Position Papers - December 2017

A review of Catholic affairs

Come on over to Bethlehem

by Pat Hanratty

Amoris Laetitia and the Nature of Mercy

by Archbishop Charles Chaput

Number 514 · December 2017 €3 · £2.50 · $4

Book review To Raise The Fallen

by Rev. Chris Hayden

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Number 514 · December 2017 Editorial

by Rev. Gavan Jennings

In Passing: Things might be better than we think they are

by Michael Kirke

A Mass for Anne Boleyn

by Rev. Patrick G Burke

Come on over to Bethlehem

by Pat Hanratty

Amoris Laetitia and the Nature of Mercy

by Archbishop Charles Chaput

There was no room for them in the inn

by J.A. Loarte

Dining with Mike Pence

by Carolyn Moynihan

Book Review: To Raise The Fallen

by Rev. Chris Hayden

Book Review: Totalitarian Temptations

by Tim O’Sullivan

Film Review: Coco

by John Mulderig

Film Review: Blade Runner 2049

by Kurt Jensen Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

2 3 7 11 13 21 24 33 39 36 38

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

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Editorial O

n Sunday December 3rd we celebrated New Year’s Day – in the liturgical calendar of the Church that is. (And in case you don’t believe me, note that we have now moved from the year A in the Sunday cycle to year B and from year 1 to year 2 in the weekday cycle).

Keeping this in mind helps us to focus on Advent in the correct way: Advent is not a penitential winding down of the old year, but a hopeful start of the new.

There is perhaps a natural tendency to react against the commercialisation of Christmas, or better said of Advent itself, by stressing the penitential aspect of the season. Advent is of course externally very like Lent: both seasons use violet as the liturgical colour, drop the Gloria on Sundays and are more spartan in the use of song and decoration in churches. We would be making a mistake however, to approach Advent as a pre-Christmas Lent. The tenor of Advent is very different from that of Lent for it is, in the words of the liturgical documents, a time of “devout and joyful expectation”. Joy must already be present in Advent in a way it is not present in Lent.

Advent’s austerity is not so much in penance for past excesses but rather in a spirit of vigilance for the future coming of Christ: “Because you do not know when the master of the house is coming, evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn; if he comes unexpectedly, he must not find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake!” (Mark 13:37, from the Gospel of the First Sunday of Advent).

Pope Francis, in various Advent messages, has stressed the centrality of hope at this season. “Let us allow ourselves, then, to teach hope, to faithfully await the coming of the Lord, and whatever desert we might have in our life will become a flowering garden” (General Audience, Dec.7, 2016). Perhaps we could add that the sobriety of Advent is there to sharpen the appetite for coming of Christ. Children teach us a great lesson in this regard, as they approach the arrival of Santa with their Christmas presents with a crescendo of unbearable expectation.

Perhaps we adults should aim to approach the great Christmas gift of God’s only Son with a similar sense of tantalising expectation?

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In Passing: Things might be better than we think they are

by Michael Kirke

T

he culture war is getting more intense not less so.

Both sides are indulging in an orgy of recrimination, each telling the other what a mess they have made of our world. And yet, in many respects, as Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister of the day, reminded the British people back in 1957, “most of our people have never had it so good”. Mind you, while some chuckled at that, others were outraged.

relentless that we are left wondering will it ever stop and whether he is doing it out of conviction or just to keep himself amused and keep his base alive.

In the Washington-based online news and comment service, The Hill, Jonathan Easley observes that “With his agenda stalled in Congress and his poll numbers sagging, Trump has kept his base engaged and the left inflamed by escalating feuds with key figures in sports, entertainment, tech and media, effectively dragging politics into every corner of public life.

In our time President Trump is expanding the culture wars, pouring more fuel on the fire every day. It’s like a boxing match without a referee as he lands punch after punch on the institutions that he views as liberal, elitist or both. It is so

Easterly says “Trump’s aim is straightforward: to convince voters that there is a privileged class that scoffs at their

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patriotism and cares more about political correctness and diversity than ordinary Americans, their traditions and their economic plight.”

and a silent conservative majority.”

The concerns of that time seem a good deal more real than much of what is preoccupying most of these celebrities we have to listen to now.

But is all this about the real world? Is there not something suspiciously unreal about everyone getting worked up about footballers gesturing on a pitch. Why are we paying such attention to entertainers using their narcissistic photo opportunities to spout their ad hominem invective at us. Not to mention the new phenomenom of celebrity colonialism.

Hanson notes that the United States avoided a civil war in those years. It did, however, suffer a collective psychological depression, civil unrest, defeat in Vietnam and assorted disasters for the next decade – until the election of a once-polarizing Ronald Reagan ushered in five consecutive presidential terms of relative bipartisan calm and prosperity from 1981 to 2001.

On one level, Victor Davis Hanson, writing in the National Review, sees all this as a recycling of the crisis of the 60s and 70s which broke out across the globe in 1968. Referring to that iconic year when the United States seemed to be falling apart, he says.

Meanwhile at the same time in Europe the students set out to upset every apple cart in sight and already in China the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution had been set in motion by Mao in 1966 and continued for ten brutal years up to his death.

“The Vietnam War, a bitter and close presidential election, antiwar protests, racial riots, political assassinations, terrorism and a recession looming on the horizon left the country divided between a loud radical minority

So is it a case of what goes around comes around? In America, after the stability of those conservative and semiconservative years came the Presidency of Barack Obama, the would-be apostle of peace and

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unity who split America in two.

The East and West coasts were at daggers drawn with Middle America by the end of his two terms. All this was documented

by Michael Kirk (without an “e”) in his superb two part PBS documentary, The Divided States of America.

percentages seem to be prevailing in Europe. In Britain the more radical pro-Europe young are at loggerheads with their elders, so much so that with Brexit negotiations staggering along, some feel the whole process might be reversed. If that happened who knows what the unintended consequences might be?

Britain had a relatively peaceful 1968. The London Times did not have much time for students who thought they were more important than they were. It ran an editorial under a heading reminding us that “A student is a student is a student.” But it is not a little ironic that her troubled exit from Europe is to a large extent being made more troublesome by the generation of Marxist revolutionary streetrioters of 1968. They eventually calmed down and then proceeded to nurture and indoctrinate those running the European bureaucracy today.

As Hanson sees it in America, politics – or rather, a progressive hatred of the provocative Donald Trump – permeates almost every nook and cranny of popular culture.

“The new allegiance of the media, late-night television, stand-up comedy, Hollywood, professional sports and universities is committed to liberal sermonizing. Politically correct obscenity and vulgarity among celebrities and entertainers is a substitute for talent, even as Hollywood is wracked by sexual harassment scandals and other perversities.

But Hanson fears that in America this time the divide is far deeper, both ideologically and geographically. It is also more 50/50, with the two liberal coasts pitted against red-state America in between. The same

“The smears ‘racist,’ ‘fascist,’ ‘white privilege’ and ‘Nazi’ – like ‘commie’ of the 1950s – are so overused as to become meaningless. There is now less

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free speech on campus than during the McCarthy era of the early 1950s.”

a sign that the loud conventional wisdom of the past – about the benefits of a globalized economy, the insignificance of national borders and the importance of identity politics – is drawing to a close, along with the careers of those who profited from it?”

Yet for all the social instability and media hysteria, life in the United States quietly seems to be getting better. The same is true in most parts of Europe.

As we watch the spectacle of identity politics unfold and the political elites consume their energies on their palpable hatred of one another – while the media cheers on one side at the expense of the other – we wonder whether the real world is just getting on with the job of living while they squabble like adolescents suffering from arrested development.

The fact is that across the West – and in the East as well – economies are growing. The lessons of the last recession may or may not have been learned.

There is no doubt but that a good deal of the public distaste for the warring political class stems from a public memory of how they fell asleep and allowed it to happen.

Hanson wonders if “the instability is less a symptom that America is falling apart and more

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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A Mass for Anne Boleyn

by Rev. Patrick G Burke

I

t is 500 years since a certain renegade Augustinian nailed a piece of paper to the door of a German cathedral and has been credited by history ever since as beginning what is called “The Reformation” as a result. But I wonder do many today stop to think to pray for those who died because of his actions? Would any, for example, take it upon themselves to offer a Mass for the soul of one of the victims of this time whose name is known to us – Anne Boleyn, for example? I have a very particular reason for asking that last question, as will become clear below.

There’s this chap I know with Down Syndrome. Let’s call him Dave. I’ve known Dave for over thirty years now, since he was a small chap. That means I’ve watched him go from reading comics like the Dandy to Enid Blyton books to paperback novels. He doesn’t read very high brow stuff, but then, who does? That’s why guys like Dan Brown live in a mansion and “serious” writers who win literary awards generally do not.

Dave went to his local school like everyone else around him and did his Leaving Certificate.

He didn’t get a brilliant result, but he did as well as or better than some of the “ordinary”

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lads in his year. Now almost forty, he has a part-time job and lives independently in sheltered housing. He has a bus pass and loves to use it. He has no bother at all getting around the small city where he lives on public transport. He finds it great for popping into the city centre to meet up with his elderly Mum and Dad for a coffee and a chat. And, of course, getting to Mass.

didn’t mean as far as he was concerned that there was nothing he could do. So he went and had Mass offered for the soul of Anne Boleyn.

It takes a special kind of person to do something like that. And by “special” I don’t mean in the way it is now generally used as another word for folk with disabilities. I mean it in the sense of finding him to be an extraordinary chap, someone with a deep Christian faith and a profound sense of compassion for his fellow human beings.

Dave continues to read voraciously. His particular love is History. And his favourite period is the Tudors. He feels very sorry about what happened to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, and the mother of Elizabeth I. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t give Henry what he wanted, a son. And being awkwardly in the way of his taking a wife who might give him one in her place, her life was forfeit to the convenience of one more powerful than she.

So he’s a really lovely guy, but a kind of person who is dying out – literally. On a recent trip to England I realised that while I saw quite a number of people with Down Syndrome who were around his age or older, I saw very few younger ones.

Perhaps only one or two over the course of a week. I found that sad but not surprising. The UK, after all, manages to make sure that over ninety percent of people like Dave don’t make it out of the womb alive.

This didn’t sit well with Dave.

There was nothing, of course, that he could do to right the wrong she suffered. But that

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It must be a strange time to be a person with Down Syndrome.

On the one hand they, like all disabled people, have never had it so good when it comes to their rights being vindicated.

Employers can’t discriminate against them when it comes to hiring and must do their best to provide them with a work environment suitable to their needs. We even have the Special Olympics, giving them, and others with disabilities, a place to show the world that being less able in no way makes you less of a human being.

boasts a ninety-nine percent “success” rate of eradicating those diagnosed with the condition. And Iceland claims to have eliminated them altogether. Not a single child diagnosed with Down Syndrome was allowed to be born there last year.

Even more disturbingly, the normal rules about term limits don’t apply when it comes to those like Dave in most countries. In the UK, for example, a child with his condition can suffer an abortion right up to the moment before birth. Think about that. It is legal to stick a needle into the heart of a child who would have been born perfectly healthy, albeit with Down Syndrome, and inject him with a lethal dose of poison. Were his mother to have gone into labour on the way to the clinic it would have been a crime to harm so much as a hair on his head. But if her child is still in her womb when she reaches her destination, then her child can have his life taken with impunity.

But on the other hand it must be quite a haunting time for them. Because they know that even as they are given every chance in life, others like them will not even be given a chance to live. Eliminating the disabled before they are born has become quite the done thing – particularly those with Dave’s disability. I have already mentioned their fate in the UK. They fare better in France: only seventy-seven percent will never make it out of the womb.

But their chances are far worse in Denmark. That nation

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Those who want to see fewer people like Dave in the world think themselves compassionate. Because what better way of reducing suffering could there possibly be than making sure that the person you worry would suffer than ensuring they never see the light of day? But they are wrong – about themselves and about Dave. I think we need a lot less of their fatal compassion and more people like Dave in the world. Not only because it is their simple human right to be allowed to live, but also because, in a time where the world is sorely troubled, we need the prayers of people like him more than ever.

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 http://thewayoutthere1.blogspot.ie/

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Come on over to Bethlehem

by Pat Hanratty

I

recently had the good fortune to visit the Holy Land as part of the first parish pilgrimage organised from Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish in Dublin. In just over a week we visited many places associated with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: places like Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum, the Mount of Olives, Gethsemane, Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre. Visiting these places helps bring the Gospel stories to life – there is a danger that reading them we can regard them as just that, stories, inspiring perhaps but not exactly life changing.

Jerusalem we had to bring our passports as Bethlehem is in the West Bank, administered by the Palestinian Authority. We had to pass through a checkpoint at the infamous wall, though security seemed to be more relaxed this year than on previous visits.

We paid two visits to Bethlehem – the first on a Sunday in September when we arrived early at the Basilica of the Nativity, where ever since the first century AD, the site has been venerated as a place of singular importance.

The first basilica was built in the fourth century by St Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine.

It was burnt down in the sixth century in one of the Samaritan revolts, but rebuilt in its present

Perhaps none of the Holy Places inspires quite like Bethlehem, To get there from our hotel in

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form in 565. According to legend, it was spared from destruction by the invading Persians when the commander of the Persian army saw depictions of the Magi in Persian clothing. Over the centuries it has been greatly expanded – indeed ongoing works mean that for several years the inside has had scaffolding as works to preserve it have been ongoing.

Buildings are just buildings when all is said and done. After a lengthy queue we had a chance to venerate, for just a few moments the very spot where our Saviour was born.

Three days later our group had an outdoor Mass in the Shepherd’s Field, a mile or so outside Bethlehem. Here again the sense of occasion was wonderful. It was a bright sunny day, but in that hilly area it was easy to imagine shepherds on a hillside, minding their flocks in a dark isolated scene, being disturbed by a heavenly light and a choir of angels singing Glory to God in the highest.

This Christmas, let’s all go to Bethlehem, if not physically, in our thoughts and prayers.

Whatever else happens this Christmas, we will be reminded of where we were on the morning of 17 September. Aspects of Christmas do tend to dominate our lives from early December onwards – lights, presents, the Christmas rush, Christmas music of every kind from the sacred to the banal. Those of us who were in Bethlehem can use all that to remind ourselves with wonder and awe, that we were at the spot where it all happened just a few short months ago.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pat Hanratty taught Science/ Chemistry in Tallaght Community School from its inception in 1972 until he retired in 2010. He was the school's first Transition Year Co-ordinator and for four years he had the role of home School Community Liaison Officer.

Amoris Laetitia and the Nature of Mercy

by Archbishop Charles Chaput

Image: Icon of World Meeting of Families 2018

M

y job today is to talk about Amoris Laetitia. Papal documents are always important. But – if we can be candid for a moment – some have the energy of a lead brick. Amoris Laetitia is very different. It has passages of great wisdom and beauty on marriage and on family life. And it has other passages that have caused some obvious controversy. The controversy has obscured much of the good in the document. So we need to engage the text with open hearts and the discipline of clear thinking.

The specific issues I want to deal with today are three: the pastoral challenges Amoris Laetitia seeks to address; the

pastoral challenges the text itself may seem to create; and how we as priests need to respond as “missionaries of mercy.” *** As a Church we need to meet people where they are. We need to listen to their sufferings and hopes. We need to accompany them along the path of their lives. That demands from us as priests a spirit of patience and mercy. We need to have a bias toward welcoming, and a resistance to seeing individual persons merely as parts of alien or alienated groups. The divorced and civilly remarried are not exiles from Church life.

They need to be invited back.

The same applies to persons

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with same-sex attraction. Jesus Christ died for all of us, and we need to behave in a manner that embodies his love.

At the same time, “accompanying” people also means that we need to guide them in the right direction – gently but also honestly, speaking the truth with love. It does no one any good if we “accompany” someone over a cliff, or even worse, to a fatal separation from God. We can’t simply confirm people in their mistakes. Scripture is very clear about right and wrong sexual relationships and behavior.

We’re very poor disciples if we lack the courage to speak the truth as the Church has always understood it.

We live in an age of studied ambiguity – at times, even within the Church – and in such an age, clarity about the truth, made gentle by patience and understanding, is a treasure without price. ***

One of the main messages in the Holy Father’s text is that life, marriage, children and family are joys to be treasured – not problems to be solved. This seems obvious, and in normal times, it would be. But we don’t live in a “normal” time. For fifty years since Vatican II, the Church has been locked in disputes over doctrine and practice. And these have been compounded by deep and rapid changes in the world around us.

Conflict can become a habit.

Every issue can become a nail that needs a hammer. We can get comfortable in our anger.

And that’s dangerous, especially within the Church, because frustration and resentment can start to feel normal, and then to feel good. C.S. Lewis would describe the pleasure we take in an unhealthy taste for argument as a pretty clear mark of the demonic. There’s nothing more poisonously delicious than trashing an enemy in the name of the Gospel of love.

So for me, at the heart of Amoris Laetitia, and a key to the whole

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document, is paragraph No. 28, where Francis writes: “Against [the] backdrop of love so central to the Christian experience of marriage and the family, another virtue stands out, one often overlooked in our world of frenetic and superficial relationships. It is tenderness.”

Tenderness, personal contact, listening instead of just hearing, and intimate attention to the needs of the other – these are the priorities Francis weaves throughout his text. It explains why he stresses in paragraph No. 22 that “the word of God is not a series of abstract ideas but rather a source of comfort and companionship for every family that experiences difficulties or suffering.” And it gives a context to his paragraphs Nos. 36 and 37, where he warns against “a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of real families.”

Francis urges us again and again to deal lovingly with people and situations as they really are.

In my reading, that leads to one of the central ironies in communicating the message of Amoris Laetitia. We live in an age of the laity. The text deals very heavily with marriage and the family, major features of Christian lay life. But to succeed, Amoris Laetitia depends profoundly on the zeal and sensitivity of the priest. The priest has the freedom of action, the pastoral experience and the overview of human relationships to be the presence of Jesus Christ in so many of the complex situations Francis describes. In other words, the vocation you have, brothers, has never been more vital for family life than it is right now.

That might sound curious because I’ve never had more priests voice uncertainty about their value to the Church than I’ve heard in recent years. I’ve had many priests approach me feeling confused or hurt by something the Pope has said about priestly indifference or harshness. And these are good, solid men – not whiners or crazies – experienced in their

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parishes and committed to their people.

How can we make sense of that?

Part of their priestly frustration comes from the constant beating the priesthood has taken in this country since 2002. The clergy abuse crisis has caused a lot of innocent priests to suffer. And some of the Pope’s more painful comments surely come from his own pastoral experiences in Latin America, which seem to have been very different from the realities in the United States.

In my own experience, cruel confessors and harsh “doctors of the law” have been rare, and a very long way from the American norm.

But I do think Francis is right in pushing all of us as priests to engage our people more directly, personally, with an open heart and a patient spirit. And we need to really listen to the truth in the Holy Father’s words. There’s a great temptation in ecclesial life, including parish life, to hide behind staff and offices and committees and programs and schedules. Jesus was captured by none of those things. He was

always present to his people.

And while we can’t escape our material duties as priests, we can find ways to keep them from dominating our pastoral service.

To put it another way: We can’t be missionaries of mercy if our main focus is running the machinery of an institution. I know very well that hitting the right balance in priestly life can be very difficult. I deal with it myself every day. But it’s possible, and Francis is urging us to put mission and people first.

It’s not my purpose today to go through Amoris Laetitia paragraph by paragraph. But the text has some beautiful passages on the needs of the elderly, the poor, migrants, persons with special needs, the importance of children and openness to new life. It’s important for all of us to read the text with an attentive mind and study its strengths.

Chapter Four on “Love in Marriage” is especially rich. And his reflection on St. Paul’s thoughts on the nature of love in

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1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is perfect material and easily adapted for parish study groups of four or six sessions.

Ground Zero is this: For Christians, sexual intimacy outside a valid marriage can never be morally legitimate.

And it’s the Church that determines what a valid marriage is.

Scripture’s clearest words about the indissolubility of marriage come from Jesus himself in Matthew 19. They can’t be softened, or reinterpreted, or contextualized. Christian marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman. When valid, it endures until the death of one or the other spouse. And our task as priests is to uphold and advance that truth as a message of liberation, even when it’s difficult.

The most widespread concerns voiced about the content of Amoris Laetitia – in public, but even more urgently and commonly in private – focus on Chapter 8, including footnote 351. Critics see in the text a

preference for ambiguity over clear teaching and a resentment toward defenders of traditional Church teaching that seem out of sync with the rest of the document.

Since at least some of the people raising these issues are persons of fidelity and substance, their concerns can’t – in justice – be dismissed. And the resulting confusion is regrettable, because the whole purpose of Chapter 8 is to provide a merciful outreach to decent persons entangled in irregular marital situations.

So how should we proceed?

First, as with all papal documents regarding faith and morals, if any confusion exists in a text, it must be interpreted consistent with the magisterium of previous popes.

Second, I’ve been a priest for forty-seven years and a bishop for nearly thirty. In all that time, I’ve met very few priests who like punishing anyone, kicking anyone out of their parish, or keeping anyone from taking part in the sacraments. But I’ve met

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hundreds of priests who worry that their people, while loving God, don’t really know their faith, don’t understand the sacraments, don’t catechize their children, and don’t know what a properly formed Catholic conscience is. Poorly formed, immature consciences are among the biggest pastoral challenges facing the Church.

This is what makes delegating decisions about the nullity or validity of a first marriage to the internal forum a matter of real concern.

The Christian virtue of mercy flows out of charity and depends on the existence of justice and truth. Romano Guardini argued that mercy is a greater virtue than justice. And rightly so. But he also stressed that truth undergirds and is essential to both virtues. In other words, real mercy is always more than mere sentiment. It can never exclude careful moral reasoning about right and wrong. It can never be set against, or elevated above, the other virtues that are key to life-giving human behavior.

Otherwise it becomes just another source of confusion.

Permanent truths exist about human nature, sexuality, behavior and relationships.

Those truths apply to all of us, in all circumstances, and justice involves living according to those truths.

But of course, all of us fail many times every day. Thus, mercy is God’s outreach through the Church to offer a way back to grace. It’s a living expression of his tenderness. But mercy does not abolish God’s justice any more than it can soften or adjust the demands of truth in order to be more congenial to our weaknesses, to our culture, or to our times.

Christian marriage is never simply an “ideal.” Describing it as an “ideal” tends to open the door to excusing and then normalizing failure. Clearly many married couples do fail, especially in today’s world of institutionalized selfishness.

They need our understanding and support, especially in cases of domestic violence.

But if grace is real, and God’s word is true, then the joy of a

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permanent marriage is possible for anyone called to the vocation. This is why better preparation and support for couples considering marriage are so vital. It’s also why we need to defend the permanence of the marriage bond wherever and whenever we reasonably can. The permanent, loving bond between a man and a woman open to new life is the glue of a culture and the guarantee of its future. We need to fight for it, and not collapse – like so many other Christian communities – into the confusion of a society based on compromises, caveats and alibis.

That’s the message we need to preach and teach.

More than seventy years ago the economic historian Karl Polanyi wrote a book called The Great Transformation. It’s one of the seminal works of the last century. It chronicles the deep changes that took place during the Industrial Revolution – not just in economics but in politics, law, patterns of thought, and all kinds of human relationships.

We’re living in that same kind of moment right now. So much of

life can seem out of our control and beyond our influence. As Joseph Ratzinger saw five decades ago, the Church of the future will very likely be smaller, poorer, and empty of prestige – not everywhere, but certainly in the nations that like to posture themselves “advanced.”

We might mitigate that outcome with smart thinking and good Church leadership. But we probably can’t prevent it. The reason is simple. We can’t quickfix ourselves out of moral and social problems we behaved ourselves into. And knowing that can easily lead to frustration and despair.

But God doesn’t ask us to save the Church or fix the world.

That’s in his hands. What he asks is much simpler and more important. He asks each of us as priests to be faithful, and to be his healing presence to his – and to our – people.

In the midst of confusion, he asks us to speak and live the truth. In the midst of conflict, he asks us to be peacemakers. In the midst of distress, he asks us

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to be sources of hope. The curse of our age is loneliness; a loneliness wrapped in relentless noise to muffle the worry that our lives and sufferings have no meaning. No matter how intractable or unfixable the problems of a marriage or family might be, the priest who listens and counsels with a spirit of mercy guided by truth is doing what God called him to do: to be the presence of God’s love in the world.

There’s no greater mission of mercy than that, and no greater joy in the life of a priest.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Joseph Chaput OFMCap is the current Archbishop of Philadelphia. He previously served as Archbishop of Denver and Bishop of Rapid City. This is an abridged version of and address given to the National Assembly of Filipino Priests, Houston, USA, November 8, 2017.

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There was no room for them in the inn

by J.A. Loarte

O

ctavius Cesar Augustus has decreed that a census be taken of all the people living in the Roman Empire. The order affects everyone, from the richest to the pooreSt In Palestine, the census must conform to Jewish practice, with each one going to his home town. Because Joseph was of the house and lineage of David, he went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, to be enrolled with Mary his betrothed, who was with child (Lk 2:4-5).

Thus, with great naturalness, the evangelist begins his narration of the event that is going to change mankind’s history. The

journey was a long one: over eighty miles. It would take four days – if everything went well – in one of the caravans that traveled south from Galilee.

Mary was not obliged to go, since the census was the duty of the head of the family. But how could Joseph leave Mary on her own when she is about to give birth? And above all, wouldn't Mary want to accompany Joseph to the city where – according to the Scriptures – the Messiah was to be born? Joseph and Mary discover in that strange caprice of the far-off Emperor God’s hand guiding them in all their steps Bethlehem was a small town.

But the census means that there

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is much more activity than usual. Joseph and Mary go to the imperial officer to pay the tribute and to be enrolled in the book of the Emperor’s subjects.

Then Joseph looks for a place to spend the night. Tradition tells us that he went in vain from door to door. Finally, he goes to the “khan” or public inn where there would always be a corner free. It was nothing more than a walled-in patio. In the centre was a cistern with water, around which the pack-animals were sheltered, and next to the wall there were some sheds for the travellers, covered with a primitive roof. Frequently these were divided by partitions so that each group could find at least a bit of privacy.

It was not a fitting place for our Lady to give birth. We can imagine Joseph’s suffering as the hour for Mary’s delivery drew near. There was no room for them in the inn (Lk 2:7), St Luke remarks tersely. Someone, perhaps the owner of the inn, must have told them that on the outskirts of the town there were some caves used to house the animals on cold nights; perhaps

they could stay there until the crowds dispersed and a room opened up in the town.

Divine Providence made use of these circumstances to show that the Son of God had decided to come into our world in poverty and humility. This was be an example to all those who would follow him down through the centuries. As St Paul said: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich (2 Cor 8:9). The King of Israel, the Desired of all the nations, the eternal Son of God, comes into the world in a place meant for animals. And his Mother has to offer him, as his first crib, a narrow manger But the Almighty does not want this prodigious event to pass entirely unnoticed. There were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night (Lk 2:8). The lowly ones of this earth, whose humble state obliges them to care for the flocks of others, are the first to receive the news of this great

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portent: the birth of the promised Messiah.

An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them: Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good news of great joy which will come for all the people (Lk 2:9-10). After giving them this Good News, the angel also gives them the sign by which they would be able to recognise him: You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger (Lk 2:12). And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased (Lk 2:14).

they would have pondered in their hearts how God is pleased with those who are poor in spirit and humble.

The shepherds return to their flocks, praising God for all they had heard and seen (Lk 2:20).

Two thousand years later, we too are invited to proclaim God’s marvellous deeds. “A holy day has dawned upon us. Come, you nations, and adore the Lord. For today a great light has come upon the earth” (Third Mass of Christmas, Gospel acclamation).

This article first appeared on www.opusdei.ie.

The shepherds make their way to the town. Perhaps they take some presents to offer the Mother and the new-born Child.

Mary and Joseph see in their homage a proof that God is watching over his Son. They too are filled with joy on seeing the sincere joy of the shepherds, and

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Dining with Mike Pence

by Carolyn Moynihan

A

s male heads continue to roll following claims of workplace sexual harassment, so strategies and rules for reforming men’s behaviour towards female co-workers multiply. In the US Congress there will be revisions of sexual harassment awareness training; everywhere, there is talk of streamlining complaints procedures, mandatory counselling, new rules about mediation, financial settlements, legal action, and so on. It’s mostly about making men pay for bad behaviour until they get the message.

The one rule that is not on the agenda of most reformers is the so-called Pence rule. On the face

of it this is strange. VicePresident Mike Pence, taking his cue long ago from Billy Graham, has made it a rule not to eat alone with a woman or attend an event where alcohol is being served unless his wife is present.

According to a 2015 report, some politicians will not travel alone in a car with a female staffer; others exclude any staff from the office before 7am or after 7pm.

What could be more obvious as a way to prevent powerful men with a sense of entitlement from molesting women in the workplace than to minimise dealings between him and her alone?

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Has Mike Pence been accused of sexual harassment? No. Have others with similar rules appeared among the lists of the shamed? Not that we’ve heard – and we most certainly would have if any such hypocrites could be found. So it works. Even The Atlantic’s liberal black writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, subscribes to it.

But feminists and other liberals will have none of it.

Back in March when the Pence rule first hove into public view, a female legal scholar wrote in Vox that it was “clearly illegal” under sex discrimination law (Title VII). “By law, working dinners with the boss could be considered an opportunity to which both sexes must have equal access,” Joanna L. Grossman opined. The Pence rule could be traced to a genderbased stereotype (for example, “that women are temptresses”) and would “cost women professionally” by cutting them off from “potentially productive business interactions.” The charge of “illegal” no doubt scared a few men off.

Following the Weinstein revelations, however, a few men invoked the rule as preventive of Weinstein-like behaviour. Vox (which, a few days later, had to sack its own editorial director, Lockart Steele, for sexual misconduct) attacked it again. It was “a completely self-serving maxim, designed to protect men against women,” doubling for powerful men as “avoidance of the appearance of scandal” while depriving women of career-building “access to good mentors and peers,” a “system that penalises women for existing.” The charge of heartless pharisaism was intended to shame the likes of Mike Pence.

Not to be outdone, a former editor of Christianity Today, writing in the New York Times, denounced the Graham-Pence rule as not even Christian for its lack of charity towards women.

Citing her own experience, Katelyn Beaty said that finding two men instead of one at a business breakfast meeting made her “acutely aware that my existence as a woman was a problem that needed to be

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managed in a public setting.”

Another anecdote about a man who would not enter the hotel room of an incapacitated female colleague to carry out her bag for her showed just how pedantic and mean these rule-bound characters could be.

having a second drink, and why I am not; why I am going to a party, and why I am not. I believe that the battle is lost at Happy Hour, not at the hotel. I am not a “good man.” But I am prepared to be an honorable one.”

Beaty, however, has a problem making her case against a rule identified with conservative Christian men, because a man who is apparently not conservative or religious at all, Ta-Nehisi Coates, has already said this:

So Beaty acknowledges that “there’s wisdom in married people avoiding settings that naturally cultivate attraction” and that “Alcohol and isolation put otherwise honourable people in precarious situations,” but she dismisses the relevance of the Pence rule to Weinsteinian behaviour on the basis that the latter is about “power” and not, by implication, about run-ofthe-mill Coates-style “moral vulnerability” (which, in all fairness, must include women, mustn’t it?).

I’ve been with my spouse for almost 15 years. In those years, I’ve never been with anyone but the mother of my son. But that’s not because I am an especially good and true person. In fact, I am wholly in possession of an unimaginably filthy and mongrel mind. But I am also a dude who believes in guardrails, as a buddy of mine once put it. I don’t believe in getting “in the moment” and then exercising will-power. I believe in avoiding “the moment.” I believe in being absolutely clear with myself about why I am

Now, what exactly is wrong with taking your moral vulnerability seriously, especially if you have a wife and children, or a husband and children, at home?

“The Pence rule arises from a broken view of the sexes: Men are lustful beasts that must be

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contained, while women are objects of desire that must be hidden away. Offering the Pence rule as a solution to male predation is like saying, “I can’t meet with you one on one, otherwise I might eventually assault you.” If that’s the case, we have far deeper problems around men and power than any personal conduct rule can solve.”

Here Beaty hits on a fundamental truth, but then denies it by resorting to caricature. The truth is that the sexes are broken. It goes back to the Garden of Eden and the Fall, and all of history, especially the last few decades, testifies to it.

Just think of how divorce rates have sky-rocketed and marital commitment declined. Men and women can love unselfishly and faithfully only with a lot of effort and – on a Christian view of things – heavenly assistance.

The Pence rule is realistic; it recognises that men and women do “tempt” one another, without even trying. It’s the law of attraction, which is a biological and social imperative, but not something to be cultivated in the

workplace and professional relationships. The idea that you can throw men and women together in close proximity and not have any rules about sexual expression other than “consent” is either naïve or deceitful.

There are a number of areas, such as dress codes and speech, where more formal etiquette would improve the working environment for both men and women (although US gymnast Gabby Douglas was twittershamed last week for saying that women should “dress modestly,” and “be classy” so as not to attract “the wrong crowd.”)

However, the Pence rule takes a necessary further step.

In discouraging situations where a man – especially, let’s concede, a “powerful” man (the boss, supervisor…) – and a woman are alone together, particularly if it’s on a regular basis, it is not simply a self-serving ordinance that suits certain men. It protects everyone: women, men, the company, the family at home, and indeed society at large since the costs of bad behaviour often spread that far.

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But what about that all that mentoring that women will miss out on if they cannot have dinner alone with the boss, or travel with him, or work late at the office with him?

Well, girls, be creative. If that is what it takes to get ahead at the moment, isn’t it time the system changed? Shouldn’t you be promoted on your competence, your performance? If it takes wheeling and dealing and gossiping and impressing the boss with your incisive insights over dinner, isn’t that just as likely to work against you as for you? Remember, there will likely be others in line for the same treatment. And what advice can he have for you that he would not share with anyone else?

That they are instead, in 2017, fighting a rearguard action against sexual harassment, shows that something very important is missing from the current model of women’s empowerment. That something is realism about sexuality and how its expression should be regulated in the workplace, and elsewhere in the public sphere.

The Pence rule addresses that gap and it should not be dismissed on specious grounds.

Women account for at least half the workforce today. Many are in senior positions. But even where they are not so powerful, if they showed the same candour and solidarity in the workplace as they are showing now at #metoo, they could reform the old boys club rules for career advancement overnight.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet. This article was originally published on MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons Licence.

Compiled and Edited by Patrick Kenny

Book review To Raise The Fallen

A book review by Rev. Chris Hayden

“I

could not say too much about your son. He was loved and reverenced by us all; his gallantry, self-sacrifice, and devotion to duty were so wellknown and recognised. I think that his was the most wonderful character that I have ever known.”

Veritas Publications, 2017

is not better known and esteemed in his native country.

These words were written to Hugh Doyle, the father of Willie Doyle SJ, by Major General Hickie, Commander of the 16th (Irish) Division, after the death of Fr Doyle at Passchendale in August 1917. Reading Patrick Kenny’s book, it becomes easy to see how such praise was merited, and difficult to understand why Fr Willie Doyle

Willie Doyle SJ is surely one of our nation’s unsung heroes; unsung, that is, in his own country, but this man was tremendously influential elsewhere. He was an important influence in the lives of several canonized saints, including St Josemaria Escriva and St Teresa of Calcutta. More importantly, perhaps, he influenced a vast number of his contemporaries through his writings, his ministry and his radical openness to grace.

Interestingly, no less a figure than Joseph Ratzinger quotes Fr Doyle in his magisterial

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Principles of Catholic Theology.

Ratzinger’s quotation does not feature in Kenny’s book, but it is worth noting: “I do not believe I could ever find food for vainglory or pride in anything I do – any more than an organ grinder can take pride in the beautiful music he produces when he turns the handle…. I feel ashamed when people praise me ... just as a piano might feel ashamed if someone were to compliment it on the beautiful music that flows from its keys.”

Why the subsequent neglect of Fr Doyle’s memory? Patrick Kenny’s oblique suggestion is that our earlier ambivalence regarding the involvement of Irishmen in the First World War may be at the root of the silence.

Now that we’re shedding some of that ambivalence, it may well be that Willie Doyle’s time has come.

This is not a work of hagiography. Kenny’s introductory biography is reserved and dispassionate, yet he presents his subject as “a spiritual tactician of the highest order.” After the 24-page

introduction, it is Fr Doyle himself who speaks for the remainder of the book. Before reading this short work, I was unacquainted with Willie Doyle.

But Kenny’s skill as a writer and compiler, coupled with the humanity and stature of his subject, left me feeling that I had encountered a very great man – indeed, a true saint.

Fr Doyle felt called to a life of hardship and sacrifice; he hoped to die a “martyr of charity,” and this is what transpired: he was killed by an exploding shell while making his way to help wounded soldiers. Fr Doyle’s courage was not the absence of fear: “My real feeling,” he wrote, “was abject fear and I often shook like a leaf.” What enabled him to endure the hardship and terror of trench warfare was his spirit of service, his deep, disciplined faith and a warm, personal relationship with his Lord.

The great gift of Kenny’s book is that Fr Doyle’s personality shines through these pages. He has a wry, self-deprecating humour which helps him to rise

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above his circumstances. Of his experience in the sodden trenches he writes: “my feet were in the water which helped to keep the fires of devotion from growing too warm.”

really light when you take it bit by bit.”

This heroic Jesuit has a wonderful turn of phrase. After midnight Mass, 1916, he observes: “peace and good will – hatred and bloodshed.” He senses that the Lord is saying to him: “You must be your own executioner.” His spiritual aphorisms are worthy of the Book of Proverbs: “A sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows sharper with use”; “welcome the hard black days as real harvest time”; “the cross is

Fr Doyle’s language may occasionally be a bit saccharine for contemporary sensibilities; this is most evident in his meditations on the Stations of the Cross. But given the intelligence, strength and stature of the man, perhaps it is contemporary sensibilities that should be called into question by him, rather than vice versa. This is, after all, what saints do: they interrogate us. It is well worth being interrogated by Fr Willie Doyle SJ, and Patrick Kenny has done a great service to the Irish Church by presenting this heroic figure in such a lively and accessible way.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rev. Chris Hayden is a priest of the Ferns diocese and is the editor of Intercom.

This review first appeared in the October issue of Intercom and is reprinted with the kind permission of the editor.

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Book review Totalitarian Temptations A book review by Tim O’Sullivan

I

n the 1970s, Ryszard Legutko began to travel for the first time outside Communist Poland and was unpleasantly surprised by the “anti-anticommunism” of his friends and contacts in the West, who combined a lenient attitude to communists and a harsh approach to anticommunists.

Author: Ryszard Legutko

Encounter Books, 2016

collapsed regimes. Instead, Professor Leguto states, excommunists quickly joined the new establishment in these countries, scrutiny of the recent communist past became deeply unwelcome and anti-communists were often seen as a threat to liberal democracy.

Later, in the ex-communist countries, after the move to democracy in 1989, a deliberately forgetful attitude was taken towards the recent communist past. In the new democratic systems set up in Eastern Europe at that time, one might have expected a very searching examination of the crimes and injustices of the recently

Later, he argues, no postcommunist government, even the worst, was condemned by the European Union, while the current anti-communist governments of Poland and Hungary have “sparked fury of enormous intensity” (p. 141).

These developments prompted the author, a Polish professor of philosophy at the Jagellonian

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University in Krakow , MEP and former Government Minister with the Law and Justice Party, to reflect in this book (The Demon in Democracy.

Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, Encounter Books, New York and London, 2016) on the similarities between communism and liberal democracy or, at least, the type of secularist, “liberaldemocratic” system that has developed in Europe in recent decades – similarities that he was at first very surprised to acknowledge.

In thought-provoking chapters on History, Utopia, Politics, Ideology and Religion, the author explores the shared objectives between these two political systems and the defective concept of the human person in both and argues that secularist liberal democracy has over time moved towards the same goals as communism, though without Soviet-style brutality.

Forms of Utopia He makes this argument in a nuanced way, by acknowledging, for example, that this book would not have been published in

Communist Poland.

Nevertheless, his argument is that communism and secularist liberal-democracy are both forms of Utopia, which aim to destroy injustice, tyranny and poverty for ever and to solve definitively “all the basic problems of collective life” (p. 47). Both sides, he maintains, also have a dislike, sometimes bordering on hatred, towards the same enemies: the Church and religion, the nation, classical metaphysics, moral conservatism and the family.

He reflects on the increasing reach of “liberal-democracy”, like Marxism before it, into every area of life – including marriage and the family and education, a move which he sees as being propelled by the concept of equality that came to prominence during the social revolution of the 1960s.

The State in liberal democracy, he argues, has ceased to be an institution pursuing the common good and has become instead a hostage of groups “that treated it solely as an instrument of change securing their interests” (p. 61).

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Professor Legutko refers to the mediocre vision of man on offer today and makes interesting comments, in this context, on entertainment: “The modern sense of entertainment increasingly resembles what Pascal long ago called divertissement: that is, an activity … that separates us from the seriousness of existence and fills this existence with false content” (p. 36). The author links this phenomenon to the “anthropological minimalism” of democratic man, in which, for example, entertaining oneself takes on an exaggerated importance (p. 38).

The author offers a highly critical analysis of the EU, which he knows well in his role as an MEP, and maintains that the EU reflects the order and spirit of liberal democracy in its most “degenerate” version. This is because, he argues, unelected EU officials and even elected MEPs are not accountable to national electorates in any meaningful way.

European institutions, he suggests, are supposed to represent “European society”, as

distinct from national societies, which, theoretically, seems quite understandable. The problem is that the EU institutions exist whereas European society does not: “Such a society will – we are told – come into existence some time in the future, but this belief is a part of the EU creed, for which evidence is, to say the least, shaky. But once we accept the basic premise that the existing institutions may act for, and in the name of, the society that is believed to emerge in the future, we give them extraordinary powers far exceeding those that are granted within the framework of an ordinary society” (p. 69). He maintains that reform will have to start from the nation-states themselves rather than from the EU as such.

Breathing with both lungs St John Paul II liked to say that Europe needed to breathe with both its lungs – Western Latin and Eastern Orthodox – but one might apply the metaphor to Western and Eastern Europe more generally. We in Western Europe need to be better

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informed on what is happening in the East.

Reporting of Eastern Europe today in Ireland is dominated by EU or Western media critiques of the nationalist positions of various Governments from that region but detailed, in-depth press exploration of the experience and outlook of people of faith is lacking – as it was in the 1970s too, before the election of Pope John Paul II. Alternative perspectives, such as this essay

by Professor Legutko, are thus of great interest for the light that they shed on current developments and debates in their region and indeed throughout Europe. Christians across Europe can and do legitimately differ about the European Union and its future and some would place greater hope than the author in the possibility of revitalizing it from within, even if concern about its democratic deficit has arguably become more widespread.

totalitarianism”. One can point in Ireland to the extraordinary pressure applied here to pass the “same-sex marriage” referendum in 2015 and the current efforts to shut down debate on the repeal of the Eighth Amendment. While Prof Legutko’s book is stronger on analysis than on solutions for the future, or ideas on how, for example, Christians in different countries might cooperate with each other, his scholarly essay is well worth reading by anyone concerned about, and wishing to understand better, the huge challenges we currently face across the European Continent.

This illuminating analysis is a valuable contribution to discussion at a time of great anxiety throughout Europe about emerging forms of “soft

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim O’Sullivan has degrees in arts and social policy and completed a doctorate on the subsidiarity principle. He is a regular contributor to Position Papers.

Film review Coco

A film review by John Mulderig

W

ill Coco (Disney) be your cup of tea? That largely depends on how well equipped you are to interpret this visually rich animated fantasy’s presentation of the afterlife, one which owes little to Christianity and much to the pre-Columbian beliefs associated with Mexico’s Day of the Dead.

Sadly, this means that the film cannot be recommended for the youthful audience at which it seems primarily aimed. Teens and grownups, however, can safely appreciate it.

Viewers travel to the other world in the company of Miguel (voice of Anthony Gonzalez), an endearing preteen from South of the Border. Miguel is on a quest

Directed by Lee Unkrich

Produced by Darla K. Anderson

Production C. Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios to follow in the footsteps of his hometown’s most famous son, Ernesto de la Cruz (voice of Benjamin Bratt), by becoming a world-renowned musician.

His aspirations have so far been stymied by the fact that his family has a long-standing aversion to all things musical. This unusual distaste first arose when one of Miguel’s ancestors deserted his wife and child in favour of a career singing and playing the guitar – with devastating emotional consequences. The tiny daughter thus abandoned is now Mama Coco (voice of Ana Ofelia Murguia), Miguel’s muchloved great-grandmother.

Desperate to make his debut at a talent night being staged as part

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of the Day of the Dead festivities, but lacking a guitar, Miguel sneaks into de la Cruz’s mausoleum where his trademark instrument is kept. Clues have convinced Miguel that de la Cruz was, in fact, Coco’s long-lost dad, so he feels justified in borrowing the guitar.

disintegration that awaits each person once there is no one left alive who remembers that individual.

While free of any ageinappropriate content and strong on the importance of clan solidarity, co-director Adrian Molina’s script, penned with Matthew Aldrich, is stuffed full of such notions. Thus, despite its warm spirit and considerable aesthetic credentials, principal director Lee Unkrich’s movie is unsuitable for Miguel’s real-life contemporaries.

While inside the tomb, Miguel is mysteriously transported to the Land of the Dead. There he eventually gains a guide in the person of Hector Rivera (voice of Gael Garcia Bernal) a goodhearted but slippery character who, like all his ilk, is a living skeleton.

For those more firmly established by maturity and faith formation, on the other hand, Coco represents a good holiday-season option.

Miguel and Hector strike a bargain: If Hector helps the boy find de la Cruz – Miguel needs the blessing of a relative in order to return to the normal world – Miguel will bring Hector’s photograph back with him and place it on the homemade altar (known as an “ofrenda”) where the departed are honoured.

According to the movie’s mythos, that will enable Hector to visit the land of the living each year. It also will allow him to postpone the “second death,” the final

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Mulderig is a reviewer for Catholic News Service.

Copyright (c) 2017 Catholic News Service. Reprinted with permission from CNS. www.catholicnews.com

Film review Blade Runner 2049

Director Denis Villeneuve Stars Harrison Ford, Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas

A film review by Kurt Jensen

M

isogyny hangs over Blade Runner 2049 (Warner Bros.) as blithely as the thick yellow fog of the postapocalyptic Los Angeles it portrays.

There’s also an abundance of female nudity and a complicated sexual encounter that may have you thinking about the risk of electrocution.

While that’s hardly unusual for science-fiction epics with a substantially male core audience, director Denis Villeneuve, working from a script by Hampton Fancer and Michael Green, has made a two-and-a-half-hour film that, in its solemn eagerness to have the audience relish every special effect and linger over every underlined point about artificial life developing authentic human emotions, feels more like four hours.

This is not a remake of Ridley Scott’s 1982 epic, based on a Philip K. Dick novel, about synthetic humans called replicants interacting with, and often threatening, human civilization. It’s the second chapter, set a few decades hence, after an entire breed of replicants revolted in the manner of a slave rebellion.

K (Ryan Gosling), a worldweary police officer, has the job, in his flying car, of locating scattered rebellious androids,

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putting them out of commission, and retrieving their eyeballs, on which are engraved serial numbers. He’s bossed around by his grumpy chief, Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright).

The core plot is a film noir-type murder mystery. Someone killed and buried a female replicant, and when her bones are examined, it turns out she had given birth. If these artificial life forms can procreate on their own, they also can control their destinies.

The question of who in the film is a replicant and who is not makes up the rest of the plot.

It’s not a question that’s answered, since the intention is to build a sci-fi franchise, and that’s not really the point of the goings-on, anyway.

Along the way, Villeneuve explores the question of whether his holographic pal, Joi (Ana de Armas), whom K purchased as one does a computer app, is just a collection of artificial intelligence or a amorous gal

capable of falling in love with a real live boy – in this case, K. There’s also an evil tech visionary, Niander (Jared Leto), with an equally malevolent aide, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) who manufactures the supposedly more compliant replicants and controls them with lethal force. K eventually connects with Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), the hero of the first film, who has surrounded himself with performing holograms of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra and is handy with his fists.

There’s a bit of a message here about mankind’s relationship to technology, what we expect out of it, and our ability to truly connect spiritually as humans.

But this existential argument doesn’t go very far, and in lieu of philosophy, some of the building-size street advertisements turn out to be seductive 3-D nude ladies. In this future, women exist pretty much only to be evil cardboard cutouts or just to be sexualized.

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The film contains female nudity, a discreet sexual encounter involving a holograph melding with a human prostitute, frequent rough language and some profanities. The Catholic News Service classification is L: limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R: restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

ABOUT THE
 AUTHOR Kurt Jensen is a guest reviewer for Catholic News Service. Copyright (c) 2017 Catholic News Service.

Reprinted with permission from CNS. www.catholicnews.com

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Nazareth Family Institute Pre-marriage preparation.

Marriage enrichment, restoration & healing.

Dates of marriage preparation weekends: 19/20 January 2018 23/24 March 2018 13/14 April 2018 18/19 May 2018 7/8 September 2018 2/3 November 2018 Venue: Avila retreat centre, Donnybrook, Dublin.

Extended course: A seven week course by arrangement with the course directors Course director, Peter Perrem 01-2896647 For more information see: www.nazarethfamilyinstitute.net

PRE-ADOLESCENCE For parents with children from 11 to 13 years old Courses 2017-2018 During puberty, children experience some psychosomatic changes that affect their sensibility and their behaviour. This is coupled with aggressive external influences.

In this course, parents analyse the causes and effects of such changes and they study the most appropriate guidelines to maintain a firm and down-to-earth relationship with their children, without limiting their natural discovery of the world.

10am-12.30pm on the following Sundays: 29 October 10 December 14 January 25 February 11 March 15 April

Rosemont School, Enniskerry Road, Sandyford, Dublin 18

â‚Ź200 per couple for the 6 sessions (booking before September 1st, 2017 only â‚Ź170) This includes course materials, tuition and tea/coffee.

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