Position Papers - April 2017

A review of Catholic affairs

Ireland’s historical amnesia Tim O’Sullivan

A post-modern heresy?

Mark McNamee

Number 508 · April 2017 €3 · £2.50 · $4

Film review: Arrival Bishop Robert Barron

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Number 508 · April 2017

Editorial

by Rev. Gavan Jennings

In Passing: Religious freedom – an eternal conflict?

by Michael Kirke

Ireland’s historical amnesia

by Tim O’Sullivan

Death of a father of eighteen children

by Andrew Larkin

A post-modern heresy?

by Mark McNamee

Servant of God 2.0

by Dr Chiara Bertoglio

Seeing beyond Sickness

by Fr Peter John Cameron O.P

Book review: Beyond Radical Secularism

by Fr John McCloskey

Film review: Arrival and the unique manner of divine speech

by Bishop Robert Barron Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

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Rev. Gavan Jennings Michael Kirke, Pat Hanratty, Brenda McGann Liam Ó hAlmhain Dick Kearns Eblana Solutions

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Editorial

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ecently a young friend of mine visited the Brompton Oratory in London. As he was quietly praying there he noticed a family of four arrive. The four knelt down, the two young children in the centre flanked by their mother and father. He then noticed that the couple were holding hands behind the children as they all prayed together. He commented to me that the simple scene was so moving that tears came to his eyes. He could see the beauty of the Christian family epitomised in this small praying group.

What he recounted to me brought to my mind Pope Benedict’s prayer during the 2006 Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum in Rome: Lord Jesus, the family is one of God`s dreams entrusted to humanity; the family is a spark from Heaven shared with all mankind: the family is the cradle where we were born and are constantly reborn in love.

My friend’s “epiphany” in the Brompton Oratory is something with which we all could do: a rediscovery of the transcendent beauty of the Christian family; to see the family – for all its struggles and failings – as “one of God’s dreams”. (In this month’s issue of Position Papers we have a piece about the sad death on the 6th of March of Jose Maria Chema Postigo, the father of a particularly remarkable family which is perhaps the largest in Spain.)

It is in the family that each person discovers the human vocation to love; without the family we are condemned to solitude. The human family is a reflection of the divine family which is the Trinity. This is something pointed out by St John Paul II when he taught: “God in His deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family, since He has in Himself Fatherhood, Sonship, and the essence of the family, which is love.” It is in the family where we learn to overcome our petty selfishness, to overcome the little caveman which lurks inside us all.

In the words of Pope Francis:

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The family is the primary setting for socialization, since it is where we first learn to relate to others, to listen and share, to be patient and show respect, to help one another and live as one. The task of education is to make us sense that the world and society are also our home; it trains us how to live together in this greater home. In the family, we learn closeness, care and respect for others. We break out of our fatal self-absorption and come to realize that we are living with and alongside others who are worthy of our concern, our kindness and our affection (Amoris Laetitia, 276)

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The world must either choose the way of the family or of solitude.

At the same time, the family is the neuralgic point in the struggle between good and evil in this world. All goodness is oriented towards the kind of communion we find in the family, whereas all evil is the option for isolation and solitude. St John Paul II was a tireless promoter and defender of the family because of his awareness that salvation passes through the family: The history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family. In these pages I have tried to show how the family is placed at the centre of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love. To the family is entrusted the task of striving, first and foremost, to unleash the forces of good, the source of which is found in Christ the Redeemer of man (Pope St John Paul II, Letter to Families, 23.4, 1994).

I had a small but unforgettable encounter as a seminarian with St John Paul II’s zeal for the family. I was on the translation team for the Synod for Lebanon in 1995 and during the proceedings the team had the good fortune to be presented one by one to the Pope. As there had been a campaign to introduce divorce into Ireland at that time I thought I would mention to him that back home in Ireland Opus Dei was working hard to defend the family. When my turn came and I said my piece I saw immediately that my words had struck a chord with the Holy Father: “Very important work, very important work!” he repeated several times energetically in his deep baritone Polish accent.

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As we approach the World Meeting of Families which takes place here in Ireland in August of next year 2018, the Church in Ireland has a golden opportunity to showcase the jewel in her crown: the Christian family. What argument could be more convincing for traditional (heterosexual, fruitful and faithful) marriage than that Brompton Oratory “epiphany�: a father and mother hand in hand and at the same time embracing their children, on their knees before Christ in the tabernacle.

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In Passing: Religious freedom – an eternal conflict?

by Michael Kirke

T

he long and winding road that leads to the double doors of religious tolerance and the tolerance of religious freedom will, it seems, never disappear.

The history of mankind shows us this, as does the daily news of our own time.

the evidence she puts before us to support her overall contention: the fight for religious liberty is never going to end. We’d better get used to it.

But it is not just an American story. It is a story which unfolds daily in almost every country in the world in one way or another – sometimes in the form of mild hostility, sometimes leading to martyrdom and unthinkable cruelty. Slade’s focus is on America and on the more institutional forms of intolerance and denial of freedom of conscience. Those of us in other jurisdictions within the democratic tradition can easily extrapolate from her

Stephanie Slade, managing editor at Reason magazine and a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow, has written a long, – very long – powerful and sobering essay in the Jesuitedited America Magazine, reflecting on the battles for religious freedom in the United States. No summary can do justice to the historical analysis which she offers us and all we can do here is highlight some of

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analysis and see the parallels in our own public squares.

side”. The United States may now have experienced one such moment. Slade recounts a conversation on CNN.

Populism is the bête noir on everyone’s political horizon just now. New Criterion, the heavyweight journal of ideas, has just published the seventh in a series of essays on the phenomenon and how it may be threatening to tear apart the trusted and tried political institutions through which we try to organise a civilised society.

Populist movements across the democratic world no longer seem to trust those institutions.

“I feel the country was founded on Christian principles,” Sandra Long, an 80-year-old resident of Mahanoy City, Pa., and a lifelong Democrat, told CNN before the election. “And now, if our ministers don’t marry a gay couple or refuse to marry a gay couple, they can be arrested and taken to jail.”

Long was mistaken. Despite the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage two years ago, ministers are not required to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies. But the perception that they might soon be—and that the government is continually encroaching on the ability of houses of worship and even individual Americans to live out their beliefs—seems to be widespread. Moreover, it likely played a role in the decision of many voters, such as Ms. Long, to support nowPresident Trump last November.

But who is populist and who is not? One of the suggestions implicit in the historical picture presented to us by Slade is that populism, from both left and right, has being playing fast and loose with our politics and laws for a long time. Our fundamental freedoms, and especially our freedom of conscience and religion, have been suffering at the hands of populism for centuries.

Sometimes it changes sides and it cries stop, in defence of a freedom denied to “the other

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Megan McArdle, a columnist at Bloomberg View, wrote in December, “When you think that you may shortly see your church’s schools and your religious hospitals closed, and your job or business threatened in the private sphere by the economic equivalent of ‘convert or die,’ you will side with whoever does not seem to set its sights on your conservative beliefs. If that side is led by an intemperate man who more than occasionally says awful things … well, at least he doesn’t want to destroy you.”

about sex and marriage? Or punish churches for excluding gay men and women from ministerial positions? Or, as Sandra Long assumed was already the case, compel houses of worship to host and solemnize same-sex weddings?”

The political left is of course quick to assure believers that their rights are safe. After all, they say, the First Amendment protects the freedom to believe whatever you want, and any attempt to constrain that freedom would surely be invalidated by the courts.”

Really?

The Catholic writer Mary Eberstadt, in her recent book It’s Dangerous to Believe, called this “the new intolerance” and said that what many believers “feel to the marrow these days is fear.”

McArdle, doesn’t buy the response from the left which, she says, “has (mostly) been that this is so much whining, clinging to a victimhood belied by Christians’ social power and majority status. No one, they have been assured, wants to touch their freedom to worship, but when they enter the commercial realm, they have to abide by anti-discrimination laws, whatever their private beliefs.”

“There is no doubt,” Slade says, “the concern is widespread. If the government can force family-run businesses to provide services for gay weddings and Catholic sisters to facilitate access to birth control, people are asking ‘what might be next?’

Could laws be on the way that criminalize traditional beliefs

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Mozilla’s founder, Brendan Eich, donated to an anti-gay-marriage campaign and was kicked out of his own company.

Ninety years before the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor, another group of Catholic sisters appeared before the highest court in the land.

Slade is certainly unconvinced by this assurance. She quotes Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia who is an expert on issues of religious freedom.

While Laycock thinks there is too much alarm about the issue he did acknowledge that the line is moving all the time. Even those pushing the line admit this openly. During arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, Justice Samuel Alito asked the Obama administration’s lawyer whether a college could have its taxexempt status revoked because it upholds traditional marriage.

“It’s certainly going to be an issue,” the solicitor general replied. “I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is going to be an issue.”

This time it was the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. An Oregon law passed by voters, at the behest of the antiCatholic Scottish Rite Masons, required all children to attend public schools. “The effect of this law will be, if upheld by the courts, to close every private school in the State,” The New York Times reported. “That was its purpose, openly avowed in public discussions preceding the election.”

The measure had the enthusiastic support not just of the state’s majority-Protestant electorate but also of the Ku Klux Klan, newly arrived in the Pacific Northwest. “We are against the Catholic machine which controls our nation,” explained “Kleagle Carter,” according to a book about the Oregon chapter of the Klan. It is a refrain being heard repeatedly in Ireland just now. “Dear

But Slade shows us that the war is not a new one.

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Catholic Church, get out of our wombs,” one histrionic headline screamed at Catholics last week.

But that’s another story.

As bad as anti-Catholic sentiment has been at points in America’s past, however, it is nothing compared to the vitriol directed at smaller religious groups over the years. Just consider what the Mormons have had to suffer.

The Oregon story had a happy ending: The Supreme Court justices unanimously struck down the statute.

Justices Alito, Thomas and John Roberts noted in their dissenting opinion on one court challenge, ominously wrote, “those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern”. Slade says that it is hard to escape the conclusion that strong forces hostile to traditional belief are on the march.

That does not reassure Slade because other violations of religious liberty did not have such a happy ending. More than thirty states have on their books to this day some form of legal prohibition on public dollars going to religious institutions.

They are known as Blaine amendments, after the House Speaker James G. Blaine.

If a form of populism is not driving much of what Slade describes, what is? The glib phrases being bandied around about conservatives being on “the wrong side of history” betray a populism as sinister as anything on the right. It is not rational argument. Slade asks us to look at the history of the Supreme Court to see how much more than measured legal judgement is at play here.

As with the Oregon private school ban, all accounts suggest that the Blaine amendments were motivated by deep animus toward Catholics. “They were passed in a series of outbursts of anti-Catholicism, there’s no doubt about the history,” Professor Laycock says. Statelevel “baby Blaines,” as some now call them, remain in force.

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If a study of Supreme Court history makes one thing clear, it is that there is no fixed line differentiating the kinds of laws that are acceptable under the First Amendment from the kinds that go too far. Where lawmakers and the courts come down on contested questions is often influenced by what a majority of Americans seem to favour.

None of the experts I talked to thought the Supreme Court literally keeps an eye on poll numbers as it hands down decisions. But they all agreed that as fallible humans, even the most upstanding jurists will be affected by the cultural zeitgeist.

Gay marriage is among the most vivid illustrations of that.

For decades, public support for legal recognition of same-sex unions was a minority position.

Between May 2011 and May 2012, according to Gallup, the numbers flipped. On May 9, 2012, President Obama suddenly announced that his views had “evolved” and he was now in favour of same-sex marriage. Thirteen months

later, the Supreme Court ruled the federal Defence of Marriage Act unconstitutional. Two years after that, it struck down all state-wide bans on same-sex unions.

Within hours of the Obergefell decision, people began suggesting the precedent should be extended even further.

Fredrik DeBoer wrote an article for Politico titled “It’s Time to Legalize Polygamy.” Similarly, in 2013, Jillian Keenan had argued at Slate that “Legalized polygamy … would actually help protect, empower, and strengthen women, children, and families.” If marrying whomever you want is a fundamental right, they wondered, shouldn’t the same be true of taking multiple spouses?

So what does Slade suggest we conclude from all this history?

She wants us to accept that institutional protections are only as strong as the underlying culture. If people are willing to see a minority group’s rights disregarded, neither the courts nor the Constitution is an

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airtight safeguard against abuse.

But if the majority is unwilling to see liberties infringed, those in positions of authority are likely to take notice. Like it or not, popular culture has been in the driving seat for decades and conservative thinking has been in the back seat.

it matters who shows up to the debate.”

Slade reminds us that Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.

“It might have been truer if he had said it can be bent, assuming enough people are willing to do the hard work of persuasion. In other words, if what counts as ‘religious freedom’ is eternally in dispute,

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Kirke is a freelance writer, a regular contributor to Position Papers, and a widely read blogger at Garvan Hill (www.garvan.wordpress.com). His views can be responded to at mjgkirke@gmail.com.

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Ireland’s historical amnesia

by Tim O’Sullivan

ho controls the past controls the future” George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four, his celebrated novel about totalitarianism, and “who controls the present controls the past.”

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Ireland post-independence was a place of book-burners and “pseudo-republican papist zealots” and that “the policies of Irish governments for decades were driven by the semi-hysteria of Catholic religiosity.”

In Ireland, public discussion about our Catholic past is now controlled by media and public figures who are largely hostile to that past and extremely selective in how they present it. The Church, one commentator recently observed, “is the poisoned tree, begetter of a hapless society rendered toxic by the fanatical, near-fascistic (sic) control of the clerics.” Another argued – and one could multiply such examples – that Catholic

The demonization of Ireland’s recent Catholic past is aimed more and more explicitly at changing the present. A TD thus asserted on RTÉ radio that the Tuam controversy was a “gamechanger” and that response to it would be of great assistance to those seeking to repeal the Eighth Amendment, which provides Constitutional protection to the unborn.

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The Tuam mother and baby scandal has caused great upset in Ireland and has attracted headlines around the world. The high rates of infant mortality in Tuam, coupled with the fact that babies and young children were buried in the grounds of the home, which closed in the 1960s, have led to lurid headlines about mass graves, evil nuns and repressive Catholic attitudes.

Church leaders have rightly called for a full investigation of all the facts relating to Tuam.

Thus, the Archbishop of Tuam has called for an inquiry into all aspects of life during the time when mothers and their children were placed in institutional care.

Media coverage has nevertheless caused considerable concern.

Brendan O’Neill, the editor of spiked, highlighted “an impatience with fact gathering” in relation to Tuam and “a preference for moral zealotry over reason”. Various writers have placed the Tuam home in historical context by highlighting the harsh social attitudes at the time to pregnancy outside marriage, as well as the poverty

of the period, the poor housing, the high rates of infant mortality and infectious disease and the limited funding for social services.

It is often argued today that the independent Irish State “handed over” responsibility for social services to the Church. The reality was considerably more complex than that. Most Church-run services pre-dated Irish independence and in many cases were established at a time when State provision was extremely patchy. Thus, the absolutely essential Catholic contribution to healthcare and education in Ireland pre-dated Irish independence and can be traced back to Catholic emancipation in 1829. Hospitals such as the Mater and St Vincent’s in Dublin were established in the midnineteenth century when Catholic religious were finally free to take such initiatives after the Penal Laws ended and to make their immense contribution to the Irish population of that time. In the late nineteenth century, decades before Irish independence,

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religious providers such as the Daughters of Charity and the Brothers of Charity pioneered intellectual disability services in Ireland at a time when statutory intervention was minimal.

hospice care or care of the disabled or elderly.

The first Christian Brothers school actually pre-dated Catholic Emancipation but such schools, and those run by other congregations or dioceses, developed rapidly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There is huge criticism today of the historical role of the religious in Irish life while their self-sacrificing and dynamic contribution is ignored.

Clearly, grave scandals and major problems in governance have been set out in various reports, notably those relating to institutional child care.

Nevertheless, if the religious orders were bankrupted or banished from Irish life, our society, and more particularly those in need, would no longer benefit from their important contribution. It is quite unlikely, to put it mildly, that strident media commentators would be filling the resultant gap in

Catholic Ireland postindependence is almost universally presented today as a priest-ridden cultural backwater.

It is worth noting, however, that alternative views do exist in this discussion. For example, in his well-researched An Age Of Innocence. Irish Culture 1930-1960 (Gill and Macmillan, 1998), Brian Fallon sets out the lively cultural life of those decades in fields such as poetry, painting, theatre, music and links with France. He is highly critical of the literary censorship of post-independence Ireland but nevertheless offers a more nuanced view of it than is typically found in the media: “Though Irish literary censorship was no myth, it has been much mythologised and … its long-term influence on the development of Irish writing has been a good deal exaggerated” (p. 205).

At this time of relentless criticism of Ireland’s Catholic past, we need to preserve a cultural memory going back

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longer than a few decades and recall the profound interconnection of faith and culture in Ireland over the centuries. I have always been moved by the links in the Irish language between the words muintir (people) and mainistir (monastery). Muintir, the Irish word for people, originally meant the people who lived around a monastery and came to have a more general meaning because monastic communities were so widespread at the time.

Pope St. John Paul’s pastoral visit to Ireland in 1979 was a moment when we were strongly reminded of our Irish Christian heritage. The Pope spoke powerfully about our historic links to the Apostolic See of Rome, our loyalty to our faith, even at times of persecution, our love for the Church and the Mass and our special monastic heritage. At Clonmacnoise, he highlighted the contribution to the Church and Europe of great figures such as St. Columbanus and the other missionary monks, or pilgrims for Christ, of that period.

Today, there is a disturbing historical amnesia about our Christian heritage going all the way back to St. Patrick and the missionary monks of the following centuries. One hears little either of later figures such as the seventeenth century Franciscan Míchéal Ó Cléirigh of Annals of the Four Masters fame, who contributed greatly to cultural life and memory through the preservation of ancient Gaelic manuscripts after the Tudor conquest of Ireland.

We have a loss of cultural memory too about the heroic Irish martyrs of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, people like St. Oliver Plunkett, Blessed Margaret Ball, Archbishop Dermot O’Hurley, Peter O’Higgins OP or Dominic Collins SJ. Nearer our own time, pioneering Catholic founders of congregations like Edmund Rice, Catherine McAuley and Nano Nagle receive limited attention outside their own congregations and the services that they established in education, healthcare and social care are forgotten or presented as part of a power-seeking agenda. Nor is there anything

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like the same attention that there was a generation ago to the courageous and highly enterprising twentieth century Irish missionaries in Africa, China and elsewhere.

Clearly, Irish Catholics need to face up resolutely to scandals or shortcomings, and to periods of darkness as well as of light, in our Catholic past. We also need to follow Christ in the present, embracing our ecumenical and fraternal bonds with other Christians or those of other faiths or none rather than looking back nostalgically at the social landscape of any previous period. Nevertheless, rather than accepting the dismal rhetoric of a “poisoned tree”, I prefer the image of the Church as an old tree, with branches requiring sharp pruning from time to time but always capable of budding forth in new generations.

interview thirty years ago, he suggested that European societies were rich with a Christian culture that was almost twenty centuries old.

They had almost lost the memory of that culture because they had lost a strong awareness of their relationship to God. Now a new generation was rediscovering both that culture and that awareness. In view of so many signs of hope, the Cardinal suggested, it seemed that the old tree of the Church in France was about to bud forth once more!

The image of an old tree comes from the late Cardinal Lustiger of Paris and it’s possible to apply his words about the Church in France to our current situation in Ireland. In a magazine

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tim O’Sullivan studied History and French at UCD in the 1970s and later completed a doctorate in social policy on the principle of subsidiarity. He is a regular contributor to Position Papers.

Death of a father of eighteen children

by Andrew Larkin

I

n the end it was brief – all too brief. Between diagnosis and death a mere two week period.

Jose Maria Chema Postigo, father of the largest family in Spain died aged 56 from liver cancer.

diagnosis the doctors had given him four months to live.

He and his wife had been scheduled to give a talk here in Dublin in January of this year to Family Enrichment Ireland on the joys and the practicality of raising a large family something Mr Postigo as father of eighteen children was more than qualified to speak on. Sadly, the talk was cancelled a week before it was to take place as Mr Postigo was admitted to hospital. He had lost up to 11kg in a month and post

His wife, Rosa Pich, announced his death on Instagram with steadfast faith and fortitude.

“God is our Father. He is very good although at times we do not understand. An hour ago Chema has gone to Heaven forever, forever, forever…. We don’t really know what God has prepared for those who are faithful. I want to thank you again for all your support, prayers and affection. If we have managed to bear this situation peacefully, it is because many people have been praying. We continue to count on your prayers. Thank you!”

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Though never having had the privilege of meeting Chema in person, I have seen him on the short documentary that Spanish television did of this remarkable family [this can be seen by googling: Comando Actualidad TV1 (Febrero 2014)]. What stands out clearly, is what a remarkable husband and wife team they both made; she with characteristic good humour and energy; he with a quieter, though loving presence amidst this charmingly large family.

Raising a family always demands much love and patience: raising a family of eighteen, I should imagine, demands heroic quantities of both virtues. Fully convinced that marriage was a call to holiness, the Postigo family travelled the world giving talks and working for IFFD, a foundation which runs the Family Enrichment Programmes, a case study method which helps parents to become better parents. At his funeral, there were people from Poland, Belgium, Hong Kong, Denmark, China, Switzerland,

Portugal and from all over Spain.

In the documentary we get a fascinating glimpse into the inner life of this family: there is hustle and bustle certainly and a constant chatter of children’s voices, but it is the happiness, responsibility and service of the other that are the most remarkable traits, whether this is helping prepare the meals, folding one’s clothes, making one’s bed or just a genial family dinner.

Tragedy was no stranger to this household: three of the Postigo children died from heart conditions. The eldest daughter died aged twenty-two in 2012 despite doctors initially saying she would not live past three years of age. The second and third child died at eighteen months and ten days old. These latter two died within the space of four months of one another.

Rosa attributed her and her husband’s ability to cope with the soul-wrenching agony of not one but two deaths within four months of one another to their

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unshakeable faith in God. In an interview with El Mundo in 2014 she claimed, “If we had not had this faith, I would have committed suicide, but thank God I have it”.

Given that their eldest was ill with a heart condition and these two recent deaths, doctors advised the parents against having any more children.

Ignoring this advice, and trusting in the providential hand of God, they went on to have fifteen healthy children who are now between the ages of seven and twenty-five.

The family were awarded the European Large Family Award in 2015 for their work in the

charity Menudos Corazones, an organisation which helps children who suffer with heart problems.

At the funeral one of the older children gave a moving account of his father. “Father, you were many things. But above all you were a kind man, loving unconditionally your family, a friend to your friends. A loving husband and father. Loyal to your friends without ever looking at their social class, only wanting to love them and draw that person closer to God”. It sounds a lot like the definition of a saint. Santo subito?

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Larkin is teacher, musician and music critic based in Dublin. He is also director of Family Enrichment Ireland.

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A post-modern heresy?

by Mark McNamee

I

deas are curious things. They can drift inconsequentially through our minds, fleeting and instantly forgotten. Conversely, they can become deeply embedded, urgently compelling us to action. More curious still is the fact that we can often be unaware of the source of ideas that stand at the very core of our view of the world and inform our most fundamental beliefs.

The 2010 Christopher Nolan film, ‘Inception’ skilfully explored the latent power of ideas. It presented the intriguing premise that a kernel or precursor of an idea could be seeded in the dreaming mind of a targeted person in order to prompt them to act in a

predetermined manner. The purpose of this implanting of an idea, of this inception, was to steer a wealthy individual into following a course of action that would financially benefit a competitor. The person on whom inception had been performed had to be unaware of the fact that their mind had been manipulated as they slept, and to consider the implanted idea to be an original thought of their own. In reality, however, it is impossible to anticipate how an individual will react to the introduction of a concept or predict how an idea will develop over time. Experience suggests that a person can be exposed to an idea but fail to fully assimilate it in the manner

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intended by the originator. In these cases, ideas can become distorted through wilful or unwitting misinterpretation. In other instances, ideas evolve over time in response to changes in the surrounding environment.

In either case, ideas mutate and become almost unrecognisable from their initial form.

While it is impossible to manipulate the thinking of an individual with the precision depicted in Nolan’s film, in a certain sense it could be said that a form of inception, centuries in the making, has shaped contemporary thought.

There was not, however, a set of conscious conspirators with a master plan who sought to effect the manipulation of a complete culture. Unintentionally, an earnest and optimistic search for truth that began in the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries mutated into increasingly bleak and pessimistic systems of thought.

By the late 19th century, thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche articulated the philosophy of nihilism, considering that we live in a

world where good and evil are relative and inherent meaning is absent. In our post-modern world, it is generally considered that the age-old questions that have confronted humanity regarding purpose or meaning are irrelevant. It is considered that the harsh fact that life is futile and without any intrinsic meaning must be confronted and accepted: no answers are available.

Relativism is a key characteristic of this post-modern worldview: there are no objective truths or fixed points of reference, just an ever-changing set of subjective values upon which decisions, often life or death decisions, must be made. Many early Enlightenment figures stressed the importance of individualism, but this was in the context of seeking human dignity and a protection of rights that the arbitrary state power of the 17th and 18th centuries sought to deny. In our contemporary culture, the idea of individualism has mutated into a radical insistence on rights without responsibility.

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The thinking of Peter Singer articulates with chilling clarity the extent to which attitudes to fundamentals, such as the value of human life can be distorted once a relativist approach is adopted. To Singer, selfawareness is the key defining characteristic of personhood. In 1977, he wrote that “Human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons”; therefore, “the life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.” Singer sees no difference between abortion and infanticide as he considers that the unborn child and very young baby both lack the selfawareness that is considered to be the defining characteristic of personhood. These views are not, however, the deluded ranting of an isolated extremist – Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, one of the world’s most prestigious seats of learning.

Based on the radical postmodern interpretation of individualism, the right to choose to end the life of an

unborn child has assumed the characteristics of an article of faith, but one based on an arbitrary, subjective judgement as to when that unborn child can be considered to have distinct rights as a person.

Without a fixed set of values to inform a conscience, ideas can possess a force as devastating and terrible as any natural phenomenon. This is evident in the connection between a Chinese missile scientist, Song Jian, and the death of approximately 330 million unborn children. In 1978, Song Jian attended a conference in Finland on control systems.

While there, he received a copy of a report “The Limits to Growth and Blueprint for Survival” produced in 1972 by a think-tank, the Club of Rome.

The Club of Rome was a nongovernmental international organisation concerned with the environment and the future of humanity. They recommended that the world population had to be reduced in order to decrease demand on natural resources and ensure the survival of humanity. On returning home,

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Song promoted the recommendations of the report and received support from the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. The report’s recommendations were used to inform a mathematical model which sought to identify an optimal population for China: this was established to be 650 to 700 million, 280 to 330 million fewer that the population of the time. Based on this target, the barbaric one-child policy was initiated and imposed through fines, forced abortion and sterilisation. A further outcome of the policy has been the development of a gender imbalance, as cultural values create a preference for male children. Implemented through female infanticide and sexselective abortion, it is estimated that, as a consequence, China has approximately 20 to 30 million ‘missing’ women.

The absence of meaningful criticism of the Chinese onechild policy from Western governments or commentators was indicative of the tangle in which contemporary thought had been caught. In September

2013, in response to a newspaper expose which indicated that British doctors were facilitating sex selective abortions, Ann Furedi, Chief Executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, expressed a view that sex selection was a legitimate basis on which to justify an abortion.

It was considered that “You can’t be pro-choice except when you don’t like the choice, because that’s not pro-choice at all.”

This position was repeated in March 2017 when Professor Wendy Savage, a member of the British Medical Association’s ethics committee, stated that doctors should not withhold information on the sex of an unborn child due to fears that it could prompt a sex-selective abortion. Abortion on the grounds of an unborn child’s sex is, in her opinion, as legitimate as any other reason.

At the heart of this issue are two distinct but interrelated questions:

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♣ Is the life of a woman worth as much as the life of a man? ♣ Should a woman have the right to decide the fate of her unborn child?

Faced with a choice between opposing an action that discriminates against unborn women in the most fundamental possible way, or to support the right of a woman to choose to abort an unborn child, many, even some of those who consider themselves feminists, choose the latter. This decision consciously disregards the fact that, for many women who experience sex selective abortions, choice plays no real role. It could be argued that a sex selective abortion should instead be seen as the imposition of cultural mores which value the life of a woman as less than that of a man. In the contemporary hierarchy of rights, the right of the individual to choose trumps the right to life.

In the face of growing contemporary hostility, there is a subtle temptation: it can be

appealing to withdraw, to note with sorrow the seemingly inexorable shift towards support for taking the lives of the unborn, yet to remain passive and silent. This temptation is becoming stronger in presentday Ireland, North and South.

During debates prior to the March 2017 Stormont elections, it was striking that when young people were asked to articulate their priorities and preferences, support for “reproductive rights” was often mentioned. Abortion has become fixed in the minds of many, particularly the young, as one of a suite of opinions which indicate whether a person is narrow-minded, uncompassionate and bigoted or broad minded, compassionate and decent. Despite being driven by a set of subjective, shifting ideas, these views continue to gain growing support and abortion is regarded increasingly as an irrefutable, fundamental right. Adrift from fixed points of reference, postmodern society is like a ship steered by a navigator who has eschewed longitude and wanders lost, unable to construct a

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method of plotting a straight course.

Recognising the flaws in contemporary thought is an essential start, but this alone is not sufficient. Mournfully observing the relentless increase in pro-abortion views, but then retreating to a comfortable bunker with like minds, will not halt the pursuit of a very specific agenda. This can only be achieved through courage and a willingness to actively challenge the contemporary orthodoxy, an orthodoxy backed by powerful and influential voices. It is easy to be glib and write lyrically of battling for what is right, without recognising the cost involved. Ultimately, publically

admitting to holding heretical pro-life views is difficult and unpopular. But it is right and it must be done.

ABOUT THE
 AUTHOR Mark McNamee is a husband and father from Ballymena in Northern Ireland.

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Servant of God 2.0 Dr Chiara Bertoglio

H

e wanted to be Christ’s “undercover agent”. A kind of fifth column in the midst of all normal occupations, interests and hobbies of the Italian teenagers. Indeed, Matteo Farina was a very normal boyin most ways, and yet an extraordinary in one; a kid who liked sports, music, friends and his girlfriend, but who loved, above all, Jesus Christ.

Matteo was born in southern Italy in 1990; he had a loving family, and had a very special bond with his elder sister, Erika.

He was educated in the Christian faith by his parents, Miky and Paola, and by the Capuchin friars of their parish church; they also encouraged his

devotion to St Pio of Pietrelcina, the Capuchin friar who had lived just a few kilometers from Matteo’s place.

As a child, Matteo was a serene, sociable and intelligent boy, and many of his friends describe him as “sweetness embodied”. While in primary school, he was fascinated by the new subjects he was discovering, by the music he liked to play, and by the adventure of faith. Matteo gradually discovered the fascination of transcendence, and once wrote in his journal: “I hope to realise my mission of ‘undercover agent’ among the young, speaking to them of God (being enlightened by Himself)”;

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he wanted to “infect” his friends with the “disease of Love”.

He liked to study Scripture (as a 9-year-old he read the entire Gospel of Matthew during Lent), and to pray the Rosary. He nourished his faith with daily prayer and a regular schedule of piety and devotion.

At the age of thirteen, however, Matteo was diagnosed with a brain cancer. He underwent a first operation in Hannover, Germany, after many journeys to several Italian hospitals. He started writing his journal, where he noted: “I hope to succeed in giving joy and strength to those in need.” It may seem incredible, but he also wrote that his illness was, for him, “one of those adventures which change both your life and that of others. It helps you to be stronger and to grow, particularly in faith.… This is the journal of a thirteen-years old boy in an amazing experience.…

This is the beautiful aspect of this adventure: it seems like a dream, but it’s true”.

(I must admit that translating these sentences into English is a very humbling experience for an adult who is very far from achieving a faith comparable to Matteo’s.)

Back home, Matteo resumed his studies at school and his hobbies, without forgetting the poor: he had a special moneybox for the missions in Mozambique and he convinced his family to renounce Christmas presents in favour of the needy.

Unfortunately, his illness struck again and again; he had to undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy, frequently at hospitals very far from his home.

In spite of this, he continued his studies and was particularly interested in chemistry, not least because the structure of matter looked, in his eyes, like a fascinating proof of God’s loving and creative power.

He was loved and admired by his friends, though occasionally mocked for his faith; he didn’t care about this, but wished to work more effectively in his quality of “secret agent” for God.

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At fifteen he wrote: “I’d like to integrate better with my peers, but without being forced to mimic their errors. I’d like to participate more deeply in their groups, but without having to renounce my Christian principles. It’s hard. Hard but not impossible.”

He did his best, however, to be a boy like all others as far as this did not conflict with his faith; for example, he was the acclaimed singer of a rock band, the “No Name”. He sometimes dreamed of his future; he considered becoming a priest, but was worried that his precarious health might prevent that. At seventeen, he met Serena, his girlfriend and “the most beautiful gift I could receive from the Lord”. He started to meditate on the mystery of human love as mirroring the love of God. His love for Serena was symbolized by the image of walking hand in hand: this was the icon of conjugality, for him, and of a love which became companionship, communion and sharing.

But his illness was ready to strike once more, and in 2009 he underwent his third operation, which left him partially paralysed. He understood that his life might be short, and he wrote: “We must live every day as if it were the last, but not in the sadness of death, rather in the joy of being ready for our encounter with the Lord.” And that encounter arrived, for him, in the spring of 2009.

Matteo is possibly the first “servant of God 2.0”: the canonical cause for his beatification, which has reached an important step this month, has been fostered by word of mouth, on social media and the web. Here, one can find many excerpts from his writings, which testify to the simplicity and strength of his faith. A faith which Matteo himself described thus:

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Faith does not mean to expect a grace from God. No! Faith is holding on to God to spread His Word. It’s praying, in order to be nourished by his food, the one which will

forever help us; it’s being committed to follow God’s plans in the best possible fashion; it’s bending the head down without lifting it up in pride; it’s doing good in silence and reflecting on the evil we’ve done.

letting yourself be saddened, you meet a humble priest, simple but wise. Under his guidance you embrace with God once more; you find joy and hope again. You get back home, among friends and family, and everything goes splendidly, better and better.

Doctors can’t explain your getting better, but you can, and you laugh.… You would like to cry to the world that you would do anything for your Saviour, that you are ready to suffer to save souls, to die for him. You’ll have the possibility to show Him your love.

But one should not think that everything was easy for Matteo.

He had his moments of anguish, particularly in the face of illness and suffering. He writes: One day you play with your friends, you laugh and are happy. Then, suddenly, she comes: illness, pain. Without realizing it, you’re plunged into a world which seems not your own. It seems impossible, like a thing happening only in movies.

Then you come back: The Lord is great, what happiness! You believe you’re healed, but after a little while you’re suffering again. You can’t believe it. You believe everything is falling on you.

Unexpectedly, in an afternoon you’d have thought a common one, an afternoon you’d have wasted as usual in

And when the pain was simply too much, Matteo wondered where could God be:

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Has God deserted you? No. In silence, He’s always at your side, He wipes away your tears and holds you in His arms, until you’ll be strong enough to walk for yourself, holding His hands in yours vigorously. Fatigue. Curl up humbly in His arms and you’ll be sheltered there until good weather will come

again. You’ll shine again, then, in His love, giving a caress, a smile, your small contribution to help those who, like you, are in need or tired; bring them to God. They’ll resurrect in turn, with our Lord, to a life of love.

And we can believe, indeed, that this life of love is what Matteo did find.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Chiara Bertoglio is a musician and theologian moonlighting as a journalist. She writes from Italy. Visit her website: www.chiarabertoglio.com.

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Seeing beyond Sickness

by Fr Peter John Cameron O.P.

I

n the days before my mother died, I would wake early and tiptoe into the room to pray the divine office in silence by her bedside.That sickroom was like a tabernacle. As Pope Francis said, addressing the ill, “The Church recognizes in you, the sick, a special presence of the suffering Christ.” What a privilege and grace to have the sick in our midst.

This year we commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the World Day of the Sick. The annual occasion is to be, as Pope Saint John Paul II stated in his 1992 letter instituting the day, “a special time of reminding everyone to see in his sick brother or sister the

face of Christ who, by suffering, dying, and rising, achieved the salvation of mankind.”

Seeing Beyond Sickness This calls us to regard the sick in a rectified way.

Servant of God Mother Mary Alphonsa († 1926), the daughter of the author Nathaniel Hawthorne and the foundress of the Dominican Sisters for the Care of Incurable Cancer, posed this question: Let us imagine, side by side, a man covered with an affliction of the flesh; poor, friendless, abandoned; his relatives no longer willing to harbor him; all

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institutions pretending to decent care evicting him; paid attendants and lodging-houses turning him to the open world.

Then imagine a businessman of great influence, in health that beams roseately. Which man would Christ have chosen for most effective attention? We know: the leper. To Christ, the sores are not the man. The abased, humiliated sphere, the infirm consciousness, the blinded sight or half-silenced speech, cover to him the soul for whom he would have suffered death.

The Mystical Sick In addition to the pain and anguish of infirmity, being ill is traumatic for another reason, which Pope Benedict XVI explained: “Sickness inevitably brings with it a moment of crisis and sober confrontation with one’s own personal situation.”

The Catholic philosopher Louis Lavelle helps us understand this: Suffering cuts through all the appearances behind which we hide, until it reaches the depths where the living self dwells. It is suffering which gives the sufferer the most intimate communication with the world,

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and with himself. Suffering acquires meaning only when it nourishes the flame of our spiritual life. Suffering becomes a sort of cauterization, which burns up the individual part of my nature, and forces me to consent to its annihilation.

What a privilege and grace to have the sick in our midst.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke once remarked: “One of the things I find most moving is the way people with infirmities manage to embrace life. They can, if their souls’ strings are finely tuned, arrive with much less effort at the feeling of eternity; for everything we do, they may dream. And precisely where our deeds end, theirs begin to bear fruit.”

Pope John Paul II reminded us that “Christ did not come to remove our afflictions, but to share in them and, in taking them on, to confer on them a salvific value.”

One of the world’s most eloquent testifiers to this was Mother Marie des Douleurs (†

1983), the foundress of the Congregation of Benedictines of Jesus Crucified – a religious community established for women deemed unfit for monastic life on account of their physical infirmities: The sick person wakes people up. By choosing not to be asphyxiated by suffering, the sick person draws people’s attention to the One who, at the height of moral and physical suffering, was able to say to the Father. Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit. The sick one gives witness that no misery or distress is so deep that it cannot be redeemed, that no sincere desire for life remains unheard – for death has been swallowed up by Life.

Such conviction moved Blessed Paul VI, at the end of the Second Vatican Council, to make this appeal: All of you who feel heavily the weight of the cross, take courage. You are the preferred children of the Kingdom of God, the kingdom of hope, happiness, and life. You are the

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brothers and sisters of the suffering Christ, and with him, if you wish, you are saving the world.

Redemptive Care for the Sick Pope Francis encourages us that “time spent with the sick is holy time. It is a way of praising God who conforms us to the image of his Son.” To quote Saint John Paul II: “It is in care for the sick more than in any other way that love is made concrete and a witness of hope in the Resurrection is offered.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Father Peter John Cameron, O.P. is Editor-in-Chief of Magnificat. He is also a playwright and director, the author of more than a dozen plays and many books. This article is reprinted with the kind permission of Magnificat and The Irish Catholic.

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Book review Beyond Radical Secularism

A book review by Fr John McCloskey

B

eyond Radical Secularism was originally published in Europe in the fall of 2015, when it caused quite a ruckus, and became even more relevant with the Nov. 13, 2015, incident of terrorism in Paris. The author, Pierre Manent, is a Frenchman who wrote the book after the earlier terrorist attack in France the previous January.

Author Pierre Manent Publisher St. Augustine’s Press, 2016

numbers of Muslim immigrants in their midst.

Manent’s main thesis is that radical secularism does not have the capacity to counter the challenge presented in our era by Islam. Although he believes that the threat posed by Islamist fanatics requires a resolute response, security measures alone are insufficient to protect the French (and European) way of life and to assimilate the large

Manent believes that the severalcenturies-old Western tradition of the secular state should be maintained and cherished.

However, he argues that trying to “solve” the problem of Muslim assimilation in France by attempting to turn them into model French secularists as adrift morally and religiously as many of those they find themselves among will fail. Instead, France must recognize and accept its Christian heritage and culture, as well as its small-but-significant Jewish presence, as foundational to its national identity.

So what is the solution?

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Manent reaches for a way of recognizing and defending European roots while retaining religious tolerance. In Manent’s view, Muslim immigrants seeking to make a home in Europe must make their peace with having moved beyond the borders of sharia (Islamic law) and to a certain extent be willing to shift mindsets. However, the established French customs, mores and traditions that make up the structure of a healthy culture have already been rejected by the radical secularist. That’s why Manent insists that France must rediscover her national form, which at some point will require secession from the European Union. Meanwhile, he recommends forbidding Muslims in France from taking money from foreign powers, whether governments or religious organizations. This would better establish their identity as French Muslims.

country’s well-being in ways that go beyond the economic benefits of a young labor pool. Manent’s many specific observations and proposed solutions can be debated without affecting the force of his central insight.

“Without vision, the people perish,” says one of those outmoded Judeo-Christian books that the French secularists – and radical secularists elsewhere – have tossed into the rubbish heap of history. Whether the Western people perish in the near or intermediate future will likely depend a lot on what identity they embrace.

His second major recommendation is to invite Muslim immigrants to enter into French common life. After all, in order to enter into the fullness of French citizenship or identity, they need to contribute to the

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rev C. John McCloskey III is a Catholic priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei and member of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross. He is the former director of the Catholic Information Center of the Archdiocese of Washington. Website: www.frmccloskey.com.

Film review Arrival and the unique manner of divine speech

Director Denis Villeneuve Stars Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker

by Bishop Robert Barron

L

ike E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Starman, Independence Day, and a host of similar films over the past thirty years, Arrival explores the theme of an alien visitation to earth. In this iteration, Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams) is a linguistic expert, who is called upon by the U.S. military to facilitate conversation with visitors from another world, whose spacecrafts have landed (actually not quite landed, for they hover a few feet off the ground) at a number of locations around the globe. This meditative film has a great deal to tell us about communication, language, and the patience required to enter into the cultural environment

of a higher intelligence. As such, it speaks, whether its director and writer intended this or not, about God’s distinctive manner of communication and the process by which we come to understand it.

To her infinite surprise, Louise one night is whisked to a remote site in Montana, where she is briefed, encased in a suffocating protective suit, and then brought into the presence of the aliens, who turn out to be octopus-like creatures, moving slowly about in a liquid environment. After recovering from her initial astonishment, Louise commences to reach out to her strange interlocutors,

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writing a few simple words on a cardboard and indicating their meaning through gesture.

Almost immediately, the creatures respond by squirting an ink-like substance that, presumably under their intelligent direction, forms itself into calligraphically rendered circles. This is their unique, highly-sophisticated, and utterly alien language.

Much of the quiet drama of Arrival occurs as Louise endeavors to understand this qualitatively different form of communication. What she comes to grasp is that any attempt at “translation” of this strange argot in the ordinary sense of the term would be futile. For as she enters into the world of the extraterrestrials, she comprehends that their symbol system bears a distinctive, quasi-mystical relationship to time and that she is receiving from her conversation partners much more than mere information.

Lest I spoil the movie for those who haven’t seen it, I won’t go any further into the plot. But I

would like to elaborate upon what this film says, at least implicitly, in regard to what we call divine revelation. One of the core convictions of the Christian faith is that God has spoken to his people, that a real communication has come from his transcendent realm and entered into our consciousness. Furthermore, believers hold, this communication is codified in the Bible, which, accordingly, is not one book among many, not one more human attempt to express our convictions about God, but rather, in a real sense, God’s word to us, God’s language, God’s speech.

I am insisting on this point, because our approach to the Bible these past many years has been dominated by what the scholars call the historicalcritical method. This is an interpretive approach that places exclusive emphasis on uncovering the cultural, historical, and linguistic setting for a Biblical text and the intentionality of that text’s human author. To be sure, these are altogether legitimate

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concerns, and whatever truths we learn in this regard are good. But the danger is that a hyper stress on the human and this-worldly dimension of the Scriptural texts can blind us to their sheer strangeness, to the disquieting manner in which they draw us up out of our world into another world. More to it, a confidently rational attitude toward the Bible can make the interpreter cocky. He can feel himself on firm ground, approaching Biblical language as he would any other poetic and historical communication from the ancient world. But this is repugnant to the patience and humility required to let God’s always unnerving, always disquieting communication be heard.

The Second Vatican Council clearly taught that the Bible is best construed as “the Word of God in the words of men.”

More contemporary interpretive methods have helped us to appreciate the second part of that observation, but I fear that they have obscured the first. In

their poetry, their philosophy, their literature, their spiritual musings, human beings, across the centuries and across the cultures, have been saying lots of things about God, but the Bible is not so much human speech about God, but God’s speech about himself. As much as we revere Shakespeare, Homer, Aristotle, Dante, and T.S. Eliot, we don’t pronounce, after reading aloud their language, “This is the Word of the Lord.” But we say precisely that after we read the Bible. We are not meant to translate the Biblical world into language accessible to us; rather, we are to allow ourselves to be “translated” (the word literally means “carried across”) into the space opened up by the Bible. To fully elaborate what this means would require many volumes of theology. But to get at least some sense of what I’m describing, attend to the Bible’s manner of speaking of grace, of participation in the divine life, of the conversation among the Trinitarian persons, and of the Word becoming flesh. None of this is the fruit of philosophical analysis or poetic musing. It is

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the stuff of revelation.

Accordingly, we don’t control any of it. It controls us.

I mentioned above how the alien craft in Arrival don’t quite land. They are massively, overwhelmingly present to the earth, but they don’t touch down; the earth doesn’t hold them. That’s not a bad visual metaphor for God’s speech in the Scriptures.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR This article first appeared at: www.wordonfire.org. Bishop Robert Barron is an author, speaker, theologian, and founder of Word on Fire, a global media ministry. This article has been reprinted with the kind permission of the editors.

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