Position Papers - December 2015

A review of Catholic affairs

“existentialIst ISIS an hreat”?

Michael Coo

k

tomorrowTtohdeay Palmyra, Parthenon Rev. Patrick

Burke

Work and Family Life Rosemary Kamau

Film review: Brooklyn Number 494 · December 2015 €3 · £2.50 · $4

John P. McCarthy

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Number 494 · December 2015

by Rev. Gavan Jennings

2

In Passing: Reflections on a long revolution.

Part two: Be careful about what you celebrate

4

Editorial

by Michael Kirke

by Rev. Pat Gorevan

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Cardinal Sarah: “God is disappearing from society… no one is interested in God”

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Creative minorities

by The Catholic News Agency

Work and Family Life

by Rosemary Kamau

Is ISIS an “existential threat”?

by Michael Cook

Today Palmyra, tomorrow the Parthenon

by Rev. Patrick Burke

Advent and the true meaning of waiting

by Pope Benedict XVI

Film review: Brooklyn

by John P. McCarthy Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

21 25 30 34 37

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

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Editorial T

he Church’s Year of Mercy will begin on December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. In the first line of his “Bull of Indiction of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy” Misericordiae Vultus (The Face of Mercy) Pope Francis points out that “Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy.” As we begin on the Advent path towards the nativity of the Infant Jesus in Bethlehem we would do well to remember that the extraordinary mercy of God the Father remained largely hidden from the world until it was revealed in the face of Jesus.

Obviously the terrible attacks in Paris and Mali, and the threat of further attacks, have dominated our minds in the past few weeks. These atrocities have given rise to much debate about issues such as the degree to which ISIS can be said to be truly Islamic and whether the nihilistic West has what it takes to resist the onslaught of radical Islam. (Two very interesting articles this month examine these themes: one by Rev. Patrick Burke who examines the acts of ISIS as first and foremost a spiritual problem before being political or sociological in nature, and an article by Michael Cook for whom these events expose the existential malaise of postmodern Western culture).

There is always a danger inherent in confronting men who are so obviously dominated by evil as ISIS: the danger of attributing to them and them alone all evil, and forgetting in the process that, as the Holy Father reminds us, all of mankind is in need of mercy. In The Gulag Archipelago, his searing analysis of the demonic world of Soviet Marxism, Solzhenitsyn masterfully summed up this temptation to complacency:

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If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Furthermore the world is, by God’s design, a level playing pitch: we are expected to give in proportion to what we have received. And who can deny that most of those men besotted with Islamicist blood-lust appear to be individuals of very limited personal and spiritual resources. On the other hand the members of Christ’s Church have received so much, and with it the responsibility to be, in the words of Pope Francis, “to be a living sign of the Father’s love in the world.”

Editorial

As Rev. Burke points out in his article, “We must pray for the conversion of heart of all those who commit such wicked acts. We must pray for the young men and women living in the West who are tempted by what Militant Islam offers.” Prayer for them is already an act of mercy and one which will nip in the bud the temptation to respond to hatred with hatred. Through seventy years of the twentieth century Catholics around the world prayed for the conversion of their greatest persecutor: the Soviet Union.

And that evil empire collapsed in a truly miraculous fashion in the late 80s. Let us not underestimate the power of prayer for conversion.

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In Passing: Reflections on a long revolution.

Part two: Be careful about what you celebrate

by Michael Kirke

E

of all that happened between 1916 and the truce of 1921.

O’Malley set out to compile what for him would be a true account.

rnie O’Malley was one of the more disillusioned members of the revolutionary generation which won Ireland’s independence from the British Empire. His later life and the records he has left us tell their own story, subjective but very revealing in a way which the sanitized glorification of the New Republic never is. Those who deny that the IRA of recent years bears any resemblance to that of the early 20th century should familiarise themselves with it. O’Malley, in the ten years before his death, reacted scathingly to the statesponsored Bureau of Military History. This was the state agency entrusted with the task of setting down the official record

In pursuit of this he crisscrossed Ireland in his old Ford, searched out his old companions in arms and interviewed over 500 of them. The transcriptions of these remain – although the magnum opus which he had planned never saw the light of day. In his book Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923, Roy Foster writes: “The memories recorded therein suggest a less sanitized and more embittered memory of revolutionary violence than those of the Bureau of Military History.

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Violence, expropriation, intimidation, random killings and enduring resentment can be inferred through many of the recollections he recorded.” One of his interviewees regretfully observed, “Sandy Nagle should never have been shot; he was a harmless ould devil.” Sandy, whoever he was, typified the victims of the callous violence of the war. There would be many more Sandys in Northern – and indeed Southern - Ireland when the war was reignited at the end of the century.

the embodiment of Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago, a revolutionary caught in the blinding light of what looked like a new dawn for humanity but ending up in the pit of disillusion and terror. In his last years O’Malley was still looking for that illusive light – “How does one reconstruct a spiritual state of mind?” he asked himself despairingly. He ended up describing his life as a “broken” one, rejecting the world many of his former comrades had constructed for themselves in the New Ireland.

One of the literary figures of the early years of the century, George Russell (AE), thought and hoped that the violence of the epoch was just a phase, a “passing illness” contracted from all that had gone on in Europe during the Great War. He was not to know that within 50 years it would sweep over Ireland again in the final decades of the century, leaving a death toll even higher than that of the 1916 Rebellion and its immediate aftermath.

Another dimension of the Irish story which Foster’s book reveals, but which will surely be played down by official Ireland for all sorts of reasons in the forthcoming celebrations, is the strong undercurrent of rebellion against the Catholic ethos of Ireland. This Catholic consciousness, in the aftermath of the persecutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had grown in the nineteenth century and had developed very powerful institutional roots. Indeed, if the commemoration were really honest it would be celebrating

O’Malley and many of his companions might have been

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the fact that it is just now, finally, after one hundred years, that the dream of some of those revolutionary visionaries has finally come true – the vanquishing of the Catholic Church in Ireland and the rooting out of its influence among its people.

meet with approval among her new nationalist companions.”

Jacob, also obsessively interested in matters sexual, would feel much more at home in the Ireland of today where student debating societies regularly rubbish the Catholic Church and Catholic beliefs in terms similar to those she expressed, where secularism is enthroned in Government departments – particularly in Health, Justice and Education and where, among other things dear to her heart, radical gender ideology, among other secularist dogmas, reigns supreme across ninety percent of Irish media.

Rosamund Jacob, another whose post rebellion life was one of disillusion and disappointment, set out vehemently at the start to undo the Catholic influence in Ireland.

Foster observes of her: “In classic back-to-the-people mode, Jacob records her attempts to learn Irish, to seek out likeminded people, and to make the contacts which would bring her…into revolutionary nationalist circles in Dublin… In this world, she searched for similarly secularist thinkers, though she was often disappointed: her robust if rather reductionist belief that ‘the Catholic Church is one of the greatest influences for evil in the world’, and that it was incomprehensible how any sane person of any intelligence could be a Catholic’, did not always

Undoubtedly in 1916 the view that Irish Catholicism was part of the national malaise was a minority one - but not insignificant. It would have been shared, among others, by the Sheehy-Skeffingtons, P.S. O’Hegarty and Muriel McSweeney, later to be the widow of the pious Terence McSweeney but not particularly pious herself. She later became a communist. All of these were later to take the view that the

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undeniably stronger Catholic element in this generation ended up hijacking the revolution and returning Ireland to what was, in their view, a different form of subservience. George Russell was among the disillusioned, moaning in the 1930s about “Catholic thought-control,… smug Catholic self-satisfaction with its own sanctity”.

While the 1916 rebellion ultimately achieved regime change, for most of the century nothing else of a very radical nature happened. Ireland remained much the same culturally. The flowering of Irish literature, drama and the burning commitment to a Gaelic Ireland which had flourished in the two decades prior to the rebellion were in fact never matched again in the century which followed. In fact the new regime ultimately alienated many from the ideal of a Gaelic Ireland by seeking a compulsory imposition of Ireland’s native language on the people. Ireland is much less Gaelic at the beginning of the 21st century than she was at the beginning of the 20th. That is tragic. She is quintessentially Irish, no less now than she was then, although that Irishness is now heavily influenced and characterised by Anglo-American culture.

Meanwhile, her Gaelic soul is on life-support.

Be wary of commemoration. Be careful about what you celebrate. Not only may they be perniciously divisive but they may also grossly distort the truth which should first and foremost be the guide to authentic freedom and the ground on which we build our lives and our communities. When we commemorate what we call the Irish Revolution we should know that it was not really a revolution – certainly not at the time. It was a rebellion against the authority of the state and a rejection of its legitimacy. Those who rebelled were undeniably revolutionary in their intent – although their revolutionary agendas were not uniform.

Politically, Ireland continued to be ruled and administered through the time honoured institutions it had inherited from

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the old regime. That was no bad thing. They are the institutions, the machinery of state, that are envy of most of the world. In terms of political life, for many decades Ireland stagnated in the strait-jacket of the enmities generated in its post-rebellion Civil War. Only now, in the 21st century, does there seem to be any hope of escape from that.

Escape to what remains a moot question.

Home Rule for Ireland had been put on the statute books.

The modern British state has evolved by Burkean principles for more than two centuries. Its mode of change was and remains evolutionary and constitutional. This was not good enough for the Irish. The Irish insurgents took the law into their own hands in a way which would be an anathema to that greatest of Irishmen, Edmund Burke. The foolish violence which ensued, after the inept leader of the militants tried to call off the planned insurrection, begot more foolish and equally terrible counterviolence and Ireland has had to live with the consequences of that ever since.

For most of the 20th century the new Irish State sought to assert her sovereignty in the world and for a number of the early decades sought somewhat ineptly to do so economically.

That came to an end with another Act of Union, union with the evolving entity which is now the European Union.

Clearly there were differences between the terms and conditions which applied under this Act and the Act of 1801. Just as the terms and conditions of that first Act had evolved into a more benign character by 1900, so also the terms and conditions of our union with Europe are of a new order as well. By 1916

One way or the other – and probably it had nothing to do with the act of rebellion in 19 16 – Ireland is now a society much closer to the mores and ideals of Rosamund Jacob, P.S. O’Hegarty and the SheehySkeffingtons of that time. If it was a revolution, it really was a long revolution. What cannot be denied is that in what is now

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about to be celebrated there is much of the tragic – not least the loss of almost 6000 lives between its inception and its celebration 100 years later.

nature has its final fulfilment.

This may be denied by the Jacobs and the O’Hegartys of the New Ireland – of whom there are now many more among us.

That does not make it any less true, and given the guarantees which are integral to these beliefs, does not threaten its ultimate fulfilment in any way.

But human history will never be devoid of tragedy. How could it be otherwise if what Christian theology and divine revelation tell us is true? We are a fallen nature and on the level of nature much of what we touch does not turn to gold. Our great consolation, and joy, however, is that we are redeemed and that raw nature is not where our existence has its final meaning.

We are capable of being raised by divine grace to the supernatural order and it is within this order that our human

Concluded

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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Creative minorities

by Rev. Pat Gorevan

D

uring an interview on the state of Europe in 2009 Pope Benedict remarked: I would say that normally it is the creative minorities that determine the future, and in this sense the Catholic Church must understand herself as a creative minority that has a heritage of values that are not things from the past, but a very living and relevant reality. The Church must actualise, be present in the public debate, in our struggle for a true concept of liberty and peace.

(Interview during flight to Prague, Feb 2, 2009)

He takes this idea from the historian Arnold Toynbee, who claimed that the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities. Pope Benedict has repeatedly called on Christian believers to see themselves as just such a creative minority, helping Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage and to thereby place itself at the service of all humankind.

This notion goes further back.

We could look at the work of the early Church, a minority if ever there was one, spreading the Good News of Christ to an indifferent world. Blessed John Henry Newman asked himself why God chose this method of spreading the message. In a

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famous sermon from Plain and Parochial Sermons - ‘Witnesses of the Resurrection’ – he commented on the text: Him God raised up the third day, and showed Him openly; not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us who did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead. Acts 10.,40-41.

It might have been expected, that, on our Saviour's rising again from the dead, He would have shown Himself to very great numbers of people, and especially to those who crucified Him; whereas we know from the history, that, far from this being the case, He showed Himself only to chosen witnesses, chiefly His immediate followers; and St. Peter avows this in the text.

This seems at first sight strange… But the chief priests would not have been moved at all; and the populace, however they had been moved at the time, would not have been lastingly moved, not practically moved, not so

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moved as to proclaim to the world what they had heard and seen, as to preach the Gospel. This is the point to be kept in view: and consider that the very reason why Christ showed Himself at all was in order to raise up witnesses to His resurrection, ministers of His word, founders of His Church; and how in the nature of things could a populace ever become such?’

Creative Christian minorities And so it continued in the Dark Ages, that period of the eclipse of Roman civilisation which was rescued by intrepid Christian monks and turned into a glorious Christian culture, the culture of Europe.

Let us listen to Alasdair MacIntyre on this, from his concluding reflections in After Virtue: What they set themselves to achieve – often not recognizing fully what they were doing – was the

construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point….

This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a God, but for another – doubtless very different – St. Benedict.’

prove heralds of an authentic spiritual leaven which, in the course of the centuries, far beyond the boundaries of his country and time, changed the face of Europe following the fall of the political unity created by the Roman Empire, inspiring a new spiritual and cultural unity, that of the Christian faith shared by the peoples of the Continent. This is how the reality we call “Europe” came into being. By proclaiming St Benedict Patron of Europe on 24 October, 1964, Paul VI intended to recognize the marvellous work the Saint achieved with his Rule for the formation of the civilization and culture of Europe.

(After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre).

The work of St Benedict, and we might say, of the Irish monks, peregrini pro Christo, was well summarised by his namesake Pope (General Audience, April 9, 2008): In fact, the Saint’s work and particularly his Rule were to

St. Benedict

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Seeking God

too the present absence of God is silently besieged by the question concerning him. Quaerere Deum – to seek God and to let oneself be found by him, that is today no less necessary than in former times (Address to representatives of the world of culture, Collège des Bernardins, Paris, 12 September, 2008).

Not that they intended to “save civilisation” or make a name for themselves. Listen to Pope Benedict again: It must be frankly admitted straight away that it was not their intention to create a culture nor even to preserve a culture from the past. Their motivation was much more basic. Their goal was: quaerere Deum. Amid the confusion of the times, in which nothing seemed permanent, they wanted to do the essential – to make an effort to find what was perennially valid and lasting, life itself. They were searching for God. Our present situation differs in many respects … yet despite the difference, the two situations also have much in common. God has truly become for many the great unknown. But just as in the past, when behind the many images of God the question concerning the unknown God was hidden and present, so

And so it continued, with many great Christian “minorities” – the revolution of St Francis of Assisi, the Oxford Movement spearheaded by Blessed John Henry himself, the universal call to holiness sounded by St Josemaría in 1928 – all were examples of someone searching for God (having, of course, first been found by him). Only God will answer our questions, and the question of God cannot be ignored; it is as important for us as it was for any of those luminaries, in fact without it we lose our own identity:

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A purely positivistic culture which tried to drive the question concerning God into the subjective realm, as being

unscientific, would be the capitulation of reason, the renunciation of its highest possibilities, and hence a disaster for humanity, with very grave consequences.

What gave Europe’s culture its foundation – the search for God and the readiness to listen to him – remains today the basis of any genuine culture (Pope Benedict XVI, Address to representatives of the world of culture, Collège des Bernardins, Paris, 12 September, 2008).

Alternative to St. Benedict’, an article published in Crisis, July 2014 and republished in Position Papers in AugustSeptember this year. He suggests that St Josemaría is a better role model for lay people:

Benedict or Escriva?

A recent controversy The American Catholic writer Rod Dreher has taken up these ideas with his ‘Benedict Option’ for faithful Catholics: to make a difference to the culture we need to follow the example and the route of St Benedict by forming communities with an ordered, even monastic spirituality: regular hours, the liturgy at its centre, with prayer and contemplation inspiring life.

Escrivá taught something the earliest Church knew quite well, the universal call to holiness, something that became, under his influence, a key teaching in the Second Vatican Council…. He said laymen need not remove themselves to monasteries to achieve perfection and that the places they would find Christ were precisely in the home and in the workplace.

And it was there they would bring others to the Gospel.

The seeming revolutionary nature of this proposal is recognized by the reception St Josemaría received when he first took it to Rome. They said he was one hundred years too early.

And all the while, he built what Dreher and others would call an “intentional

Austin Ruse has replied with ‘The Escrivá Option: An

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community” that even and especially today draws individuals and families together in order to learn and teach and gain strength and then to go forth into the market place, the sports arena, the prisons and universities and draw others closer to the Gospel and toward a spiritual perfection equal to the monks and nuns.

Escrivá said Christ wanted a few men of his own in every human endeavor.

The Escrivá Option calls men and women to become contemplatives in the middle of the world, to live as best they can in the presence of God throughout the day from the moment of waking to turning out the light at night.

This is achieved through prayer and study and a vigorous regimen of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly norms of piety.

A story is told about St Josemaría showing a guest around Opus Dei’s headquarters, which includes some rather beautiful chapels. The visitor asked him which chapel was his favourite, and he responded by throwing open the window and pointing to the street. He felt that we should be able to find God there too: contemplation can be carried on in the hustle and bustle of life.

I would like to give the last word to Blessed John Henry Newman in ‘Witnesses to the Resurrection’. He asked himself why did God use a few souls to begin and continue the work of the Church, and answered in this way:

It strikes me that whichever creative minority option one favours, it will always involve a contemplative heart and a willingness to search for God.

St. Josemaría Escrivá

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I have already suggested, what is too obvious almost to insist upon, that in making a select few the ministers of His mercy to mankind at large, our Lord was but acting according to the general course of His providence. It is plain every great change is effected by the few, not by the many; by the resolute, undaunted, zealous few. True it is that societies sometimes fall to pieces by their own corruption, which is in one sense a change without special instruments chosen or allowed by God; but this is a dissolution, not a work.

Doubtless, much may be undone by the many, but nothing is done except by

those who are specially trained for action.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rev. Patrick Gorevan is a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature. He lectures in philosophy in St Patrick’s College Maynooth and is academic tutor at Maryvale Institute. He has written on the early phenomenological movement, virtue ethics and the role of emotion in moral action.

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Cardinal Sarah: “God is disappearing from society… no one is interested in God”

by The Catholic News Agency

A

t the presentation of his new book Cardinal Robert Sarah said that Western society is rapidly forgetting God, and expressed his desire to help people rediscover him through both prayer and witness.

“I would like to help people discover God in their lives, because many of us have lost God,” Cardinal Sarah told the Catholic News Agency (CNA) at the November 20 presentation of his new book, God or Nothing.

“God is disappearing from society, from culture, from the economy, no one is interested in God,” he said, which is why he thought of the need to bear

witness to the fact that “God exists, that God is our life.”

Without God, the cardinal said, “we are nothing. Without God man doesn't know where he is, where he is going and therefore it's a testimony of faith. Without God we are lost.”

Released last month, God or Nothing was officially presented yesterday in Rome’s Santa Maria dell'Anima church.

In addition to Cardinal Sarah, brief interventions were also given by Cardinal George Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat of the Economy; Archbishop Georg Ganswein, Prefect of the Papal Household and Archbishop Rino

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Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization.

Published so far in French, English, Italian and German, the book offers Cardinal Sarah’s insights on current hot-button issues, such as gender ideology and the definition of marriage, as well as the mission of the Church, the joy of the Gospel and the “heresy of activism”.

Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, spoke with CNA before the event began, saying that although it’s not easy to put God back into the minds that have forgotten him, “through our testimony, through our life, we can help people to love God”.

“Not only by reading my book, because it’s not enough to read a book. But you must have an experience … a personal encounter, a personal experience with God.” In his speech, Archbishop Ganswein said Cardinal Sarah

has “prophetic” insights, and likened him to Pope St. Gelasius I, who in the late 400s succeeded in stopping the emperor, Anastasius I, from declaring power over the Church, as well as the state.

He said that Cardinal Sarah clearly sees how many states today seek to lay claim to the “spiritual power” which belongs exclusively to the Church.

“When the states of the West today attempt to overturn, step by step, natural law at the behest of globally active pressure groups; when they want to adjudge, for themselves, on the very nature of man – as in the highly ideological programs of Gender Mainstreaming – then this is more than just a fatal relapse into the rule of the arbitrary,” Archbishop Ganswein said.

“It is primarily a new submission to that totalitarian temptation that has always accompanied our history, like a shadow.”

This temptation is present in every age, though manifested in

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a new language, he said, noting that Cardinal Sarah “forcefully insists” that the Church must not give in to the intellectual fashions of the time.

He said that while a state shouldn’t be a religion, as is currently “horrifically expressed” by ISIS, neither should the state “prescribe to the people secularism as a supposedly neutral world view.”

It’s dangerous, the archbishops said, to think of secularism “as if it is nothing more than a new pseudo-religion, which once again takes up where the totalitarian ideologies of the last century left off in attempting to denounce and ultimately extinguish Christianity – and every other religion – as outdated and useless.”

Archbishop Ganswein called Sarah’s book “radical” in the sense of the word’s Latin origin, “radix,” meaning “root,” because in it the cardinal takes us back to the root of our faith and the true radicalism of the Gospel.

Cardinal Sarah awakens us to the fact “that the new forms of indifference to God are not just mental deviations one can simply ignore. He recognizes an existential threat to human civilization par excellence in the moral transformation of our societies,” he said.

The archbishop cautioned that the Gospel is in danger of being transformed by certain “socalled ‘realities of life,’” and insisted that divine revelation must never be adapted to the world.

“The world wants to devour God,” he said, however, “God wants to win over us and the world.”

Like the archbishop, Cardinal Pell in his speech praised Sarah’s boldness in speaking out on contemporary issues, saying that he is part of the return of “the great African theologians.”

Cardinal Sarah himself spoke to CNA about the blossoming faith in Africa, and expressed his hope that it will continue to grow not only in number, but in depth

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and fidelity to Christ and the Church’s magisterium.

great richness the continent has to offer.

It’s the goal of many African bishops, he said, “to show that we believe in Christ, we are faithful to him, we are faithful to the magisterium,” and to help people in Europe, “who have a bit lost this fidelity to Christ,” to rediscover that Christ is our life.

Francis, he said, “will discover a living faith, perhaps his message will be to encourage Africans to root their faith in Christ, to not forget that Christ is their faith.”

This article is reprinted from the Catholic News Agency. www.catholicnewsagency.com

God is light and truth, he said, explaining that we need truth in order to live correctly, which is why the African bishops are so eager to help people find God through prayer, and especially through fidelity to the magisterium.

“The magisterium is the way that will guide us to God. He’s not only rules or things that are against our liberty, our freedom.

No. Doctrine is the way of salvation, the way of liberty and freedom and the way to Jesus,” he said.

Cardinal Sarah also offered his thoughts on Pope Francis’ trip to Africa next week, saying he expects the Pope to discover the

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Work and Family Life

by Rosemary Kamau

O

ne of the greatest privileges in life is being a stay home mother of a large family. Being a stay at home mother is one of the best gifts a mother can possess and at the same time the greatest gift she can give to her family. What is of even greater importance is the gift of faith God has given us as mothers and the adequate time to teach our children the faith and to pray for them every day.

I have always admired stay home mothers who work professionally as home makers.

Spiritually, it took me a long time to realise that the devil does not understand nor like anyone who sacrifices their life for others. A stay home mother

falls in this category because she does not seek anything for herself. She seeks no glory for herself. She renders many little acts of service daily to her family without expecting anything in return. She gives her talents and time to her family, seeking their happiness and comfort. Many married women have at one time or other dedicated their time as stay home mothers, some for a short period and others for longer periods of time.

St. John Paul II realized that society today compelled women to work formally outside the home. Those who choose to stay at home to take care of the children were made to feel guilty and worthless. He commented

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on this issue by stating that, “It is a disservice not only to children, but also to women and society itself when a woman is made to feel guilty for wanting to remain in the home and nurture and care for her children. It is also necessary to counter that misconception that the role of motherhood is oppressive to women and that a commitment to her family, particularly to her children, prevents a woman from reaching personal fulfilment and from having an influence in society.

No response to women’s issues can ignore a woman’s role in the family or take lightly the fact that every new life is entrusted to the protection and care of the woman carrying it in her womb.”1 I work at home doing household tasks professionally. It involves doing laundry, cooking, cleaning and numerous tasks that make my home a bright and cheerful home. In my free time I also

write and illustrate Christian books for children. The most important task is being there for my husband and teaching my children and listening to them.

But all this would not be possible without my husband.

He works tirelessly to provide for our family. The cost of living in Nairobi is high as is taxation in Kenya. It is not easy providing for a family of ten. St. Josemaria taught us that we cannot out do God in generosity.2 This observation is true, God has always provided for us and has never let us down. But it is important to note that there is just enough and not extra for splashing around. We have learnt how to live within our own means.

When I attended my first spiritual retreat at Tigoni Study Centre, my life was transformed.

I had always believed that God had created us to live “goodish” lives and that was a guarantee to heaven. My limited catechism of

1

John Paul II, Pope John Paul II Speaks on Women, edited by Brooke Williams Deely, (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014), p.251.

2

St. Josemaria Escriva, Christ is Passing By (Lagos: Criterion Publishers), #40, p.

92.

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the Catholic Church had overlooked that BIG aspect of fulfilling the plan or mission for which God had created me. It never occurred to me that I was His and I was supposed to serve God, doing His Holy Will. After many classes of doctrine, chats, spiritual direction, confession, prayers, circles, recollections and retreats, it has become clearer to me how important a mother’s role is in God’s eyes.

Saint Josemaría challenged us to become saints in the middle of the world. It was only after an intimate and personal encounter with God, that I realized that God wanted more from me. I had the responsibility of praying for my family, having Holy Masses offered up for them so that we would eventually be united with God in Heaven when we died. This was my ultimate turning point and I dedicated my life to doing God’s Will.

As married couple, my husband and I dedicated ourselves to God. We prayed together and

went together for Holy Mass often. He always insisted we should sit together as a sign of unity. We accepted the gift of children God choose to send to us as promised in our marriage vows. God blessed us with four daughters and four sons. They are now between the ages of six and twenty-two. Because we had a big family, we decided that there would be periods when I would stay at home to take care of the family. It is a beautiful and unnoticed way of life.

I began to see that there is more than meets the eye about being a stay home mother. She has our Mother Mary as her role model.

Just as Mary dedicated her life to serving Jesus and Joseph, she too dedicates her life to serving her family. It should be noted that Mary is the greatest of all saints. St Josemaría Escrivá said, “The attention she gives to her family will always be a woman’s greatest dignity.”3 It is not possible to become a stay home mother without

3

Saint Josemaria Escriva, In conversations with Josemaria Escriva (New York: Sceptre Publishers, 1968), p.131.

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putting Christ as the centre of my life. Because by doing this, the essence of why God created me became clearer. My deepest fulfilment is doing God’s will.

This can be measured by the peace and joy in our hearts. The saint continues, “Certainly there will always be many women whose only task is to run their home. This is a wonderful job which is very worthwhile.”4 It is a professional job that greatly influences society. As a mother of eight, I have the responsibility to ensure I bring up responsible and God fearing citizens for society and for heaven.

4

Saint Josemaria Escriva, In conversations with Josemaria Escriva (New York: Sceptre Publishers, 1968), p.134.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

4

Rosemary Kamau is a stay-home mother and a writer and illustrator of several Christian books for children and mothers. She is married to Kamau Kuria and God has blessed them with four daughters and four sons. She Saint Josemaria Escriva, In conversations with resides JosemariainEscriva (New York: Nairobi, Kenya.

Sceptre Publishers, 1968), p.134.

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Is ISIS an “existential threat”?

by Michael Cook

W

hat is the greatest existential threat to world security? The Islamic State?

This month, yes. But back in July, the incoming chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff told a Congressional committee that it was Russia. "If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia. And if you look at their behaviour, it’s nothing short of alarming” said Marine General Joseph Dunford. And what about China? And North Korea? Both of them have been described as existential threats to the West.

Western civilisation is always facing “existential threats” ranging from climate change to asteroids to a global pandemic to artificial intelligence to nuclear warfare. The University of Cambridge has a well-funded Centre for the Study of Existential Risk to alert people to the dangers of new technologies. We seem to be hard-wired to turn small disasters into existential risks.

Perhaps that is why zombie films and other dystopian dramas are so popular.

So it’s not cowardice or naiveté to heed the Obama Administration’s call not to panic about the Islamic State after its Friday the 13th

25

atrocities in Paris. “They’re a bunch of killers with good social media” President Obama said yesterday. They are “dangerous” but “Our way of life is stronger.

We have more to offer.” And Vice-President Joe Biden has insisted: “ISIS is no existential threat to the United States of America.”

existence, our way of life.” He quotes the former head of British armed forces from 2010 to 2013, General David Richards. Earlier this year he declared that the threat is existential and “that we need to approach this issue of Muslim extremism as we might approach World War II back in the 1930s.”

However, there is an ominous precedent for these fears. Within a hundred years after the death of Mohammed, Muslim armies overran the Middle East, North Africa and Spain, obliterating Christianity from countries where it had flourished for centuries. It took seven hundred years for a resurgent Christian kingdoms to expel Islam from Spain. That left a scar on the Western psyche which still aches.

France’s best-known philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy, also seems to think so. In a recent newspaper column he backed up the French President’s call for war on Islamic terrorists. A war, says Lévy in passionate rhetoric reminiscent of the early days of World War I, waged “without truce or mercy”.

Could this happen again?

Not everyone agrees with Obama’s assessment. John Lloyd, an eminent journalism academic at the University of Oxford, recently wrote: “This, I think, adds up to war: and an existential threat. A threat to our

26

Dare to utter the terrible word “war” a word that the democracies try to push out of the range of hearing, beyond the bounds of their imagination, their symbolic system, and their reality.

This aversion to war is their mission, their distinguishing trait, and their crowning

glory, but it is also their weakness.

LĂŠvy wants Western countries to support air strikes with boots on the ground and suggests that to think otherwise is evasive and cowardly: What is it about this war that the America of Barack Obama, at least for the moment, seems not to really want to win? I do not know the answer. But I know where the key lies. And I know the alternative to using the key: No boots on their ground means more blood on ours.

If we are not going to give into panic and name-calling, we need to distinguish the three wars implied in this these doom-laden words.

The war in the Middle East.

There ISIS is a serious threat to the sovereignty of Iraq and Syria, where it already controls significant areas. Lebanon is also at risk. ISIS has already begun a campaign against the only

country in the Middle East with a substantial Christian minority.

If its army were to sweep through, the Mediterranean would turn red with the blood of Christians and Shias.

What is needed to win this war is not so much military might as subtle diplomacy to secure the cooperation of Turkey, Russia, Iraq, the Kurds, Assad’s Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Israel, the Arab states, the United States, France and other Western nations. But the more atrocities ISIS commits in other countries, the more motivated the diplomats will become. The Islamic State can be crushed, although it will almost certainly survive as a terrorist network. The greatest danger is that it might get its hands on weapons of mass destruction. This is possible, but if Saddam Hussein failed to obtain them with all the resources at his disposal, will ISIS? The war of terror.

Western Europe has experience in controlling terrorists.

Through a combination of

27

diplomacy and force by the United Kingdom, the IRA is no longer a threat. Spain has crushed ETA, Italy the Red Brigades, Germany the BaaderMeinhof Group, France the OAS. The United States, another target for ISIS, has to expect some terrorist acts, but it’s impossible to imagine that American security agencies will fail to eventually uproot and destroy terror networks.

The long-term war of ideologies.

Again, it’s impossible to imagine that Western Europe will suddenly convert to Islam, let alone the repulsive sect represented by the Islamic state.

Violence and extremism will attract some young Muslims – and even some young converts – but most people will be repelled.

On the contrary, the immediate danger to political freedom is that democratic governments will resort to oppressive schemes like the one proposed by US presidential candidate Donald Trump, to register all Muslims.

Lévy suggested internment camps, like those set up in

World War II Britain for Fascists and German sympathisers.

But the barbaric attacks in Paris do expose a serious weakness in the Western response.

Politicians everywhere denounced them – but as an assault on “our way of life”: shopping, sport, dining out, concerts, the whole package of Western freedom to enjoy a consumer society. “What would our country be without its cafes, concerts, sport events, museums?” President Hollande said, urging his countrymen to return to their bistros. “Our duty is to get on with our lives.” But is entertainment all that the West has to offer?

Once upon a time, to be “Western” implied a commitment to transcendent values. For those who have remained loyal to Christianity and Judaism, it meant faith in their religious values and democracy and freedom. For the Enlightenment legatees of that tradition, it meant just democracy and freedom. But for both it meant a commitment to

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defend and die for a cause bigger than the self.

The contemporary West, however, is far more self-centred and sceptical. The most powerful social movements are campaigns to live out one’s own sexuality and choose one’s own death. It’s hard to think of anything more self-absorbed. Intellectually, there is a loss of faith in the austere and commanding power of truth.

While the Islamic State is unlikely to topple governments and establish a caliphate in Paris any time soon, this intellectual vacuum will eventually be filled by some transcendent belief. It could possibly be Islam; it could be a resurgent Christianity; it could be an as-yet unknown toxic ideology.

But one thing is sure. People are not going to die for the right to eat in their favourite bistros.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This article first appeared on www.mercatornet.com.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

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Today Palmyra, tomorrow the Parthenon

by Rev. Patrick Burke

F

riday the 13th November of this year is a day that will live in infamy. It is the day that members of Islamic State attacked the people of Paris. The merciless fanaticism of the killers is epitomised by the lack of pity they showed to even the most vulnerable of their victims: people in wheelchairs, helpless to make even a token attempt to defend themselves or escape, were gunned down without hesitation as they sat in the disabled section of a concert hall, the special care taken of them by our civilisation making them ready victims of the savagery.

The aftermath of such brutality, one would imagine, would bring

only sorrow for the victims, their families, their country from those in our society; and absolute disdain for their killers expressed by uncompromising condemnation from all quarters of our society, with no attempts of any sort being made to justify their actions or somehow shift the blame away from these coldblooded killers, that no one would try to defend the clearly indefensible. Sadly this was not the case.

The morning after the attack, only hours after the guns had sounded in the streets of Paris, before even we knew for sure how many dead there were, never mind their names, it had begun; the talk of how we had

30

brought this upon ourselves. I will not deny that the West does have much moral culpability for the way things are in the MiddleEast today. But this is not what brought Islamic State to Paris.

If it was, they would have no reason to treat with such barbaric cruelty the people of their own religion in the lands they control. And days after the attacks they murdered two of their captives, a Norwegian and a Chinese man, after having sought a massive cash ransom for their release. Norway and China have no history of interfering in that region.

Therefore these self-blaming views displays a terrible misunderstanding of what it is

we are dealing with here. Islamic State may use Western involvement in the Middle-East as a recruiting tool; but they themselves are not motivated by it. What drives them is a burning passion for the total annihilation of all that is not in full conformity with their own particular worldview. This means not only their own brand of Islam in the countries in their immediate vicinity, but globally.

This requires the complete destruction of Western Civilisation and our way of life.

What they did in Palmyra they hope to do to the Parthenon; the crucifixions they carry out in the lands they control they dream of doing in ours and everywhere else in the world.

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This self-blaming also causes us to forget a very crucial part of this issue: the spiritual dimension. That is because what we are dealing with here is evil – nothing less can explain the crucifixions, the beheadings, the kidnapping and enslavement of young girls and women for sexual purposes. And evil is a spiritual problem. And spiritual problems require a spiritual solution. And the best start towards such a solution is, as with so many things, to begin with prayer.

Prayer when faced with such horrors is natural. We should hardly be human if we did not wish to support the people of Paris in that way during such dark and difficult days, by praying for the victims, their families, and for the peace and comfort of all who are frightened by what took place on their very doorsteps. More, our prayers are something they are entitled to expect from us; and it is something that we, as the people of God, are obliged to offer. For if we will not pray, then who will; and if we will not pray at a

time like this, then when will we ever?

But we must pray for other things as well. We must pray for the conversion of heart of all those who commit such wicked acts. We must pray for the young men and women living in the West who are tempted by what Militant Islam offers. Who knows why it is they are tempted? It is enough to know that it is the nature of evil to tempt us. But we must ask God's protection on these young people that that may be able to fight off these temptations. We must do this for the sake of their souls as well as the lives and safety of all those they now threaten or may put at risk in the future.

And we must pray, perhaps above all, for those within our borders who will not pray. I mean by this those who do not usually pray. At times like this many will light candles, many will say prayers, many will even go to churches to hear Masses or take part in other services who do not usually enter into God's house. But as the rawness of the

32

tragedy lessens, so does their impulse to draw near to God. But the spiritual danger we face does not lessen, it only grows stronger. And a spiritual battle needs a solid spiritual support beneath it at all times or that battle will be lost. So we must pray that all those under attack will be drawn back to God, to prayer, to faith; and that those who continue to practice their faith will be drawn ever deeper into it.

Rather, times like this should make us think that the old adage “we do not negotiate with terrorists” needs an addendum: “and neither do we under any circumstances say anything that might be taken to justify their actions”. Instead we must pray, not only for the people of Paris, but we all the world that this terrible evil will be taken from us, so that all people may know peace.

Wringing our hands over the policies of the West won't stop Islamic State. In fact, it probably brings a smile to their faces.

There is nothing like quite as satisfying as having your enemy do your propaganda for you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR The Rev Patrick G Burke is the Church of Ireland rector of the Castlecomer Union of Parishes, Co Kilkenny. A regular contributor to Position Papers, he was formerly a broadcast journalist with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Network. He blogs at www.thewayoutthere1.blogspot.ie, is a frequent correspondent to the letters page of the Irish Times and other national newspapers, and can occasionally be heard on RTE Radio One’s A Living Word.

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Advent and the true meaning of waiting

by Pope Benedict XVI This is the text of the homily of Pope Benedict XVI at the First Vespers of Advent, November 28, 2009.

D

ear Brothers and Sisters,

With this celebration we are entering the liturgical season of Advent. In the biblical Reading we have just heard, taken from the First Letter to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul invites us to prepare for “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (5: 23), with God's grace keeping ourselves blameless. The exact word Paul uses is “coming”, in Latin adventus, from which the term “Advent” derives.

Let us reflect briefly on the meaning of this word, which can be rendered with “presence”, “arrival” or “coming”. In the language of the ancient world it was a technical term used to indicate the arrival of an official or the visit of the king or emperor to a province. However, it could also mean the coming of the divinity that emerges from concealment to manifest himself forcefully or that was celebrated as being present in

worship. Christians used the word “advent” to express their relationship with Jesus Christ: Jesus is the King who entered this poor “province” called “earth” to pay everyone a visit; he makes all those who believe in him participate in his Coming, all who believe in his presence in the liturgical assembly. The essential meaning of the word adventus was: God is here, he has not withdrawn from the world, he has not deserted us. Even if we cannot see and touch him as we can tangible realities, he is here and comes to visit us in many ways.

The meaning of the expression “advent” therefore includes that of visitatio, which simply and specifically means “visit”; in this case it is a question of a visit from God: he enters my life and wishes to speak to me. In our daily lives we all experience having little time for the Lord and also little time for ourselves. We end by being absorbed in “doing”. Is it not true

34

that activities often absorb us and that society with its multiple interests monopolizes our attention? Is it not true that we devote a lot of time to entertainment and to various kinds of amusement? At times we get carried away. Advent, this powerful liturgical season that we are beginning, invites us to pause in silence to understand a presence. It is an invitation to understand that the individual events of the day are hints that God is giving us, signs of the attention he has for each one of us. How often does God give us a glimpse of his love! To keep, as it were, an “interior journal” of this love would be a beautiful and salutary task for our life! Advent invites and stimulates us to contemplate the Lord present. Should not the certainty of his presence help us see the world with different eyes?

Should it not help us to consider the whole of our life as a “visit”, as a way in which he can come to us and become close to us in every situation?

and of history as a kairós, as a favourable opportunity for our salvation. Jesus illustrated this mysterious reality in many parables: in the story of the servants sent to await the return of their master; in the parable of the virgins who await the bridegroom; and in those of the sower and of the harvest. In their lives human beings are constantly waiting: when they are children they want to grow up, as adults they are striving for fulfilment and success and, as they advance in age, they look forward to the rest they deserve. However, the time comes when they find they have hoped too little if, over and above their profession or social position, there is nothing left to hope for. Hope marks humanity's journey but for Christians it is enlivened by a certainty: the Lord is present in the passage of our lives, he accompanies us and will one day also dry our tears. One day, not far off, everything will find its fulfilment in the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of justice and peace.

Another fundamental element of Advent is expectation, an expectation which is at the same time hope. Advent impels us to understand the meaning of time

However there are many different ways of waiting. If time is not filled by a present endowed with meaning expectation risks becoming unbearable; if one

35

expects something but at a given moment there is nothing, in other words if the present remains empty, every instant that passes appears extremely long and waiting becomes too heavy a burden because the future remains completely uncertain. On the other hand, when time is endowed with meaning and at every instant we perceive something specific and worthwhile, it is then that the joy of expectation makes the present more precious. Dear brothers and sisters, let us experience intensely the present in which we already receive the gifts of the Lord, let us live it focused on the future, a future charged with hope. In this manner Christian Advent becomes an opportunity to reawaken within ourselves the true meaning of waiting, returning to the heart of our faith which is the mystery of Christ, the Messiah who was expected for long centuries and was born in poverty, in Bethlehem.

In coming among us, he brought us and continues to offer us the gift of his love and his salvation.

Present among us, he speaks to us in many ways: in Sacred Scripture, in the liturgical year, in the saints, in the events of daily life, in the whole of the creation whose aspect

changes according to whether Christ is behind it or whether he is obscured by the fog of an uncertain origin and an uncertain future. We in turn may speak to him, presenting to him the suffering that afflicts us, our impatience, the questions that well up in our hearts. We may be sure that he always listens to us! And if Jesus is present, there is no longer any time that lacks meaning or is empty. If he is present, we may continue to hope, even when others can no longer assure us of any support, even when the present becomes trying.

Dear friends, Advent is the season of the presence and expectation of the eternal. For this very reason, it is in a particular way a period of joy, an interiorized joy that no suffering can diminish. It is joy in the fact that God made himself a Child. This joy, invisibly present within us, encourages us to journey on with confidence. A model and support of this deep joy is the Virgin Mary, through whom we were given the Infant Jesus. May she, a faithful disciple of her Son, obtain for us the grace of living this liturgical season alert and hardworking, while we wait.

Amen!

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Film review: Brooklyn

by John P. McCarthy

F

ew immigrants to America can be said to have had it easy. Part and parcel of the immigrant experience, no matter the destination, is relegation to the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.

Ideally, this situation is temporary, as is the sense of dislocation, apprehension and bewilderment so many emigres face.

In the film Brooklyn (Fox Searchlight), set during the early 1950s, Eilis Lacey has relatively little to complain about. Her journey out of Ireland and reception in America go about as smoothly as can be imagined. In part because of the time period

– decades after the main waves of European immigration and catalysts such as the Great Famine – her material circumstances on either side of the Atlantic are far from dire.

Yet there’s a more specific reason why her coming to America is frictionless and free of tumult. A Catholic priest, Irish but long stationed in a Brooklyn parish, has paved the way by securing Eilis a job in a local department store and accommodations in a reputable boardinghouse.

The comparative ease of Eilis’ transition doesn’t mean her story, adapted from a novel by Colm Toibin, lacks incident or

37

fails to compel. Just don’t expect the kind of harshness and bleakness found in parallel works such as Tis. Brooklyn is picturesque, meticulously understated and, like star Saoirse Ronan’s graceful performance, dignified. The movie eschews histrionics and doesn’t excoriate anyone or anything. No individual, group or institution is demonized or degraded.

Knowing there are few opportunities for clever young women in their hometown of Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Rose Lacey (Fiona Glascott) has arranged for her sister to emigrate. Despite pangs about leaving Rose behind with their widowed mother, Eilis is eager to go.

classes at Brooklyn College and she starts to blossom.

Eilis helps serve Christmas lunch to down-on-their-luck Irishmen in the parish hall. (“These are the men that built the bridges, roads and tunnels,” Father Flood observes.) At a church dance she meets Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen), a charming young plumber of Italian descent. Their romance seems to ratify her decision to emigrate.

But it’s not quite that simple.

Under sad circumstances, she goes home for the first time and, much to her surprise, finds that life in Enniscorthy isn’t so bad.

She gains another suitor, Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson), and seriously considers not returning to Brooklyn.

Poised and competent, if inexperienced, Eilis joins the ranks of Irish girls seeking new lives in Brooklyn. As she begins working behind the counter at Bartocci’s department store, a protracted bout of homesickness dampens her spirits. Then her sponsor Father Flood (Jim Broadbent) enrolls her in night

Taking his cue from Toibin’s subtle prose, screenwriter Nick Hornby neatly calibrates the pathos and humor. Much of the latter comes via Mrs. Kehoe, the boardinghouse owner hilariously portrayed by Julie Walters.

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Some viewers may feel the movie is too placid and wish for more overt conflict. The fastidious production design does result in images of New York and the Emerald Isle that verge on the idealized. And John Crowley’s directorial decisions make it clear he’s not aiming for gritty realism.

qualifies it as elevated entertainment, is that her subsequent decisions are ethically clear-cut while also coinciding with what the audience is rooting for.

Atonement is integral to the movie’s worldview and redemption is possible because mistakes are measured in full context, not in isolation.

On reflection, however, Brooklyn is neither whitewashed nor appreciably flawed by naivete. It has more depth and incisiveness than first meets the eye. No doubt assimilation wasn’t as effortless as it appears, even in the early 1950s. But the refusal to manufacture struggle or disruptive plot points matches the film’s laudatory absence of melodrama.

What Brooklyn offers is a moving and trenchant look at the subject of migration – including the much-overlooked post-World War II phase of the Irish diaspora – from a woman’s perspective.

Eilis has one serious moral lapse. Yet what gives the film more than surface beauty, and

39

Brooklyn sees the Catholic Church as playing a vital role in this process and as a constructive force in the daily lives of individuals such as Eilis.

What emerges is a portrait of a caring, practical priest and a church that, without fanfare or hubris, provides spiritual guidance and material comfort to its flock.

be inappropriate for children under 13.

Reprinted with permission from CNS. www.catholicnews.com

The film contains a non-explicit premarital encounter, several uses of rough language, and some crude and crass language.

The Catholic News Service classification is A-II – adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may

ABOUT THE AUTHOR John P. McCarthy is a guest reviewer for Catholic News Service. Copyright (c) 2015 Catholic News Service.

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Interdiocesan Retreats For Priests 7 Mar (9pm) - 11 Mar (10am) 2016 25 Apr (9pm) - 29 Apr (10am) 2016

The retreat will be preached by a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature and will also include plenty of 8me for silence and private prayer.

Book online: www.lismullin.ie

Married couples: strengthen your marriage!

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Where?

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(Child-minding as well as fun activities for the children will be provided).

The cost? €220 per couple.

This includes course materials, tuition and a meal.

For further information see www.familyenrichmentireland.org