The Gadfly “To persuade and reproach” - Socrates, The Apology
Vol. XIII, Iss. III October 21, 2010
Searching for God’s Best The above is the title of an attractive, purple-colored pamphlet found in the JC among all the other pamphlets. It has been there for a while, and I have read it before, but I picked it up again recently and would like to elaborate on it. To begin with, I think the pamphlet is very well done and covers topics that need to be covered. I would like to merely respectfully take it forward a few more steps, in the way of a reflection. (These things happen when you’ve had a lot of theology classes … EVERYTHING becomes a theological reflection ...) To me, the pamphlet seems to be targeted at an overall audience
that is new to the idea of the Christian life, and therefore needs to step away from the chaos that can be found in the secular approach to dating. I feel that, sociologically speaking, the simplicity of this message is outdated in its approach. I understand that society is still very secular. However, the difference, for the most part, is that this is not as much of a shocking revelation anymore. FUS students are still actively involved in challenging the culture, but their acceptance of reality is calmer (with a readiness to go deeper)—at least, calmer than it was for me growing up, and what I saw in the older members of my youth
groups. When I opened up the pamphlet a few days ago, I immediately read under the topic of Women and Purity, “An unmarried woman needs lust in her life like a fish needs a bicycle.” I visualized a fish riding a bicycle and my momentary happiness was rudely interrupted several seconds later by the repulsion that I mistakenly picked up as a teenager: that a person should just let go and be free and lustful after they get married—they just have to wait until then. Yes, waiting is good. Yes, PLEASE wait; but, “after marriage?” “Lust?” This then brought to mind the response to a question we put to Dr. Asci in Continued on page 6
To Talent Or Not To Talent, That Is The Question We applaud aspiring actors, admire agile athletes, emulate enlightened educators, salute stalwart soldiers, and seek out superb singers, because in such people we recognize and respect their talents. We treasure talents as God-given gifts, but are popularity and profit—those by-products of talents—treasured more than talents themselves? Are we being hoodwinked into believing that popularity and profit perfect all talents? If yes, then we fawn over the famous, chase celebrities, revere the rich and seek out superlative stars hoping ourselves to get a
piece of the pie some day and rise to stardom. Or does lavishing in the limelight too much pillage talents, mutating them into our greatest temptations? It is reasonable to believe that temptations do often come from our talents. Take Judas Iscariot for instance, the treasurer among the apostles. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was keen to point out that Judas was the only Judean apostle among the other eleven Galilean apostles, probably since Judeans were commonly better administrators than Galileans. His shrewd economic un-
derstanding knew exactly how to raise money for charity; that was his talent. Unfortunately, greed spoiled his talent, as he stole small sums of money from the apostles and ultimately sold our Lord for the price of a slave. The power of pecuniary profit pillaged his talent. Captain Wage Labor has convinced our commodity-consuming culture in constant consumer training that our talents are for the sole purpose of bolstering buying power and milking monetary profits. Put simply, talents are only a Continued on page 4
Page 2
St. Clare, pray for us!
Staff: Tony Leccece (T.L.) Daniel Romeyn Davis (D.R.D.) Keith Michael Estrada (K.M.E.) Maria Cecilia Rocha (M.C.R.) Riza Norton (COR) Michael Andreola (M.A.) Olivia Dvorjak (O.D.)
Layout Editor: Kimberly Doudna (K.D.)
Editor in Chief: Gillian LaMuro (G.L.)
** Please note that the views held in the individual articles do not necessarily express the views of the whole staff. **
Interested in joining our staff? Email us at notestothegadfly@gmail.com
~Mission Statement~ The Gadfly is an attempt to “bite the sleeping horse” in the spirit of Socrates. It is a student publication whose purpose is to facilitate discussion concerning campus and cultural issues as they pertain to students of Franciscan University. It aims to be a forum for open, well-thought out, and honest discussion towards the end of knowing and loving truth in its most robust sense.
Advisor: Dr. John White Advisor Extraordinaire
From the Editor’s Desk My fellow Musketeers, I used to wonder why we received so many socialistic articles. I mean, we used to receive a lot of articles about dating too, but we all know why. On the other hand, socialism is just wrong. Rerum Novarum. The end! I mean, in Graves de Communi Re, Leo XIII writes: “We deemed it Our duty to warn Catholics, in unmistakable language, how great the error was which was lurking in the utterances of socialism, and how great the danger was that threatened not only their temporal possessions, but also their morality and religion.” Seems pretty clear to me. The Church should know something about socialism. It did try to live communally in its early days. This way of life was abandoned or at least modified and I think you can see why in that immortal quote from St. Paul in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” The early American settlement of Jamestown also tried to live communally and almost all died from starvation. John Smith (of Poca-
hontas fame; how else would I know this?) had to whip them into shape by using, what else, that line from Thessalonians. Bear in mind that this “communal living” did not work in very small communities. Remember with me, wasn’t there this society called the Knights of Columbus that was created to keep Catholics out of the unions because they were considered a hotbed for socialists? “But it’s working in Europe,” everyone says. No it’s not. I live there. I was born in a British hospital and my parents live in Germany. People die of starvation in the NHS. One twenty-year-old mentally handicapped man died of starvation in a HOSPITAL! By the way, these people do have insurance in Europe. In England, it’s called BUPA. And their taxes: kind of horrendous. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never have so many been so taxed for so little. But of all of a sudden, here at our conservative little university, socialism is bandied about like it’s a good idea and a viable political option for us Catholics. I don’t know why.
Dear Editor, Having read Mr. Pyles' article in its entirety, I am compelled to say that though I have "accepted" the fact that Mr. Pyles' opinion may differ from my own and even as I consider myself a "tolerant" person: I am not persuaded that a homosexual union and a heterosexual marriage may both share the word "marriage" while each assume a
different meaning. The word "marriage" may only be used when speaking of that "which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of whole life" (CCC 1601). I'll even leave God out of this one, and only focus on the true meaning of the word, so that your secularized ears will not be offended. If you had done your research,
Enjoy!
Continued on page 3
St. Martha, pray for us! Continued from page 2
Mr. Pyles, and investigated into the roots of the English word "marriage", you would have discovered that it is traced back to several Latin words which all have the same prefix, marī. Among them, the adjective marītus (Harper's Latin Dictionary, 1880) is translated (and was used during that time) in all of the following ways: (1) of or belonging to marriage; (2) wedded, tied up; and (3) impregnated, fertilized. Therefore, it is most clear that the Latin word marītus contains the suggestion of the miracle of con-
Page 3
ception, a phenomenon that can only occur between a man and a woman. -Andrew Ward
Dear Mr. Ward, Touché! The Editor p.s. I am a little self-conscious about my secularized ears…
With a Mother’s Love In a Confirmation Sermon addressing confirmandi on April 24, 2006, Bishop Tissier De Mallerais of the Society of St. Pius X, a Traditionalist schismatic group, said the following: "Pope Benedict XVI wrote his first Encyclical on the LOVE of GOD. But it did not give any definition of this love of God. We don't know what it is in his Encyclical. Because he forgot completely to say that the object of love is good. Is necessarily a GOOD thing. True love has as its object, GOOD, the GOOD. What we love is the GOOD. And if we love a wrong GOOD, it is not true love. And Pope Benedict XVI says that love is selfdenial, the gift of self to the others. That is NOT false, but that is not the definition of true love. Because you can very easily give yourself to a false ideal. Let us look, for example, at the Communists...who have a FALSE ideal, and a false love. Or let us see, also, those who spread all around the world simply the ideal of Democracy. That has NOTHING to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that is also a totally wrong ideal. Because only is good and good things what leads us to
Don’t be Squished.
God. And Democracy has nothing to do with God. There is no line written in the Gospel about Democracy. So let us love only the good things that lead us to God. And let us especially love above all God Himself. Charity is a love of God. And charity is a love of preference. We make a choice. We prefer God than any creature on earth. For example, those young people who dedicate themselves to priesthood or religious life. When they have to leave their family, they offer a great sacrifice, a great self-denial, they give themselves wholly to God, but as a love of preference, with a special object, God Himself - loved above all creatures. That is the true charity. Let us retain this definition of true charity - it is a love of preference of God." I thought this related a bit to the article written last week by Keith because it involves the description of what precisely the definition of love truly is, that love which Keith rightly exhorts all of us to cultivate towards all of our brothers and sisters, regardless of their race, creed,
Have your say.
notestothegadfly@gmail.com
Professor Quotes of the Week:
If you invite a vampire into your house, it’s almost like they’re allowed to bite you.
~Professor Fitzgibbons
Continued on page 7
notestothegadfly@gmail.com
Page 4 Continued from page 1
means to a greater end – money. Captain Wage Labor has Am eri caniz ed Prot agoras’ philosophy into believing money is the measure of all things. Popularity is just a profit maximizer. We can order Captain Wage Labor to be “at ease,” but he will not stop shouting orders until all our talents have turned into golden cash cows. Under his regimen our personal values are useless until they have monetary value, the measure of all things. So as not to be misunderstood, entrepreneurs and corporate executives are not evil despots. Their talents lie not solely in making monetary profits, but in understanding the cause and effect of economic principles. This economic understanding is true talent and a much needed one in today’s recession. Still, the monetary profit made from any talent is only a by-product. Thus, when entrepreneurs, corporate executives – and everyone for that matter – declare the summum bonum of their profession to be multi-millionaires, and believe the end of being wealthy justifies any means of becoming wealthy, we can conclude that greed corrupts the profession, if not destroys it. If the by-products of talents, i.e. profit and popular-
St. Etheldreda, pray for us!
ity, are confused as being the ultimate end, then our talents have transformed themselves into a tenacious avarice tempting us and trapping us into a single life narrative – a life spent on creature comforts and mundane passion. What is worse than tempting talents succumbing to avarice is a growing trend of trepid talents. When Captain Wage Labor shouts his orders and demands profit from our talents, we may buckle into bankruptcy under the pressure that we failed to transform our talents into profit maximizers. Thus, we raise our flags of surrender and stand before Captain Wage Labor in humiliation and trepidation. If we take his regimen too seriously, we are ashamed of our talents if they do not receive a salient salary, and suppress our anger while believing that forcing our innate talents into profit is a burden. Oddly enough, the rhetoric of Captain Wage Labor has convinced us to set aside our innate talents, letting them slumber in our shadow, and has replaced them with more fiscally money-wise talents. We stand in trepidation before this Captain and before our real innate talents. We are afraid of professing our innate talents, fearing they are not conducive to a commodity-consuming culture. To innately talent or not to innately tal-
ent – that is the question of every college student. There is enormous pressure to conform to our commodity-consuming culture in constant consumer training, something Habermas articulated very well. Many have resigned their lives to such conformity and have set aside their innate talents, adopting trendy talents teaching them how to save a dollar every day. Caught up in constant consumerism, we have forgotten how to live the American dream. The American dream ought to be more than getting a job, buying a house, and being a family of consumers. Life is more than a salient salary sustaining creature comforts. We can hardly even enjoy the comforts that we have today since we are always caught up in buying newer and better comforts. The American dream ought to be a nation set forth in confidence aspiring to profess and practice their innate talents, unafraid of what their talent is worth wagewise. The real treasure of life is not found in golden nuggets but rather in cultivating, treasuring, and professing our innate talents. ~Ryan Stoffer
The Classics?! “Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” Alixis de Toqueville
St. John, pray for us!
Page 5
Passionately Catholic? Or Passionately Latin? “I might not be Roman Catholic!” I blurted, feeling a mixture of sheepishness and excitement. “What!?” came the reply. “My dad was baptized Byzantine, and if he didn’t change Rites formally, canonically I’m Byzantine Rite, too!” “Oh, well that’s… interesting…” My face fell as I realized what would be an exciting discovery for me would separate me from the other Catholics here on campus. You see, our campus which is “Passionately Catholic,” ought to specify that we are “Passionately Roman Catholic.” Wait, you may be thinking, isn’t that the same thing? For those of you who aren’t Theology majors, the Catholic Church is actually a communion of 7 Rites, which are further subdivided into 22 different churches. Why don't we specify? Because out of ignorance, we make the assumption that every Catholic we meet is Roman Rite. The first semester I was here I was pleased to see that they held a Byzantine Liturgy on campus at Christ the King (although the lack of iconostasis makes the experience a bit different.) My father was baptized, confirmed and raised in the Greek Catholic Rite, so I wanted to go to the Liturgy and discover this part of Catholicism that was previously altogether unknown to me. I highly enjoyed the Liturgyit seemed so mystical, so reverent, and I truly felt in touch with the early eastern Christians. The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom has been around since the 5th Century- older even than the beautiful Tridentine Mass. However, I was
dismayed that, come spring semester, they did not hold another Byzantine Liturgy on campus. So far this year I haven’t seen it on the menu, though I’m quite hoping that will change. I went again to Byzantine Liturgy during family weekend, attending an all-English Liturgy at St. John the Baptist’s Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church in Pittsburgh. Afterward, I was discussing my love of Eastern Catholic spirituality with the Deacon, and he asked if we did anything here on campus. “We’re supposed to have Divine Liturgy at least once a semester, and sometimes we have Akathist Hymn, but other than that, nothing.” After his homily on the New Evangelization and JPII, I felt embarrassed that we as a campus don’t do more to explore all aspects of Catholicism. The U.S. Biships forced Latinization in the early 20th Century. Many Eastern European immigrants, as a result, joined the Orthodox Christian churchesthey were able to keep their traditions and liturgy, but lost union with Rome. While the Roman Catholic Rite is the largest, that doesn’t mean we can snub our noses because other Catholic Churches have married priests or give infants Holy Communion. As a result, the Second Vatican Council declared that Eastern Catholic Churches to be equal in dignity to the Roman Catholic Church. But no one seems to remember this! Even Wikipedia, when looking up “Catholic Church” states that it is “also known as the Roman Catholic
Church.” I can’t tell you how many students I’ve talked to after attending Divine Liturgy asked me, “Wait… does that count for your Sunday obligation?” or “Wait, Catholic, not Orthodox? What’s the difference?” "A conversion is … required of the Latin Church," John Paul II wrote in Orientale Lumen, "that she may respect and fully appreciate the dignity of Eastern Christians." I really want to see more on-campus activity that encourages breathing out of both lungs, understanding that “Catholic” is not limited to Mass-goers, but also those who attend Divine Liturgy as well. Why can’t there be talks explaining the beautiful tradition of writing icons? Why don’t we have a married priest come speak to us about what it’s like to be both married, and a priest? What is the “dormition of Mary?” Each Rite has its own unique, beautiful way of celebrating the Incarnation and Passion. You know, during the Household Life Mass, Father Gregory made some great points about appreciating both the Tridentine Mass and the charismatic Novus Ordo, but why not go beyond that? JPII stressed the importance of “breathing with both lungs”- the Eastern Catholic Churches have glorious traditions that contribute to what is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
~Emily Rolla
Page 6
St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!
Continued from page 1
Austria about the book “I kissed dating goodbye.” His response was that the book seemed to imply that impurity was just a thing to hold out for. I really don’t think this was the intention of the author, but without a proper understanding of the theology of the body, this does get unintentionally communicated. While still wanting to go back to the image of the fish on the bicycle that I had only a few moments before, I next think of Pope John Paul II making the shocking statement during a Wednesday audience that even the husband who looks at his wife with lust is in sin. To my understanding, this was an angle on humanity that had not been taken before in widely known theology. All of these things are comforts to me that the pamphlet leaves out. Maybe I’m just jaded or something (not really, relatively speaking), but I really need to be told and reminded that my husband will be someone who I am going to enjoy being with, who will think of me outside of the sexual sphere, who will be a good friend to me, who will pray over me and with me, etc. I don’t want to feel like I need to come to terms with the world’s limited view of sexuality, merely translated into a marriage setting. A person’s entire view on sex, but more importantly, the other person in his personhood is important. The idea of being a confused person in a marriage that is happy because it is morally correct is enough to make me want to join the convent—where I, personally, would be very unhappy. I want to find a
friend that respects me as a person for who I am as a person, in the man that I marry. It is the right time for the Church to continue to work on developing the ideas of humanity and the human person. So, I opened up the pamphlet all the way, and found inside what looked like a letter addressed to a teen girl (I didn’t look very closely). My eyes fell on the lines, “Don’t be anxious. Don’t worry. Don’t look around at the things others have gotten or that I’ve given them. Don’t look at the things you think you want.” I stopped reading. I just recently read in my homework that one of the products of the Enlightenment is that no one is free to trust themselves, and how sad this is. I couldn’t agree more. If a person cannot trust himself, he will eventually die. I grew up in the middle of a desert next to a Paiute Indian reservation. These people trust themselves. What they still have is something that has been shattered for a lot of the world’s population. It is intrinsic for a young adult to grow to know who they are in their identity. This includes knowing how they personally feel about those who make up their social circles. It is unhealthy to “just focus on God.” It is also impossible. A person needs to grow and form personal opinions (and relationships) as they grow. For a minor example,
how else are they going to have peace about rejecting a guy that their roommate (because she is lonely herself) is trying to force them to date and who the roommate thinks is a wonderful choice? A person needs to know herself to be able to handle the … uh … roommate’s formed opinion. The bad end of this is that if a person doesn’t take the time to form themselves in relation to the world around them, they may end up being manipulated, and therefore will have to learn the hard way how to form their identity, if they even have the guidance to make the choice to do so. The roommate who thinks said guy is amazing isn’t going to defend you against him when he starts crossing your boundaries and you just don’t know what is going on. You have homework to do. You don’t have to deal with this. The bottom line would be that God does not look at us and think about how stupid our desires are. All of our desires point to what is truly good for us – they just may be misguided. The trick is then to move ahead slowly and carefully and learn the correct path for following God. This does not include putting the other fifty percent of the population on hold and pretending that you are neuter. I really don’t think that works anyway. I know this isn’t a complete reflection on the pamphlet, but my formed opinion is that I need to go … socialize and eat my lunch, and that this is a nice length for an article. Until next time. ~Clara Bauer
Pop Culture Seminar Quote: Before he was evil and my enemy. Now, he is evil and my friend. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965)
St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us! Continued from page 3
or sexual orientation. Indeed Keith presents us with a challenge. But Bishop De Mallerais's severe criticism of Pope Benedict XVI's supposed fogginess regarding what precisely makes something authentic love is particularly revelatory in this regard. Were this critique actually true, then nominalism, which is so widespread in our culture ever since both the Protestant and Kantian revolts, would continue to reign not only as it already tragically does in the world, but also in the Church! What the Bishop is claiming is that love, to be truly love, has to be explicitly love of God. This would mean that a sacrifice which is made for anything other than explicitly to the Holy Trinity as understood by the Catholic Church, would not even be truly considered a sacrifice nor love. Pope Benedict XVI, on the other hand, argues rightly that love is not necessarily love of the good, but could be sincerely pointed towards what is not intrinsically good. As with the examples used by the Bishop, a Communist according to the authentic Catholic theology of love expounded by the Holy Father in his Encyclical, could actually participate unconsciously and unknowingly in the love which ultimately comes only from God and through the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The fact that ultimately we know as Catholics that all love and sacrifice derives exclusively from the Cross of Jesus Christ and the maternal mediation of our Holy Mother Mary, does not in any way lead to the dangerous conclusion proposed by the Traditionalist Bishop that somehow only nominal Catholics can participate in this One True Sacrifice of love. Were this the case, then the Reformational, nominalist theology, as contained in the entirely nominalistic theory of "sola fide", would be substituted in the place of the authentic Christian theology defined by the Church as justification by both faith and works. What the Bishop is essentially saying equates
Page 7
to Luther's theory that only those who believe in Christ can be saved, regardless of what happens in their souls and their particular degree of holiness. Ontologically and metaphysically, nothing whatsoever changes in the soul of a justified Christian as opposed to the ungodly pagan: the sole difference is that God "covers up" the sins of the unrighteous by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone through grace alone. Along the same lines, the Bishop is saying that regardless of how much a pagan or Communist or any other non-Catholic has any obvious love and sacrifice, the only thing that matters is that they believe in the Catholic Faith. In other words, faith alone saves - only in this case, as opposed to Luther, it is the Catholic Faith alone that saves. The authentically Catholic belief has always been that the grace of Jesus Christ, and therefore faith in Him, is really efficacious and makes an ontological, metaphysical change occur in the soul of all in whom Christ lives and takes His residence. Consequently, if we see the effects which we know come from Jesus Christ in the soul of a person who is not nominally Catholic, we must believe logically that the person is one in whom the grace of Christ is indeed effective, albeit not consciously known or formally recognized, and even in some cases explicitly rejected. Wherever we find love and sacrifice, be they amongst Communists, atheists, anarchists, and any other nonCatholic "pagans", let us rejoice in the fact that, as our beloved Holy Father so rightly teaches us, these can only come to be by Jesus Christ working anonymously yet laboriously amongst us! We must fervently pray that God give us the grace to never be disastrously blind to the true effects of His grace alone working ever so anonymously, quietly, and invisibly amongst us. Our Mother Mary, the icon of hiddenness and all holiness, alone can show us in her own immaculate humil-
ity and selflessness the way to recognizing her and her Son working together amidst so many who outwardly reject their love, grace, and especially amongst non-Catholic Christians, Her own unique coredemptive, mediatorial role granted her by Jesus. Souls who know her hiddeness and desire to imitate it could never fall into the trap of believing that she only works amidst those who explicitly recognize both her and her Son, as the Bishop would erroneously have us believe. Let us thank Jesus and Mary that the Vicar of Christ, who truly is Christ on earth in the beautiful phrase of St. Catherine of Siena, has fought in favor of love, true love, Catholic love, real love, genuine love, in his first Encyclical. As Keith so accurately pointed out to us in his last article, everyone knows we sure do need love in this cynical age. And might I add that not only do we need love, but as we learned so unfortunately from the above quote, we perhaps even more importantly need a reminder of what precisely love is. Ideas have consequences, and the idea about love of Pope Benedict XVI, the current Successor of St. Peter, being so beautiful and truly charitable as it is, can only have equally and even more abundant beautiful and truly charitable consequences! May Mary, Mediatrix of all graces, obtain for all of us the true wisdom to recognize Her hidden presence wherever we see glimpses of it, without prejudice and without judgmentalism, as Keith remarkably exhorts us. Only when we are so transformed by her hiddenness will we be able to truly be beacons of hope and sincere love that will bring light to those who are in the darkness of sin. ~Edward Abdallah
j|Çx? j|à tÇw jtzzxÜç ‘Bubble’ Spirituality The overused cliché of the ‘bubble’ has been spoken of entirely too often here at Franciscan. Instead of acting as a reminder of the bubble, it has instead enforced the idea of the ‘bubble’ among the students on campus. We joke about the tendencies of being at Franciscan and the ‘Frannies’ once in a while. The Gadfly itself has railed against various stereotypes like these, followed by a general public cry of protest for making blunt generalizations and maybe unfair comparisons. In reality, we all have our own hypocrisies that we don’t care to admit or do not even realize completely. I myself conform to some Franciscan norms which, for some reason, most find incredibly appalling. Festivals of Praise (FOPs), praying in the port, and doing the Marian consecration are all things that I do or have done, and these fall into the ‘Frannie’ conformity. Many of us do not want to fall into that ‘Frannie’ label, but it seems hard to avoid if you go here. In another breath, is it really all that bad? Sure we find abuses; people just go to FOPs for the social or emotional aspects, the port is a ‘fad’ of which false senses of spirituality can grow from, and the consecration chain becomes a fashion statement. I may only be remarking on the spiritual crutches of Franciscan, but it is a Catholic university and spirituality is what tends to separate us from the other universities. Now, I know we are all human, so we can always blame the flaw of humanity. I must echo the words of Thomas Merton who said, “Thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others.” I can say I fall into the same hypocrisies and faults. Despite that, I have refused to consider or continue to call Franciscan University a ‘bubble’ any longer. We are called to flourish here, to come out and conquer previous hidings and struggles. This does not mean we go back into the world hiding. Most students wear their classic Catholic or Christian clothes around campus, and I ask, “Would we be equally as passionate back home?” This may be my own judgment or assumption, but while talking with some, I find that at Franciscan it is only appropriate to wear Christian labeled clothes, safely within the ‘bubble’. Speaking for myself, I only wear Christian clothing even back home where the culture isn’t as forgiving. People express their beliefs through how they dress and I per-
sonally don’t see a need to be different when it comes to religion. There should be a class on reintegration, or one on how to properly witness, offered once you emerge from the ‘bubble.’ I have seen numerous students spout St. Thomas Aquinas’ theories or other concepts of theology like it is common knowledge. To the world, Aquinas is a fat priest or a dumb ox, who was slightly intellectual. The tendency to throw around dogmas and different theological issues carelessly makes the secular society tune out such conversation. I am not saying we should not talk about it at all, but care must be taken in how delicately we deal with those we evangelize. We have created in the ‘bubble’ a group of self-righteous evangelists who are about as subtle as Martin Luther was, nailing his criticism of the Catholic Church upon the door of All Saints’ Church. This forcing of Church doctrine and dogma upon others is a cry of immaturity, for it shows that they cannot take the time to hear another person’s view and then respond appropriately. How could anyone properly evangelize, if one cannot simply be with a person and love that individual, before tearing that person’s perspective apart? I have to bring up another comment from Thomas Merton that captures the sense of what I am bringing up. He said, “I am afraid the common combination of organizational jollity, moral legalism and nuclear crusading will not pass muster as a serious religion. It certainly has little to do with ‘spiritual life.’” This selfrighteousness is the product of the false ‘spirituality’ that has been created on campus. The ‘bubble’ has to be gotten rid of and ‘popping’ it will not merely stop the mentality that has entrenched our students. We have to recognize what a true Frannie is and embrace it. Rather than becoming the ‘rebel’ or ‘the pot stirrer’, I think it is sufficient to live out the Catholic faith. I think it is sufficient to go to FOPs, pray at the port, and complete the Marian consecration. I think it is sufficient to have authenticity in our spiritual lives here on campus. We need a new passion to rekindle the fire on our campus and that won’t happen if students are so hung up on stereotypes. There has to be a new blazing love, and a return of authentic spirituality to our campus. ~Alexander Pyles