August/September 2019

Number 531 Aug/Sep 2019 €3 · £2.50 · $4

A review of Catholic affairs

Building a Culture of Religious Freedom ARCHBISHOP CHARLES J. CHAPUT

The Assumption and the key to Evangelization FR DONNCHA Ó hAODHA

Films: Spider-Man: Far From Home JOHN MULDERIG

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Number 531 · August/September 2019

Editorial

by Fr Gavan Jennings

In Passing: The Great Divide

by Michael Kirke

Skyping God

by Jennifer Kehoe

Building A Culture of Religious Freedom

by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

The Assumption and the key to Evangelization

by Fr Donncha Ó hAodha

Books: How Fear Works

by Margaret Somerville

Films: Spider-Man: Far From Home

by John Mulderig

Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

2 4 10 18 27 33 39

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

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Editorial

I

n June I had a phone call from a regular reader of Position Papers with a (friendly) complaint: “Why don’t you address the problem of Pope Francis?” he asked. By problem he was referring of course to things like the ambiguity in Amoris Laetitia regarding the admission of divorced and remarried Catholics to the Eucharist, the “Who am I to judge” comment regarding a practising homosexual, and his sympathy for apparently heterodox members of the hierarchy. We had an interesting conversation at the end of which I promised that I would dedicate an editorial to this question … so here it is.

Yes, I will admit that some things the Holy Father says are disconcerting. For example, I was hurt by the infamous “breeding like rabbits” comment (perhaps more so being the eleventh of twelve children). As a priest who hears confessions, I was left perplexed by the Pope’s remarks about not turning the confessional into a “torturechamber”. I would have thought empty confessionals was the more pressing problem (and by empty I mean the priest’s side of the confession box). And I’m sure most of us have heard that “Who am I to judge?” remark quoted in defence of morally relativist positions.

And yet we shouldn’t make more of such remarks than is warranted. If I’m being honest, I know what the Holy Father was driving at when he made those remarks: it is true that large families are not obligatory for Catholics, that priests should be gentle in confession, and that nobody can judge the conscience of another person. As Catholics we have to hear the Pope’s words with a filial, loving attitude. There are however Catholic websites are far from filial, and which appear almost obsessive in their desire to put the worst spin on the Pope’s every word. I’ve given up reading those websites.

But what about the Pope’s apparent ambiguity on the question of admission of divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion?

The treatment of this matter in the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia – mostly contained in one footnote – is very confusing. (That

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said, the rest of Amoris Laetitia is very good, and parts of it absolutely wonderful.) At the same time the clear and perennial practice of the Church is that nobody in a state of mortal sin may receive Holy Communion. There seems to be a contradiction here.

Resolving that apparent contradiction is – as they say – above my pay-grade; that is something for the theologians to work out.

Meanwhile I stick with the perennial practice of the Church.

Pope Francis’ blunt and imprecise manner of communicating can be disconcerting, confusing even, but normally it doesn’t amount to more than that. Pope Francis has much of the firebrand reformer about him, and that gives a directness and punchiness to his teaching. And even if on occasion his teaching lacks doctrinal clarity, the Pope is the Pope … and I am a Papist. I’m no less a Papist with Francis than with St John Paul II or Benedict. And I’m happy to leave all the rest in the hands of God.

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In Passing: The Great Divide

by Michael Kirke

T

he world seems to be irreconcilably divided into two diametrically opposed realms of feeling and fear. These worlds do not talk to each other, they talk at each other. On the one hand there is the realm of those who feel The Shame And Peril Of Living In A No-Abortion State. On the other hand there are those who in equal measure talk of feeling The Shame And Peril Of Living In An Abortion State. The measure of difference between those two sound bites is the word “No” but the measure of difference between the sentiments expressed is as an abyss.

but-not-out defenders of the unborn. It is totally devoid of the slightest suggestion that there is any point in listening to what they might have to say in defence of their case against “an abortion State”. These are two forces at war, and it is not pretty.

The measure of shame and peril felt on each side may be relatively equal, but the measure of power exercised by one side of the divide over the other is not.

In a recent Irish Times article Gavin Boyne drew attention to the way in which the most extreme advocates of abortion had now captured the engines of social and health policy in Ireland and were moulding them into their own

The first is a tweet signaling another volley of rifle-fire, in the form of a blog post, at the down-

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image and serving the culture of death. But not only are they doing so in Ireland. They are seeking to work their way around the globe in pursuit of their goal.

the language of this war, that means only one thing.

The hearing on whether to adopt the “agreed conclusion,” which involves “a set of concrete recommendations for governments, intergovernmental bodies and other institutions,” came after weeks of negotiations.

It was held at the U.N. headquarters in New York late on the evening of March 22, after translators had gone home. When Byrne Nason asked exhausted delegates whether any country had an objection, diplomats from both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain spoke, citing a slew of language dealing with sexuality and the family that “disregards important red lines” for them.

The chairwoman of a U.N. commission, in the face of objections from more than one member state, recently forced the adoption of a measure that implicitly promotes abortion.

Who is this woman? She is Irish ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason, who is recognised within the U.N. as a woman who has dedicated her life to using the Organisation to promote abortion around the world – which is probably why the government of the world’s newest Abortion State has appointed her as its ambassador there.

The delegate from Bahrain claimed that during the negotiation process he was “bullied and harassed” by highranking U.N. officials and senior Commission members, “in terms of threatening me to go back to my capital, talk to my royal family to pull me out of the negotiation.”

Again, language says it all.

Islamophobia anyone?

Controversy erupted a few months ago at the annual conference of the Commission on the Status of Women, when Byrne Nason, ignoring objections by two countries, forced the adoption of a document that promises “universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services” for citizens of member states. In

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The Muslim countries objected to “multiple references to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights”. But Byrne Nason was having none of it. “I hear no objection. It is so decided,” the ambassador responded as she banged her gavel. The Bahraini and Saudi Arabian diplomats protested, but to no avail.

The document in question promised, among other things, to “ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights” The United States was not a member of the Commission but did participate in negotiations about the measure. Their team was dismayed that “the clear views of many delegations were not taken into account,” U.S. Ambassador for U.N. Management and Reform Cherith Norman Chalet said in a statement delivered at the March 22 hearing. The U.S. also took issue with the language on “comprehensive education and sexual and reproductive health information.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” a U.N. expert who advises member states on legal issues told National Review. The source characterized Byrne Nason as the “primary villain” in the situation who has “clearly dedicated her life and her work to advancing the abortion agenda at the U.N.” A diplomat involved in the negotiation who requested anonymity from the National Review writer to speak on the record called it a “very frustrating session.” “This has never been the way” such negotiations work, the diplomat said. “Everybody needs to be on board.” If even one country rejects the document, the diplomat added, it “automatically means that there’s no agreement.”

The Holy See, Guatemala, Comoros, Bahrain, Belarus, Cameroon, Djibouti, Libya, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Gambia, Malaysia, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe joined the U.S. in expressing concerns about the parts of the document dealing with abortion and neglect of the family, and with the faulty process

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that led to the document’s adoption.

small town. It is one of Ireland’s oldest and most beautiful cities, for a short time the seat of its parliament.

The unfortunate reality is that some of these countries are still in the early stages of development and have poor records when it comes to dealing with social inequality, economic progress, women’s rights, and more. This firstly allows the wise men and woman in control at the U.N. to denigrate all their values, and secondly, gives an opportunity to the neo-colonial Abortion States to package their very progressivist policies into their development programmes.

Closer examination of the new release of course assured me that this movie was not about Friar Tom, or the remarks he made about the state of our bodies after the death of grace in our souls, when afflicted by that sin which we appropriately call “mortal”.

You probably have some hazy recollection of what all Christians once learned in their catechisms.

The people who walked out of Fr. Tom’s church in disgust at his remarks may have forgotten that.

Divided Kilkenny It struck me as a bit strange to recall that Dolores Riordan and the Cranberries had a worldwide hit a few decades ago when they said exactly the same thing about another kind of sinful activity indulged in and causing the mayhem that all sin causes in any country. Zombies was what they called those who surrendered the life of their souls to Irish Republican Army. Perhaps had Friar Tom set his words to music he might have been more effective in getting his point across. As it is

My weekly newsletter from Screenit.com this week told me that among the crop of new movies just released is one entitled The Dead Don’t Die. In its very brief snapshot of what the film is about it says: “Comedy/ Horror: Residents of a small town must contend with a zombie outbreak.” My God, I said to myself, “That was quick. They’ve already made a movie about Friar Tom Ford’s shocking sermon to the people of Kilkenny.” Well, sorry. I know Kilkenny is not a

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he now just has everyone falling over backwards in outrage and his friends and superiors apologizing for him. He included a range of what Catholic moral teaching describes as objectively sinful behavior. One feels, of course, that his real sin was to include gay activity among these.

Friar Ford, as he admitted himself, is something of a fan of the zombie movie genre. To his cost, he let his enthusiasm for the metaphor he saw in them go just a little bit too far. But really, was it that shocking? Literary souls like using metaphors to explain their ideas. He saw it as a way of bringing home to us all the grossness and horror of that sin which we call “mortal”, that sin which kills the life our soul. Christ called some of those of his own time who were willfully in a similar state, “whited sepulchres” – which as an image is not far from zombie. Of course his hearers were offended and outraged also. Indeed, they ended up crucifying him for his offensiveness.

The gay thing is, of course, impossible to talk about now – unless you are praising the lifestyle to the skies. What is it anyway? I once wrote something by way of explanation of the Catholic Church’s teaching that it did not condemn as sinful the condition of being gay in one’s sexual orientation. A friend of mine contradicted me, explaining that in contemporary usage – I’m not an expert in the area – “being gay” was in fact a description of one who was homo-sexually active. What the Catholic Church holds, he explained to me is that homosexual orientation is not in any way sinful, so much so that it is perfectly compatible with a virtuous and sanctified life – which was the point I was trying to make. He thought I was not being helpful by confusing the two.

There is now much ado about the latest iteration of Catholic teaching on the gender and identity issue. It clearly explains the traditional Catholic view that men and women are created with fixed gender and sexual roles.

Some are complaining that it does not address the work of biologists and psychologists who grapple with the exceptional cases which give rise to confusion of identity.

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The Church is not a Scientific Institute. It is a moral teacher and has to offer moral guidance to every soul on the planet. It is aware of, and respects the responsible work being done by scientists, psychologists and psychiatrists in this field. Indeed it uses their findings to clarify its own moral teaching as faith and reason demands. However, it is the bizarre ramblings of the LGBT theorists that have made it necessary to offer this statement of moral teaching to poor bewildered humanity at this time.

revolution. Sexual sin no longer exists. Pharmaceutical development and technological development – although they have brought great goods to mankind have combined together to poison our vision of what it is to be truly human. Together they have led us to a place where sexual abuse, promiscuity, abortion, pornography are corrupting individual human beings in their millions. As a consequence they are corrupting our society by destroying the family. That dual corruption, unless it is arrested, will end in utter chaos. If a bit of outrage in a Kilkenny Friary helps bring us back to our sense of what is really right and wrong, I can live with a bit of outrage.

At the root of all the confusion, of course is the poison inflicted on society and our civilization by the neo-Marxist definitions of our nature which spawned the sexual

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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Skyping God

by Jennifer Kehoe

I

was in a conversation recently which stemmed from a young mother lamenting the practice of churches being locked in the evenings, a time which was one of the few windows during which she would be able to spend some time in Eucharistic Adoration.

As we know, our Western culture has fallen far from the Christian roots on which it was built.

Values such as care for each other, our environment, regard for things belonging to other people and even more so, the things of God, were Christian values embedded into culture by Christians living them out. Since casting off Christianity, the West has been piggybacking on the remembered habits of

Christianity. Concepts such as kindness, manners, forgiveness, respect are products of Christianity. Christianity humanised the culture, imparting dignity on our interactions and, though it’s politically incorrect to say this, it put a stop to the oftentimes savage practices such as, in the extreme, human sacrifice and cannibalism. Read the eyewitness histories of certain now desirable tourist destinations and you will be thankful that Christian missionaries landed their boats in those places, many times paying the price of martyrdom.

Pre-Christian Society was not a pretty sight.

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Have you ever flown in an aeroplane over a shipping passage such as the ones between Ireland and Britain or Ireland and France? It never fails to astonish me how a ferry or cargo ship can have almost reached it’s destination yet it’s white wake is still visible quite from the point of departure. The sea holds the memory of the ship passing long after it has passed over the horizon. I think that sight is a good analogy for today’s Europe and America. Western culture is currently treading water without lifejackets in the fading wake of Christ, the ship from which we so gleefully cast ourselves. We thought our strong legs, strong arms andstrong lungs where self sufficient. The sea was azure and so enticing. However, our bodies, our culture and habits, were strong precisely because they were linked with those attributes of Christ. We did fine for a while, we’re just dandy, check us out riding the briny waves not a care in the world, basking in the wake, the illusion which has bit by bit by bit been fading and losing the flavour and essence of Christ.

Without Christ, our legs won’t hold out much longer, our once

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strong arms are waning and our lungs are ever tiring, less and less able to fill with life giving oxygen, less and less able to dispel choking toxins.

Without the ship there’s just the deep, deep, deep sea.

The surface sparkles were enticing to us. We were tricked into believing that casting off the “restrictive” security of Christianity we would somehow attain something greater of our own invention. We made the error of Adam and Eve, foolishly believing we could be our own God. We could hew our own personalised furrow without him, not stopping to realise that the sparkles are not the sea but mere reflections which mask the grave danger beneath. The sea, mankind unguided by God, has a merciless appetite and will devour the weary and the foolish and give nothing back.

This is where our culture is now.

An ever darkening, ever more frightening place with neither rock nor ship on which to depend. And it seems the depths are fathomless. We are returning to a state of pre-Christian

savagery where the strong devour the weak. We’re back to child sacrifice, or “post-birth abortion” and a total(itarian) abandonment of rational thought as is so grandly displayed in bully-boy rainbow flags and gender ideology. We no longer leave our bicycle leaning against a wall and expect it to be there when we return. We cannot leave our homes unlocked because they will surely be ransacked. And now, inevitably, we cannot leave our churches unlocked. Once the place of sacred asylum, of peace, solace and oftentimes physical shelter for the weary, the worried, the unloved and the homeless, the churches must now be locked because they are no longer considered untouchable safe places.

When I was working in the inner city I used to attend lunchtime mass in a Franciscan church.

Several of the regular attendees would pass the time during Mass sleeping slumped on a pew bench. Shabby homeless old men who had nowhere else to go except for the shelter of God’s house where they would at least be warm and receive some

human contact and be treated as humans by the bare-footed friars.

I passed that church recently with my daughter and had to mumble to her not to make eye contact with the small assembly of drugged addicts bickering on the steps of the locked church.

I’m sure it was a difficult and heavy hearted decision for the Franciscans to lock their doors.

How many times had they cleaned up syringes and excrement from that consecrated place. How many handbags and wallets were taken, how many altercations took place before they had to padlock the doors, opening only at times when security was available to keep people safe?

Some years ago my own parish, a respectable town, had to make the sad decision to lock up at sundown, not because of drug addicts but because of teenage brats urinating for bravado, pilfering the pennies from the poor box or simply using it as a place for what my father used to call “blackguarding”. As we know, countries such as France have concerns more serious than

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schoolboys up to no good. One by one desecration and fire is the fate of unguarded Catholic churches.

How did I get from inconvenient Eucharistic adoration times to desecration of European churches? Oh yes, the necessity of padlocks and keypads on churches because neither buildings nor people are automatically safe in the sanctuary any more. I put forward the suggestion that if actual adoration isn’t available due to the church being locked, or illness or caring for little children, that many parishes have a twenty-four hour webcam focused on the tabernacle and the flickering sanctuary lamp which tells us Jesus is home, and that it could be a nice idea to spend time with Our Lord in that way. I commented that it was nice that at the same time that churches need greater security and shorter open times that God, with his usual finesse, had left us a way of being present of keeping him company, albeit by webcam.

A friendly debate ensued with some thinking that was a good

idea and others disagreeing. A priest was quoted as saying that only adoration in person was acceptable as the other was no better than looking at a printed picture.

I disagree.

I’m going to make the case for skyping God: My nephew’s children’s maternal grandparents live on the other side of the world. They are not humanly able to spend long periods of time physically close.

However, with the technology each of us carries around in our pockets and handbags, those children have a well established intimate relationship with their adoring grandparents. Between Skype and FaceTime they check in regularly, have long chats, show their artwork, their wobbly teeth and send virtual kisses to their very present though distant grandparents.

One of the connector pieces on EWTN promotes Eucharistic Adoration. I love the bit where the girl explains

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“I look at Him, and He looks at me.”

offerings, even if they are just from a passing car.

That is the precise essence of Eucharistic adoration. A two way gaze. I look at my Love and My Love looks at me. Love transcends proximity. God’s love transcends both time and space.

He is not limited by pixels or bytes. He is already closer to us than water is to a fish.

When my children were smaller we would regularly pass by my husband’s workplace as we went to and fro from shops, schools and so on. We’d look out to see if we could spot Daddy’s car parked in its little space beside the ancient yellow cottage which is his surgery. Sometimes it wouldn’t be there if he was on a house call. However, it was typical that they’d excitedly spot his car, like the sanctuary lamp, indicating that Daddy is there. I’d tell them to blow a kiss because he loved getting unexpected caresses while he was working.

How lovingly those little windborne kisses floated my husband’s way. I would ring him later to inform him he had received those kisses. He’d hug them and tell them how happy and loved he would feel when those invisible kisses came his way. Personally I have faith that my husband was indeed helped through his sometimes difficult or heart wrenching days by his little children’s love filled thoughts, because what is love but heart connecting to heart?

Every Christmas and Easter the Holy Father gives his traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing: To The City and To The World. This blessing is received by millions of the faithful via satellite link, via radio, TV, and internet. It is God’s blessing, in no way lessened or diluted on its trip into space and back. St Josemaría Escrivá tells us to often cast our hearts to the tabernacles near us, to unite with them during the day, to keep our Lord company by greeting him as we drive past churches or other places where the Blessed Sacrament is present.

Our Lord gathers these loving greetings with great joy. He is never outdone in love and he rejects none of our loving

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Either way, my husband was always delighted that his children were sending him kisses as we drove past where he was. For sure, the children benefitted, their love for their father was enriched by those little acts of devotion.

A number of years ago, Bishop Javier Echevarría, then Prelate of Opus Dei, was on a pastoral visit to the people of Opus Dei, their extended family and friends in the Philippines. One of the major struggles families in the Philippines encounter is the reality that employment can be very difficult to find and oftentimes either the mother or the father has to work abroad simply to keep the family above water. At one large get-together with 10,000 people, the Father, as he was affectionately known, spoke about this in very very clear and urgent tones. This physical separation is a grave danger to families. Long distance marriages are very difficult to maintain over extended time.

The absence of physical presence, day to day life together andmarital intimacy all create unique struggles for those

families. He encouraged those who find themselves in these difficult circumstances to do all in their power to keep those separations as short term as possible, to try if at all possible to keep the family as a physical unit.

Then he went on to advise those couples to remain intimate as best they could even though apart. He suggested connecting on the internet through the likes of Skype to talk about family life, to pray together, to just relax and enjoy each other. The love of husband and wife, on which the children and the family depend even more than economic security, was to be urgently and consistently nourished with the use of the technologies which are widely available today. This surely must be one of the greatest benefits of the Internet.

In my own family, our eldest daughter was able to join in her smallest sister’s birthday party via FaceTime from France.

Oftentimes during that year away from home she would just leave FaceTime on as she pottered around her room, just so that she could enjoy family life from afar.

We weren’t even always talking

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just as you wouldn’t always talk to someone in the same room.

You just know they’re there and enjoy their company. As St Francis is so often (though erroneously) quoted as saying “… and sometimes use words…”.

This is how I feel about checking in on Adoration either from some grand and exotic shrine or from your humble and ordinary local parish via webcam.

I think the priest mentioned earlier may have mistakenly thought the person was asking whether Sunday duty may be fulfilled by watching Mass online (it isn’t). I don’t think any man would suggest a person not FaceTime their mother because it’s not as good as being with her in person. Perhaps if the mother was living locally and we only interacted with her via a phone screen instead of actually visiting her, it may indicate a serious relationship flaw. However, if we regularly visit our Mom, it doesn’t exclude the delight of FaceTime chats at other times.

Certainly if visiting in person is not a possibility, FaceTime is, quite literally, a Godsend

I’m reminded of the computer homepage my husband used some years ago for quite some time. It was the Vatican TV webcam from St Peter’s Square, Rome. He used to say that he’d feel connected to the universal church by glancing at the great basilica, hear the fountains and watch the pilgrims milling about.

He was reminded to pray for the Holy Father whose then apartments were visible on the webcam. Obviously it was a far cry from being in Rome but I thought it was a very filial thing to do. I am sure that God saw and delighted in his loving son doing that very simple act to stay connected in a tangible way.

Jesus is our spouse. He is our divine bridegroom. Like any bride we long for that connection with our spouse. So the church is locked? So we’re bedridden, disabled or just a plain old overwhelmed mom keeping all the plates spinning and not always managing. Do you think for a second that the Bridegroom who waits for us in the quietness of the tabernacle is going to avert his gaze from us because our

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connection is in computer pixels and therefore not good enough?

with us? Does he not desire our simple bits of news and childlike questions?

I love when my husband texts or phones me for tiny moments during the day, I love that continued conversation, those little connections which remind me that I’m on my spouse’s mind, that I’m in his heart. I’m excited and hopeful that some day my husband can retire and we can spend all day chatting. I still have so much to tell him like “y’know who I saw uptown” and important questions such as “would you like some tea?” In the meantime I’ll delight in those technology enabled moments of heart onto heart with my spouse.

Is God not the greatest spouse?

Does he not long for connection

God sees us anyway. We are always in his gaze. He sees our efforts. One of my favourite scenes in the Gospel is Jesus’ encounter with Nathaniel. Jesus says to him “I saw you under the fig tree.” We don’t know what Nathaniel was doing when Jesus saw him. We know it was something good, perhaps it was as simple an act as trying to tune in the live webcam from his local parish church which happened to be locked because other people have forgotten that it was precisely Jesus who gave us this great civilisation with its beautiful, now locked churches.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennifer Kehoe is a young mother of six, living in Kildare, Ireland. She runs a blog “Raindrops on my Head,” at http://jenniferkehoe.blogspot.ie.

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Building A Culture of Religious Freedom

by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

B

ack in April, Gerard Baker, the Wall Street Journal’s editor at large, wrote a column called “Persecuted Christians And Their Quiescent Leaders” that I hope all of you will read.

In it, Baker hammers home two facts. Christians of every tradition – Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox – are now the most widely and brutally persecuted religious community in the world. And too many Christian leaders in too many countries, including our own, are too cowardly to name this persecution for what it is – especially when it comes at the hands of Muslim extremists.

Alliance Defending Freedom.

And the threats to religious liberty in our own country come from a different, shrewder, but every bit as ugly brand of extremism. So it’s a blessing and a joy for me to be with you today. Courage, like cowardice, is infectious, and very few people can match the courage and character that permeate the entire ADF team. Michael Farris, Paula and Alan Sears, Amy Shepard, and so many others: These are extraordinary persons doing extraordinary work, and I count it a privilege to admire them. But I’ll come back to that at the end of my comments.

Cowardice is not a word you’ll find in the vocabulary of

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I want to talk today about “building a culture of religious freedom.” So the question naturally becomes: How do we do it? I think I can help us answer that. But I need to offer a few preliminary thoughts.

does the way we use it. As all of the great saints understood, thinking a little about our death can have a wonderfully medicinal effect on human behavior.

Here’s my first point, and it’s very simple. We’re mortal.

We’re going to die. My father was a funeral director, and I grew up in a home where death was something sacred, but also a natural part of life. Obviously, life is a gift of God and therefore precious, especially to the people who love us. We need to protect it, preserve it, help it to flourish, and make it meaningful.

But for persons of faith, death isn’t something to fear. God never abandons the people who love him. So I’ve always found it odd that American culture spends such a huge amount of energy ignoring death and distracting us from thinking about it. Our time in this world is very limited; science can’t fix the problem; and there’s no government bailout program.

So our time matters. And so

The reason is obvious. If we believe in an afterlife where we’re held accountable for our actions, then that belief has very practical implications for our choices in this world. Obviously, some people don’t believe in God or an afterlife, and they need to act in a way that conforms to their convictions. But that doesn’t absolve us from following ours.

For those of us who are Christians, the trinity of virtues we call faith, hope, and charity should shape everything we do, both privately and in our public lives. Faith in God gives us hope in eternal life. Hope casts out fear and enables us to trust in the future and to love. And the love of God and other human persons – the virtue of charity – is the animating spirit of all authentically Christian political action. By love, I don’t mean “love” in a sentimental or

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indulgent sense, the kind that offers “tolerance” as an alibi for inaction in the face of evil. I mean love in the biblical sense: love with a heart of courage, love determined to build justice in society and focused on the true good of the whole human person, body and soul.

Human progress means more than getting more stuff, more entitlements, and more personal license. Real human progress always includes man’s spiritual nature. Real human progress satisfies the human hunger for solidarity and communion. So when our leaders and their slogans tell us to move “forward into the future,” we need to take a very hard look at the road we’re on, where “forward” leads, and whether it ennobles the human soul or just aggravates our selfishness, our isolation, and our appetite for things.

What all this means for our public life is this: Religious believers can live quite peacefully with the separation of Church and state, so long as the arrangement translates

into real freedom of religion, and not the half-starved copy of the real thing called “freedom of worship”. We can never accept a separation of our religious faith and moral convictions from our public ministries or our political engagement. It’s impossible.

And even trying to do so is evil because it forces us to live two different lives, worshiping God at home and in our churches; and worshiping the latest version of Caesar everywhere else. That turns our private convictions into lies we tell to ourselves and to each other.

Here’s my second point.

Religious faith sincerely believed and humbly lived serves human dignity. It fosters virtue, not conflict. Therefore, it’s vital in building a humane society. This should be too obvious to mention. But one of the key assumptions of the modern secular state – in effect, the secular creation myth – is that religion is naturally prone to violence because it’s irrational and divisive.

Secular, non-religious authority, on the other hand, is allegedly rational and unitive.

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Therefore, the job of secular authority is peacemaking; in other words, it must keep religious fanatics from killing each other and everybody else.

The problem with that line of thought is this: It’s simply an Enlightenment fantasy. Secular politics and ideologies have murdered and oppressed more people in the last one hundred years – often in the name of “science” – than all religions together have managed to mistreat in the last millennium.

What’s really going on in much of today’s political handwringing about religious extremism and looming theocracy is a push by America’s elites and leadership classes to get religion out of the way. God is a competitor in forming the public will, so God needs to go.

Here’s my third point. Man is a moral and believing animal.

The need to believe is hardwired into human nature. Christian Smith, Notre Dame’s distinguished social researcher, notes that all

human beings, everywhere and always, have a need to believe something as an organizing idea or truth, and to behave according to a moral code that distinguishes right from wrong.

Why is that important? It’s important because any claim that atheists, agnostics and a secularized intelligentsia are naturally more “rational” than religious believers is nonsense.

We’re all believers. There are no unbelievers. Smith puts it this way: All human beings are believers, not “knowers” who know with certitude. Everything we know is grounded on presupposed beliefs that cannot be verified with more fundamental proof or certainty that provides us with assurance they are true. That is just as true for atheists as [it is] for religious adherents…. All human knowing is built on believing. That is the human condition.

To put it another way, atheists just worship a smaller and less forgiving god at a different

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altar. And it means that people of faith should make no apologies – none at all – for engaging public issues respectfully but vigorously, guided by a faith that informs and humanizes their reason.

Having said all that, the question is: How can we build a culture of religious freedom?

We can start by changing the way we think. Patriotism is a limited virtue. Our political system has many strengths. But it’s not an end in itself. Majority opinion doesn’t determine what is good and true. Like every other form of social organization, democracy can become a form of idolatry and a license for inhumanity. The deep moral problems we now face in our country didn’t happen overnight. They’ve been fed by a false understanding of freedom for decades, and they have roots in the exile of God from public consciousness. …

Critics often accuse faithful Christians of pursuing a “culture war” on issues like

abortion, sexuality, marriage and the family, and religious liberty. And in a sense, they’re right. We are fighting for what we believe. But of course, so are advocates on the other side of all these issues. They too are “culture warriors,” and neither they nor we should feel uneasy about it. Democracy thrives on the struggle of competing ideas.

We steal from ourselves and from everyone else if we try to avoid that struggle. In fact, two of the worst qualities in any human being are cowardice and acedia. By “acedia,” I mean the kind of moral sloth that masquerades as “tolerance” and leaves a human soul so empty of courage and character that even the devil Screwtape would spit it out.

In real life, democracy is built on two practical pillars: cooperation and conflict. It requires both. Cooperation, because people have a natural hunger for the kind of solidarity that makes all community possible.

And conflict, because people have competing visions of what’s right and true. The more

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deeply they hold their convictions, the more naturally people seek to have those convictions shape society.

What that means for people of faith is this: We have a duty to treat all persons with charity and justice. We also have a duty to seek common ground where possible, but that’s never an excuse for compromising with grave evil. It’s never an excuse for being naive. And it’s never an excuse for standing idly by while our liberty to preach and serve God in the public square is whittled away. As the team at ADF knows better than anyone, we need to work vigorously in law and politics to form our culture in a God-based understanding of human dignity and the purpose of human freedom. Otherwise, we should stop trying to fool ourselves that we really believe what we claim to believe.

There’s more. To work as our country’s political life was intended, America needs a special kind of citizenry; we need a mature, well-informed electorate of persons able to

reason clearly and rule themselves prudently. If that’s true – and it is – then the greatest danger to American liberty in our day is not religious extremism. It’s something very different. It’s a culture of narcissism that cocoons us in dumbed down, bigoted news, vulgarity, distraction and noise, while methodically excluding God from the human imagination.

Kierkegaard once wrote that “the introspection of silence is the condition of all educated intercourse,” and that “talkativeness is afraid of the silence which reveals its emptiness.” Silence feeds the soul. Silence invites God to speak. And silence is exactly what American culture no longer allows.

Securing the place of religious freedom in our society is therefore not just a matter of law and politics, but of prayer, interior renewal – and also education. …

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If we want a culture of religious freedom, we need to begin living that culture here, today, and now. We live it by giving ourselves wholeheartedly to God – by loving God with passion and joy, confidence and courage, and by holding nothing back. God will take care of the rest. Scripture says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps 127:1). In the end, God is the builder. We’re the living stones.

The firmer our faith, the deeper our love, the purer our zeal for God’s will – then the stronger the house of freedom will be that rises in our own lives, and in the life of our nation.

I’ll end now with just a few thoughts that are a bit more personal. I’ll turn seventy-five at the end of September. In accord with Canon Law – the law that orders the internal life of the Catholic Church – I’ll be offering my resignation to Pope Francis. When I sat down to write these remarks, I did it knowing that this talk will probably be the last one I give as Archbishop of Philadelphia.

So the words matter. I’ve been a

priest for almost fifty years and a bishop for more than thirty.

And that gift from God as a priest of Jesus Christ has been a source of deep and enduring happiness. It has been the greatest blessing of my life.

But, in fact, my life has been filled with too many blessings to count – blessings that include so many, many friends. The leaders, staff, and supporters of ADF will always rank very high among those friends. All of you know the importance of the work you do, or you wouldn’t do it. But what you can’t know, at least in this world, is how many thousands of people you’ve lifted up with courage and confidence and hope through your efforts.

That’s the essence of friendship – offering ourselves, out of love, for the sake of others – and friendship is the heart of the Christian life. Every Christian vocation is simply an intimate friendship with God and others who love him. And it always brings forth new life. For a married couple, it brings forth children; for those of us in

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ministry, it brings forth the birth of faith in another person’s heart. Always, it brings forth new life. God radiates beauty, and hope, and new life, and he can’t help himself. It’s in his nature to love. He proved that once and for all on Golgotha. So thank you, to everyone in ADF, for all that you do for the rest of us in his name.

Many years ago, the neurologist Oliver Sacks published a book called Awakenings. It’s the story of an experiment Sacks ran in 1969. Sacks gave the drug L-Dopa to a group of patients who had been catatonic for decades. The results were dramatic. The patients literally “woke up” to a much higher level of understanding, functioning, and communication. And they discovered a world that had greatly changed since their original illness.

The results were temporary. All of the patients eventually slipped back into silence or developed other medical problems. But while they had

their window of clarity they saw the world as it really is, and they experienced it with all of the wonder, suffering, fear, and joy that give life its grandeur.

We need to remember those patients. We need to wake each other up to see the world and our nation as they really are – the good along with the evil. We need to support each other in the work for religious freedom we share. We need to treat each other as friends, not enemies or strangers. We need to learn from each other’s successes and mistakes. And unlike the patients of Dr Sacks, we need to keep each other from slipping back into the narcotic haze that so much of America’s everyday life has become.

To put it another way: It’s important for our own integrity and the integrity of our country to fight for our convictions in the public square. But the greater task is to live what we claim to believe by our actions: fidelity to God, love for spouse and children, loyalty to friends, generosity to the poor, honesty and mercy in dealing with

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others, trust in the goodness of people, and discipline and humility in demanding the most from ourselves.

These things sound like pieties.

That’s all they are, until we try to live them. Then their cost and their difficulty remind us that we create a culture of human dignity in the measure that we give our lives to others.

Nations change when people change. And people change through the witness of other people – people like each of you here today. You create the future with the choices you make.

Speak the truth about the beauty and order of creation: Male and female he created them (Gen 5:2). Fight for your right to love and serve God, and for others to do the same. Defend the dignity of marriage and the family, and witness their meaning and hope to others by the example of your lives. If you do that, you’ll inspire others to do the same.

And you’ll discover in your own life what it means to be fully human.

God bless all of you.

So serve the poor. Help the weak. Protect the unborn child.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Charles J. Chaput, a Capuchin Franciscan, is the archbishop of Philadelphia and the author of Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World.

This article is adapted from an address delivered at the Alliance Defending Freedom Summit on July 9, 2019.

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The Assumption and the key to Evangelization

by Fr Donncha ÓhAodha

A burning question “How can I spread the Gospel more and better?” “How can we be more apostolic in the current climate?” “How could I share the faith more effectively with others in my daily life?” “What is the key to being an instrument of God’s love in my family, workplace and social environment?”

These are surely good questions, expressing a genuine concern which is relevant now and always.

And the answer?

Perhaps we could take the advice of St Bernard from a famous

homily of his: Respice stellam, voca Mariam! – Look to the star, call upon Mary!

The Woman with the answer Specifically we could contemplate Our Lady in the Liturgy of the Assumption. The Book of Revelation presents us with the dazzling image of the woman “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev 12:1).

This Lady of stellar radiance has already appeared fleetingly in Psalm 45:13, which refers to the princess “decked in her chamber with gold-woven

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robes”, while the Church places on Mary’s lips the oracle of Isaiah 61:10: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.”3

intimacy with the entire Communion of the Saints (the crown of twelve stars). Nobody is closer to us than Mary, because no one is closer to the Lord than she is.

In his Assumption homily of 2007, Benedict XVI meditated on the “multidimensional image” of Rev 12:1-6:

Mary gives us the key to being apostles of the Lord. It is a question of immersing ourselves in his life, so as to share his life with others. The more we are bathed in the light of Christ, the more Christ can radiate to the world through us.

Without any doubt a first meaning is that it is Our Lady, Mary, clothed with the sun, that is, with God, totally; Mary who lives totally in God, surrounded and penetrated

by God’s light. Surrounded by the twelve stars, that is, by the twelve tribes of Israel, by the whole People of God, by the whole Communion of Saints; and at her feet, the moon, the image of death and mortality.

Our Lady is clothed with the Sun of Justice, Christ the Lord (cf.

Mal 4:2). Her beauty consists in her identification with Christ.

Thus she defeats death (the moon) and enjoys an unheard-of

The key to being apostles

It is really important to improve how we understand and articulate the Faith. It is truly helpful to improve our understanding of contemporary culture and the mentalities of those around us. But what is absolutely fundamental is to be a branch grafted onto the Vine who is Christ (cf. Jn 15:1ff.). For without him we can do nothing (cf. Jn 15:5), and with him we “can do all things” (cf. Phil 4:13).

This conviction can help us when we face the temptation of pessimism in the work of

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evangelization. How much the devil would like us to give up our efforts to share Christ with the world!

True, we face a veritable tsunami of secularism, an aggressive culture of death, and the scandal of the sins of members of Christ’s Church and of ourselves.

But what is all this compared with Christ “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6)? Christ is the Lord of history. The mission is his and he continues to go on working (cf. Jn 5:17), always and everywhere, and notwithstanding our assessments, his work is eternally fruitful.

Passion for Jesus means passion for his people What is essential in the life of an apostle is to be united with Christ. Being with Christ always implies reaching out towards others. The more we are “in Christ”, the more we are “for others”. It is the fundamental dynamic of the New Commandment: Love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable because of the

nature of a life lived in, with and through Jesus (cf. Jn 13:34).

Benedict XVI explains this beautifully in his encyclical on Christian hope: “The relationship with Jesus is a relationship with the one who gave himself as a ransom for all (cf. 1 Tim 2:6). Being in communion with Jesus Christ draws us into his ‘being for all’; it makes it our own way of being.

He commits us to live for others, but only through communion with him does it become possible truly to be there for others, for the whole… Christ died for all. To live for him means allowing oneself to be drawn into his being for others” (Spe Salvi 28). Pope Francis has put this same teaching succinctly and clearly in his great teaching document on apostolate: “Mission is at once a passion for Jesus and a passion for his people” (Evangelii Gaudium 268).

So sublime, and so close One could be tempted to think that because of her all-holiness,

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Our Lady is somehow distant from us who are all sinners. But the fact that she is so sublime in no way distances her from her children. On the contrary. At Lourdes where down through the years, she has helped so many of her children in very personal ways, Mary identified herself precisely as the Immaculate Conception. Mary’s holiness is the reason why she is so close to us.

no matter how isolated or forgotten.”

The apostles of the New Evangelization can surely learn from Mary that intimacy with Christ is what facilitates intimacy with souls.

“The closer a person is to God, the closer he is to people”.

As Benedict XVI explained with simplicity and clarity: “The closer a person is to God, the closer he is to people. We see this in Mary. The fact that she is totally with God is the reason why she is so close to human beings” (Homily, 8 December 2005).

The December 2015 edition of National Geographic carried the striking cover story of “How the Virgin Mary became the world’s most powerful woman”. After surveying various aspects of Marian devotion from disparate parts of the world the author concluded: “She is the spiritual confidante of billions of people,

This is the key to apostolate. Our efforts at evangelization are a spontaneous fruit of our personal union with Christ. The person who seeks to live in Christ, through prayer and sacraments, who tries to grow in virtue, and especially in charity towards others, is always a natural and effective apostle. To proclaim Christ clearly by how we live and work, and also by speaking about Jesus, is always a fruit of the ascetical effort to welcome the invitation to live “in Christ”.

As St Josemaría puts it in The Way (960): “Just as the clamour of the ocean is made up of the noise of each one of its waves, so the sanctity of your apostolate is

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made up of the personal virtues of each one of you.”

said this prayer daily. It may help us too to grow in apostolic zeal in our daily lives.

In the glory of her Assumption, Mary gives us this encouraging lesson. Clothed with Christ, she is simultaneously in intimate union with his mystical Body, the Church, and by extension with the whole human race, since all people are invited to belong to the People of God.

Dear Jesus, help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go.

Flood my soul with your spirit and life.

Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly,

In her Assumption Mary is the personification of the New Commandment. She is also the image of the Church, which, sometimes despite appearances, is always full of the saving light of Christ, in every time and place, and in the life of each of her faithful.

That my life may only be a radiance of yours.

Shine through me, and be so in me That every soul I come in contact with May feel your presence in my soul.

Pray to be apostolic Communion with Christ and with others, which is the heart of the Church and the essence of the apostolate, is well expressed in a prayer from the writings of the soon to be canonised Blessed John Henry Newman.

Often called the “Fragrance Prayer”, St Teresa of Calcutta

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Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!

Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine, So to shine as to be a light to others;

The light, O Jesus will be all from you; none of it will be mine; It will be you, shining on others through me.

Let me thus praise you the way you love best, by shining on those around me.

Let me preach you without preaching, not by words but by my example, By the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, The evident fullness of the love my heart bears to you.

The Assumption of the Virgin,

by Goya

ABOUT THE
 AUTHOR Rev. Donncha Ó hAodha is a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature, author of several CTS booklets and a regular contributor to Position Papers.

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BOOKS

How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First Century

by Frank Furedi London; Bloomsbury, 2018 306 pages

How Fear Works

by Margaret Somerville

I

currently teach bioethics to medical students and in the past have also taught law students. A theme of the first class I give them is that as members of the professions they are entering they should try to learn to live comfortably with uncertainty if they are to avoid errors, including ethical errors, especially errors of judgment.

Living comfortably with uncertainty is the polar opposite of uncertainty-eliciting fear. The latter causes problems because people who are frightened by uncertainty tend to convert unavoidable uncertainty into a false certainty – they are certain, but they are wrong – and that in turn leads to mistakes, including ethical ones.

Psychologists tell us that uncertainty is a very difficult mental state because it means that we cannot be certain which coping mechanisms we need to employ and that can leave us not using any and feeling unable to cope.

How Fear Works is not difficult to read; in fact it’s very engaging. It covers complex topics and multiple disciplines.

People like me with an interest in post-1960s changes in the societal Zeitgeist, especially changes in shared values, will find the author’s insights

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fascinating and useful – an unusual combination.

finds a more positive orientation towards uncertainty the politicisation of fear will flourish.

Frank Furedi is a retired sociologist and social commentator who often features in the British media. The content of this book is so rich and varied that I cannot do justice to it in a short review. That said, an excellent summary of How Fear Works can be found on the inside flap of the dust cover.

Here’s what that says:

“Society is continually bombarded with the message that the threats it faces are incalculable and cannot be managed or contained. The ascendancy of this outlook has been paralleled by the cultivation of helplessness and passivity – all this has heightened people’s sense of powerlessness and anxiety.

As a consequence we are constantly searching for new forms of security, both physical and ontological.

What are the drivers of fear, what is the role of the media in its promotion, and who actually benefits from this culture of fear? These are some of the issues Furedi tackles to explain the current predicament. He believes that through understanding how fear works, we can encourage attitudes that will help bring about a less fearful future.”

“In How Fear Works, Furedi seeks to explain two interrelated themes: why has fear acquired such a morally commanding status in society today and how has the way we fear today changed from the way that it was experienced in the past?

“Furedi argues that one of the main drivers of the culture of fear is unravelling of moral authority. Fear appears to provide a provisional solution to moral uncertainty and is for that reason embraced by a variety of interests, parties and individuals. Furedi predicts that until society

Instead of protecting us, excessively high levels of fear are

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seriously harming us as individuals, communities and societies. “A less fearful future” is to be intensely desired.

How Fear Works contains many important observations and insights. Here is a random, noncomprehensive assortment of some of its messages:

•

What we fear matters to how we live our lives. For example, people used to fear judgment by God after death, but now they fear suffering while dying. Legalizing physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia can be seen as a response to this fear.

Euthanasia converts the mystery of death to the problem of death and presents a lethal injection as the technological solution to that problem.

•

Furedi sees the breakdown of authority as a cause of fear because it causes people to feel they have no powerful trusted protector. This brings to mind Jonathan Haidt’s research in The Righteous Mind that millennials reject authority and, consequently, might be more fearful than previous generations.

•

There is little scepticism among many people regarding scientific pronouncements. Furedi observes that it can be in the interests of scientists, governments and policymakers in gaining public support to emphasise risks and engender fear.

Euthanasia can be characterized as a “terror management device” or “terror reduction mechanism”. Deep fear elicits free floating anxiety which the person seeks to control, often in post-modern societies with a technological solution. To use such a solution we need to find a focus for our fear. Death elicits, as Furedi says, the “most primal fear”.

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Furedi notes that science has replaced God as the ultimate authority at the societal level – so if science doesn’t support a belief, it is treated as

irrelevant. This is consistent with the secularist attitude that religion is a purely personal private matter and has no place in the public square.

•

•

Furedi correctly identifies the powerful impact of the phenomenon of the medicalization of decisionmaking in 21st Century societies, including in relation to public and social policy decision-making. For example, the same-sex marriage debate in Australia became a question of protecting the mental health of LGBTQI+ people and preventing psychological harm, especially diminishing the risk of suicide. Furedi argues such medicalization results in medicine replacing morals and physicians replacing priests as sources of authority.

•

Words matter: the media use language to create and sustain fear. It benefits them by attracting viewers and readers.

•

At a macro or societal level our attitude to risk has changed from risk as a possibility to risk as a probability. This is a source of the increase in fear in society.

For instance, although postmodern Western democratic societies have much lower levels of crime than in the past, many people believe the contrary.

•

Furedi suggests that parents are overprotective of their children – “helicopter parents” – because they overestimate risks. They are not willing to let their children engage in any activity they see as risky -- to the serious detriment of their children’s development. Over-protected children miss opportunities to develop resilience to adversity or to learn to deal with failure.

It follows from the above two points that the post-modern sin is failure to follow the dictates of medicine and science.

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•

Furedi proposes that because we can’t agree on what the risks are, we can’t agree on the values that should take priority when not all values can be honoured.

•

But we can’t even agree on what legitimately constitutes a value. For example, Furedi writes about “the significance of a crucial development in the moral outlook of society – the transformation of safety into the fundamental value …

[This was] paralleled by the dramatic demotion of the status of personhood. Since the late 1970s, pessimistic cultural attitudes towards the capacity of people to deal with adversity have become the norm. Everyday language reflects the shift through the regular use of terms such as ‘vulnerable’ or ‘at risk’ to describe people.

The corollary of this emphasis on the emotional fragility and powerlessness of individuals is the constant inflation of the range of experiences defined as risky. The definition of harm and of its impact has also expanded to encompass

experiences that in previous times were regarded as unexceptional and normal.

Drinking water from a tap, or eating a large cheeseburger, are now targets of health alerts. In fact virtually anything that you eat has been associated with cancer!

A study of 50 common ingredients, taken randomly from a cookbook, found that 40 of them were the subject of articles, reporting on their cancer risks.” ******* Paradoxically, our increase in uncertainty results from the immensely increased range of knowledge provided by our explorations of vast outer space with astrophysics and deep space research and of vast inner space with genetics and molecular biology. We have exponentially expanded our perception of the unknown. We now know so much more than we knew in the past; we even know that we know hardly anything.

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But instead of viewing the unknown with amazement, wonder and awe, we look at it with great fear.

Wright commented on these words: “Do you know what the most frequent command in the Bible turns out to be? What instruction, what order, is given, again and again, by God, by angels, by Jesus, by prophets and apostles? What do you think – ‘Be Good’? ‘Be holy, for I am holy’? Or, negatively, ‘Don’t Sin’? ‘Don’t be immoral’? No. The most frequent command in the Bible is: ‘Don’t be afraid.’”

Furedi advises that “[t]he most effective way of countering the perspective of fear is through acquainting society with values that offer people the meaning and hope they need to effectively engage with uncertainty. The problem … is not fear as such but society’s difficulty in cultivating values that can guide it to manage uncertainty and the threats it faces.”

The renowned Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s last words were Noli timere, “Be not afraid”.

Anglican Bishop N.T. (Tom)

“How Fear Works” is an important book and a thoughtful reading will be richly rewarding.

Don’t be afraid to explore it!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Margaret Somerville is professor of bioethics in the school of medicine at the University of Notre Dame, Australia. This article is reprinted from www.mercatornet.com with the kind permission of the author.

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FILMS

Spider-Man: Far From Home

by John Mulderig

S

nappy and substantial, Spider-Man: Far From Home (Columbia), director Jon Watts’ follow-up to his 2017 feature Spider-Man: Homecoming, is an adventure full of bloodless derring-do and gentle, innocent romance. As a result, many parents may consider it acceptable for older teens.

Country: USA, 2019 Director: Dome Karukoski Stars: Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins, Colm Meaney

whom he’s smitten, and hanging out with his best pal, Ned (Jacob Batalon).

True to its title, the film finds the eponymous superhero (Tom Holland) traveling across Europe on a summer trip organized for the students of his alter ego Peter Parker’s high school. He wants to spend the journey, which includes stops in Venice and Prague, courting MJ (Zendaya), the vaguely goth classmate with

But hard-driving crime fighter Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) forcefully recruits him to join the battle against the sole survivor of a quartet of monsters known as Elementals. So, at Nick’s behest, Peter teams with Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), an alien whose world – a version of Earth that existed in a different part of the multiverse – was destroyed by the creatures.

He’s eventually so impressed with this new comrade that he gives him the vastly powerful technological system, dubbed EDITH, that he inherited from his late mentor, Tony Stark, alias

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Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr., seen only in images). Peter soon discovers, however, that his trust may have been misplaced.

Screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers continue to explore the franchise’s recurring theme about the responsibilities that come with power. In this case, Peter’s regifting of EDITH, a sort of weaponized Alexa or Siri, is symptomatic of his doubts about his ability to step into Tony’s shoes. (The fact that Peter is mourning Tony connects the movie not only to its predecessor but to Avengers: Endgame from earlier this year in which Iron Man’s self-sacrificing death was portrayed.)

The script touches comically on some subjects unfit for little kids.

Thus a character is quoted as theorizing that Peter’s long, mysterious absences while he’s off being Spider-Man are due to his secret career as a male escort.

material in Peter’s possession but concealed this discovery from May. These brief jokes are intended light-heartedly, but they’re clearly not fare for small fry – who might also be frightened by the scale and intensity of the action.

The film contains frequent stylized combat, mature references, including to pornography and prostitution, at least one mild oath, as well as a couple of crude and a few crass terms. The Catholic News Service classification is A-III – adults.

The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Similarly, Tony’s sidekick, Happy (Jon Favreau) – who has begun a romance with Peter’s guardian, Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) – references the fact that he once came across some salacious

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Mulderig is a reviewer for Catholic News Service. © 2019 Catholic News Service. Reprinted with permission from CNS. www.catholicnews.com

LEARN TO COMMUNICATE IN YOUR MARRIAGE Next Programme: 4-6 October 2019

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