Number 516 February 2018 €3 · £2.50 · $4
A review of Catholic affairs
Saving the Eighth Amendment J O H N WAT E R S , MICHAEL KIRKE & T I M O ’ S U L L I VA N
Film review: The Commuter JOHN MULDERIG
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Number 516 · February 2018
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Editorial by Rev. Gavan Jennings
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In Passing: A war for the heart and soul of Ireland by Michael Kirke
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Muffling the debate by Tim O’Sullivan
Lent: Pathway to Easter from www.opusdei.ie
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Irelands’ constitutional crisis by John Waters
Book Review: The Strange Death of Europe by James Bradshaw
Book Review: A Catholic Guide to Mindfulness by Patti Armstrong
Film Review: The Commuter by John Mulderig
Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:
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Rev. Gavan Jennings Michael Kirke, Pat Hanratty, Brenda McGann Liam Ó hAlmhain Dick Kearns Eblana Solutions
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Editorial
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omething we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand. The thing we cannot see is culture, in its intrapsychic or internal manifestation. The thing we do not understand is the chaos that gave rise to culture. If the structure of culture is disrupted, unwittingly, chaos returns. We will do anythinganything-to defend ourselves against that return.” These are the opening words of the Preface (subtitled “Descensus ad inferos” – the descent into hell) of Jordan Peterson’s 1999 book Maps of Meaning. In the Preface Peterson describes how as young university student he became fixed on the question of evil, especially as it manifested itself in the totalitarian societies of the twentieth century. He kept asking himself, “How did evil – particularly groupfostered evil – come to play its role in the world?” Such evil is the chaos waiting to overwhelm society once “the structure of culture is disrupted”. His categories of culture and chaos help us to understand more profoundly the issues at stake in the current efforts of the Irish government to remove the constitutional protection of the life of unborn children. While politicians are already covering their efforts with trite slogans and specious arguments, at root what is happening is a profound disruption of the structure of Irish culture. And by culture is meant that which is a bulwark against evil; humanity we might call it. This bulwark is being dismantled and the chaos of evil – inhumanity – is returning. This “chaos” is, as Peterson says, “something we do not understand”. It is the “mysterium iniquitatis”, a crime which, in the words of Viktor Frankl, “in the final analysis remains inexplicable inasmuch as it cannot be fully traced back to biological, psychological and/or sociological factors”. It is what John Waters in his article in this month’s issue baldly terms “wickedness”. While the term “evil” might
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not be one to be used in the referendum campaign which is now beginning, it is at the heart of the matter. Indeed it is the true tragedy of the matter. Evil is always at work when one human being seeks the death of another; this is the epitome of inhumanity. And when such evil receives State sanction, the bulwark against chaos has all but been dismantled. When an unborn child, especially one with Down’s Syndrome or with a so-called Fatal Foetal Abnormality (i.e. a very sick child) comes into contact with a humane or cultured society for the very first time, the encounter will be with the smile of a mother, the tender care of a doctor or nurse, the surge of humanity of a medical staff which seeks to save that life and alleviate its sufferings. The first, indeed the only, contact of such a child with a society in chaos, a society which has lost its humanity, will be with an instrument designed to administer death: a scalpel, a suction pump or a saline solution device.
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Could we even surmise that such children might experience this brutal and fatal encounter with “civilisation” with relief – as sparing them the horror of being born into the kind of dystopia which does such things to human beings? After a moment of horror they find themselves in the loving arms of a “humane” God. Theirs is a physical evil: the radical truncation of their lives on earth. The moral evil – wickedness – is the preserve of the men and women whose society the unborn were spared of sharing. The greater, and only true evil is of course to be the perpetrator of evil, and not its victim. Peterson says later in the Preface: “I have been trying ever since then to make sense of the human capacity, my capacity, for evil.” This is an important element of the “mysterium iniquitatis” to bear in mind. The capacity for evil, the lurking chaos, is not the preserve of one or other group in society. As Solzhenitsyn famously put it: “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.”
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Even our growing inured to the reality of what is happening around us is in some sense a warning sign to us: that perhaps my humanity is being diminished. Our pity for the innocent unborn must also be matched by a sorrow for those whose hearts could do this: for mothers duped by medical practitioners and others – often in a time of extreme anguish – to violate the most fundamental maternal instinct to preserve the life of their child; doctors who could violate the most fundamental principle of their profession: to save life; and politicians who lead their nations down the dark path of chaos.
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In Passing: A war for the heart and soul of Ireland by Michael Kirke
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war for the heart and soul of Ireland is currently waging and the battle for the right to life of the unborn is revealing a divide in its people of the most fundamental kind. The very nature of humanity is at issue.
civilization, once thought they were on the right side of History. The Marxism implicit in the determinism of those who tell us we are on “the wrong side of history” is frightening. We are a free people and we make history, history does not make us. History is the record of our greatness and our folly, of our capacity for good and our dreadful capacity for evil. To surrender ourselves and our freedom to “History” as some blind force is to abandon our humanity. To surrender ourselves and our freedom to “History” without questioning the human choices which made it what it is, is to abdicate moral
It is amazing that what Maria Steen pointed out recently in a TV encounter needed to be said in a public debate. The old “wrong side of History” was thrown at her as a argument against the right to life of the unborn. She pointed out that history did not have the cleanest record when it comes to human rights – given that slave-traders, to name but one atrocious blot on
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responsibility. To define our freedom as simply a matter of making choices without asking ourselves about the good or evil character of what we choose is the way to a hell on earth.
elite, poor backward Ireland is still living in the Dark Ages, continuing “against the tide of History” to regard the child in its mother’s womb as a human being. The international media is keeping up the pressure – hoping that they will see Ireland go from the back of the class right up to the front again, as it did nearly three years ago when it became the first country in the world to legalise gay marriage by a popular vote.
This is the battle now being engaged on the island of Ireland. In the North of Ireland, within the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, the outcome will be determined by Parliament. In the Republic it goes before the people in a referendum and in a matter of months the issue will be decided. The right to life of babies over the first nine months of their existence will be taken away or vindicated.
In terms of financial resources and elite consensus, it is all shaping up to be the greatest and most unequal contest since David faced Goliath. On one side you have the international forces of the United Nations, the European Union Commissars, assorted NGOs led by a shadowy manipulator masquerading as a philanthropist, George Sorros, by that betrayed organisation, Amnesty International, whose Irish branch is now totally dedicated to the cause of abortion – and about ninety percent of the national media. On the other side you have a very committed but numerically limited and terribly underfunded platoon of pro-life
The forces of so-called progress, namely “progressivism”, and the forces of reason are mustering for the battle. Divisive it will be. Divisive it must be – for this, like no other issue is an issue of life and death. Ireland’s progressivist elitists are an embarrassed lot – feeling out of step with their compatriots in the United States, the island of Britain and the continent of Europe. Among this enlightened
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action groups defending the unborn.
freedom are synonymous. All this, they hope, will be seen by the people of Ireland to be the lie that it is.
Pope Francis is expected to visit Ireland in August. The clever progressives in the Irish Government have been very careful to ensure that he was not going to get a platform to speak his mind on the issue in any way that would have a serious impact on the result. For that reason the referendum will take place in May or June – at the time of writing the date had not yet been set. They have no such reservations about letting the unelected quangos of the United Nations and the European Union have their say on the matter.
“Only the freedom which submits to the Truth leads the human person to his true good. The good of the person is to be in the Truth and to do the Truth.” (Veritatis Splendor, Saint John Paul II). This speaks not just to the Christian but to all mankind. The denial of the truth inherent in the pro-choice ideology, a denial made in the face of human nature and science, enslaves its adherents – even as they demand their false autonomy. In the same Magna Carta on behalf of Truth, he also spells out the reasons for the cul-de-sac into which progressivism has led us, and its dire consequences.
But the defenders of unborn children know the story of David and Goliath. They also know that in their sling they have a small still voice more powerful than anything this Goliath can throw at them and the babies they are fighting for. They have the truth, the truth about our nature and about our humanity. They feel that if they can tell the story of life then the deception of abortion will be exposed – along with the untruth that choice and
This essential bond between Truth, the Good and Freedom has been largely lost sight of by present-day culture... Pilate’s question: “What is truth” reflects the distressing perplexity of a man who often no longer knows who he is, whence he comes and where
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he is going. Hence we not infrequently witness the fearful plunging of the human person into situations of gradual self-destruction. According to some, it appears that one no longer need acknowledge the enduring absoluteness of any moral value. All around us we encounter contempt for human life after conception and before birth; the ongoing violation of basic rights of the person; the unjust destruction of goods minimally necessary for a human life. Indeed, something more serious has happened: man is no longer convinced that only in the truth can he find salvation. The saving power of the truth is contested, and freedom alone, uprooted from any objectivity, is left to decide by itself what is good and what is evil.
William Binchy, an expert in constitutional law, when he addressed politicians deliberating on the legislation which set up this referendum. He challenged both those advocating repeal and the legitimacy of international pressure being put on Ireland to make this change. Clearly, he said, the implications for civilisation of an argument which gives one human being the right to choose to end the life of another innocent and defenceless human being brings us back to not just the Dark Ages but to one of barbarism where right and wrong are no longer rooted in reason but on the whims of individuals. Human rights, Binchy explained to the members of the parliamentary committee – some of whom seemed incapable of comprehending the truth of what he was saying – are based on the inherent and equal worth of every human being. “Human beings have human rights, not because they are given by legislators or courts, but by reason of their humanity.” Commenting on what advocates for change are saying, he claimed
The chilling implications of the underlying and erroneous philosophy of those advocating the repeal of Ireland’s constitutional protection of the right to life of all human beings were laid bare by Professor
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that, if accepted, they would make it lawful to take the life of a child on request, with no restriction as to reasons, and also where the child has a significant foetal anomaly. “If human rights are to have any meaning, one human being should not be entitled to choose to end the life of another, innocent and defenceless, human being. The idea that our law should authorise the taking of a child’s life with “no restriction as to reasons” is, frankly, abhorrent to any civilised society.”
brings us back once again to the spectre of a hell on earth. So let the battle be engaged. This is a crucial moment of truth for the Irish people, and indeed the watching world. The great art historian, Kenneth Clark, from the precipice of Skellig Michael off the coast of Kerry, long before Star Wars arrived there, once spoke of Western civilization hanging by its fingernails from those rocks. Perhaps history will repeat itself and the world will begin its liberation from the blind force of History to which “progressivism” has surrendered our freedom.
To get a sense of the poverty of the thinking behind the prochoice case one has to look no further than the slogans with which they proclaim it. “Abortion is not a Crime. It is a choice”, they shout, without looking at the implications of those words . Choices and crimes are not mutually exclusive. Some choices are wrong and will always be wrong, whether the law says so or not. Good laws say they are. Bad laws say they are not – in this case a bad law is being proposed on the basis that choice is the greatest of all goods – which
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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Muffling the debate by Tim O’Sullivan
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n A Private Choice (The Free Press, 1979), his powerful analysis of abortion in America in the 1970s, Professor John T Noonan, Jr. argued that the press there “muffled” the abortion issue to a very large extent. In part, this was through very biased coverage of what Professor Noonan called “the abortion liberty”. He argued that the press, including radio and TV, was for that liberty: “Virtually every major newspaper in the country was on its side, as were the radio stations, the news commentators, the disc jockeys, the pollsters, the syndicated columnists, the editorial writers,
the reporters, the news services, the journals of information and the journals of opinion…. There was not a single large urban newspaper regularly carrying the anti-abortion viewpoint the way Horace Greeley’s Tribune had carried the anti-slavery viewpoint.…There was not a single national news magazine that was ever other than silent on the issue or favourable to the liberty” (pp. 69-70). The muffling of debate also resulted from misleading and inaccurate reporting. Thus, the impression was repeatedly, and wrongly, given that the abortion liberty accorded by the Roe versus Wade US Supreme Court decision of 1973 applied only to
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the first three months of pregnancy. Moreover, opposition to abortion in America in the 1970s was presented as an exclusively religious/Catholic concern. In Ireland, we have experienced a similar muffling of debate on abortion – from an extraordinary media bias going back to the 1980s and a failure to report on the reality of abortion law and practice in Britain and other countries to the partial and one-sided processes of the recent Citizens’ Assembly and Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment. Terminology also provides a pointer to the muffling of debate here. For example, the Irish Times, which has long campaigned for the liberty of abortion and has described the pro-life term as “loaded”, refers in its news reporting to those in favour of that liberty as “prochoice” whereas those against it are “anti-abortion”.
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Given that “pro-life” and “prochoice” respectively are the terms preferred by the various campaigning groups, one might expect the media to follow this usage; but the Irish Times instead has adopted the preferred terminology of one side of the debate (pro-choice) but not of the other side (prolife). Not content with campaigning on one side of the debate, in other words, it also seeks to control the ways in which that debate is framed so that even pro-life initiatives must conform to its unbalanced house style. One should add, in fairness, that the paper carries an excellent weekly column by the pro-life commentator, Breda O’Brien. At one level, of course, “antiabortion” is an accurate descriptor of those who are against the liberty of abortion. In press coverage, however, it has the advantage of suggesting a negative, rigid sentiment while “pro-choice” brings with it connotations of freedom and respect for the wishes of others.
In reality, however, the term “pro-choice” is problematic for many reasons. First, and most importantly, choice does not extend to the innocent baby peacefully growing in his or her mother’s womb. Second, the “private choice” of abortion is actually accompanied, wherever abortion is legalised, by enormous compulsion and lack of choice – for example, taxpayers who are totally opposed to abortion must nevertheless contribute to State funding of abortion “services” through their taxes; and, in many countries, medical and nursing professionals must participate in abortion procedures and referrals if they
wish to progress in their careers and irrespective of any conscientious objections they may have. Lack of choice is also a feature of public discussion – in countries like Britain, the media have arguably closed down the abortion debate since the Abortion Act of 1967 and pro-life speakers today may struggle to get a hearing even in student forums. In France, the then Socialist Government passed a law in early 2017 sharply restricting the freedom of operation of pro-life websites. Rather than being “loaded”, the term “pro-life” is highly
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appropriate because it conveys a sense of positivity and of support for women and their babies and for the future. It is a reminder that at the heart of the abortion debate is the question of whether a particular living being will live or die. Being prolife also means having huge respect for pregnant women and their needs – a respect which is underpinned by the leadership role of women in the pro-life movement, in Ireland and elsewhere. It is also important, as Church leaders frequently point out, that Christians promote a pro-life ethos in all areas of life and not just in relation to abortion.
At the end of his book on “the abortion liberty” Professor Noonan concluded with his own appeal for a truly pro-life ethic: “There must be a limit to a liberty so mistaken in its foundations, so far-reaching in its malignant consequences, and so deadly in its exercise. There must be a surpassing of such liberty by love” (p. 192).
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.
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Lent: Pathway to Easter from www.opusdei.ie
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ive us the right dispositions, O Lord we pray, to make these offerings, for with them we celebrate the beginning of this venerable and sacred time.”[1] Right from the first Sunday of Lent the liturgy resolutely marks the character of the forty days that start with Ash Wednesday. Lent is a compendium of our whole life, which is a “constant returning to the house of our Father God.”[2] It is a pathway to the Paschal Mystery, to the death and resurrection of our Lord, the centre of gravity of history, and of each woman, each man: a returning to eternal Love. During Lent the Church again reminds us of the need to renew
our heart and our deeds so that we can rediscover the centrality of the Paschal Mystery. We once again have to put ourselves in God’s hands to “grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ and by worthy conduct pursue their effects.”[3] “What a strange capacity man has to forget even the most wonderful things, to become used to mystery. Let us remind ourselves this Lent that Christians cannot be superficial. While being fully involved in our everyday work . . . we have to be at the same time totally involved with God, for we are children of God.”[4] Hence during these days we want to consider in our prayer the need for conversion,
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to redirect our steps towards our Lord and purify our hearts, making our own the psalmist’s cry: Cor mundum crea in me, Deus, et spiritum firmum innova in visceribus meis; “A pure heart create for me, O God; put a steadfast spirit within me.”[5] These words are from the psalm Miserere that the Church offers us frequently during this liturgical season and that Saint Josemaría so often recited. Israel’s path through the wilderness Lent has deep roots in various key episodes in the history of salvation that is also our own history. One of these is the crossing of the desert by the Chosen People. Those forty years for the Israelites were a time of trial and temptation. The Lord God accompanied them all the time, and made them understand that they should rely only on him, softening the hardness of their stony hearts. [6] It was a time of constant graces. Though the people suffered, it was God himself who comforted and guided them
through Moses’ words, and who fed them with manna and quails and gave them water at the rock of Meribah.[7] How relevant for us are the words, filled with tenderness, with which God led the Israelites to reflect on the meaning of their long journey! You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know to know what was in your hearts, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.[8] The Lord addresses these words today to us as well, who in the desert of our lives certainly experience fatigue and problems every day, but also encounter God’s fatherly care. Sometimes his care reaches us through the
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disinterested help of family members and friends, and sometimes even from people of good will whom we may not even know. Through his mysterious way of guiding us, God bit by bit leads us into his heart, the true promised land: Praebe, fili mi, cor tuum mihi…. “My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.”[9]
inaugurated by Christ. With his Incarnation, his life and glorification, our Lord leads us to the definitive exodus, in which the promises are totally fulfilled. He makes a place for us in heaven; he achieves a Sabbath’s rest for the people of God; for whosoever enters God’s rest also ceases from his labours as God did from his.[12]
Many of the episodes in the exodus of the Israelites foreshadowed future events. Not all of those on that first pilgrimage through the wilderness entered the Promised Land.[10] That is why the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, quoting Psalm 94, mourns the people’s rebellion and at the same time celebrates the coming of a new exodus: Since therefore it remained to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he sets a certain day, “today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”[11] This “today” was
Christ’s path through the wilderness The Gospel for the first Sunday in Lent shows us Jesus who, in solidarity with us, allowed himself to be tempted at the end of his forty days spent in the wilderness. His victory over Satan fills us with hope, and makes us realise that with Him we too can win out in the battles of our interior life. Our temptations then no longer upset us, but instead are turned into opportunities to get to know ourselves better and cling more closely to God. We discover that the ideal of a comfortable life is a mirage of true happiness, and we realise, with Saint Josemaría, that “we need, most probably, to change again, to be more loyal
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and humble, so that we become less selfish and let Christ grow in us, for He must become more and more, I must become less and less (Jn 3:30).”[13] The experience of our personal fragility should not lead to fear, but rather to a humble petition that activates our faith, hope and love: “Take away from me, Lord, whatever takes me away from you” we can say, as St Josemaría often did.[14] When we are with Jesus we find the strength to firmly reject temptation, refusing to dialogue. “Note well how Jesus responds. He does not dialogue with Satan, as Eve had done in the earthly paradise. Jesus . . . chooses to take refuge in the Word of God and responds with the power of this Word. Let us remember this: at the moment of temptation, of our temptations, there is no arguing with Satan. Our defence must always be the Word of God! And this will save us.”[15] The story of the Transfiguration, proclaimed on the second Sunday of Lent, strengthens our conviction that victory is certain in spite of our limitations. We
too will share in Jesus’ glory if we unite ourselves to his Cross in our daily life. Therefore we need to nourish our faith, as we see in the Gospel scenes the liturgy presents to us every three years on the last Sundays in Lent. First, we see the Samaritan woman, who overcomes sin to recognise Jesus as the Messiah who quenches, with the living water of the Holy Spirit, her thirst for love;[16] then the man blind from birth, who recognises Christ as the light of the world who overcomes ignorance, while those who thought they could see remain blind,[17] and finally Lazarus, whose resurrection reminds us that Jesus has come to bring us new life.[18] By contemplating these scenes as one more person there, with the help of the saints, we will find extra resources for our personal prayer and attain the more intense presence of God that we are seeking during these days. Our penitential pathway as sons and daughters The Collect for the third Sunday in Lent presents the penitential meaning of this season: “O God,
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author of every mercy and of all goodness, who in fasting, prayer and almsgiving have shown us a remedy for sin, look graciously on this confession of our lowliness, that we who are bowed down by our conscience may always be lifted up by your mercy.” With the humility that comes from knowing we are sinners, we ask with the whole Church for the intervention of God’s fatherly mercy: his loving gaze on our lives and his healing forgiveness.
charitable at all times towards those around you . . . Penance consists of putting up goodhumouredly with the thousand and one little pinpricks of each day . . . in eating gladly whatever is served, without being fussy.”[20]
The liturgy urges us to take up personally the process of conversion, by inviting us to make room in our lives for the traditional penitential practices. These practices express a change in our relationship with God (prayer), with others (alms) and with ourselves (fasting).[19] It is the “spirit of penance” Saint Josemaría gave us so many practical examples of: “penance is fulfilling exactly the timetable you have fixed for yourself . . . you are practising penitence when you lovingly keep to your schedule of prayer, despite feeling worn-out, listless or cold. Penance means being very
At the same time we know that merely external actions count for nothing without God’s grace. We cannot be identified with Christ without his help: quia tibi sine te placere non possumus, “for without your help we cannot please you”.[21] We try then with his help to carry out these works in secret, where only our Father God sees them.[22] We try to rectify our intention frequently, so as to seek more diligently his glory and the salvation of all men and women. The apostle John wrote: he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. [23] These words invite us to examine our conscience carefully, because it is impossible to separate the two sides of charity. If we know that we are always under God’s gaze, our sense of divine filiation will
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imbue our interior life and apostolate with a more trusting, childlike contrition, and with sincere self-giving to those around us, among our family, colleagues at work, friends.
clothe ourselves with Jesus Christ and his merits.”[26] Lent is a splendid moment to cultivate this “special affection” for Confession, by practising it ourselves in the first place, and then by telling many others about it.
Our penitential pathway through the sacraments In our daily struggle against the disorder of sin, the sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion are also privileged moments. It makes sense that our inner penitence should be perfected by the sacrament of Confession. Much depends on the dispositions of the penitent, although the protagonist is God, who moves us to conversion. Through this sacrament – one of God’s real masterworks[24] – we can perceive how he draws good even from our fallen freedom. This is the way Saint Josemaría explained what our role should be: “I advise you all to have, as a special devotion . . . that of making many acts of contrition. And an external, practical manifestation of this devotion is to feel a special affection for the Holy Sacrament of Penance,”[25] in which “we
After the absolution the priest gives in the name of God, the Ritual suggests a beautiful final prayer of dismissal of the penitent: “May the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of all the saints, whatever good you do and suffering you endure, heal your sins, help you to grow in holiness, and reward you with eternal life. Go in peace.”[27] It is an ancient prayer in which the priest asks God to extend the effects of the sacrament over the whole of the penitent’s life, reminding us of the source of its effectiveness: the merits of the innocent Victim and of all the saints. As happened with the younger son in the parable, after being embraced by our Father God we
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are admitted to the banquet. [28] What joy it gives us to be really clean when we take part in the Eucharist! “Love our Lord very much. Maintain and foster in your soul a sense of urgency to love him better. Love God precisely now when perhaps a good many of those who hold him in their hands do not love him, but rather ill-treat him and neglect him. Be sure to take good care of our Lord for me in the Holy Mass and throughout the whole day.”[29] Through the liturgy, the Church invites us to take up the Lenten journey eagerly. She urges us to receive the sacraments frequently, to meditate earnestly on the Word of God, to practice works of penance – doing so with the cheerfulness that is particularly emphasised on the fourth Sunday of Lent: Laetare Jerusalem![30] These practices purify our soul and prepare us to take part intensely in the Holy Week ceremonies, when we will relive the culminating moments of Jesus’ time on earth. “We must bring into our life, to make them our own, the life and death of Christ. We must die through
mortification and penance, so that Christ may live in us through Love. And then follow in the footsteps of Christ, with a zeal to co-redeem all mankind.”[31] Well purified from our sins, and contemplating Jesus giving his life for us, we will rediscover the joy of the salvation God brings: redde mihi laetitiam salutaris tui, “restore unto me the joy of thy salvation”.[32] This article first appeared on www.opusdei.ie.
[1] Roman Missal, 1st Sunday of Lent, Prayer over the Offerings. [2] Saint Josemaría, Christ is Passing By, 64. [3] Roman Missal, 1st Sunday of Lent, Collect. [4] Christ is Passing By, 65. [5] Ps 50[51]:10. [6] Cf. Deut 8:2-5. [7] Cf. Ex 15:22-17:7. [8] Deut 8:2-3. [9] Prov 23:26.
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[10] Cf. Num 14:20 ff. [11] Heb 4:6-7; cf. Ps 94[95]:7-8.
[26] Saint Josemaría, The Way, 310. [27] The Rite of Penance, no. 104.
[12] Heb 4:9-10. [13] Christ is Passing By, 58.
[28] Cf. Lk 15: 22-24.
[14] Saint Josemaría, notes from a family get-together, 18 October 1972.
[29] Saint Josemaría, The Forge, 438. [30] 4th Sunday of Lent, Introit (cf. Is 66:10).
[15] Pope Francis, Angelus, 9 March 2014. [16] Cf. Jn 4:5-42 (3rd Sunday of Lent, Year A).
[31] Saint Josemaria, The Way of the Cross, 14th station. [32] Ps 50[51]:14.
[17] Cf. Jn 9:1-41 (4th Sunday of Lent, Year A). [18] Cf. Jn 11: 1-43 (5th Sunday of Lent, Year A). [19] Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), 1434. [20] Saint Josemaría, Friends of God, 138. [21] Saturday, 4th week of Lent, Collect. [22] Cf. Mt 6:6. [23] 1 Jn 4:20. [24] Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1116. [25] Saint Josemaría, notes taken from his preaching, 26 April 1970.
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Irelands’ constitutional crisis by John Waters
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or nearly six years I have been involved in what has seemed a continuous political battle, loosely related to issues concerning family and children and converging on the Irish Constitution. This battle is now on to its third referendum. The first, in 2012, related to what was presented as “children’s rights,” but was really a burglary of the authority of parents. The second, in 2015, delivered the Irish version of same-sex marriage. Both amendments were passed roughly 60:40. The third referendum – to take place some time in the early summer – relates to the rights of the unborn child, which have been under attack by pro-abortionists for thirty-five years.
My resistance to these initiatives has a constant basis that is less a matter of Catholic doctrine than a determination to preserve particular understandings of law, now under terminal sentence in my country and elsewhere. Of course, these understandings are part of Christian teaching, but I make the distinction because I find that, nowadays, people have become oblivious to the fact that they would be necessary and true even if Christ had never come. The Preamble of the 1937 Irish Constitution begins: “In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all
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actions both of men and States must be referred …” It is nowadays not immediately obvious that this opening passage has also a secular interpretation, perhaps best demonstrated by reference to C. S. Lewis’s observation that when God is abolished by man, He is not replaced by all men but by a few men imposing their will on the rest. It is essential, therefore, that laws fundamental to human functioning and happiness be referred elsewhere – upwards, sideways, outside – though preferably not downwards. Certain rights are so fundamental and non-negotiable that they cannot be left to the mercies of human caprice or consensus. These include certain personal rights, on which depend the security and freedoms of the individual; family rights, protecting the unity and cohesion of the most fundamental grouping in society; and collective rights, regulating the health and stability of the nation. Such rights were at one time universally understood to emanate from natural law,
which could be characterized as deriving from divine authority or as an extrapolation from the nature of earthly and human reality. This is the real terrain of these recent battles. In the referenda of 2012 and 2015, a few of us divined a plundering of the fundamental rights of families in a manner that was actually illegal, unconstitutional, and profoundly dangerous. In effect, the Irish government performed two sleights-of-hand, both times convincing the public that it had a right to vote on matters that were actually beyond the remit of government and People. Both of the targeted articles had made clear that the rights set out within them were not extended or generated by the state, but were “antecedent” and simply “recognized.” Thus, Article 41 begins, “The State recognizes the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society…”; Article 42 begins, “The State acknowledges that the primary and natural educator of the child is the Family . . . ” (my emphases).
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The 2012 amendment dismantled the edifice of rights in Article 42 that guaranteed the inviolability of the family and its independence from the state. In 2015, the attack mounted in the name of “marriage equality” ensured that the very definition of a family in Article 41 was torn apart and replaced with an absurdity beyond satire. The amended Article 41 declares inter alia that two men or two women who are “married” to each other are to be regarded as a “natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.” Under attack this year is Article 40.3.3, otherwise known as the Eighth Amendment, which “acknowledges” the right to life of the unborn child. This article, added in 1983 when pro-life interests became concerned about the encroaching threat of abortion, also represents merely a recognition of an antecedent right. Because this right it is not raised up by Article 40.3.3, it
cannot be demolished by the removal of that article from the Constitution. Yet the procedural logic of the referendum implies that, by deleting or amending the article, the People will, as though magically, have acquired a right to void or curtail the right it refers to. This is not merely illegal but manifestly wicked. That it can be considered at all is owing to the attrition effected by decades of propaganda, in which the child in the womb has been rendered abstract and prehuman. Yet the Irish language version of the wording of Article 40.3.3 – which ought to take precedence in moments of ambiguity or doubt – refers not to “the unborn” but to “the living without birth,” (“na mbeo gan breith”) a concept that cuts through the abortionists’ dissembling. It is a moment unprecedented in human history. In every other instance, abortion arrived in Western societies not by a vote of the people but by edict of a court (as in the US) or a statutory instrument (as in the UK). The Irish government is to ask the Irish People whether or
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not they will permit a category of innocent human person to be subject to lethal force, and have this power franchised to private interests and funded from the public purse. If it is possible for the Irish People to adjudicate by ballot on this question, why might we not in the future deliberate similarly on the right to life of the elderly, the homeless, the Travellers, or the mentally ill? Or what might ensure that such possibilities continue to seem absurd? The enlightenment of the electorate? Adequate counter-propaganda? The courts? Ah, the courts. In recent months with some like-minded friends I have been seeking lawyers to represent a petitioner in a challenge to what the government is proposing. Of course, we have been speaking exclusively to lawyers sympathetic to causes that might broadly be identified with our perspective – “pro-life,” “conservative,” even “Catholic,” although all such categorizations unhelpfully reduce the issue. All the lawyers we have spoken to agree with us – “100 percent,”
“110 percent,” “150 percent,” and more. But most of them explain that, although we are entirely correct in our analysis, such concepts as “absolute rights” and “natural law” have no purchase in modern judicial thinking. Even if we get a hearing, the judges will find some way of declaring that these are matters for the government and the People – a nonsense, but apparently highly probable. The lawyers we have spoken to have been unable to identify the moment at which the unmooring from natural law took place, but all observed that it has been happening for some time. All law is nowadays to be regarded as positive, i.e. man-made. Nothing is given, antecedent, or deriving from Anyone – even anything – higher. Of course, such “logic” renders nonsensical the language of our Constitution, which is the only basis for the authority of our courts. It seems that by a process of avoidance, dissembling, and nod-and-wink, the foundations of Irish constitutional law have stealthily been removed and carted away,
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without a murmur of protest from lawyers or intellectuals. We have moved from a place in which human rights have been guaranteed by virtue of some understanding of transcendent derivation, to a dispensation in which even the most fundamental rights are to be regarded as existing at the whim of the electorate. The lawyers we spoke to – all good people – referred to the process whereby natural law was abandoned as though it were a foreign language that they could follow but had not learned to speak. Only one of them offered to join our endeavor. The starkness of the situation we have arrived at, the others implied, matters much less than that judges not
be placed in the uncomfortable position of having to state in clear terms why words like “imprescriptible” and “antecedent” no longer have the meanings given in the most commonplace dictionary.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Waters is an Irish writer and commentator, the author of nine books, and a playwright. This article first appeared in the First Things magazine, and is reprinted with the kind permission of the author and of the editor of First Things.
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Book review The Strange Death of Europe
A book review by James Bradshaw
“E
urope is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide. Whether the European people choose to go along with this is naturally, another matter.”
Douglas Murray
Bloomsbury Publishing,
4 May 2017, 352 pages
facing, and draws upon his experiences travelling across Europe to examine the core issues from the banlieues of Paris to the refugee camps of Lampedusa.
Thus begins Douglas Murray’s recent and controversial bestseller: The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. The British writer and polemicist is known for his strong views, and has devoted much of the last decade to writing about issues relating to terrorism, immigration and assimilation. This book represents a culmination of his efforts to raise awareness of the problems which Europe is
Murray does not hold back in stating what he believes will occur should major changes to the policies of European governments not be made soon. “By the end of the lifespans of most people currently alive, Europe will not be Europe and the peoples of Europe will have lost the only place in the world we had to call home,” he warns. The author points to two key causes of the present discord: the mass influx of newcomers
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over previous decades, and just as importantly, the fact that over “the same time Europe has lost faith in its beliefs, traditions and legitimacy.” This combination of the practical and the philosophical is crucial to this book, and the degree to which Murray successfully ties them together is testament to his skill as a writer, and his profundity as a thinker. Mass immigration and the effects which this process has had is first examined, and Murray carefully explains the transformation which has occurred in several European societies since World War Two. In Britain, large-scale immigration from the former colonies began to pick up in the mid-twentieth century, while a similar process in France saw many people relocating to the country from which they had just broken free. In Germany the Turkish gastarbeiter arrived, with most Germans assuming that they would eventually depart, something which has not happened. The process of immigration was greatly accelerated in Britain during the
New Labour era, in which restrictions were eased for all immigrants, and when the door was opened to residents of all EU member states, an even more dramatic migration process commenced, one which was without precedent in British history. Interestingly, and importantly, the level of immigration which occurred was far, far larger than what was expected by New Labour. Even more interestingly, Murray describes how figures which had predicted smaller changes than those which actually took place were at the time excoriated for their alleged scare mongering. The hyperbolic warnings of Enoch Powell in particular, resulted in policy makers and commentators displaying a great deal of reticence about discussing the issues which immigration presented. The extent to which the Blair/ Brown governments got immigration wrong, Murray argues, lends credence to the view that it was part of “deliberate policy of societal transformation: a culture way being waged against the British
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people using immigrants as some kind of battering ram.” As the author examines different countries’ experiences in this respect, it becomes clear that one recurring factor leads to great controversy: Islam. Tens of millions of Muslims now live in Western European countries which have no previous experience of coping with such diversity, and Murray examines how this process has played out in different contexts. At the core of his argument is the belief that the presence of these new communities brings with it a direct challenge to the liberalism of modern Europe. The reaction to the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in 1988 was to Murray a turning point in recent history. The book was burned during public demonstrations in the United Kingdom, a sign that the nation’s one million Muslims had a fundamentally different attitude to free expression than that of their neighbours. Mass immigration to Britain has since seen that same population treble.
Since The Satanic Verses came out, the publication of images of Muhammad have seen a Danish cartoonist go into hiding, a Dutch film-maker has been murdered in public and the editorial staff of a French satirical magazine has been butchered in their office. A message that criticism of the Islamic religion is forbidden has been broadcasted clearly and bloodily, and most worrying of all, many European political leaders have been slow to condemn the illiberalism within their midst, while being vocal in the denunciation of the growing populist movements which have been gaining ground across Europe. Murray believes that Chancellor Merkel’s ham-fisted response to the refugee crisis has merely exacerbated the existing problems, and that the tensions within European societies had been growing long before we became inured to terrorist attacks. Indeed, the fact that Merkel had acknowledged that multiculturalism had “failed
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utterly” as far back as 2010 – and that she was joined in this opinion by mainstream leaders such as President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Cameron – makes her rash decision to open Germany to seemingly unlimited immigration in 2015 seem all the more inexplicable. The failure of Merkel to convince other European leaders of the merits of such an approach, and the visceral opposition of Eastern and Central European leaders to the idea, likely stems from the massive public opposition to mass Muslim immigration. Politicians across Europe are eager to play this down, but public sentiment can – and already has been – gauged. Earlier this year, the Chatham House think tank asked 10,000 Europeans across ten EU states if “All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped.” 55% of those surveyed said yes to a Trumpstyle ban, and in no country did more than 32% of people oppose the idea. Given the public’s views, why do the elites continue
to persevere with large-scale immigration? Murray believes that the answer to this partly lies in how Europe as a continent has lost touch with its “foundational story.” Weighed down with guilt and plagued with self-doubt, Europe no longer has the confidence to assert its own values and identity. Christianity, together with Greco-Roman and Enlightenment thought, forged the Europe of old. However, scientific advances and biblical criticism in previous centuries contributed to a collapse in Christian belief and practice in the old continent. This has left a hole in Europe’s identity which has not been filled according to Murray, even though “the post-war culture of human rights that insists upon itself” does represent “an attempt to implement a secular version of the Christian conscience.” The attempt to substitute a two thousand year religious and cultural tradition with a vague, ephemeral and ever-shifting language of
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“human rights” has not been successful, and what’s more it has been compromised by the arrival of vast numbers of people with radically different opinions on everything from the role of women in society to the treatment of gay people. The continent’s political class is unable to decide what it stands for (Murray references the refusal of Europe’s political leaders to include a reference to Christianity in its proposed Constitution as an example), with the result that it becomes clear to many that “Europe” now stands for nothing. However, this does not mean that the search for meaning does not continue. It is simply the case that modern Europe provides no satisfactory answer, and therein lies the problem. “Nothing in modern European culture applies itself to offering an answer” to this quest, Murray says. “Nothing says, ‘Here is an inheritance of thought and culture and philosophy and religion which has nurtured people for thousands of years and may well fulfil you too.’
Instead a voice at best says, ‘Find your meaning where you will.’ At worst the nihilist’s creed can be heard: ‘Yours is a meaningless existence in a meaningless existence in a meaningless universe.’” An atheist from a broadly secular country, Douglas Murray is a rather curious cultural Cassandra. He diagnoses the cause of Europe’s general listlessness in part as being a failure to appreciate the religious and cultural heritage which has been bestowed upon us by our forefathers, and believes that a renewed respect for this tradition could offer some hope for the future. “For my own part I cannot help feeling that much of the future of Europe will be decided on what our attitude is towards the church buildings and other great cultural buildings of our heritage standing in our midst,” he concludes. “Around the questions of whether we hate them, ignore them, engage with them or revere them, a huge amount will depend.”
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It is rare to find a book which so comprehensively and compellingly examines the core issues facing a society – and civilisation – that a reader can feel certain in their view that it will be discussed and reflected upon for decades to come. The Strange Death of Europe is one such work. This article first appeared in The Burkean Journal – a recently established online political and cultural magazine run by students from Trinity College Dublin that promotes conservative thought and ideas. This article is reproduced with the permission of the editor.
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Book review A Catholic Guide to Mindfulness
Interview with the author by Patti Armstrong
S
usan Brinkmann, once a New Age feminist, is now a Catholic apologist, awardwinning author, Third Order Carmelite, and a staff writer and radio and TV host with Living His Life Abundantly and Women of Grace. She knows what it’s like to seek happiness in all the wrong places and has dedicated her life to sharing the good news of the Catholic faith. Her latest book, A Catholic Guide to Mindfulness, warns of the dangers of the latest Eastern meditation fad and offers Catholics a deeper, holier path rooted in the wisdom of the saints and doctors of the Church.
Susan Brinkmann
Avila Institute, 2017 124 pages
First things first: What is this growing practice of “mindfulness”? “Mindfulness” is rooted in Buddhism and seeks to bring about a state of active, open attention on the present by which one observes his or her thoughts and feelings as if from a distance, without judging them to be good or bad. Although it is promoted as a non-spiritual practice used as a means of vanquishing stress and anxiety, it is practiced through one of several forms of Buddhist meditation, such as “Breathing Space Meditation,” “Body Scan Meditation” and “Expanding Awareness Meditation.” Connecting with God is not the
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goal of any of these types of meditation.
spiritual disaster, even to the point of requiring exorcism in some cases.
Why did you write this book? My main concern is the attempt by many Catholics to integrate mindfulness meditation practices into their prayer or spiritual lives. They are being led into this by believing that it’s not a “Buddhist practice,” [but a way] to just focus on the “here and now.” But when we do that via one of several mindfulness meditation techniques – such as “Breathing Space Meditation,” “Body Scan Meditation” and others that are commonly taught – then we are venturing into the realm of Buddhist practices. Many Catholics may start out trying to keep these practices separate, but there is a common confusion in the West regarding Eastern meditation and how it differs from Western meditation (one is a mental exercise; the other is a method of dialoguing with God), which is why many are inadvertently combining the two – and this can often result in
Why would combining practices be a problem? As the book explains, I have personal experience with this. Our “New Age Q&A” blog at Women of Grace recently received an email from a woman whose husband stopped praying the Rosary with his family because he found this kind of meditation to be more relaxing. Although none of us should come to prayer just for relaxation, but to converse with God, this shows how easily people, in varying stages of their spiritual lives, can be confused – without even realizing it – and thus be led away from God rather than towards him. Are there studies on the effect of mindfulness? There is mounting scientific concern regarding the mainstream media only touting studies that found benefits of mindfulness and not reporting on studies that found negative
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results from the practice. Some studies have shown that practicing mindfulness can actually backfire on people as they focus intently on the moment and leave their thoughts behind, including the positive ones. It can also lead people to disconnect rather than focus and engage in critical thinking on problems that require more thinking and not less.
than what people are getting from proponents.
In addition, a meta-analysis of 18,000 mindfulness studies conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in 2014 found only 47 that were considered methodologically sound – that’s only .0026%. And of those 47 found to be acceptable, the research found only “moderate evidence” of decreased anxiety, depression and pain and “low evidence” of improved mental health-related quality of life. This research led to more alarming findings about the negative effects of mindfulness, which then led me to put this information into a book in order to provide a more complete picture of this practice
As a result, many people are abandoning mainstream religion and are feeding the resulting spiritual hunger with other practices, which range anywhere from a variety of non-Christian and/or New Age philosophies to the occult.
Why is mindfulness appealing to people? There are several reasons why people are being drawn to it. Firstly, the increasing secularization of our society has relegated Judeo-Christian values to the “nobody cares anymore” dustbin.
Secondly, I see the need to escape from the pressures of modern life as another reason why people are so drawn to Eastern meditation practices. These practices induce altered states of consciousness through the use of techniques designed to empty or manage the mind. This gives people a false reprieve from their worries.
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In an era when we are suffering record levels of depression and anxiety, who wouldn’t want to escape their problems for at least a little while? Of course this is appealing! In Christian prayer, they may have to confront their problems, but they are doing so with Someone who can actually solve those problems. In Eastern meditation, the only option is momentary escape. Afterward, you’re still stuck with the same problems. Thirdly, with respect to psychologists and others promoting the practice, there is much money to be made through psychospiritual fads like mindfulness. We have seen the same pattern in the past with Reiki and “Centering Prayer.” Once these fads become common interest, many seek to exploit them for financial gain.
Why are the Catholic alternatives superior? If one is living in the present moment in the presence of God, there is no need for a Buddhist practice like mindfulness. These Christian practices far surpass these merely human-based methods and actually draw us into the presence of God, where we can find authentic peace and healing. Instead of a momentary escape from anxiety, the Christian alternative offers a real solution to anxiety and a permanent transformation. One practice is a quick fix; the other is a longterm opportunity for exponential personal growth toward the ultimate goal of our existence here on Earth – union with God. By the time we reach this summit of union with him here on Earth, we will have been completely transformed into a totally new creation – not just an improvement of the old. When we are united with our Creator, we will finally become who we were meant to be from the
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beginning of time. This is a grace that surpasses all understanding. Can a person be a good Catholic and still practice mindfulness? It depends on what you mean by “good.” Good people are deceived all the time. Wellintentioned people pursue means that make them feel good all the time, but these means can be deeply spiritually damaging. If you are just refocusing yourself for a few minutes on the task at hand, that is not a problem. But if you’re engaging in the typical methods of practicing mindfulness, all of which involve some kind of meditation, then you risk inducing an altered state, which renders one vulnerable to psychological damage or to the influence of spiritual entities. Catholics should not be involved in this, even when it is recommended by a doctor, because too many studies have shown it to be harmful, which is
why more and more researchers are speaking out about it. If a Catholic wants to practice being mindful of the present moment, my book recommends that they begin to employ The Practice of the Presence of God, which was introduced in the sixteenth century by a humble Carmelite brother named Brother Lawrence. It not only teaches a person to stay grounded in the present, but to do so in order to live in continual awareness of the presence of God within. We’re taught to live in the present moment at all times in order to respond to the will of God as it plays out in each and every moment of our lives. There is a vast difference between a state of sterile “awareness” and the much deeper realms of bliss to be found while basking in the presence of the Creator of the universe.
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Tell me about retreats and conferences you have begun offering titled, “The Catholic Alternative to Mindfulness.” My retreats are designed to teach people how to incorporate the practice of the presence of God and the sacrament of the present moment into their lives and are scheduled at Fatima House in Bedminster, Pennsylvania, Feb. 16-17 and March 23-24, and at the Malvern Retreat House in Malvern, Pennsylvania, June 9-10, 2018. And more are in the works.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patti Armstrong is an award-winning author and was the managing editor and co-author of Ascension Press’ bestselling Amazing Grace series. © 2018 EWTN News, Inc. Reprinted with permission from the National Catholic Register – www.ncregister.com.
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Film review The Commuter by John Mulderig
I
f you think your trip back and forth to work is trying, consider the plight Liam Neeson finds himself in as The Commuter (Lionsgate). Neeson’s character, police officer-turned-insurancesalesman Michael MacCauley, is already having a bad day even before he catches the train from Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal to suburban Tarrytown. Strapped for cash to begin with, Michael has just been let go from his job. So when a stranger who calls herself Joanna (Vera Farmiga) offers him a large sum to identify one of his fellow passengers on the basis of a few scanty clues, the bizarre proposition gets his attention. It soon becomes apparent, however, that Joanna
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is not on the side of the angels and that her proposal is as much blackmail as bargain. With his wife, Karen (Elizabeth McGovern), and son, Danny (Dean-Charles Chapman), in danger, Michael turns for help to Alex Murphy (Patrick Wilson), a friend and fellow cop who is still in the force. But he must largely fend for himself as he pursues his frantic search. If all this sounds murky and improbable, it is, though lively action sequences help mask that fact. To the extent that director Jaume Collet-Serra’s generally efficient thriller aims to do anything more than deliver on the pleasures of its genre, though, its serious intentions are
undermined by the logical shortcomings of the story. Collet-Serra and screenwriters Byron Willinger and Philip de Blasi do present their protagonist with a fundamental moral dilemma: should he imperil a stranger in exchange for the safety of his family? But the clumsy way they back him into this corner blunts the impact of their perfectly respectable ethical message. As for the script’s digs at corporate America via the abrupt and uncaring way in which Michael gets the axe, and through the nastiness of Vince (Shazad Latif), a commuting broker who is rude to everyone within reach, they are even more maladroit. (The dialogue uses up the sole F-word to which a film rated PG-13 is entitled, to flip the bird to Vince’s ex-employer, reallife brokerage Goldman Sachs.) Although The Commuter is not endorsable for kids, and the script includes too many vain invocations of the Lord, the bloodletting is at least minimal since Irish-born Michael prefers fisticuffs to gunplay. From an
aesthetic point of view, while it avoids a total train wreck, the wheels on this vehicle for Neeson do creak under the weight of its large cargo of suspended disbelief. The film contains much brawling and some lethal violence with brief gore, a scene implying use of pornography, about a dozen profanities, a couple of rough and several crude terms and an obscene gesture. The Catholic News Service classification is AIII – adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Mulderig is a reviewer for Catholic News Service. Copyright (c) 2018 Catholic News Service. Reprinted with permission from CNS. www.catholicnews.com
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