Position Papers - December 2016 by Position Papers

A review of Catholic affairs

At the Beginning of Advent: An Advent Dialogue with the Sick Joseph Ratzinger

Intolerance and discrimination against Christians Massimo Introvigne

Number 504 · December 2016 €3 · £2.50 · $4

Film review:

Doctor Strange Bishop Robert Barron

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Number 504 · December 2016 Editorial by Rev. Gavan Jennings

In Passing: Global warming or global amnesia – which is the bigger threat? by Michael Kirke

Why I was wrong about Christianity by Tom Holland

Can religious freedom survive same-sex marriage? by Paul Coleman

At the Beginning of Advent: An Advent Dialogue with the Sick by Joseph Ratzinger

Intolerance and discrimination against Christians in Europe and North America by Massimo Introvigne

Book review: Beyond Radical Secularism by Rev. John McCloskey

Film review: Doctor Strange by John P. McCarthy

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

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Editorial T

he year now drawing to a close has been, with the Brexit vote and the Trump election, the year of political surprises. There are many lessons which can be learnt from these two events, for instance that in politics anything can happen, that the media are sometimes out of touch with popular sentiment, and not to trust polls completely. But there is also a broader lesson which we could take from such unexpected turns of events, and that is that fatalism must be avoided. Fatalism views the course of history as predetermined – a juggernaut careering along, generally from bad to worse. For the fatalist man is inherently evil, set unchangeably on a course toward successively worse choices. But the message of Christianity begins in Bethlehem with an angelic affirmation that there are indeed “men of good will” who seek to do God’s will and who are open to the message of the Messiah. Our hope is not only in God, but also in an inherent, albeit wounded, goodness of man. Edmund Burke observed that all that was necessary for evil to conquer was for good men to do nothing; but equally we could say that evil can only triumph where men think it cannot be otherwise. The figure of the Infant Jesus lying on the straw in Bethlehem fills us with joy, but that joy is complemented by the holy men and women – of good will – who populate the Nativity narrative. From his very infancy Christ manifests to us the goodness of God, but also reminds not to give up on our fellow man too quickly. With this thought I would like to wish all our readers a very blessed Christmas and a happy New Year.

In Passing: Global warming or global amnesia – which is the bigger threat? by Michael Kirke

he catastrophe of our time which conventional wisdom identifies readily – even ad nauseam – is the calamity we are promised if we do not deal effectively with the causes and consequences of global climate change. But there is an even greater catastrophe unfolding in our midst. It is nothing less than the wholesale destruction of the fabric of our civilization and it is far more threatening to the welfare of humanity than the natural changes to our climate.

against this threat. Secondly, human ingenuity, scientific and technological resourcefulness are all on our side to ensure that we will probably cope reasonably well with the effects of this unruly phenomenon.

Two reasons should assure us that global warming is not going to wipe out the human race. For one, that elusive force of nature, ‘political will’, seems now to be in harness to lead the charge

Surely one of the greatest malaises of our time is our failure to value our past? That failure is primarily the result of our self-inflicted ignorance. Everywhere around us we see

Much more destructive of our fragile civilization than the climate-change denial everyone is getting so worked up about is the consignment of our wealth of human memory and tradition to the scrap-heap of history.

public policy undermining that vital umbilical cord which links – or should link – successive generations of mankind down through the ages. The end result is a denial which amounts to blindness – creating an empty black hole where there should be a vast reservoir of truth and wisdom. The consequences of such a radical denial cannot but be catastrophic.

drama, such as Downton Abbey: “This rosy vision of the past… says, ‘Don’t bother your heads with what’s going on now, just wallow in fake nostalgia.’ It’s bad history, bad drama. It puts your brain to sleep. “It’s the opposite of what a good broadcaster should do, which is stimulate and invigorate. You might as well take a Mogadon as watch it.”

It is not that we are unhappy to indulge our nostalgic sentiments with pastiche historical concoctions like Downton Abbey, or the bizarre mindless faux historical narratives of Dan Brown. All this, some of it little more than vain fantasizing, without the foundation of truthful scholarship, without the training of young minds in the skills involved in the pursuit of historical truth, will at best be nothing more than a superficial gloss. At worst it will be up there with the Wagnerian fantasies of Adolf Hitler, foundation stones for new tyrannies.

What history must do – and include in that concept everything we know about archaeology and the study of historical literature and art – is unite us with the generations of men and women who have preceded us, not for a moment denying that among them we find the good, the bad and the ugly. The loss of intimacy with the minds of the past which is evident in the minds of the present must remind us of one thing. It must recall for us the hordes of barbarians who descended on the civilizations of the past – the Vandals, the Goths and the Huns on the Roman world, the Viking hordes invading the Celtic world, and in

As veteran film-maker Ken Loach said recently, when asked about the popularity of British

our own time, the Islamic jihadists and their destruction of the remnants of the ancient civilizations of the Middle East.

All this, in part at least, is a consequence of the neglect of history and its systematic removal from school curricula.

Just recently in Britain a campaign has had to be launched to prevent the removal of archaeology from the senior school curriculum. The subject is now joining art history and classical civilization in the school bin. Sir Tony Robinson, presenter of the serious television history programme, Time Team, is dismayed at the trend. “It feels like the Visigoths at the gates of Rome,” Sir Tony told the Guardian. “All these incredibly valuable and important subjects are being cast into the fire.”

Dorothy Day, reflecting in the mid twentieth century on the loss of the sense of the past and the sense of their origins among young Americans, wrote, “Tradition! We scarcely know the word any more. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington.” She regrets the loss of the sense of origin of the Irish, the Italian, the Lithuanian who have forgotten their birthplaces and “no longer listen to their mothers when they say, ‘when I was a little girl in Russia, or Hungary, or Sicily.’ They leave their faith and their folk songs and costumes and handcrafts, and try to be something which they call ‘an American’”.

At the heart of all this is a denial of the value of our knowledge of the past and of the traditions of of our ancestors. Denial of tradition is a denial of our humanity and it is at the heart of modern individualism, that ideology which is even more inimical to our common good than Communism was.

G. K. Chesterton read the issue politically, interpreting the

denigration of tradition as something alien in a true democratic heart. “Tradition is democracy extended through time. Tradition means giving the vote to that most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. Tradition is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who are walking about.”

Burke and Thomas Paine were the leading protagonists. Yuval Levin in his masterful book, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Left and Right, shows how the issue of tradition, its value and relevance, became the hinge on which the future character of our society and our world was going to turn – and is still turning.

The enemies of tradition have probably always existed. Their interventions in history have, for the most part, been violent ones. But it was not until the Enlightenment that they really took on an ideological character. In the culture war which their emergence sparked, Edmund

Paine was a man who clearly believed, as he wrote in Common Sense, one of the seminal texts inspiring the American Revolution, that “we have it in our power to begin the world over again.” For Burke such an idea was a dangerous anathema, because it

ignored all the essential realities of our human nature. For him history was a process of clarification through experience, and political change is among its constant features. But if ignorance of history and tradition prevail in a society then such change is at a terrible risk of being chaotic and human suffering will be the consequence.

posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors’” “If ‘the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken and no one generation could link with the other,’ Burke worries, then ‘men would become little better than the flies of a summer.’” For Burke our links to our ancestors – through our knowledge of their history and the traditions which have come down to us from them – are “capital” to which the present and the future are entitled, the accumulated knowledge and practice of our forefathers. The radicals, Burke argues, seek “to deprive men of the benefit of the collected wisdom of mankind, and to make them blind disciples of their own particular presumption.” He therefore sees himself, Levin explains, as a defender of the present, not the past, and sees the revolutionaries as a threat to present happiness as well as to future order.

Yuval Levin sums up: “Paine seeks to understand man apart from his social setting, while Burke thinks man is incomprehensible apart from the circumstances into which he is born—circumstances largely the making of prior generations.” “Burke expressly denies that we can look out for the needs of the future even as we reject the lessons and achievements of the past. Access to those lessons and achievements is one of the most crucial needs of the future, as he sees it, so the present-centered vision of the revolutionaries must involve betraying the future as much as the past: ‘People will not look forward to

The radicals of the Eighteenth century, like Paine, wanted to

start the world anew. The gender-bending radicals of our day, driven by the ideology of radical individualism are going even further. They, ignoring the wealth of human experience evident in the history of mankind, want to take our very nature and fashion it in the image of their own strange fantasies.

A breath can make them, as a breath has made; but a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, When once destroyed can never be supplied.” We live dangerously when we live without the benefit of the wisdom of our forebears, despite all their flaws and failures.

We might borrow a thought from Burke’s contemporary and fellow alumnus of Trinity College Dublin, Oliver Goldsmith, reading the concepts of history and tradition into his word, “pride”. “Princes and Lords may flourish, or may fade:

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.

Why I was wrong about Christianity by Tom Holland

hen I was a boy, my upbringing as a Christian was forever being weathered by the gale force of my enthusiasms. First, there were dinosaurs. I vividly remember my shock when, at Sunday school one day, I opened a children’s Bible and found an illustration on its first page of Adam and Eve with a brachiosaur. Six years old I may have been, but of one thing – to my regret – I was rock-solid certain: no human being had ever seen a sauropod. That the teacher seemed not to care about this error only compounded my sense of outrage and bewilderment. A faint shadow of doubt, for the first time, had

been brought to darken my Christian faith. With time, it darkened further still. My obsession with dinosaurs – glamorous, ferocious, extinct – evolved seamlessly into an obsession with ancient empires. When I read the Bible, the focus of my fascination was less the children of Israel or Jesus and his disciples than their adversaries: the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Romans. In a similar manner, although I vaguely continued to believe in God, I found Him infinitely less charismatic than my favourite Olympians: Apollo, Athena, Dionysus. Rather than lay down laws and condemn other deities as demons, they

preferred to enjoy themselves. And if they were vain, selfish and cruel, that only served to endow them with the allure of rock stars.

world has grown grey from thy breath.” Instinctively, I agreed.

By the time I came to read Edward Gibbon and the other great writers of the Enlightenment, I was more than ready to accept their interpretation of history: that the triumph of Christianity had ushered in an “age of superstition and credulity”, and that modernity was founded on the dusting down of longforgotten classical values. My childhood instinct to think of the biblical God as the po-faced enemy of liberty and fun was rationalised. The defeat of paganism had ushered in the reign of Nobodaddy, and of all the crusaders, inquisitors and black-hatted puritans who had served as his acolytes. Colour and excitement had been drained from the world. “Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean,” Swinburne wrote, echoing the apocryphal lament of Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor of Rome. “The

So, perhaps it was no surprise that I should have continued to cherish classical antiquity as the period that most stirred and inspired me. When I came to write my first work of history, Rubicon, I chose a subject that had been particularly close to the hearts of the philosophes: the age of Cicero. The theme of my second, Persian Fire, was one that even in the 21st century was serving Hollywood, as it had served Montaigne and Byron, as an archetype of the triumph of liberty over despotism: the Persian invasions of Greece. The years I spent writing these studies of the classical world – living intimately in the company of Leonidas and of Julius Caesar, of the hoplites who had died at Thermopylae and of the legionaries who had triumphed at Alesia – only confirmed me in my fascination: for Sparta and Rome, even when subjected to the minutest historical inquiry, did not cease to seem possessed of the qualities of an apex predator. They continued to

stalk my imaginings as they had always done – like a tyrannosaur.

must hold the Christian sect in horror.” Rather than acknowledge that his ethical principles might owe anything to Christianity, he preferred to derive them from a range of other sources – not just classical literature, but Chinese philosophy and his own powers of reason. Yet Voltaire, in his concern for the weak and oppressed, was marked more enduringly by the stamp of biblical ethics than he cared to admit. His defiance of the Christian God, in a paradox that was certainly not unique to him, drew on motivations that were, in part at least, recognisably Christian.

Yet giant carnivores, however wondrous, are by their nature terrifying. The longer I spent immersed in the study of classical antiquity, the more alien and unsettling I came to find it. The values of Leonidas, whose people had practised a peculiarly murderous form of eugenics, and trained their young to kill uppity Untermenschen by night, were nothing that I recognised as my own; nor were those of Caesar, who was reported to have killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. It was not just the extremes of callousness that I came to find shocking, but the lack of a sense that the poor or the weak might have any intrinsic value. As such, the founding conviction of the Enlightenment – that it owed nothing to the faith into which most of its greatest figures had been born – increasingly came to seem to me unsustainable.

“We preach Christ crucified,” St Paul declared, “unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.” He was right. Nothing could have run more counter to the most profoundly held assumptions of Paul’s contemporaries – Jews, or Greeks, or Romans. The notion that a god might have suffered torture and death on a cross was so shocking as to appear repulsive. Familiarity with the biblical narrative of the

“Every sensible man,” Voltaire wrote, “every honourable man,

Crucifixion has dulled our sense of just how completely novel a deity Christ was. In the ancient world, it was the role of gods who laid claim to ruling the universe to uphold its order by inflicting punishment â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not to suffer it themselves. Today, even as belief in God fades across the West, the countries that were once collectively known as Christendom continue to bear the stamp of the two-millenniaold revolution that Christianity represents. It is the principal reason why, by and large, most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we

generally assume that every human life is of equal value. In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian. This article is reprinted with the kind permission of the NewStatesman.

ABOUT THEâ&#x20AC;¨ AUTHOR

Tom Holland is a British writer, who has published several popular works on classical and medieval history as well as creating two documentaries. His most recent book, Dynasty: the Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar, is published by Abacus.

Can religious freedom survive same-sex marriage? by Paul Coleman

ame-sex marriage presents no threat to freedom of religion, or so we are told. After all, the sky did not fall in the day that the US Supreme Court voted five-to-four, in the case of Obergefell v Hodges, to make same-sex marriage a legal right. On the whole, life went on as normal. But on both sides of the Atlantic, the evidence is mounting – religious freedom (and freedom in general) will suffer at the altar of same-sex marriage. This is because in the current clamour to legalise same-sex marriage, dissent is not to be tolerated, and opponents of same-sex marriage must be silenced.

Here are five ways in which freedom is – and will be – threatened.

1.  The workplace Anyone involved in work relating to marriage and relationships has faced significant pressure to condone, facilitate and support same-sex marriages – despite the dictates of his or her conscience. In some cases, failure to do so has resulted in the termination of employment. For example, Lillian Ladele was forced to leave her job as a London-based marriage

registrar because she would not officiate same-sex civil unions. Similarly, UK Christian sex therapist Gary McFarlane was dismissed for gross misconduct because he had a conscientious objection to treating same-sex couples.

argued that he should stay on as chief executive worried that his stance would reduce the company’s ability to attract people to their mission.” Such cases will surely increase if the current trajectory is followed.

And other sectors are vulnerable to this process, too. In 2011, Adrian Smith, a housing manager in Manchester, was demoted and had his salary reduced by 40 per cent because he said on his personal Facebook page that same-sex marriage was “an equality too far”. What’s more, when it was discovered that Brendan Eich, the CEO and founder of internet company Mozilla, donated a small amount of his private income to Proposition 8, a ballot measure to ban gay marriages in California, he was forced to resign. As a columnist for the New York Times explained: “Many people at Mozilla did not consider Mr Eich’s views on gay marriage to be completely irrelevant to his role as chief executive. Even those who

2.  The marketplace Same-sex marriage also demands complete orthodoxy in the marketplace; any marriagerelated business is under serious threat of being sued and ultimately closed if it does not conform. Bakers, florists, photographers, guest houses, wedding venues and printing companies who have refused to allow their creative talents or facilities to be used to promote or celebrate same-sex marriages have been sued in a number of countries. The brutal message of these cases is clear: “If you don’t believe in same-sex marriage, then don’t run a business involving marriages or relationships.” One can only imagine how much harder it will

become for individuals and companies to act according to conscience now that same-sex marriage has been legalised across the world.

editorial board of one student paper declared that “it will no longer accept, nor will it print, op-eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage”.

The public square

Access to services Free speech is also under significant threat. Barely a month goes by without another street preacher being arrested on the streets of Britain for daring to read what the Bible says about homosexuality. The same is true on the continent. In 2012, the Bishop of Madrid was investigated by the police for preaching a Good Friday homily that named homosexuality among a list of sins; two years later, a Spanish cardinal suffered a similar fate – as did a Dutch imam and a Belgian bishop. Although the US First Amendment protects free speech to a higher degree, censorship around this issue still exists – particularly on university campuses and in the media. For example, immediately following the Supreme Court decision, the

If a ‘traditional’ view of marriage is so intolerable, why should it be given a platform at all? This logic is now being applied to the access of services that are otherwise available to the public. For example, in 2012 several organisations attempted to host a conference on the legal definition of marriage at the Law Society in London. The conference was entitled ‘One Man, One Woman’, which was the legal definition of marriage at the time. However, the Law Society cancelled the booking, claiming that the conference breached its diversity policy. Similar calls are being made in the US. My organisation, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), has been actively involved in defending marriage

as between one man and one woman across the US. A week after the Supreme Court decision, the ADF hosted a conference in California. Before the event was due to take place, one angry group launched an online petition calling for the conference to be banned, and it quickly gathered over 50,000 signatures. It explained: “The anti-gay Alliance Defending Freedom is hosting a giant training [sic] in California. They want to train hundreds of lawyers to push for hateful antigay laws globally…. A global outcry could get [the venue] Marriott to condemn the ADF’s anti-gay values and stop the training altogether.” Nothing came of the petition on this occasion, but time will tell whether this illiberal bullying and hysteria will eventually force those with ‘traditional’ views from almost every corner of public life.

5.  Churches and charities We are also beginning to see the impact that same-sex marriage

is having on private associations – particularly churches and charities. It is a near certainty that charities in receipt of public funding will soon have to conform to the same-sex marriage mantra or lose their funding. But there is also a possibility that even charities that do not receive any public money will come under pressure for opposing same-sex marriage. Days after the Supreme Court ruling, Mark Oppenheimer wrote in Time that “organisations that dissent from settled public policy” should have their tax-exempt status abolished or greatly diminished. After all, the logic goes, why should the public purse subsidise these ‘bigoted’ dissenters? There is also a strong likelihood that, if things continue along their current course, even churches will be forced to conform or face the consequences. In 1989, Denmark became the first country in the world to allow same-sex couples legally to register as domestic partners,

and more recently it legalised same-sex marriage. In doing so, the Danish government required the state church to conduct same-sex ceremonies within its churches. This model is currently the exception, not the rule. But as Denmark was the first country to legalise same-sex unions, it is likely that other countries may follow it down this coercive route in the future. Conclusion It is true that the day Obergefell v Hodges was decided, the sky did not fall in. The same was true the day the British parliament enacted the Marriage

(Same-Sex) Couples Act in 2013, and the day Ireland voted to change its constitutional definition of marriage in May 2015. But on both sides of the Atlantic, same-sex marriage continues to restrict religious freedom in farreaching ways. If members of the public refuse to approve of same-sex marriage, they will be labeled as bigots and shut out of public life. Given the speed by which all this is happening, it is fair to assume that the worst is yet to come. This article is reprinted with the kind permission of Spiked Review.

ABOUT THEâ&#x20AC;¨ AUTHOR

Paul Coleman serves as senior legal counsel for ADF International. He is a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales and has represented many clients before the European Court of Human Rights and other international bodies.

At the Beginning of Advent: An Advent Dialogue with the Sick by Joseph Ratzinger

hen the quiet joy of the period before Christmas makes itself felt on every side, many factors can make it especially hard to be sick. The burden of sickness prevents us from truly sharing in the joy others feel. But perhaps Advent can nevertheless become a medicine of the soul that makes it easier to bear the enforced inaction and the pain of your illness. Indeed, perhaps Advent can help us discover the unobtrusive grace that can lie in the very fact of being sick. A very personal Advent of one’s own Let us reflect on what the word “Advent” actually means. The

Latin word adventus can be translated as “presence” or “arrival". In the vocabulary of classical antiquity, it was a technical term for the arrival of a high official and especially for the arrival of kings or emperors in a province. It could, however, also express the arrival of a deity who emerged from hiddenness and gave proof of his presence through mighty works or of a god whose presence was solemnly celebrated in a cultic act. The Christians adopted this word in order to express their special relationship to Jesus Christ. For Christians, he was the king who had entered this wretched province Earth and

bestowed on it the gift of his visit; and they believed that he was present in the liturgical assembly. In general terms, when they used this word, they intended to say: God is here. He has not withdrawn from the world. He has not left us alone. Although we cannot see him and take hold of him as we do with objects in this world, nevertheless he is here, and he comes to us in many ways. Accordingly, the word visitatio is closely connected to the meaning of the word “Advent". This means “visit”, but our ecclesiastical language has long been accustomed to translate it as “visitation”. And a strange shift in our thinking has occurred here: the word “visitation” has almost completely lost the joyful contents of the word “visit”. We no longer think of its original meaning; rather, we think of “visitations” as burdens and labors that we interpret as a punishment “visited upon us” by God. But the opposite ought in fact to be the case! The word “visitation” (or “visit”) ought to help us perceive that even hard

things may contain something of the beauty of Advent. Just like a great joy, so too illness and suffering can be a very personal Advent of one’s own – a visit by the God who enters my life and wants to encounter me personally. Even when it is difficult for us, we should at least try to understand the days of our illness in this way: The Lord has interrupted my activity for a time in order to let me be still. In my daily living, I have little time for him and little time for myself. I am completely involved from morning to evening in all the things I have to do, and I even succeed in eluding my own grasp, because I do not know how to be alone with myself. My job possesses me; the society in which I live possesses me; entertainment of various kinds possesses me; but I do not possess myself. And this means that I gradually go to seed like an overgrown garden, first in my external activities and, then, in my inner life, too. I am propelled along by my activities, for I am

merely a cog in their great machinery. But now God has drawn me out of all this. I am obliged to be still. I am obliged to wait. I am obliged to reflect on myself; I am obliged to bear being alone. I am obliged to bear pain, and I am obliged to accept the burden of my own self. All this is hard. But may it not be the case that God is waiting for me in this stillness? May it not be the case that he is doing here what Jesus says in the parable of the vine: “Every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (Jn 15:2)? If I learn to accept myself in these days of stillness, if I accept the pain, because the Lord is using it to purify me – does this not make me richer than if I had earned a lot of money? Has not something happened to me that is more durable and fruitful than all those things that can be counted and calculated? A visit by the Lord – perhaps illness can present itself in a new light when we see it as a part of Advent. For when we rebel

against it, this is not only because it is painful or because it is hard to be still and alone: we rebel against it because there are so many important things we ought to be doing and because illness seems meaningless. But it is not in the least meaningless! In the structure of human life as a whole, it is profoundly meaningful. It can be a moment in our life that belongs to God, a time when we are open to him and thus learn to rediscover our own selves. Perhaps we should try an experiment. Let us understand the individual events of the day as little signs God sends us. Let us not take note only of the annoying and unpleasant things; we should endeavor to see how often God lets us feel something of his love. To keep a kind of inner diary of good things would be a beautiful and healing task. The Lord is here. This Christian certainty is meant to help us look at the world with new eyes and to understand the “visitation” as a visit, as one way in which he can come to us and be close to us.

Paths and forms of waiting A second basic element of Advent is waiting â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a waiting that is an act of hope. Advent thus shows us the very essence of Christian time and the true nature of history. Jesus revealed this in many parables: in the story of the servants who are waiting for the return of their master or of those other servants who forget his return and behave as if they were the proprietors; in the story of the virgins who await the bridegroom or of those other virgins who cannot wait for him; and in the parables of sowing and harvest. In his life here on earth, man is one who waits. As a child, he wants to be an adult; as an adult, he wants to forge ahead and be successful; and finally, he yearns for rest. At last, there comes the time when he realizes that he has hoped for too little: he has set his hopes on a job and a good position, but now he has nothing else left for which to hope. Mankind has never ceased to hope for better times; Christians hope that the Lord passes

through the whole of history and that he will one day gather up all our tears and labors, so that everything will find its explanation and its fulfillment inhis kingdom. Nothing shows more clearly than a period of illness that man is one who waits. Every day, we wait for signs of improvement, and ultimately we wait for a complete recovery. At the same time, however, we discover that there are very different forms of waiting. When the time is not filled with a meaningful presence, waiting becomes unbearable. When the present moment remains completely empty â&#x20AC;&#x201C; when all we can do is to look for something to come, and there is nothing at all in the here and now every second is too long. And waiting is an intolerable burden when it remains completely uncertain whether we actually dare expect anything. But when time itself is meaningful and each moment contains something valuable of its own, the joyful anticipation of something greater, some thing

still to come, makes even more precious that which we already experience. And it gives us a kind of invisible force that bears us across the individual moments. The Christian Advent wants to help us attain this kind of waiting, for this is the truly Christian form of waiting and hoping. This is because the gifts of Jesus Christ do not belong purely to the future: they penetrate the present time, too. He is already present in a hidden manner. He speaks to me in many ways â&#x20AC;&#x201C; through Sacred Scripture, through the Church year, through the saints, through many different events in my daily life, and through the whole of creation, which looks different when he stands behind it than when it is obscured by the mist of an uncertain origin and an uncertain future. I can speak to him; I can utter lamentations in his presence; and I can hold up my sufferings, my impatience, and my questions to him, aware that he always hears me. If God exists, then there is no meaningless time, no time

devoid of significance. Every moment has its value, even if all I can do is to endure my illness in silence. If God exists, then there is always something to hope for, even where no human voice can any longer summon me to hope. And old age and retirement are no longer the last stage of my life, a position from which all I can do is look backward: for something greater always lies ahead, and it is precisely the time of an apparent uselessness that can be the highest form of human ripening. Christian hope does not devalue time. On the contrary, it means that every moment of life possesses its own value; it means that we can accept the present and that we ought to live it to the full, because everything we have accepted in our heart will remain. A time of joy that no suffering can drive away This helps us to understand a third aspect of Advent. It is not only the time of the presence and the awaiting of the Eternal God; since it is both of these, it is in a unique manner also a time

of joy, a joy that dwells within us and cannot be driven away by suffering. Perhaps the easiest way to understand this is to look at the inner meaning of our Advent customs. Almost all of these are rooted in passages of Scripture that the Church employs in this time as words of her prayer. Here, the faithful people have, as it were, translated Scripture into visible signs. For example, we read in Psalm 96: “Then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy before the LORD, for he comes.” The liturgy has expanded this, drawing on other texts in the Psalms, to form the following affirmation: “The mountains and hills will sing praise before God, and all the trees of the wood will clap their hands, for the Lord, the ruler, is coming to rule for ever.” The Christmas trees we decorate are simply an attempt to make these words visible. The Lord is here – our ancestors believed this and knew this, and so the trees had to go out to meet him, they had to bow down before

him, the trees themselves had to become a song of praise to their Lord. The same certainty of faith led them to make the words about the singing mountains and hills a reality. They gave a voice to the mountains, and their singing resounds down through the centuries into our own days, letting us sense something of the nearness of the Lord – for it is only he who could give men such melodies. Even a custom like Christmas baking, apparently such an external activity, has its roots in the Church’s Advent liturgy, which makes its own the glorious words of the Old Testament in these days of the declining year: “In that day, the mountains will drip sweetness, and the rivers will flow with milk and honey.” People of old found in such words the embodiment of their hopes for a world redeemed. And once again, our ancestors celebrated Christmas as the day on which God truly came. When he comes at Christmas, he distributes his honey (so to speak). Truly, the earth must flow with this honey on that day: where he is present,

all bitterness disappears, and there is harmony between heaven and earth, between God and man. The honey and the sweets are a sign of this peace, of concord and of joy.

precisely for those who are oppressed. And this is why he has awakened an echo so pure that its consoling power can touch the hearts even of unbelievers.

This is why Christmas has become the feast when we give presents, when we imitate the God who has given his own self and has thereby given us once again that life which truly becomes a gift only when the “milk” of our existence is sweetened by the “honey” of being loved. And this love is not threatened by any death, any infidelity, or any meaninglessness.

Perhaps the right way to celebrate Advent is to let the signs of God’s love that we receive in this period penetrate our soul, without resistance, without questions and quibbling. Warmed by these signs, we can then receive in full confidence the immeasurable kindness of this child who alone had the power to make the mountains sing and to transform the trees of the wood into a praise of God.

Ultimately, all this finds its unity in the joy that God has become a child who encourages us to trust as children trust and to give and receive gifts.

This meditation was written during Cardinal Ratzinger’s time as Archbishop of Munich.

It may be difficult for us to accept this joyful music when we are tormented by questions, when we are afflicted both by bodily illness and psychological problems, and these would tend to make us rebel against the God whom we cannot understand. But this child is a sign of hope

Intolerance and discrimination against Christians in Europe and North America by Massimo Introvigne

n 2011, I served as Representative of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) for combating racism, xenophobia, and intolerance and discrimination against Christians and members of other religions. There were two other representatives for combating anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. “Other religions” meant all religions other than Judaism and Islam.The OSCE is the largest organization dealing with international security and human rights, apart from the United Nations. Its participating states include Canada, the US, all countries in Europe and in the former USSR, including Central Asia nations like Mongolia.

At the concluding of an OSCE ministerial meeting in 2011 in Lithuania, Mgr. Dominique Mamberti, at that time Secretary for the Holy See’s Relations with the States, praised “the outstanding work that was done to combat intolerance against Christians”. He particularly referred to the conference we organized in Rome on September 12, 2011 on Hate Incidents and Crimes against Christians as “a successful and hopeful event”. At the Rome conference, I introduced the “Rome Model”, predicting a slippery slope from intolerance to discrimination and from discrimination to hate crimes. The OSCE and other bodies quoted repeatedly the

Rome Model in the years after the event.

Argentinian postmodernist artist Léon Ferrari (1920-2013) offered another example of intolerant art. In 2004, Cardinal Bergoglio, the present Pope, called Ferrari’s works “a shame” and “blasphemy”, and acted in court to prevent some of them from being exhibited.

1.  Intolerance The focus of the Rome Model is on Christians, but is valid for all cases where a spiral of intolerance is at work. Intolerance is a cultural phenomenon. A group is ridiculed through stereotypes and depicted as malignant, evil, an obstacle to happiness and progress. Benedict XVI was the target of a particularly vicious intolerance, but he was not the only Pope to be targeted by intolerant cartoons, articles, and movies. Although artistic freedom is important, the arts may also become an instrument of intolerance. While certain works of art critical of religion are not intolerant, others are. Examples include Nazi artists depicting the Jews as evil and anti-Christian provocations such as Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987), where Serrano photographed a crucifix submerged by the artist’s own urine. World-famous

With the tragic events of Charlie Hebdo in 2015, the question acquired a dramatic urgency. No one could condone criminal attacks by ultra-fundamentalist terrorists. On the other hand, some cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo were in themselves intolerant of both Islam and Christianity. Pope Francis stated in an interview, “In freedom of expression there are limits”. He also argued that the notion that every public offense against religion should be admitted is based on “the idea that religions or expressions of religion are a sort of subculture which are tolerated but insignificant; they are not part of our enlightened culture. This is one legacy of the Enlightenment”.

2.  Discrimination In the Rome Model, discrimination, a legal process, soon follows intolerance. There is a logic in this progression. If a group or organization is evil and threatens public happiness, we need laws against it. Discrimination against Christians typically involve limiting their freedom of speech on certain subjects, denying conscientious objection in matters they regard as crucial, forbidding the public exhibition of Christian symbols, limiting or reducing their freedom to operate schools, and allowing courts to interfere in the internal affairs of the churches. In recent years The European Court of Human Rights has played an ambiguous role about anti-Christian intolerance. In Lautsi (2009), it banned crucifixes from Italian public schools, although the decision was overturned on appeal in 2011.In Eweida (2013), it allowed wearing a small cross at a British Airways check-in counter – but not in hospitals, the Court said

the same day in Chaplin (2013). In Ladele (2013), the Court concluded that conscientious objection by a Christian municipal registrar, Lilian Ladele, against the celebration of same-sex marriages was not allowed. In this case, an appeal was not admitted. In Sindicatul (2012), the Court tried to compel the Romanian government and the Romanian Orthodox Church itself to accept that priests may form a trade union hostile to the hierarchy – and remain in the Church. After vocal protests by many Christian churches, and the Holy See, the decision was overturned on appeal in 2013.

3.  Hate Crimes The third stage of the spiral of intolerance leads from discrimination to hate crimes. Here again, there is a method in the madness. If discrimination fails to suppress the evil group or organization, it is not surprising that radicals may decide to take the law in their own hands and resort to actual violence.

Hate crimes against Christians do not occur only in Africa or Asia. The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians, a Catholic NGO based in Vienna, has documented hundreds of cases: churches vandalized, statues destroyed or decapitated, priests and even bishops attacked. A case in point is Femen, a feminist, pro-gay movement founded in Ukraine in 2008. It is known for vicious attacks to Catholic churches (including Notre Dame in Paris, 2013) and personalities (such as Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela of Spain in 2014), and for destroying religious symbols. The group gained notoriety by destroying in Kiev in 2012 the giant cross erected in memory of Stalin’s victims. Recent books raised serious questions about Femen’s obscure financing and ties to prostitution and pornography networks. On the other hand, they seem to have powerful political ties. In 2013, France used the image of Femen leader Imma Shevchenko as the national symbol Marianne in one of its stamps, a choice personally

defended by President François Hollande. The spiral of intolerance – from intolerance to discrimination and from discrimination to hate crimes and persecution – applies to many groups. Jews in Nazi Germany were first attacked through books and caricatures and then discriminated by the laws: and in the end, Auschwitz came. Combating discrimination against Roma and Sinti minorities was a key part of my OSCE mandate. In many countries, they are first subject to intolerance through stereotypes (“they are all thieves”), then targeted by discriminatory laws (special passports, problems in obtaining documents), and very often end up becoming victims of hate crimes. Another example concerns those religious minorities labeled as “cults” by the popular media. After some (very real and sometimes tragic) incidents involving “cults”, in several European countries anti-cult movements were organized and anti-cult laws were passed. France and Belgium published

official lists of “cults” (in French, “sectes”) including, together with dangerous criminal organizations, dozens of bizarre but more or less harmless religious minorities. Anti-cult propaganda continues to be officially sponsored and supported by mainline media in France and elsewhere. The case of cults illustrates the sociological notion of “moral panic”, as defined by South African sociologist Stanley Cohen (1942-2013). Some “cults” are, in fact, criminal – just as some Romas and Sintis are thieves. Moral panics start from real (i.e. not imaginary) problems connected with some groups. However, the prevalence of the problem is exaggerated through folk statistics, and negative actions perpetrated by some individuals are attributed to the whole group. The real crimes of some “cults” are used to discriminate against hundreds of religious minorities. The most studied example of moral panic concerns pedophile priests. Here again, a very real and tragic problem is

exaggerated by folk statistics creating intolerance through generalization (“thousands of priests are pedophiles”). Folk statistics found their way even into a report of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, , mentioning “tens of thousands” of cases of pedophilia involving Catholic priests worldwide, a figure not supported by any academic study. The report is a case in point of how “moral entrepreneurs” use moral panics in order to promote specific agendas. As the only effective medicine against pedophilia in the clergy, the report suggested that the Catholic Church should change its doctrine on abortion, chastity, and homosexuality.

4.  Hate Crimes: A Difficult notion OSCE participating states, including the Holy See, subscribed several documents about hate crimes, calling for the State to punish them more severely than parallel crimes not motivated by hate. What crimes,

exactly, are hate crimes? Perhaps a simple example may clarify this difficult notion. I am Italian, Catholic, and overweight. If somebody beats me because of some personal or commercial dispute, this is not a hate crime. On the other hand, if someone does not know me personally but decides that Italians, Catholics, or overweight persons should be given a lesson, finds the undersigned more or less by coincidence, and beats me, this is a typical hate crime. Today, most of the international debate on hate crimes evolves around laws against homophobia. Proponents of these laws in countries (including Italy) claim that homosexuals are routinely beaten by thugs hating their sexual orientation and that special laws are needed. However, the law does punish physical violence against homosexuals. With very limited exceptions, all OSCE participating states consider hate motivations, including against homosexuals, as aggravating circumstances for all crimes. In fact, in debating with LGBT

activists, we discover that they do not call for new laws against homophobia because violent crimes against homosexuals are not punished by current laws. They know they are. What they really want to incriminate is “hate speech” based on “heterocentrism”, the idea that heterosexuality is the normal human orientation, and “heterosexism”, the system where the union of a man or a woman is honored, recognized and protected more than a same-sex union is. Obviously, punishing “heterocentrism” and “heterosexism” as crimes introduces a serious limitation of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and also freedom of religion, since the teachings of most religions about human sexuality would easily fall under these categories.

5.  Hate Speech In the field of hate crimes, the single most difficult moral and legal question is whether laws should punish “hate speech” and, if yes, where the boundary lies

between hate speech and freedom of expression. OSCE is the international forum where most work on hate crimes is done. It maintains that clear cases of hate speech are discourses calling for actual physical violence against a group, or insulting individuals with terms commonly regarded as offensive, such as “nigger”, “faggot”, and similar. Although there are grey areas, general laws do punish incitement to violence and insults. Introducing special laws protecting certain categories against hate speech is dangerous, as evidenced by the application of anti-homophobia laws where they exist. On February 6, 2014, criminal charges were brought in Pamplona, Spain against Archbishop Fernando Sebastián, a few days after the Pope’s announcement that he had been named a cardinal. Charges were based on Spain’s antihomophobia law, and the cardinal’s remark in an interview that homosexuality is a “deficient form” of expressing one’s

sexuality, as well as his quoting from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that homosexual acts are “disordered” and “morally unacceptable”. That many disagreed with the cardinal is hardly surprising. The use of the word “deficient” was perhaps unfortunate, although he immediately clarified that he intended no offense. But should the cardinal really be subject to criminal prosecution, under a law contemplating serious jail penalties, for this? In 2013, the Supreme Court of New Mexico in the Elane Photography case stated that a Christian photographer can be compelled to photograph a Lesbian marriage. Elane Photography quickly became a precedent for imposing similar obligations to Christian owners of pastry and flower shops who refused to supply specially prepared cakes and flower arrangements for same-sex marriages. On February 18, 2015, the Superior Court of the State of Washington came to a decision in a hotly debated case concerning a

flower shop, ruling against its owner, Barronelle Stutzman, that anti-homophobia laws are dynamic and may change their scope over the years. Once the State of Washington introduced a law allowing homosexuals to marry, refusing to co-operate with these marriages became discriminatory and homophobic. In France, based on provisions against homophobia, the police arrested pro-family activists simply for wearing T-shirts of the anti-gay-marriage group, Manif pour Tous. One was arrested when queuing for visiting the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, another with friends in a coffee shop. In Canada, the Council of Law School Deans recommended that graduates of the law school of Trinity West University should not be admitted to the Bar, because they sign a code promising to “respect the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman”. This, the Council said, is homophobic insofar as it only mentions “marriage between a man and a woman” even though same-sex couples can marry in Canada.

Trinity successfully challenged the Council’s ruling before the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, but its graduates are still in trouble in other Canadian provinces. In Ireland, the chapter of the Legion of Mary at National University was disbanded because it supported Courage, an organization that promotes chastity according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church among Catholic homosexuals. On January 28, 2014, the French Parliament passed a law on discrimination against women, which inter alia extends the definition of the crime of “creating obstacles to an abortion” from physically preventing an abortion to exerting a moral pressure on a woman who is considering it. Although Minister Najat VallaudBelkacem, who introduced the law, gave assurances that it would not forbid pro-life marches, distributing brochures or offering free counselling in or near hospitals to women considering an abortion is punishable by up to two years in jail. Whether offering such

counseling to women via the internet will also be considered a crime is a matter of interpretation.

image of God: man and woman. Let us not be naive: it is not a simple political struggle; it is an intention that is destructive of the plan of God. It is not a mere legislative project (this is a mere instrument), but rather a ‘move’ of the Father of lies who wishes to confuse and deceive the children of God”.

Any law on hate speech incriminating more than clear insults or threats of physical violence seriously threatens both freedom of speech and religious liberty. The religious liberty of Christians is seriously threatened if they risk incrimination for hate speech when they repeat that abortion is an “unspeakable crime”, or “cries out in vengeance to God” or cite the Catechism of the Catholic Church that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered”. Even claiming that gay marriage laws come from “the envy of the Devil”, who hates human beings created in the image of God as men and women, is typical religious speech and should not be prohibited. By the way, who said that? It was Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, in 2010, when Argentina was passing its gay marriage law: “Here, the envy of the Devil is present, and deceitfully intends to destroy the

In 2010, Cardinal Bergoglio also wrote to Argentines, on the same matter: “We do not want to judge those who feel differently”. This is not different from the famous answer he gave to a journalist as Pope Francis in 2013: if a homosexual person “is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this in a beautiful way”. There is no contradiction between a refusal to judge persons as persons, and a strong opinion against a law. Who are we to judge the homosexuals as persons? But who are we not to judge moral deeds and legislative projects, and thus betraying our duties as Christians and citizens?

6.  Lord of the World “No one –Pope Francis wrote in Evangelii gaudium – can demand that religion should be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life, without influence on societal and national life, without concern for the soundness of civil institutions, without a right to offer an opinion on events affecting society”. The Church is popular in many quarters when she speaks out about the poor. But “when we raise other questions less palatable to public opinion, we are doing so out of fidelity to precisely the same convictions about human dignity and the common good”. In two of his morning reflections, on November 18 and 28, 2013, Pope Francis quoted the Lord of the World (1907), a novel by British priest Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914). He said that the novel reads, “almost as though it were a prophecy, as though he envisioned what would happen” today.

In 2015, in a press conference during his return flight from the Philippines, the Pope insisted: “There is a book – excuse me I’m advertising – there is a book, perhaps the style is a bit heavy at the beginning, because it was written in 1907 in London.... At that time, the writer had seen this drama of ideological colonization and described it in that book. It is called Lord of the World. The author is Benson, written in 1907. I suggest you read it. Reading it, you’ll understand well what I mean by ideological colonization”. The novel is a tale of the Antichrist, who imposes, the Pope said, something similar to what the Bible describes in the Book of Maccabees, “the globalization of hegemonic uniformity”, a “uniformity of thought” under the name of “progressivism”. Christians who do not accept the new “progressive” orthodoxy are executed. Then come “death sentences, the human sacrifices”. He then asked those present: “Do you think there are no human sacrifices today? There are many,

many of them. And there are laws that protect them”. Pope Francis also compared Benson’s novel to the Biblical story of Daniel, so often portrayed by the Pope’s favorite painter Marc Chagall (1887-1985). Daniel “is condemned only for worshipping, for worshipping God. And the abomination of desolation is called prohibition against worship”. “In that time one could not speak about religion: it was a private matter”. “Religious symbols were removed and taken down”. Today there is a “universal temptation” to a “general apostasy”: to obey “the tenets of

the worldly powers”, to remain silent, to reduce religion to “a private matter”. This is not real worship and not real religious freedom either. Benson’s novel raises the ultimate question about freedom of conscience, a question posed not to governments and laws but to the heart of each man and woman: “Do I worship God? Do I adore Jesus Christ the Lord? Or do I do so by halves and play games with the prince of this world? Worshipping to the very end with trust and fidelity is the grace we should ask”. This is the text of a lecture at Baylor University, in Texas, given on November 16.

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR

Massimo Introvigne is a well-known sociologist of religion and the managing director of CESNUR (Center for Studies of New Religions) in Turin, Italy. His most recent book is Satanism: A Social History, just released by Brill, Leiden. This article by Massimo Introvigne was originally published on MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons Licence. If you enjoyed this article, visit MercatorNet.com for more.

Book review:   Beyond Radical Secularism

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

by Rev. John McCloskey

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. 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 numbers of Muslim immigrants in their midst.

Manent believes that the several-centuries-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 smallbut-significant Jewish presence, as foundational to its national identity. So what is the solution? 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.

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 country’s well-being in ways that go beyond the economic benefits of a young labor pool. Manent’s many specific observations and proposed

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 Centre of the Archdiocese of Washington. Website: www.frmccloskey.com.

Director Gavin O'Connor Starring Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons

Film review: â&#x20AC;¨ Doctor Strange

USA

by Bishop Robert Barron

cott Dericksonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new film, Doctor Strange, has received rave reviews for its special-effects, its compelling story-telling, and the quality of its actors, but I would like to focus on the spirituality implicit in it. Doctor Strange is far from a satisfying presentation of the spiritual order, but it represents a significant step in the right direction, which proves especially helpful for our time. Played by the always splendid Benedict Cumberbatch, Dr. Strange is dashing, handsome, ultra-cool, a brilliant neurosurgeon, called upon to handle only the most delicate and complex surgeries. He is also unbearably arrogant, pathologically selfabsorbed, utterly dismissive of his colleagues, something of a firstclass jerk. While racing in his Lamborghini to an evening soiree, he runs his car off the road and suffers grievous injuries to his hands. Despite the heroic efforts of

the best surgeons, his fingers remain twisted, incapable of performing the operations which made him rich and famous. In his desperation, he travels to a mysterious treatment center in Katmandu, where people with horrific and irreversible physical damage have, he hears, been cured. There he confronts a baldpated female figure, played by Tilda Swinton, who claims that she has healed severed spinal cords through the manipulation of spiritual forces. When he hears this, the rationalist Dr. Strange explodes in anger and, poking her in the chest, he asserts his conviction that matter is all there is and that we human beings exist for a brief moment in the context of an indifferent universe. With that, she shoves him backward and, to Dr. Strangeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s infinite astonishment, his astral body suddenly leaves his ordinary body. This is his introduction to a world that he

never knew existed, and the beginning of his mystical apprenticeship. By the way, if you want a compelling Christian take on this phenomenon, look at Fr. Robert Spitzer’s musings on “trans-physical consciousness,” or in more ordinary language, the “soul.” What I particularly liked about this confrontation in Katmandu is how it represents a challenge to the comically arrogant scientism of our time, by which I mean, the fallacy of reducing all forms of knowing to the scientific manner of knowing. This attitude, though widespread today through the influence of the “new” atheists, is utterly selfrefuting. How, precisely, did the advocate of scientism see, measure, or empirically verify through experimentation the truth of the claim that only empirically measurable things are true? Though as I say widely held in many circles today, this crude attitude was not characteristic of the founders of the modern sciences, many of whom— Descartes, Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton come readily to mind— were devoutly religious, nor was it embraced by such key scientific figures as Gregory Mendel, an

Augustinian friar or Georges LeMaitre, the formulator of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins and a Catholic priest. The coolly arrogant but hopelessly narrow Dr. Strange is an apt representation of the clueless advocates of scientism on the contemporary scene, those who have simply closed themselves off to what a thousand generations of human beings have taken for granted. In order to participate in the dynamics of the higher world, Dr. Strange has to go through a lengthy and demanding training, not unlike, his master explains, the formation he went through to become a neurosurgeon. But now he has to leave his ego aside and surrender to something he can’t entirely understand. This disciplining of the grasping self, of course, is at the heart of monastic and spiritual traditions the world over. Therefore, in the measure that it reminds young people that there is more to reality than meets the eye and in the measure that it encourages them to embark upon a properly spiritual path, Doctor Strange performs, I would argue, an important service.

However, all is not well with this film from a spiritual point of view, for it stops, as many contemporary movies do, at a sort of way station to the real thing. As does Star Wars, which also features a young man going through a needed apprenticeship, Doctor Strange initiates us into a fundamentally Gnostic space, a realm of spiritual powers, both good and evil, engaged in a relentless and neverending struggle. Dark and light side of the Force, anyone? And its basic game is the learning of spells and incantations—secret gnosis— that will enable one to manipulate the higher powers to a good purpose. To be sure, there are elements of the Biblical story in Doctor Strange, as there are in Star Wars, for instance the theme of salvific suffering and embrace of mission on behalf of others. But Gnostic visions always miss the essential teaching contained in Biblical revelation, namely that God is a personal power, who can never, even in principle, be manipulated by us and who reigns supreme and victorious over any and all powers of evil at work in the cosmos. The point of the spiritual life, on the Biblical reading, is not to control the powers through

knowledge, but to surrender in faith to the purposes of God and to accept from God a mission to incarnate his love in the world. I’m sure it’s asking too much to expect escapist popcorn movies to get Biblical spirituality right. And if Doctor Strange can beguile young people out of a deadening and selfcontradictory scientism, opening them to a world beyond ordinary experience, I say “two cheers for it.” This article has been reprinted with the kind permission of the editors.

ABOUT THE  AUTHOR Bishop-elect Robert Barron is an author, speaker, theologian, and founder of Word on Fire, a global media ministry.

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RAISING A LARGE FAMILY – with love A public lecture by Chema and Rosa Postigo-Pich

Chema and Rosa who have the most school-age children in Spain, and possibly Europe, were chosen by the European Large Families Confederation (ELFAC) as Europe’s Large Family of the Year. Rosa recently authored a book recounting her experiences: Rosa, What's your secret? Raising a large family with love. In this lecture they discuss the challenges facing a large family: The spouses: keeping romance alive / evenings out / solving arguments / putting spouse first Children: love and individual attention / teaching responsibility / patience / faith in the family / customs and traditions The material things: how to balance the books / organise the day / keep order in the home.

5.00-6.15pm, SUNDAY, 22nd JANUARY 2017 Venue: Rosemont School, Enniskerry Road, Sandyford, Dublin 18 Fee: €20 per person To book contact: familyenrichmentireland.org