learning contexts in which being a woman and bearing a child is a synonym of having one’s body invaded, distorted, and destroyed. Girls can certainly learn not to want children, but such learning seems always to be socially imposed.”[2]

A whole mind-set is being socially imposed on women today. Perhaps the most direct and saddest summing-up of the life-style it presents to young girls, for their present and for their future, is that of “neither virgin nor mother”. The first thing that girls are led to do, in violation of a truly feminine instinct, is to abandon their natural modesty – perhaps the most powerful quality that both attracts and inspires respect for girls and women in boys and young men.

The immodest girl gives the impression to boys and men that she cares little for her virginity or has perhaps already thrown it away. The current life-style of so many teenage girls suggests a contempt for virginity – in which a girl should naturally see an affirmation of her own sense of self-worth, the surrender of which signifies the total gift of self and as such is to be kept for the man she marries.

Hence, also in courtship, she sees purity as the necessary setting for true love to grow and the necessary condition for knowing if it is true. So she realises that only as a virgin can she enter marriage with the full respect of her husband.

Just think of the icons of womanhood that the media insistently project today – “neither virgin nor mother”. What
a way to lose both self-respect and the respect of men. Contempt for motherhood! – for motherhood which, despite its burdens, is the natural aspiration and should be the pride of every normal woman; and which is also the main source for her husband’s continuing admiration for his wife, as well as the cause of a similar admiration on the part of the children as they grow up.

Disregard of modesty. Contempt for virginity. Disesteem for motherhood. … Ask yourself: are you able to evaluate this life-style? Are you aware of the pressures towards it? Are you standing up to them? Do you try to wake up your friends and colleagues to this brutal de-feminisation to which modern woman is subjected?

I repeat that if your prudence discerns some truth in these observations, you will need to summon up all your fortitude so as to follow the path they suggest.

[1]See Time magazine Nov 30, 2010 [http://business.time.com/2010/11/30/are-women-less-competitive-than-men-explaining-the-gender-gap/]
[2]Male and Female, 1949, p231.

Lucy Mackain-Bremner, chaplaincy co-ordinator to Leweston School in Dorset and a graduate of the Emmanuel School of Mission in Rome, gives an insight into the reality of modern street evangelisation. “Always be prepared to give an account of the Hope that is in you” 1Pt 3:15

I was walking down a busy street and a young man stopped me and asked me: “What’s the joke? Why are you smiling?” Somewhat taken by surprise, unthinkingly I replied as honestly as I could: “Because I love Jesus.”

My voice must not have been as bold as my heart, though, because he didn’t hear what I said, so I had to repeat it more loudly, with an even bigger smile: “Because I love Jesus!”

And he said, “Oh, me too. I’m Muslim.” He was on his way to run a community youth club but he stopped and we spoke for a while. I ended with giving him a Miraculous Medal (of Our Lady) and he took it saying: “Thank you! We really honour Mary too, you know, because she’s the mother of Jesus.” He said I was his sister and then we parted.

Through this little encounter the Lord showed me how He can and will use you in the most beautiful and personal ways. If you really desire to make His name known, He expects nothing from you other than to be yourself, to be how He created you and calls you to be. We are created to know and love God and are forever looking to do this better and more deeply, but to truly fulfil our human dignity we must evangelise.

To make God known and loved by others – this is the loving work of evangelisation, a commission we all received through our Baptism. But how do we make this a reality?
Catholic Street Evangelisation in 2013

There is a growing generation of people who have never even sought to cross the threshold of a church, who hold their own ideas of truth and accountability and whose opinion of Catholic priests stretches no further than media scandal. The question is how to reach them. The answer is simple: street evangelisation.
I’m not talking about preaching repentance from a soap box or holding up placards saying THE END IS NIGH. In 2006 someone was given an Asbo for doing just that on Oxford Street. I’m talking about Catholic street evangelisation, something I came across three years ago on a postgraduate gap year and which I’ve been doing ever since.

“It’s important not to go with an agenda. Just listen and love.” That was the central teaching I heard before going out on to the streets for the first time, and it’s something I’ve tried to remember deep in my heart. I held onto this and tried to understand how to do it as we set up. Half of us were singing in a choir with drums and guitar and the other half split into pairs intent upon chatting with anyone who would stop to listen.

We were a group of 20 students at a mission school in Rome and by taking to the streets each week to speak and pray with the people we met, we put into practice what we learnt from the great Catechism of the Catholic Church and various encyclicals on mission and love: to listen and to love.

We went for one hour only and in that time people would have the most amazing conversations. You can meet the world on the streets of Rome and, given the chance, people just need someone to listen to them. We prayed individually for every single person we met, sometimes with them! In a particular moment of action, I remember approaching two middle-aged British tourists who appeared to be sisters. One seemed sort of interested in what we were doing; the other was a bit embarrassed and wanted to leave. So as they were wandering on I asked if there was anything they would like me to pray for and one immediately burst into tears, setting her sister off, who explained: “Yes, this is what we came here looking for.”

I never fully understood their situation, but I knew the Holy Spirit had used me in that moment to touch their lives in a certain way. I left with a full heart, and a large smile.

I understand “not going with an agenda” principally to mean not setting out to preach in peoples’ faces, but I think it has a spiritual resonance that goes deeper. It means freeing yourself from being restricted by what you want to say or think you should say to anyone you meet, because you are not going to meet just anyone: you are going to meet someone, and their story is unique. You are going out to communicate God, and because we are all unique individuals God relates to each one of us uniquely. Different aspects of who God is speak to people in different ways. My favourite is “God is Love”, which means that by loving this person wholeheartedly in that moment you are giving them a taste of God. If you want to tell people how amazing God is, show them by loving them – and by havingJesus so present in you that all they see is Him.

This is from a prayer of Blessed John Henry Newman:

“Jesus, flood my soul with your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that my life may only be a radiance of yours.
Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come into contact with may feel your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!”

Nightfever

Out on the streets of London every second month is a group called Nightfever, based in St Patrick’s church off Soho Square. Fifty or more young Catholic volunteers, working in and around London, come along each time to evangelise for the evening, which begins with Mass at 6pm. This is followed by a candle-lit vigil of Eucharistic Adoration until late. There is a rota of live music ministries throughout the night, so just as people are arriving in Soho dressed up to go out to bars and clubs, they come across beautifully serene music floating out of the church porch over speakers.
Some volunteers then take to the surrounding streets to speak with the people they meet, going out in pairs with large lanterns – a great way to draw attention and spark curiosity. Others are stationed at the church doors to welcome people who find their way there. People are then invited to come in and light a candle in the church, to take a few minutes out of the hustle of the city for peace and to say a prayer.
Inside, the church pews are quietly filled with people praying; light comes only from the sanctuary where, lit by candles, the Blessed Sacrament is exposed. Prayerful singing from the different choirs helps engender a breathtakingly beautiful ambience. The aim is to create an atmosphere conducive to prayer to help those who haven’t prayed in years or perhaps have never prayed before. Priests are dotted around to receive the steady queues of people moved to want sacramental forgiveness or just to talk things over.

As I sat in Adoration one evening, I witnessed a constant stream of people from the street coming in, kneeling at the front for a moment or several, writing a prayer or moving back to sit quietly in a pew. People who come in promising to stay for a couple of minutes stay much longer, soaking up the atmosphere.
A group of scantily dressed women, in their heels, tottered up the aisle to the front, each being guided to light a candle in front of Jesus in the exposed Blessed Sacrament. Little did they expect that moments later they’d be sitting in a pew sobbing into each other’s arms.

This type of street evangelisation doesn’t set itself up to know all the answers. It doesn’t judge, or condemn; it simply and powerfully offers an encounter with Christ.

So, with pockets stuffed with tea lights and solemn yet excited prayers made with my evangelisation partner, I set out into the neon glow of Soho Square, to invite people in.

No sooner had we left the church porch than we caught the eye of a young man walking quickly, by himself, hesitating at the sight of us. We simply said: “Would you like to come in?” He replied with an equally simple “Yes”, so we guided him to the front where he lit a candle and retreated thoughtfully into a pew.

Next, we approached three young men heading out to a restaurant who, initially slightly suspicious, followed us into Adoration where they knelt at the front and each solemnly wrote a prayer. As we left, one turned to me with a glowing face and said: “Thank you so much!”

The stories are endless, and we share them with each other over tomato soup in the crypt at the end of the night, everyone touched by seeing how the Lord worked that evening.

Nightfever, originating in Germany, has spread through Europe and beyond, reaching as far as Brazil and China.

3 Steps to Street Evangelisation

For this type of organised street evangelisation the practical rules are few but important. You must always go out in pairs (like the apostles), so one can pray while the other speaks. Don’t go with an agenda of conversion, and make time during the evening for your own personal prayer – keep topped up!
Here are three guiding steps for street evangelisation:

1. Pray

“Holiness makes mission possible.”

The principal rule of Catholic evangelisation is a personal and sacramental relationship with God. We can do nothing without Him and so must first abandon ourselves entirely to His Will. Through a faithful prayer life and regular Mass, Confession and Eucharistic Adoration we are filled with the Holy Spirit and the graces of God (even if we don’t feel that we are).
“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” – Proverbs 4:23
Before we even approach the streets, during all times of evangelisation and after every conversation we must be saturated in prayer. During times on the street it has been useful to stop and to pray a simple (yet powerful) Hail Mary between encounters.

2. Listen

“We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” – Blessed Theresa of Calcutta
Focus on the person in front of you with your whole being, be conscious of your body language and listen to them not just with your ears but with your heart and intellect also. Love them with the burning love of Jesus in that moment and feel the compassion He has for them. Meet them where they are.

3. Respond

“For out of the abundance of the Heart the mouth speaks.” – Mt 12:34 (also Lk 6:45)

Only then, when we are fit to burst with the love of God through prayer, and are filled with personal compassion through listening, are we able to respond.

“Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.” – Prov 13:3
This may seem at first to mean “don’t open your mouth”, but think what a guard does: he stands vigilant and lets pass only what is permitted. If you guard your mouth, you keep watch over what you say, letting only what is right and good – the abundance of the treasure of your heart – pass your lips.

Things to Remember

The first thing to keep in mind is the strength of personal testimony: people cannot argue with your personal experience of faith, and you are not setting out to argue people into the Church. There is a time and place for apologetics and catechesis but this first encounter is about bringing people to feel the loving touch of Christ. Catechesis can follow. When someone hears how the Lord has worked in your life, they are receiving a powerful witness. And that helps lead the conversation away from convoluted and often unconstructive debates about Church teaching.

Never lose hope if nothing “miraculous” seems to happen. We are part of a bigger picture and the Lord asks us to play our part: “One sows and another reaps” (Jn 4:37).

Be yourself. We are given all the tools we need to evangelise in our Baptism. When responding to the questions of other people, you don’t need to tie yourself up in knots thinking of elaborate answers when truth is the pearl of great price that people are drawn to search for.

“Perfect love casts our fear” (1 Jn 4:18). If you are afraid, anxious or embarrassed, go to the source of perfect love, the Eucharist, to ask for help. Then, once you have received this love, cast out the fear, awkwardness and anxiety in the people you meet by loving them with the same love you have received.

Evangelisation is the first step; catechesis, commitment and deeper formation follow. Don’t expect someone you’ve just met to accept everything at once. And remember that it’s not your responsibility at that moment to explain everything!

Use appropriate vocabulary. To use words that people don’t understand, like transubstantiation, consecration, sinfulness and repentance, is creating barriers not breaking them down. Likewise, bear in mind that simpler words have been warped through a lack of understanding in the media. For example, the word “Church” can mean many different things to different people. Depending on who they are, it can be a trigger word for all sorts of emotional reactions.

Sometimes the best way of defining something is by relating it to your personal experience. For example, you might explain what it means to you to be a member of the Church, why you choose to be part of the Church, why you love the Church. By doing that, rather than attempting a theological definition that some may not be ready for, you can communicate a far clearer picture of what the Church is. That is what I mean by meeting someone where they are.

The Fruits are His

We evangelise not to see the difference but to make the difference. We have no idea what seeds are being planted at those times when we think everything is going wrong. Evangelisation is not a numbers game; if you arrange an event and four people come – praise the Lord! He has handpicked these four souls and sent them to you. We give to God, and His are the fruits. Wonderfully, He quite often shares them for our own good.
“Give, and it will be given to you; a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.” – Lk 6:38

Evangelising what I spend my weekends and holidays doing, because I love it! I never thought anything could be as great as receiving the love of God, but giving it to other people and seeing them fall in love with God too is the most incredible thing to be part of.

A fellow missionary said to me once: “You always get more than you give, don’t you?”

Emmanuel School of Mission

“Become who you are and you will set the world on fire.”

Based in Rome, a 10-minute walk from St Peter’s, lies the Emmanuel School of Mission, a school dedicated to the formation of young Catholics and offering a transformative nine-month course. Each year the school accepts the applications of 20 young adults from across the world, aged between 18 and 35, and immerses them in a world of Scripture, Eucharistic Adoration, theological study, international mission and works of compassion.

In my year there was a German chef, a French music teacher, a Coptic Catholic Egyptian, a Lithuanian gospel singer, a Brazilian teenager studying languages, a Scottish gamekeeper and an English nurse from Bournemouth, to name but a few. Despite our extraordinary differences, we found very quickly a commonality rooted in Faith. Through the sacraments we were spiritually connected, and knowing this enriched our relationships in a unique way and deeply united us as brothers and sisters within a matter of months.

I lived most of the time outside my comfort zone and in return received an enormous heart for mission, a profound understanding of the Holy Spirit acting in my life, and an insatiable appetite to let the Lord and Our Lady use me in whatever way they see fit. I cannot recommend this year enough for any young Catholic who feels a niggling curiosity,

a searching desire or an outright calling to deepen and understand the Faith that has been given to them. If you’d like to find out more about the Emmanuel School of Mission, there’s lots of useful information at www.esm-rome.com.

The Emmanuel Community is a Catholic community of priests, together with consecrated and lay faithful, across the world dedicated to a life of Eucharistic Adoration, works of compassion, and Evangelisation in their daily life and relationships. If you would like any more information please don’t hesitate to contact Lucy Mackain-Bremner by emailing info@emmanueluk.org.uk

In our last issue we published a piece by Fr John M. McDermott S.J. concerning the resolution of tensions in the western philosophical tradition, especially in the modern philosophy of science. Here we publish our response and Fr McDermott's response to that. The differences seem to be over whether these tensions can be resolved through our better understanding of nature (our position), or whether they are inherent to created reality and cannot be rationally resolved but only founded upon the ultimate intelligibility of absolute love. Fr McDermott is a faculty member of the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. Since 2003 he has served as a member of the International Theological Commission, and since 2008 as a consultant to the US Bishops' Committee on Doctrine.

Reply to Fr John M. McDermott

1.  In finding human cognition "paradoxical" Fr McDermott seems unsure whether hylomorphism (the analysis of all entities into unifying form and individuating matter) reflects simply man's inadequate way of knowing, which cannot attain the full structure of reality, or whether this really is the structure of reality. Yet if we can intuit at least that God knows things differently, we can also discern that the structure of reality is actually as God would perceive it. McDermott seems to go on to suggest that humans simply project the subjective inconsistency of our supposed cognition onto reality because we have to posit some correspondence between our minds and reality. We should ask: Is the individual unknowable in itself, or just unknowable in all its relativitiesby the circumscribed mind of man? If that latter is the case, then we have no business saying that matter is absolutely unknowable and therefore "non being". If the material is truly unknowable as "not being" then not even God can know it! That is to make the mind of man the measure of being, not the Mind of God, whereas we are told by the Word of God Incarnate that "Every hair of your head is counted", "Not a sparrow falls to the ground without your heavenly Father knowing".

2.  Fr McDermott does go on to affirm that God knows creatures in their individuality, but he seems then to have some sympathy for the Nominalist despair of finding any intrinsic and universal rationality in nature, and even for Sartre's despair of finding meaning in existence at all. His way out of the conundrum of the apparent meaninglessness of existence, viewed by the human mind, depicts Revelation breaking into the closed world of man confirming the ultimate reality of the dialectical dynamic of love. This grounds the intelligibility of paradoxical creation and thus human knowing. It is akin to Barthian fideism in as much as such revelation leaves shrouded in mystery the resolution of apparent fundamental paradox within the immanent dynamic of human knowing andloving.

Rather, we would say that we do know material things within a matrix of universal relationships. We do indeed know differently from God, for God knows the individual in supreme detail and in every aspect and relationship of its universality - its causality, meaning and purpose within the Plan of Salvation to the nth degree. But we are sufficiently aware of this not to be trapped within the cloud of unknowing about matter. Our minds are created in the image of our maker and we do attain at least to the basic meanings of matter with certainty, as is evidenced by our increasingly fruitful and powerful use of those meanings in our technology. To attain to perfect understanding and wise use of these things, or to understanding ourselves and our own place and purpose in creation, we needrevelation and the graced elevation of our mind into communion with the Living God.

Yes, it is true that there is a level of provisionality, of "non-being" in the existence of created things because all contingent existence is measured and projected within a causal network of relationships. What something "is", its "essence", is defined through relationship to the creating Mind and intention of God who knows and wills its place and its purpose within the equational structure of meanings that is creation. So its own specific existence is always provisional and not the gold standard of its own identity.

3. If universality is "being" and individuality is simply "non-being", then Sartre would be right to say that to exist as an individual is inextricably entangled in meaninglessness. But if individual existence is always relationally set within a framework of other existentials, the whole of which is referred to the Supreme and Absolute Existential who is God, then we can see that essence and existence do not arise from a cosmic tension between infinite being and infinite non-being. Rather, every unitary reality, including every material entity, is actual and knowable because it is known by God within the dynamic and interlocking framework of other created beings, and they are simultaneously contingent and provisional in so far as they are intrinsically dependent andstructured towards meanings beyond themselves within that environmental framework. In short, they are "being" that is therefore knowable by created minds, because they are called into being by the Mind of God, and they are also "not-being" in the sense that they are not God, and therefore not absolute in their individual identity. McDermott writes:

"In the mystery of matter, or corporeal individuality, [human reason] strikes a limit to its knowing. It is then forced in freedom to choose either to postulate a fundamental nothingness or absurdity in existence, thus denying intelligibility and destroying itself, or to transcend itself toward the infinite God of love who has made Himself known through the finite, visible structures of this world."

Materia for Aquinas is not non-being in the sense of chaos or negation, but the lowest degree of esse/being. (2 Sentences d.12 art. 4 resp). Aristotle and Aquinas speak rather of polymorphic potential, not an infinite void, which could (erroneously) imply an equal and opposite pole of existence to God's infinite Being. As we argued in our November 2010 editorial, science is not the study merely of individual entities in the Aristotelian sense, which must condemn it to the realm of the metaphysically unknowable and irrelevant. Science is the study of the created order in its material/formal relationships up to and including the bodily existence of Man. It cannot, therefore, in Christian terms, be an all-sufficient answer to Life, Love and even to the Universe.For material existence relates intrinsically to the higher order of Mind or Spirit.

Matter (in the modern sense of material creatures with their potential/formal identities) not only relates to the Mind of God through which it is framed in meaningful and dynamic order, it is an order that is founded through the living Wisdom of God whose Personal Incarnation is the very raison d’être of the physical creation in the first place. If matter were indeed the ultimate unknowable and were meaningless, then Sartre would be right and the turn to a "God of love" would be an attempt to escape the inevitable conclusion that individual existence is indeed intrinsically empty and absurd. And if that were true, then how could God manifest himself through matter or through anything "created" at all?

The very fact of the Incarnation sheds light upon the foundations of matter and corporeality, which were gratuitously created for and towards that most meaningful of ends. It tells us that matter is not meaningless and nothing. It is contingent and dependent, only capable of being fully understood within the higher context of the plenary purpose of God's plan for creation. It is in God, not in matter, that man strikes an absolute limit to his knowing. God's infinity does not imply that he is the most abstract, but that he is the most absolutely individual and concrete, the most necessary and supremely Existential Being, beyond anything we have the mental or metaphysical capacity to imagine.

4. We deny the concept of absolute and infinite non-being. The concept of non-being is an unconscious hangover from a pagan cosmic dualism which owes more to Plato than to Aristotle and is alien to Thomas Aquinas. There is only God and that which he creates, however minimal its entitative constitution may be. "Non-being" simply IS NOT - by definition, unless we are to posit some infinite and eternal sea of existential emptiness which surrounds and circumscribes the equally infinite Being of God. For if matter is truly "non-being", except in some comparative and analogical sense, then God does not create it!

Were evolution ultimately random, there would be no intelligibility in the universe and all study of it would be doomed to the frustration of post-modern hypothesising. If evolutionists wish to preserve their science as "knowledge," while they might describe their method as concerned with the collection, comparison, and ordering of apparently coincidental mutations and events, they can never give chaos as the final explanation of the reality studied.

5. We are loved not just individually but within and through the hierarchy of relationships that constitute the Church as the family of salvation. We are all loved in and for the sake of Jesus Christ, then through Our Lady. Similarly we are known to be what we are and called to be what we should become in nature and in grace through the hierarchy of relationships that form the fabric of material causality that is the created cosmos. Matter is not "non-being" and chaos, it is that which is controlled and directed by mind to the glory of the Incarnation, for the Cosmos is framed by Wisdom as fully as it is by Love, and it is the Wisdom of God who is made flesh in the fullness of time and who gives himself for our redemption. It is from this new order of Wisdom restored inCreation that the plenary gift of divinising Love, who is the Holy Spirit, is poured out upon mankind. As Pope Benedict continually points out, if we neglect the priority of Wisdom in revealed religion we risk divorcing faith from reason and religion from science, which does harm to both.

Response by Fr McDermott

I am grateful to the editors of Faith for publishing my article, criticising its insufficiencies, and allowing me a response to clarify some misapprehensions.

The first misapprehension concerns "non-being." I did not intend an infinite void opposed to God. In the classical tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas prime matter, the principle of individuality conjoined to form, is identified as non-being. For them matter always exists within form. It is unintelligible to the human mind. Thomas writes, "Matter in itself has no being (esse) and cannot be known" {S.T. I, 15, 3, 3). But God created it and knows it thoroughly; He knows singulars individuated by matter (S.T. I, 14, 11c; 15, 3, 4; 44, 2; ScG I, 65; De Ver. 2, 5). Thus Thomas explicitly denies that "matter is of itself unknowable" (De Ver. 2, 5, 12). What man cannot know God knows. Thomas clearly oscillates between human and divine perspectives. Sohe paradoxically affirms that prime matter, non-being, participates in goodness and beauty (De Norn. Div. 4, 4, 355; S.T. I, 5, 3, 1.2; 5, 4, 3). I refer readers to "The Mystery of Matter" for Thomas' complex understanding of prime matter and "Matter, Modern Science, and God" for the recurrence of matter's paradoxes in modern science; both articles are scheduled for proximate publication in Angelicum.

Sartre's philosophy is abhorrent to me because it recognises no norm outside human reason, sees reason as absurd, and makes all value dependent upon arbitrary choice. That spells the death of reason, freedom, and love. Thus Sartre serves to expose and demolish the pretensions of Enlightenment reason as a faculty apart from faith and love. The finite cannot absolutise itself without committing intellectual suicide. Nonetheless I affirm a structure in reality intelligible to the human mind. It consists of the polar tension between finite and infinite which recurs repeatedly in the conundrums of philosophy and modern science. While reason cannot resolve that tension by dissolving one pole into the other, human experience is wider than pure reason. In the experience of morality we are awareof a claim made upon our consciences to do the good, whatever the cost, even if our lives have to be forfeited. This is an absolute, or unlimited, claim since the moral subject is called to surrender all other values for the sake of the good. The whole universe with all its attractions is relativised. Only God can demand such total dedication. Here reappears the tension between absolute and relative, infinite and finite. But instead of rejecting morality (and ultimately love) with Sartre for its alleged contradiction, we can recognise that, if the moral claim with its polar tension is reality, then the structure of thought reflects the structure of reality. This correspondence of thought and reality (morality) manifests the truth to be affirmed in freedom. "He who does the truth comes tothe light" (Jn. 3:21).

Since all thought presupposes an absolute (infinite), God can be known by thought, even apart from Christian revelation - if man can experience true morality! Such morality involving self-sacrifice for others is ultimately love, grounded in God who is Love. In a fallen world, no man can authoritatively assure others of love's reality except the One who is identically Love. Moreover, only absolute Love can restore creation's primordial unity destroyed by sin. Once we can see that meaning is given to us in love, human science surrenders its hubristic claim as judge over all and recognises love as mystery and gift. Then it understands its abstractions as meaningfully approximating God's mind. This is not Barthian faith, a leap into darkness with an intellect incapable of attaining truth.Rather by acknowledging love, reason finds itself grounded in reality and validated. When confronted by suffering, death, and sin, it does not despair but affirms meaning in Christ crucified, whose resurrection proves that Love is stronger than sin and death.

Dr William Newton is associate professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

In a debate with an advocate for abortion, one occasionally comes up against an informed opponent who seeks to undermine the Church’s position on the issue by pointing out that the Universal Doctor of the Church, St Thomas Aquinas, held to the doctrine of delayed animation or hominisation. According to this theory, ensoulment did not occur at conception but only later: for St Thomas at least 40 days later. This, of course, seems to open the door to the possibility of abortion, a fact disquieting to the average pro-life Catholic.

Certainly, it would be easy to respond that Aquinas is not the Magisterium and so he did, very occasionally, get things wrong – the Immaculate Conception being a stellar example. Or, one could point out that even if Aquinas did ascribe to a theory of delayed hominisation, he still held that abortion before ensoulment was wrong, at least to the degree that it is a form of contraception or that it risks killing a “formed” foetus.

''As Vatican II teaches: 'Only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light'.''

These responses are good and useful but I fear they do not do justice to Aquinas for while he was, of course, almost certainly wrong in subscribing to a theory of delayed animation, there remains much truth in his general approach to ensoulment. Therefore, in this short article, I wish to explain St Thomas’s approach and to suggest that his metaphysical principles are ultimately sound. Moreover, I shall suggest that if we were to replace his outmoded embryology with what we now know, the Angelic Doctor himself would be more than likely to conclude that ensoulment took place at the moment of conception.

Aquinas’s Metaphysical Principles

Aquinas’s anthropology is firmly constructed on the foundation of the hylomorphic theory – the idea that all material things are a composite of a material and a formal principle. In the case of the human being, the formal principle is the soul. While it is the form that gives to matter all its particularity, matter itself must be disposed towards the reception of a given form. So, for example, chickpeas must be soaked and cooked if they are to be digested. This boils down (no pun intended) to saying that the matter currently conspand as chickpea cannot receive the form of human flesh without first being disposed. Another example, more classically Thomistic, is that wet wood must be disposed – through the process of drying out – to receive the form of fire.

When this notion of disposition is applied to human generation it leads to the conclusion that the material element of the human being that is given by the parents in procreation must be ready to receive a rational soul before it can actually receive it. Remember, the parents themselves do not give the child his form (the spiritual soul) because they only contribute something material, namely a sperm and an ovum; and their own souls – being spiritual and so without parts – cannot divide to provide a soul for their offspring. Hence, the soul must come directly from God through an act of creation, and it is on account of this that we have the term “procreation”.

Given these principles, Aquinas’s approach was to say that the rational soul is infused as soon as the matter of the body is ready for such a form. Now, the rational soul gives to a human being the ability to do typically human activities, such as thinking and willing. While at their highest point such activities, particularly conceptualising, are immaterial and so are not ultimately dependent upon the body, Aquinas held that in this life the whole gamut of rational activity needs various interior sense powers that come with the body. He was quite aware that damage to the body – especially damage to the brain – impeded rational activities like thinking.

The question then becomes: how developed does the body need to be before we can say that it is ready for the rational soul? Aquinas certainly did not think that the brain needed to be fully developed. He knew that the bodily component to rational thinking was not fully developed until well after birth, since children are not capable of rational thinking until after early childhood. Rather, it seems likely that Aquinas held that those organs needed for thinking should at least be visible. He does not say this directly; he says only that the rational soul does not exist “before the organisation of the body”. In Aquinas’s day, this organisation could only be verified by the unaided faculty of sight. Hence, the visible presence of the brain (as the requisite presence) seems a reasonableinterpretation of Aquinas on this point.

A Human Cause of Development

The question remains, however, how – in St Thomas’s view – the body develops to the stage where it is ready to receive a rational soul, by a divine act of infusion. Aquinas very much followed Aristotle on this point. He thought that the male semen acted upon the menstrual blood of the woman, forming this blood into the body of the fetus. Of course, since there is quite a developmental gap between menstrual blood and a fetus, he surmised that this process took some time: hence the delay in hominisation.

''Only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.''

More importantly, Aquinas held that the sperm of the man acted like an agent of the male (whom he took to be the active partner in generation) in carrying out the work of developing the blood into a body fit for a rational soul. This development would pass through three stages, marking the three distinct grades of living things. Aquinas says:

Therefore the vegetative soul, which comes first, when the embryo lives the life of a plant, is corrupted, and is succeeded by a more perfect soul which is both nutritive and sensitive, and then the embryo lives an animal life; and when this is corrupted it is succeeded by the rational soul introduced from without: although the preceding souls were produced by the virtue in the semen.  (Summa Contra Gentiles, II, 89)

It is important to note here that, for Aquinas, the semen acts as the instrument of the father in bringing about the development of the foetus’s human body – or at least a body fit to receive a rational soul and, by that reception, to become a fully human body. The silent but crucial premise here is that an effect must be proportioned to its cause. Or, we might say, an effect is always somehow contained in its cause. Hence, if water is to be raised to boiling point, it can only be on account of the cause (the fire) being itself as least as hot as 100 degrees Celsius. To apply this principle to the issue at hand, we would have to say that given the effect – the development of a human body – the cause bringing this about must be a human cause. Aquinas respects this metaphysical principle byarguing that the semen is operating like an instrument or tool of a fully human cause, namely the father.

Wheat From the Chaff

What we need to do now is to distinguish the perennially valid metaphysical principles that undergird St Thomas’s account from his antiquated embryology. We have seen that the first metaphysical principle at stake is that material things must be ready to receive a new form. In this case, the form is a rational soul and the requisite disposition on the side of the matter seems to be that those bodily organs needed for thinking must in some way already be present. Now, this is the really critical point: what does it mean for these organs to be present? At least three possibilities present themselves:

(a) the organ is present and mature (it is operative).
(b) the organ is present but immature (so not operative).
(c) the power to develop the organ is present.

As we have seen, St Thomas seems to have held to option (b). What I shall now argue – following in the footsteps of others – is that if we separate out the chaff of Aquinas’s outmoded embryology from the wheat of his own metaphysical principles, this will lead inexorably to option (c). That being the case, the modified Thomistic position tends towards the doctrine of immediate ensoulment.

St Thomas, as we have seen, thought that the development of the body to the level corresponding to option (b) was brought about by the semen acting on the menstrual blood as an instrument of the father. It will be remembered that the principle underlying this was that an effect (the development of a human body) will always be proportioned to its cause. We now know, of course, that the semen does not act as an enduring instrumental cause of the soul of the father. Yet, having stripped away the defunct embryology, we still have the valid metaphysical principle: we still need to find a human cause that could account for the development (a specifically human development) of the bodily organs needed for thinking.

So, what is this cause? The answer can only be that the zygote is itself that cause because it clearly has within itself what it needs to bring about this development. Certainly, it needs nutrients and oxygen from outside (as we all do) but it has within itself the capability to assimilate and use these things in the pursuit of its development. But, and here is the punch line, if the human cause of the development of the bodily organs is the zygote, then the zygote is already human; and, if it is already human, it already has a rational soul. Thus, we see how stripping away the ancient biology but applying the self-same metaphysical principles leads inevitably to the conclusion of immediate ensoulment.

Addendum

Before concluding, let me at least note one other way that authors have occasionally come to the defence of St Thomas in this matter. We now know that the flesh of the zygote is human flesh in the sense that it has the 46-chromosome constitution proper to human beings. Might it be argued from this alone that we have proof of the existence of a human soul because, according to the hylomorphic theory, the matter is what it is by way of the form, and so human body matter indicates the presence of a human form?

The problem with this argument is that it does not always prove the existence of a human individual. After all, a few cheek cells floating in a petri dish, or a cadaver kept alive by artificial means, would also be examples of the existence of living human flesh; but there is not also the presence of a human person. Hence, what appears to be more important is that the conceptus is the cause of its own development. By this it manifests itself as a self-subsisting, integrated and complete organism of human type.

Conclusion

My objective in this short essay has been to show that in “stripping off the shell of the out-of-date science, we find the permanently valid kernel of … [Aquinas’s] thought on the soul,” as John Saward wrote in Redeemer in the Womb. The obstacle before St Thomas that prevented him from seeing the reasonableness of the doctrine of immediate animation was his belief that the sperm, acting as an instrument of the father, was the enduring agent behind the construction of the foetal body to a state ready for a rational soul. This also led him to make an exception for Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Since the Spirit is an uncreated cause of infinite power He was instantaneously able, Aquinas argued, to build from the blood of the Blessed Virgin a body ready for a human soul.

With this obstacle removed by modern embryology, Aquinas’s durable metaphysics leads us to make Christ’s immediate ensoulment not an exception to the rule, but the exemplar for all. As Vatican II teaches: “Only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.”

Form of ‘Horseness’

Dear Father Editor,

In your May/June editorial, you question Aristotle’s concept of the form’s adequacy for giving an account of the continuum of development in life forms that lies at the heart of the theory of evolution. Aristotle’s concept of form, suitably refined by St Thomas Aquinas, is a metaphysical concept. As such it has no place in empirical description. It is wholly – and rightly – innocent of the concept of falsifiability. The latter is the indisputable foundation of scientific enquiry. It is not the task of metaphysics to give an empirical account of anything.

Aristotle’s hylomorphism (matter-formism) has triumphantly withstood the test of time. Aquinas’ teleology is unthinkable without it. Without form we would have no basis for natural law morality. If evolution is a true scientific theory – and not just an ideology – then it must be falsifiable. Empirical investigation is built upon the notion of falsifiability. A non-falsifiable scientific hypothesis is a contradiction in terms. But is evolution falsifiable? That – and not Thomistic metaphysics – is what needs looking at.

Yours faithfully,
Tim Martins
Hayle
Cornwall

Dear Father Editor,

Your May/June editorial sees St Thomas Aquinas’s system as static, and says we need something more dynamic – specifically, that we need to bring in evolution (this is a traditional Faith movement theme, and to be expected). But then it speaks explicitly of ditching the form (or essence) approach of Aquinas and Aristotle and gives the example of “horseness” as something that can change – without seeming to realise that this leads logically to ditching the notion of “human being” and, as a consequence, our union with other humans, from Adam and Eve down the ages until
the end of time.

If we do not share the same nature, what happens to original sin; to our solidarity with others; even to our being able to understand what they say? If the matter is taken to its logical conclusion, we would end up ditching the notion of Christ himself as something (or someone) permanent.

I think this poses a key query about the possibility of combining evolution and Christianity. An attempt to save the possibility could be that human beings, unlike horses, have an immortal soul, which keeps us all united, despite the fact that our bodies can evolve. But this does not fit in well with the theory of evolution (or at least I don’t see it doing so).

I have considerable admiration for the work the Faith movement does to promote the Catholic faith, but I have always been hesitant about its espousal of evolution (although I realise this is a central tenet). This editorial makes me more hesitant.

Yours faithfully,
Fr Andrew Byrne
Grandpont House,
Oxford

Editor’s Comment
We are very grateful to Mr Martins and Fr Byrne for their thought-provoking letters. Space does not allow us to address exhaustively the issues raised, but it is precisely these issues that must be resolved if the New Evangelisation is to take root in our culture. While offering only a thumbnail sketch here we fully intend to revisit these issues at greater length in subsequent editions of this magazine.

First, a caveat: without getting bogged down in the scientific status of the theory of evolution, we should note that among scientists there is a consensus on the broad lines of the theory of evolution. Within those broad lines there are variations. Some of these variations may owe more to ideology than to empirical observation, and certainly some of them may be incompatible with the Catholic faith.

Our contention is that generally speaking the theory of evolution is not at odds with the Catholic faith. We do, however, note that both Mr Martins and Fr Byrne share our conviction that there is a tension between Thomistic metaphysics and the theory of evolution. Furthermore, we think Mr Martins is right to draw out the link between this issue and the whole question of morality and natural law. Fr Byrne is right to highlight its links with questions of anthropology and original sin. Mr Martins goes on to assert that Aristotle’s metaphysics “has triumphantly withstood the test of time”. We would demur.

It is simply a fact that many reputable scientists and philosophers of science dismiss metaphysics as irrelevant. Furthermore, the pre-modern science concept of “the nature” has been slipping out of our culture’s world-view for centuries, given the force of new knowledge about formality.

And this loss of the coherence of Catholic philosophy, which was so fruitfully at the heart of the growth of second-millennium western civilisation, has been followed by exactly the undermining of Catholic doctrines, inside and outside the Church, which Fr Byrne alludes to.

To cite one example, Professor Stephen Hawking, whose iconic status as a scientist has made him enormously influential in contemporary culture, says in his 2010 book The Grand Design: “Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead … Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics … Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”

If philosophy does not dialogue with modern science it condemns itself to obscurity. Where, after all, did Aristotle and scholasticism get their concept of “form” if not from (relatively accurate) observation of the natural world? And if the philosophy we use as a vehicle to present the content of our faith can be dismissed as irrelevant, so also the content of our faith may be dismissed as irrelevant. And who could deny that this is taking place in our culture at the present moment?
While cautioning against a simplistic understanding of the relationship between science and metaphysics, we cannot accept the notion that the latter can somehow entirely insulate itself against the discoveries of modern science. Even the Church’s Magisterium will not allow this.

Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Aeterni Patris, which did so much to foster the Thomistic revival in the 19th century, notes: “The Scholastics … well understood that nothing was of greater use to the philosopher than diligently to search into the mysteries of nature and to be earnest and constant in the study of physical things. And this they confirmed by their own example; for St Thomas, Blessed Albertus Magnus and other leaders of the Scholastics were never so wholly rapt in the study of philosophy as not to give large attention to the knowledge of natural things”.

Fr Byrne suggests our editorial “speaks explicitly of ditching the form … approach of Aquinas and Aristotle”. In fact our criticism was slightly more nuanced: we took issue with the notion of the form as a “static constant”. We do not want to do away with the notion of form altogether; we are not advocating nominalism. Modern science, however, allows us to elaborate a more refined notion of the relative form, according to which the form of any given reality is understood as relative to its environment.

In so far as that relationship of a reality to its environment is repeatable, two individuals may share the same relationship to their environment and so share the same nature. Form here is understood not as a distinct metaphysical principle but rather as a repeatable function of a relationship between an individual and its environment. Natural things below man do have dynamic natures.

Fr Byrne is absolutely right to draw attention to the distinctiveness of human nature in this matter. With us God directly infuses a spiritual soul, which is a new principle of integration and control bringing a new and higher unity and meaning to the elements that make up the human body.

Reform of the Curia

Dear Father Editor,

One of the constant clamourings since Pope Benedict XVI resigned the papacy, and throughout the build-up to the Conclave which elected Pope Francis, has been the mantra that the Curia must change, that the Curia is corrupt, that the Curia is a hundred and one other things.

Regarding the Curia, the Second Vatican Council taught as follows: “In exercising supreme, full, and immediate power in the universal Church, the Roman pontiff makes use of the departments of the Roman Curia which, therefore, perform their duties in his name and with his authority for the good of the churches and in the service of the sacred pastors” (Christus Dominus, 9).

Just as each government will alter its civil service departments as it sees fit, it seems to be that the same is to be expected within the Church. Taking the Council Fathers at their words, the Roman Curia essentially manifests and implements the will of the Holy Father. Thus in my view an attack on the Curia is essentially an attack on the Holy Father. Commentators, including cardinals, who have called for reform have, as far as I have seen, offered not one example where the Church’s machinery of government while carrying out the directions of the Holy Father has failed.

As the Pope regularly meets the curial heads and approves the publication of their decrees, it is the Holy Father who speaks through these decrees and who is criticised when people dissent from them. Pope Francis will amend the Curia as he sees fit to implement his vision. But I can see a time in the future when we will have the calls for the Franciscan papacy’s Curia to be reformed as people react against his teachings, as they have reacted against the teachings of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

It is easier to attack the machinery of government in the Church then to stand up and say that the Pope is deluded, which is essentially what is being said. Pope Francis has, of course, outflanked critics of both the Curia and the Papacy by establishing a congregation of cardinals drawn from across the world to advise on the government of the Church. From this advice the Holy Father will decide how best to manage the machinery of government of his pontificate.

Perhaps we should spend less time picking the speck of wood out of the Curia’s eye and more time picking the beam out of our own eyes and therefore be more open to accepting the teachings of Christ’s Church.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Keeffe
West Harrow
Middlesex

The ‘New’ Evangelisation

Dear Father Editor,

I enjoyed Mgr Barltrop’s review of the book The New Evangelisation: Responding to the Challenge of Indifference. It goes without saying that one should not overlook Archbishop Fisichella’s insights into evangelising modalities – not just because he is President of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation but because it is widely understood, especially inside the Vatican, that both he and Cardinal Ratzinger, as he then was, mostly authored the encyclical Fides et Ratio (aka “Fisichella and Ratzinger”)

However, Mgr Barltrop is right to point out the omission in Fisichella’s analysis of the outstanding survey of the “waves of evangelisation in history” by Raniero Cantalamessa.

Furthermore, there is a need to acknowledge some background to the phrase “New Evangelisation” itself so as to better resolve the “conundrum” that Mgr Barltrop describes as something Fisichella’s book is aware of.

The phrase originates from various translations of a phrase from Paul VI’s Evangelii Nuntiandi which is rendered in English as “a new period of evangelisation”. Other translations also use the word “new”, for example the Spanish “tiempos nuevos de evangelisacion”, and the Italian “nuovi tempi d’evangelizzazione”. The editio typica, however has: “feliciora evangelisationis tempora”. Thus the Latin does not use the typical word for new, “nova”. Instead, it uses “feliciora”, so the phrase translates more literally as “an abundant season of evangelisation”.

Mgr Brian Bransfield, an assistant general secretary to the US Bishops Conference has written in his book The Dignity of the Human Person According to John Paul II that “feliciora comes from felix, or happy. Feliciora connotes abundance, something that is nobler, propitious, flourishing, more auspicious, fortunate, or bountiful in an agricultural sense.”

The choice of the Latin word, he indicates, shows how the new evangelisation is new. The new is not opposite what was in the past, or opposite “old”. The new is not synonymous with contemporary or current. Rather, he states, “the new evangelisation is new in the sense that evangelisation is to be a noble, bountiful, flourishing and of abundance. While the word new is a suitable adjective for evangelisation, the quality of the newness should be understood in the sense of feliciora.”

Joseph Ratzinger in Co Workers of the Truth, under the entry for 9 December, states: “Mary is span image and model for the Church. By gazing on her the Church is prevented from conveying a one-sided male image that reduces her to an instrument of socio-political action programmes.” And this is the context in which the Pope refers to Christian families open to life as “a key agent in the New Evangelisation”.

Mary educated Jesus in the human love he poured out towards others by her example. This makes sense when we consider the Greek for “favoured one”: kecharitomene – which is difficult to translate in to English, but which means overflowing with grace to such an extent that it is like a fountain within a fountain.

Kecharitomene is like a superlative placed upon a superlative. No wonder, then, that Blessed John Paul II called Mary the “Star of the New Evangelisation”.

If we are not wholly Marian our evangelisation cannot be “new” and the domestic church is called to embody this dynamic most of all.

Yours faithfully,
Edmund P Adamus
Director for Marriage and Family Life
Diocese of Westminster

In the second part of his article Fr Ross Campbell, assistant priest in Kirkintilloch, offers an insight into the challenging Mariology of one of the major spans of 20th-century theology.

A great son of the Church who deserves a special place of honour in contemporary ecclesiastical life. (Blessed John Paul II on Hans Urs von Balthasar)

Balthasar is above all a Marian person… By being made a Cardinal on the eve of his death the Church acknowledges that he is right in what he teaches of the faith. (Funeral Homily of Hans Urs von Balthasar preached by Cardinal Ratzinger)

In the first half of this article (published in the March/April edition of Faith magazine) we offered a thumbnail sketch of some of the 20th-century debates in Mariology and the consequences of those debates. We noted the confusion that arose from them in the life of the Church regarding the role of Mary. There is no doubt that in recent years we have witnessed a resurgence of the role of Mary in the devotional lives of many Catholics. In itself this is a good thing. However, this growth in Marian devotion cannot be reduced to piety based upon nostalgia or sentimentality. We saw, especially during the pontificate of Blessed John Paul II, how Mary has been reintegrated into the life of the Church. The theological underpinnings of Mary’s relationship with the Church have been recovered andbrought to the fore. This article looks at the contribution of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar in this rediscovery of the Marian profile of the Church.

Scholars argue whether or not Balthasar was a systematic thinker. He certainly never dedicated a systematic treatise to Mary and the Church. Nonetheless a number of foundational ideas recur throughout his theology and give it shape and form.

Balthasar’s Theological Foundations

Balthasar’s fundamental theological presupposition is that human history comes from and is directed towards Christ. For this reason one can expect human history (and indeed the cosmos) to show forth something of the glory of God. Nowhere is this glory more evident than in the concrete living person of Mary, who has been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. The form of God’s glory, and therefore the form of revelation, is Jesus Christ. Balthasar doesn’t necessarily mean form in a strictly scholastic sense here; rather he means that reality which we, with our human minds, are able to grasp. Christ is the intelligible embodiment of God’s glory. The goal of all theological speculation, and of the believer, is to have experience of this form. This is Balthasar’s “theological aesthetic”. TheChristian is called to rediscover the beauty of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ.

Consequently the foundation stone of the edifice of Balthasar’s ecclesiology is Christological: the Incarnation of God.[1] According to Antonio Sicari, Balthasar sees Christ as:

"this “someone”, “in whom the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9), [and who] demands, above all, a personal and immediate relation with all human beings, beyond the limits of relations due to those who are only “someone”[2]

By referring to this divine “someone” Balthasar emphasises the particularity of the person of Jesus Christ. Christ is not some sort of nebulous platonic ideal; he is a person, a particular “someone”. But Christ is also the second person of the Trinity. He is God. And in the Incarnation he has entered time and space, met other human beings and established relations with them. This “someone” who claims to be the very being of God has placed himself within the grasp of the whole of humanity by entering our history. He is, therefore, potentially in relation to all human beings.

For Balthasar, the fact that God, in Christ, sought to establish relations with other human beings means that the Church, that is those people who are drawn into a relationship with Christ, is a constitutive element of the Incarnation. For Balthasar, the Church is not an afterthought tacked on to the event of God’s enfleshment. The Church is an integral part of the Incarnation. The Church was in the mind and plan of God from the beginning.

From this realisation flows the insight that if we desire to enter into relationship with God we need to look at what this particular “someone”, Christ, actually did. In what way did he choose to relate to human beings? Balthasar maintained that the first human relations that Christ established must have had a twofold character: they must have been both paradigmatic and efficacious.3 By paradigmatic Balthasar meant that this real and particular relationship between Christ and an individual was the first instance of this relationship, but it also sets up a pattern of this type of relationship that will be repeated throughout history and diffused across the whole of humanity.

These relationships, which take place during Christ’s 33 years of visible presence among humanity, are the initial realisations of all future relations. By efficacious, Balthasar means that because Christ is not just anyone but the divine “someone” his relationships transcend the normal conditions of purely human relationships. Christ’s relationships transcend the limitations of space and time. And so for Balthasar the Church flows from the seriousness of the Incarnation and Christ’s life as a human being.4 The Church, therefore, is a constitutive part of the divine initiative and not a consequence of it.

Mary and the Church

In Balthasar’s approach to theology Mary gives the Church her centre and apex. He observes that throughout the history of the Triune God’s dealings with humanity a female principle is present. The history of our salvation is marked by a feminine presence that responds actively and fruitfully to God’s initiatives: first Israel, which is presented throughout the Scriptures in feminine terms (as the daughter of Sion or, in those times when the prophets urge her to repentance, as a faithless wife); then Mary; and now the Church (the bride of Christ). And it is in this context, then, that the experience of the early Church and in particular the experience of Mary becomes pivotal for all believers.

Who is the Church? Not, what is the Church?

According to Balthasar (perhaps in direct response to the ecclesiology of Rahner) this is the question we should be asking.

The Church should not be thought of purely as an organisation or as an institution. The Church is not a “something”, neither is the Church an “it”. The Church is a person. She is a somebody. A person knows and wills in a way that an inanimate object does not. For instance, a car does not know or will anything. The Church, however, unlike an inanimate object, is a subject: she knows and she wills. However, the Church is a particular type of subject. She is a collective subject but at the same time she has one single centre of consciousness. These terms are slightly technical and require a word of explanation. A collective subject is a body capable of knowing and willing that is made up of individuals who are individually capable of knowing a willing. An example of this might be a family.We might commonly say “the family has decided…”. And by this we mean the family made up of individuals as a collective unit has come to a joint decision. In the same way the Church is made up of different individuals (Mary, the saints, us).

But within these collective subjects, normally the individual members remain isolated in their individuality; that is, they do not possess a single centre of consciousness. The Church is different because her centre of consciousness is Christ. Christ pours himself out through his grace into his members – that is, the members of the Church – so that the content of what the Church knows and wills is Christ. For a Catholic, to think “with the mind of the Church” is not simply to parrot the teachings of Christ: it is to be touched by Christ’s grace in such a way that one’s mind participates in the mind of Christ and thinks Christ’s thoughts. Moreover, the will is that which leads us to act. And when the Church performs her acts as Church it is Christ who acts. When the Church baptises it isChrist who acts; when the church absolves from sin, it is Christ who acts. And, of course, the source and summit of the Church’s life, the Eucharist, is Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity.

The Church is the living ecclesial chain that guarantees humanity’s and creation’s contact with the Incarnate God and she will therefore remain throughout history. Principally, this remaining endures and is made tangible in the glorified humanity of Mary, Peter and the other apostles. The Church is characterised by a concrete and enduring collectivity of subjects that surrounded Christ and with whom Christ established relations (that were paradigmatic and efficacious), so that humanity might continue to have access to Christ. Therefore, the purpose of the Church is to enable the believer, through grace, to experience and participate in her normative subject, her consciousness – Christ.

For us to participate in this life of God we must be in Christ, which is to be in the sphere of the Church.5 To the degree that this sphere is Christ’s own, he is the consciousness of the Church. It is in this sense that we speak of the Church as being Christ’s body, and Christ as the Head. However, to the extent that we as the collective subject respond as Church, we respond as members of the Bride of Christ. This receptive response of ours finds its normative subjectivity in the fiat of Mary. Thus the Church receives her fundamental and constitutive feminine dimension. The feminine Church is not something abstract, but a real subject with concrete individuals, beginning with Mary, who through Christ have been given a share in the divine Trinitarian life.

That is why Mary, when we reflect upon her presentation in the Gospels, is always seen as being embedded in the truths concerning Christ and the Trinity.6 Her whole life has a Trinitarian shape to it: she is obedient to the will of the Father, she bears the divine Son in her womb, and at the annunciation she is docile to the work of the Holy Spirit. Here we see Balthasar’s fidelity to the structure of Lumen Gentium: he first considers Mary in relation to Christ and the Trinity and then the Church.

We see then that this extension of Christ in history, through the Church, takes place pre-eminently through the concrete Christological constellation of the theological persons that Christ forms. At the apex of this constellation is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Balthasar’s Christological Constellation

Balthasar, in line with Lumen Gentium, adopts neither a Christocentric nor an Ecclesiocentric Mariology. For him, the more personal and unique Mary’s relationship with Christ is seen to be, the more she will represent the real content of the Church. It is only as the mother of Christ that she can become mother of the Body and spouse of the Word. Because of her unique role in history (the Immaculate Conception) she is able to become the meeting point of Christianity. For Balthasar Mary is uniquely linked to Christ for the Church – so that she can bear fruit for her. It is through Mary (and Peter and John) that the form of Christ is imprinted upon the Church and carried through history.

Balthasar Sought to Deepen the Teaching of the Council

As we have said, Balthasar saw the Church as a constitutive part of the Incarnation. From the very beginning the Church forms part of the divine plan; and the fundamental nature given to the Church is Marian. For Balthasar, Mary’s relation to the Church is not merely analogical or archetypal but ontological; in Mary the Church is embodied even before being organised in Peter:

“The Church is primarily feminine because her primary, all-encompassing truth is her ontological gratitude, which both receives the gift and passes it on.”[7]

There is a Marian character which moulds the Church both in terms of her being as such, and also in terms of the life of her members. It is through the Marian fiat in the Chamber of Nazareth that the Church is founded and given its catholicity. Mary’s yes is perfect and unconditional and thus universal. Therefore Balthasar warned that we must be careful to avoid reducing the meaning of archetype to a platonic (as a mere copy) or a psychological understanding (a sharing of a similar experience).[8]

The Mariologist Antonio Sicari believes that, for Balthasar, Mary is not only a prototype or model of the Church but rather, as woman, virgin, bride and mother, she constitutes the Church’s real form.9 Because the Church begins essentially in the chamber of Nazareth,[10] Mary is the original and generative image of the Church: she is the place of the Word’s indwelling, both bodily and ontologically.[11] For Balthasar the Marian principle constitutes the soul of the Church. Without it, ecclesial life risks being reduced to mere bureaucracy and functionalism – something he was clearly concerned about.

While Balthasar asserts that the Church’s primary identity and personality is found in Mary, this is not the sole aspect of the Church’s nature. He goes on to say that Christ establishes other relations which are also efficacious and paradigmatic. Through these further human relations Christ leaves other principles which will endure in the Church: Petrine (Office and Sacraments), Pauline (missionary character and charisms), Johannine (unity, contemplative love and the evangelical counsels) and Jacobine (continuity of old and new covenant – Tradition, Canon Law).

The Holy Spirit is the bond of unity that unites these various principles in the Church in a bond of mutual love.12 It is when these principles are united that the face of the Church becomes a Marian transparency to Christ. For Balthasar, the risen Lord, who wills to be present in His Church until the end of time, cannot be isolated from this constellation of historical life.13 He gives a lasting character to these spans so that believers may continue to have access to the divine life.

Mary and Peter|

If Mary constitutes the subjective feminine holiness of the Church then Peter (Office and Sacraments) constitutes the objective/masculine holiness of the Church as it is entrusted to men (although those men who hold office still exist within the comprehensive femininity of the Church).

According to Balthasar there are four principal elements of this objective Petrine holiness. First, the Church as the Bride of Christ receives her being and life from the Incarnate God in the form of vivifying substance (the Eucharist) and the words of pardon (sacramental absolution). Second, the Tradition of the Church enables the Word of God to remain always accessible to the believer (and the world) and to remain linked to its origin. Third, the justification of the believer is set down in an ecclesial order of law and thus the believer can share in this gift of justice only within the Church. This demonstrates how the Jacobine principle must seek the approval of the Petrine. Fourth, the indelible character of baptism (grace), confirmation (mission) and orders (office) means that allChristians remain enabled and available for every new encounter with the Lord: in other words, they are deputed towards Christ.

But it is Mary’s faith that is the determining form, interiorly offered to all being and activity within the Church.[14] The Petrine-Apostolic ministry of word and sacrament is never an end in itself; rather it is always subordinate to, and in the service of, the Marian principle. The Petrine principle is given to us by Christ to enable the Church to become what she already is in Mary, the spotless bride. All that is given to Peter is given to him to make the Church (and us) more like Mary.

According to Balthasar everything in the Church is a movement between these two principles (Marian and Petrine): the Church as the bride of Christ is the extension and product of the living reality of Christ, which requires an essential structure (sacraments and ministry, which are founded by Christ Himself). Second, it is the institution which makes possible the conditional nuptial realisation. Christ the Head continues to be present to His Body-Bride, making her fruitful and enabling our continued participation. Third, it is the institution that provides believers with an objective rule that they can live under. This rule fashions us into the Church’s perfect Marian core. Fourth, the institution is also a teaching instrument that forms the anima ecclesiastica within us; this itself is asharing in Mary’s wisdom according to Balthasar.15 Finally, it is the Petrine dimension that guards the authenticity of the prophetic and charismatic elements of the Church, which if genuine must have a Marian mould.

Although Balthasar speaks of a mutual indwelling of love between the Petrine and Marian principles (perichoresis), he continuously views the Marian principle as more fundamental because all the various principles, charisms and missions find their embracing point in her. The particular role of the Petrine principle (through its objectified holiness and rule), in relation to this mutual love, is to prevent us from proposing our own human spirit as the Holy Spirit.

In fact, Balthasar gives a threefold priority to the Marian principle. It is temporally prior to the apostolic experience. It is spiritually prior: Mary’s faith moves from interior to exterior, whereas the apostles’ faith is exterior and then interior. Balthasar asserted that Mary’s faith is both qualitative and formative.16 Finally, Mary is theologically prior. The Church without spot or wrinkle exists first and foremost within Mary’s perfect faith. It is because she is immaculate that the Church is infallible in her.

For Balthasar everything that exists in the Church does so in order that the Church herself (and we as believers) may become more like Mary, who perfectly experiences and participates in the life of Christ the divine “someone”.

[1]A. Sicari, “Mary, Peter and John: Figures of the Church,” in Communio 19 (Summer 1992), trans. Michael Waldstein, 191.
[2]Ibid.
[3]Ibid 192 also see The Christian State of Life, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1983), 290.
[4]Ibid, 193.
[5]Blair, 166.
[6]Ratzinger & Balthasar, 100.
[7]Ibid.
[8]Blair, 142-143, (cf: The Glory of the Lord Vol. I, 340).
[9]Sicari, 197.
[10]The Christian State of Life, 210.
[11]Sicari, 198 (cf: Prayer, 27).
[12]Spouse, 191,
[13]The Office of Peter, 162.
[14]The Office of Peter, 171.
[15]Theo-Drama IV, 357-358.
[16]The Office of Peter, 206.

John Paul: Living Witness to the Church

The first of May is not a national holiday on this side of the Atlantic, where we celebrate "Labor Day" on the first Monday of September. Thus the significance of the providential timing of the Beatification of Pope John Paul II may not have been as readily apparent to Americans as it was to the faithful in Great Britain and on the Continent. Yet once again, as occurred on the day of his death (2 April, 2005 was both the First Saturday of April and the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday), the date chosen by God's Providence for the raising of Pope John Paul the Great to the altar contained many layers of significance. The unusually late date of Easter this year meant that Divine Mercy Sunday coincided with the first day of the month traditionally dedicated to the Blessed Mother, which is alsothe feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, the Church's response to communism's consecration of 1 May as its "high holy day" for celebrating workers. How fitting that the man who dedicated so much of his life to opposing the lie at the heart of communism's empty promises should be celebrated and remembered on communism's very own "feast day." The man who spent his early life as a worker behind the Iron Curtain became the instrument of the Holy Spirit in teaching the world about the true dignity of man, of human labour, and about the unfathomable power of Divine Mercy to transform evil into good, despair into hope, and oppression into freedom.

The lifelong aspiration of Karol Wojtyla was simply to be a servant of Mary, completely handed over to her Immaculate Heart, as expressed in his motto, "Totus Tuus." The fact that all of these streams of significance converged in St. Peter's Square on Divine Mercy Sunday, 1 May, 2011, was because, in the words of Pope Benedict's homily at the Mass of Beatification, "this is what was pleasing to the Lord."

Perhaps the most moving moment of the day came at the very beginning of the Mass, immediately following Pope Benedict's pronouncement of the formula of beatification, when the tapestry depicting the smiling face of the new Blessed was unveiled on the facade of St. Peter's Basilica. The crowd erupted with joy at that moment, as if John Paul II was again entering the Square in the Popemobile for a Mass or a Wednesday audience. But this time the shouts of joy contained an even deeper and richer significance: the man who by the witness of his life tirelessly proclaimed Jesus Christ to the whole world was now acknowledged to be in the presence of Christ in heaven, radiant in his holiness among the countless throng of blesseds and saints he himself had named over the course of his longpontificate.

Throughout the weekend of the beatification celebrations, Rome once again looked like it was in the midst of one of John Paul's World Youth Day celebrations. Along the cobblestone streets surrounding the Vatican, thousands of young people camped out in every direction, packed like sardines in the hope of getting into St. Peter's Square, or at least close by, for the Mass of Beatification. Once more the old familiar cheers of "Giovanni Paolo!" followed by a series of claps resounded through the Square, with an added "Santo Subito!" to boot. As they had for his funeral, the youth of the world came to Rome to give back to their spiritual father, to thank him by their presence for the way he has irrevocably affected their lives by telling them that the Church believes in them and that theThird Millennium desperately needs their courageous, joyful and radical witness to the Gospel.

"It was as if John Paul was back," said one young seminarian in attendance, acknowledging the particular charism of hope and enthusiasm which the Holy Spirit is continuing to pour upon the Church through the witness of Karol Wojtyla. Pope Benedict himself acknowledged this charism of vibrant hopefulness in his homily at the Mass of Beatification, saying that Blessed John Paul "directed Christianity once again to the future" and "rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress."

John Paul "restored to Christianity its true face as a religion of hope," said Pope Benedict, and that contagious, overflowing hope was again made visible in St. Peter's Square and the streets of Rome during the celebration of the beatification of the one who was chosen by the Holy Spirit to lead the Church across the threshold of hope that is the dawn of the Third Millennium of Christianity. The cause of that hope is the fulfilment of every human longing in Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of Man -the enduring legacy of Blessed John Paul II is nothing else than Jesus Christ.

On a more personal note, the beatification of John Paul II has renewed my faith in and understanding of the communion of saints. I can say proudly that "I knew him when he was Pope!" I have attended World Youth Days with him, I have listened to his homilies, I have read his encyclicals, I entered the seminary at his urging...and now he has made it to the goal of eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. Blessed John Paul II remains my spiritual father, and he continues to guide and bless my life by his witness and intercession. Such confident hope was expressed by Pope Benedict at the conclusion of his homily that joyful morning: "Beloved Pope John Paul II ... continue, we implore you, to sustain from heaven the faith of God's people. You often blessed us in this Square from the ApostolicPalace: Bless us, Holy Father! Amen."