Position Papers - January 2017

A review of Catholic affairs

Bishop Javier Echevarría PRELATE OF OPUS DEI 1932 - 2016

Number 505 · January 2017 €3 · £2.50 · $4

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Number 505 · January 2017 Editorial

by Rev. Gavan Jennings

In Passing: Epiphany in Trafalgar Square

by Michael Kirke

Will There Be Ballet In Heaven?

by Jennifer Kehoe

Sex, Family and the Liberty of the Church: 2016 Tocqueville lecture

by Cardinal Charles J. Chaput

The Three Love Diet

by Patrick F. Fagan

1994 Interview with Bishop Javier Echevarría

by Pilar Urbano

Why We Should Address Jesus as Thou

by Bishop Robert Barron

Book review: With God in America: the Spiritual Legacy of an Unlikely Jesuit

by Edward N. Peters

Film review: Silence

by Brad Miner Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

2 3 7 13 22 24 29 32 37

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

Contact us The editor, Position Papers, P.O. Box 4948, Rathmines, Dublin 6 email: editor@positionpapers.ie; website: www.positionpapers.ie Tel.+ 353 86065 2313 For new or renewed subscriptions contact: info@positionpapers.ie

Articles ©Position Papers, who normally will on application give permission to reproduce gratis subject only to a credit in this form: ‘Reprinted, with permission from Position Papers, Dublin’. Please note: the opinions expressed in articles do not necessarily reflect those of the editor nor of the Opus Dei Prelature of which he is a priest.

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Editorial O

n the evening of December 12 the Prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Javier Ecchevarría completed his earthly pilgrimage and gave up his soul to God. It was the end of a life lived for others, and lived in this manner right up to his dying breath, as those who accompanied him in his last hours were to report later. The life of ‘The Father’, as in Opus Dei we fondly term the Prelate, was marked by two virtues in particular, according to Msgr Fernando Ocáriz, the Auxiliary Vicar of Opus Dei: dynamic fidelity and generous dedication to each person with whom he came in contact. Msgr Ocáriz spoke of these two facets of the late Prelate’s life in a recent interview with the Spanish magazine Palabra.

Speaking of his loyalty to the Church, the Pope, to Opus Dei and its faithful, and to his own friends as a consequence or expression of his fidelity to Jesus Christ, he said that ‘His whole existence, from the time of his admission to Opus Dei long ago in 1948, was marked by this human and supernatural virtue, which grew over time thanks to his close contact firstly with St Josemaria and then with Bl. Alvaro del Portillo, with whom he collaborated for many years in the government of the Prelature.” Bishop Echevarría’s life was characterised by, in Msgr Ocáriz words, “his generous dedication to each person who asked his advice, guidance or prayers, or who simply greeted him in passing on a corridor.”

In this issue of Position Papers we include an excerpt from a lenghty interview he did with the Spanish journalist Pilar Urbano, prior to his appointment as Prelate in 1994.

On December 22, Msgr Fernando Ocáriz, auxiliary vicar of Opus Dei, publicly convoked the Congress that will elect Bishop Javier Echevarría’s successor as head of the Prelature. On January 21, a plenary session of the Council for women in the Prelature will be held in Rome, which will present to the Congress a list of suggestions for candidates. The voting of the elective Congress will begin on January 23. The name of the person chosen will be sent to Pope Francis, since the confirmation of the Roman Pontiff is required.

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In Passing: Epiphany in Trafalgar Square

by Michael Kirke

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n image has been haunting me for months. It was captured – or, I should say, it captured me – one September evening in Trafalgar Square. It evoked a strange sensation of timelessness, as though 2000 years had been transcended in a moment. Somehow, that historic moment of betrayal in a garden in Jerusalem in 33 AD, was present again in that iconic London meeting place in 2016 – and nobody seemed to care too much. Everyone seemed to be looking the other way. An emblem of our age?

which was going to befall his city within a generation. And it did happen. The Temple was razed to the ground and the streets ran with blood.

Perhaps I should have blessed myself and prayed that this city I was now strolling through, this pivot of the modern world, would be spared a similar fate. I didn’t – even though the stones of Palmyra had recently been strewn around the Mesopotamian desert and the women of Aleppo were weeping – and continue to weep – for themselves and for their children. This morning’s paper tells us that the battle for this city is over but fears are mounting because of reports

A few days before the scene depicted by Caravaggio, the subject of the painting prophesied the terrible fate

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that Syrian troops or allied Iraqi militiamen were shooting people in apartments and on the streets.

That face, looking across Trafalgar Square, is a penetrating representation of the face of the one Person who really knows what this evil is, that its origin is a creature of enormous power and that the this creature is the irreconcilable enemy of both God and man.

The forces of militant Islam, I thought to myself, have already proven themselves no less interested in inflicting death and destruction on this city. The same great evil which was at the root of that act of betrayal, in that distant garden, is also the source of today’s horrors, is at the heart of every war.

That look of pity, mixed with dismay – “do you betray me with a kiss” – stopped me in my tracks. I sensed – and know – that this look is eternal.

Caravaggio’s spellbinding capture of that look reminds us

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that each one of those figures strolling before the image is the object of the infinite love behind that gaze. A few moments before, some of them were singing and dancing on this very spot in one of those spontaneous pieces of street theatre you stumble across in this very special place.

Given the look in those eyes one could not but long and long that these wayfarers might know more than they seemed to know; that they might only connect the prophetic words of that betrayed God-man with our world and its sometimes terrible predicaments. We know that humankind cannot bear very much reality and we know that singing and dancing are good for the soul – as does he, – but even just a little recognition of the divine inter-connectedness of all things would surely help?

Behind that look is the knowledge that, as Romano Guardini observed, “there is more than the mere possibility of evil as the price of human freedom; more than the inclination to evil, fruit of individual or collective (inherited) sin. Jesus recognizes a personal power that fundamentally wills evil: evil per se. It is not satisfied by the achievement of positive values through wicked means; does not simply accept the evil along with the good. Here is something or someone who positively defies divinity and attempts to tear the world from God’s hands – even to dethrone God. God being who he is, this is possible only by leading the world into apostasy and self-destruction.”

This momentary musing on a London pavement was occasioned by the National Gallery’s use of a protective hoarding at the Gallery to advertise the “Beyond Caravaggio” exhibition currently being held there to great acclaim. This is the first major exhibition in these islands to explore the influence of Caravaggio on the art of his contemporaries and followers.

After the unveiling of Caravaggio’s first public commission in 1600, artists from across Europe flocked to

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Rome to see his work. Seduced by the pictorial and narrative power of his paintings, many went on to imitate their naturalism and dramatic lighting effects.

until 15 January. It then moves to Dublin where it opens on 11 February and continues until 14 May – after which it then goes to Scotland The image on display in the square is a detail from Caravaggio’s “The Taking of Christ”, 1602. This painting is on indefinite loan to the National Gallery of Ireland from the Jesuit Community, Leeson Street, Dublin, who acknowledge the kind generosity of the late Dr. Marie Lea-Wilson who gave them this masterpiece as a gift.

Bringing together exceptional works by Caravaggio’s and the Italian, French, Flemish, Dutch, and Spanish artists he inspired, ‘Beyond Caravaggio’ examines the international artistic phenomenon known as Caravaggism.

This exhibition is a collaboration between the National Gallery, London, the National Gallery of Ireland, and the National Galleries of Scotland. The exhibition continues in London

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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Will There Be Ballet In Heaven?

by Jennifer Kehoe

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t the moment I am grieving.

My father died recently. You think you’ll be ready but you never are. Something is gone from my life, moments which can never be relived or re-enacted. I wasn’t ready and never could have been. My mind is overwhelmed with memories.

Every minute of every day my father is on my mind. That is not to say I feel sad all the time.

Sometimes I’m wondering whether I am a bad daughter because I feel normal today and then like a wave it hits again like yesterday as I was stopped at traffic lights up the town I “saw” him in another man wearing the familiar sort of hat he’d wear on a sunny day. Or like last week when I found myself stuck in

traffic behind the car he’d sold last year when he’d gotten good test results and decided to change his car since he’d be here a bit longer. Those moments I just want to get home. Other moments I’m fine and “normal”.

Grief is an unpredictable thing.

He’s on my mind every minute of every day.

So I’m so sad but something else has swept me off my feet. I’m happy!! Yes, I repeat that, I’m overwhelmed with this unexpected joy. That’s what this post is about, not the grief, that’s mine and I’ll stumble through.

Joy though was never designed for privacy. Joy is something the mountaintops shout out.

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Why am I happy my father is dead?

he’d bring me back to earth like the time I sat and complained about this child did this and the other one did that and they don’t this and they mess up that…. He listened to my long rant then laughed and said “So you’re trying to say they’re normal?” Oh how I miss that sort of wisdom.

How I miss my friend. But where I really look for, and find, my father … and my mother … is at Mass. I don’t feel anything sentimental or feel a spiritual high, but that’s where I find them. That’s what I look forward to each day … finding Daddy. At Mass. I wouldn’t miss that daily encounter. And beside him, the woman, my lovely mother, whom he grieved for sixteen years and now I’m thinking … what was that but a flash?

I’m not happy he’s dead, I’m happy he’s ALIVE!!

Since the day he died I’ve found myself drawn to two things. One is the Mass. I’ve always gone to Mass every day apart from when I mistakenly thought I was too busy with little children and they were too naughty and noisy and that I may as well not be there at all since I was so distracted and if I was any further back in the church I’d be out the door and that I was distracting the other people. Believe me, that was a mistake. Mass benefits everyone even when we’re distracted and stressed. Sometimes the only prayer I’ve managed to mumble has been “Lord, give me peace”.

Prayer indeed.

If you’re grieving and longing for a loved one, try Mass.

I don’t look for my father in the smell of his shirts still hanging in his wardrobe waiting for him to put them on. I don’t look for him at his graveside though I do like to go there. I look longingly at the chair at my table he sat at when he’d call in around 11 am and we’d have tea together and

And what’s the second thing I’m drawn to?

Beauty.

I’ve always had this idea and I’ve written about it before that beauty is not an optional extra

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and that somehow it points to something far above itself, a signpost so to speak. Now that with time I’ve become more “learn-ed” (hehehe … read: “just realising how much I don’t know”!). I’m realising that the desire for beauty is indeed one of the transcendentals – the embedded insatiable longings within us which point to an existence more perfect than our own. Let’s call that existence Heaven.

The longing for perfect justice/ goodness.

The longing for perfect love.

The longing for perfect beauty.

The longing for perfect home/ being.

I’ll give an example. There’s a road in Connemara, Ireland which is called “the Sky Road”.

Aptly named because there earth and sky seem to marry. On a sunny day I think it must be one of the most beautiful sights known to man. I was there recently very soon after my father died. The day was perfect and though I’m including a picture,

What are these longings? You’ll recognise them when you read them ... I did.

The longing for perfect knowledge/truth.

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no camera can capture the breath catching beauty unfolded in front of you. It is truly magnificent. However that day it particularly struck me that however beautiful it was and is, something was missing. I cannot grasp that beauty and make it mine. I cannot own it or embrace it, it can’t unite itself to me. It cannot satisfy, it leaves a pain of longing ... to own and be owned by it. What do we say to babies and little children? “I love you so much I could eat you!”

Nothing fully satisfies that longing which haunts us. What beauty is is the signpost to something higher ... so much higher ... to the Beauty that will satiate, the Beauty which will own and be owned by me.

One rainy evening I was driving my 13 year old home from ballet class when a song came on the radio. At the end of the song she asked me why we can feel some songs in our chest? I think it is because some songs touch that transcendental dissatisfaction, the longing for an untouchable and the hope that one day it will be touched.

My father was a very holy man.

By “holiness” I don’t mean piousity which is actually not holiness at all. His was a holiness with its feet on the ground. One time while holding one of his newborn grandchildren he said that he thought that babies are a glimpse of the Beatific Vision ... as close to pure beauty and goodness and being as we can hope. Which of us could tire of looking at our baby, or one close to us? Every eyelash and minute little hair follicle delights us. The desire for beauty is completely superfluous to our survival, it fits uncomfortably with the survival of the fittest narrative which would favour only the functional and useful. Why should we care whether the sky is golden or pink or colours we can’t even name? Why should a waterfall delight us but a concrete wall leave us unmoved?

Why do we long to be home or to have a home if we’re lacking one? Yet when we sit down and the sun shines in we see the dust and the work we need to do. We need to lock our doors and our windows, we need to guard against intruders and hazard.

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We’re home yet still dissatisfied no matter how lovely it may be.

Two Christmases ago my father’s house burnt down. He was home in the shower at the time but managed to escape wearing what his friend joked later to be a “biblical” outfit ... that which Adam wore before the Fall. It’s a long story but while the house was being rebuilt he and my sister and nephew moved from my home, to a house loaned by a friend, to a horrible brown “rental” which reeked of stale cigarettes, before they could move home. Such an upheaval would have finished off many octogenarians, not my father.

When asked how he coped so cheerfully with moving from temporary accommodation to temporary accommodation. He laughed and said “This life is temporary accommodation.” He wasn’t put out at all because even home is our temporary accommodation.

So why did I call this post “Is There Ballet In Heaven?” I’ve been thinking about all the above thoughts very very much in these last weeks and how they

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connect to my father’s death, my own mortality and what lies beyond. Oftentimes as Christians, as Catholics, we rattle off prayers without thinking at all about their content. Sometimes they aren’t prayers at all but mumblings rising to heaven with neither heart nor mind accompanying them. We say the Creed ... the list of all we believe ... I believe in One God etc., etc. Do we even know what we’re professing half the time? I think a lot of us forget this line: “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.” We believe that in heaven we will be reunited with our body! Hey! How cool is that?

And ... we’ll be just lovely ... perfect in fact.

I’d have loved to have learned ballet. Sadly living in Ireland in the 1970s, neither opportunity nor funds were readily available.

I still love ballet and some of my girls have the bug. It was during their recent performance that this post came to me. The human body is objectively God’s most beautiful creation. Saint John Paul II goes into this in great detail in his astonishing

catechesis “Theology of The Body”. We are the only creatures who experience all these nonsurvival-related longings. In my opinion, ballet is perhaps the most beautiful the human body can be. In its classical element goodness wins, the desire for justice is vanquished, the evil witch fails. The prince who rescues with nobility and goodness is not mocked as he is in our culture. Dare I say it, marriage – the full “knowing” of the other – is still seen as a great good even if our culture has rejected it. All of the transcendental desires are embraced in classical ballet. So beautiful. (These are the thoughts I was having during a children’s ballet show.) It made me remember the resurrection

of the body. If we’ll have our bodies, we’ll have things that bodies do, like laughing and singing ... and dancing. If they delight us here, do you think God will exclude them from heaven? We don’t change species, we don’t become angels; we’ll still love the things and the people we love, only in an unhindered way.

Oh YES, I think there’ll be ballet in heaven.

And if there is, I hope they have lessons for beginners.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

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Sex, Family and the Liberty of the Church: 2016 Tocqueville lecture

by Cardinal Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

I’

ve been a priest for forty-six years. During that time I’ve heard something more than 12,000 personal confessions and done hundreds of spiritual direction sessions. That’s a lot of listening. When you spend several thousand hours of your life, as most priests do, hearing the failures and hurts in people’s lives – men who beat their wives; women who cheat on their husbands; the addicts to porn or alcohol or drugs; the thieves, the hopeless, the selfsatisfied and the self-hating – you get a pretty good picture of the world as it really is, and its effect on the human soul. The confessional is more real than any reality show because nobody’s watching. It’s just you,

God and the penitents, and the suffering they bring with them.

As a priest, what’s most striking to me about the last five decades is the huge spike in people – both men and women — confessing promiscuity, infidelity, sexual violence and sexual confusion as an ordinary part of life, and the massive role of pornography in wrecking marriages, families and even the vocations of clergy and religious.

In a sense, this shouldn’t surprise. Sex is powerful. Sex is attractive. Sex is a basic appetite and instinct. Our sexuality is tied intimately to who we are; how we search for love and happiness; how we defeat the

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pervasive loneliness in life; and, for most people, how we claim some little bit of permanence in the world and its story by having children. The reason Pope Francis so forcefully rejects “gender theory” is not just because it lacks scientific support — though it certainly has that problem. Gender theory is a kind of metaphysics that subverts the very nature of sexuality by denying the malefemale complementarity encoded into our bodies. In doing that, it attacks a basic building block of human identity and meaning — and by extension, the foundation of human social organization.

But let’s get back to the confessional. Listening to people’s sexual sins in the Sacrament of Penance is hardly new news. But the scope, the novelty, the violence and the compulsiveness of the sins are.

And remember that people only come to Confession when they already have some sense of right and wrong; when they already understand, at least dimly, that they need to change their lives and seek God’s mercy.

That word “mercy” is worth examining. Mercy is one of the defining and most beautiful qualities of God. Pope Francis rightly calls us to incarnate it in our own lives this year.

Unfortunately, it’s also a word we can easily misuse to avoid the hard work of moral reasoning and judgment. Mercy means nothing – it’s just an exercise in sentimentality – without clarity about moral truth.

We can’t show mercy to someone who owes us nothing; someone who’s done nothing wrong. Mercy implies a preexisting act of injustice that must be corrected. And satisfying justice requires a framework of higher truth about human meaning and behavior. It requires an understanding of truth that establishes some things as good and others as evil; some things as life-giving and others that are destructive.

Here’s why that’s important. The truth about our sexuality is that infidelity, promiscuity, sexual confusion and mass pornography create human wreckage. Multiply that

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wreckage by tens of millions of persons over five decades. Then compound it with media nonsense about the innocence of casual sex and the “happy” children of friendly divorces.

What you get is what we have now: a dysfunctional culture of frustrated and wounded people increasingly incapable of permanent commitments, selfsacrifice and sustained intimacy, and unwilling to face the reality of their own problems.

This has political consequences.

People unwilling to rule their appetites will inevitably be ruled by them — and eventually, they’ll be ruled by someone else.

People too weak to sustain faithful relationships are also too weak to be free. Sooner or later they surrender themselves to a state that compensates for their narcissism and immaturity with its own forms of social control.

People too worried or selffocused to welcome new life, to bear and raise children in a loving family, and to form them in virtue and moral character, are writing themselves out of the human story. They’re extinguishing their own future.

This is what makes the resistance of so many millennials to having children so troubling.1 The future belongs to people who believe in something beyond themselves, and who live and sacrifice accordingly. It belongs to people who think and hope inter-generationally. If you want a portrait of what I mean, consider this: the most common name given to newborn male babies in London for the past four years in a row is Muhammad. This, in the city of Thomas More.

Weak and selfish individuals make weak and selfish

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Ironically, millennials are less sexually active than Baby Boomers and Gen X individuals were at the same age and are either delaying child-bearing or avoiding it altogether. See, among other stories, Catherine Rampell, “Bad news for older folks: Millennials are having fewer babies,” the Washington Post, May 4, 2015; Claritza Jimenez, “The sex lives of millennials,” the Washington Post, June 30, 2016; R. R. Reno, “While we’re at it,” First Things, October 2016; Isabelle Kohn, “9 brutally real reasons why millennials refuse to have kids,” The Rooster, September 1, 2016; etc.

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marriages. Weak and selfish marriages make broken families.

And broken families continue and spread the cycle of dysfunction. They do it by creating more and more wounded individuals. A vast amount of social data shows that children from broken families are much more likely to live in poverty, to be poorly educated, and to have more emotional and physical health issues than children from intact families. In other words, when healthy marriages and families decline, the social costs rise.

professional experts, as helpful as they can sometimes be.

The family is where children discover how to be human. It’s where they learn how to respect and love other people; where they see their parents sacrificing for the common good of the household; and where they discover their place in a family story larger than themselves.

Raising children is beautiful but also hard work. It’s a task for unselfish, devoted parents. And parents need the friendship and support of other likeminded parents. It takes parents to raise a child, not a legion of

No parents do this perfectly.

Some fail badly. Too often the nature of modern American life helps and encourages them to fail. But in trying, parents pass along to the next generation an absolutely basic truth. It’s the truth that things like love, faith, trust, patience, understanding, tenderness, fidelity and courage really do matter, and they provide the foundation for a fully human life.

Only a mother and father can provide the intimacy of maternal and paternal love. Many single parents do a heroic job of raising good children, and they deserve our admiration and praise. But only a mother and father can offer the unique kind of human love rooted in flesh and blood; the kind that comes from mutual submission and self-giving; the kind that comes from the complementarity of sexual difference.

Of course some of the worst pressures on family life come from outside the home. They

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come in the form of unemployment, low pay, crime, poor housing, chronic illness and bad schools.

administration’s actions over the past seven years.

These are vitally important issues with real human consequences. And in Catholic thought, government has a role to play in easing such problems – but not if a government works from a crippled idea of who man is, what marriage is, and what a family is. And not if a government deliberately shapes its policies to interfere with and control the mediating institutions in civil society that already serve the public well. Yet this could arguably describe many of the current

The counterweight to intrusive government is a populace of mature citizens who push back and defend the autonomy of their civil space. The problem with a consumer economy though – as Christopher Lasch saw nearly 40 years ago — is that it creates and relies on dependent, self-absorbed consumers. It needs and breeds what Lasch called a “culture of narcissism,” forgetful of the past, addicted to the present and disinterested in the future. And it’s hard to argue with the evidence. In his inaugural speech of 1961, John F. Kennedy

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could still tell Americans, quite confidently, to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Today I wonder how many of us might find his words not only naïve and annoying, but an inversion of priorities.

If we want strong families, we need strong men and women to create and sustain them with maturity and love. And as a family of families, the Church is no different. The Church is strong when her families and individual sons and daughters are strong; when they believe what she teaches, and then witness her message with courage and zeal.

She’s weak when her people are too tepid or comfortable, too eager to “fit in” or frankly too afraid of public disapproval, to see the world as it really is. The Church is “ours” only in the sense that we belong to her as our mother and teacher in the family of God. The Church does not belong to us. We belong to her. And the Church in turn

belongs to Jesus Christ who guarantees her freedom whether Caesar likes it or not.

The Church is free even in the worst persecution. She’s free even when many of her children desert her. She’s free because God does exist, and the Church depends not on numbers or resources but on her fidelity to God’s Word. But her practical liberty — her credibility and effectiveness, here and now, in our wider society — depends on us. So we should turn to that issue in the time remaining.

In his classic work Democracy in America, Tocqueville noted that the success of American democracy depended, in large part, on the strong American attachment to family and religious faith.2 In effect, families and churches stand between the individual and the state. They protect the autonomy of the individual by hemming in the power of government, resisting its tendency to claim the entirety of

2

See “Democracy and Religion” in Pierre Manent, Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD, 1996, pp. 83-107.

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life. But they also pull us out of ourselves and teach us to engage generously with others.

As families and religious faith break down, the power of the state grows. Government fills in the spaces left behind by mediating institutions. The individual is freed from his traditional obligations. But he inherits a harder master in the state. Left to itself, as Tocqueville saw, democracy tends toward a kind of soft totalitarianism in which even a person’s most intimate concerns, from his sexual relations to his religious convictions, are swallowed by the political process.

later see democracy as a bad way to run a country. And nearly half of Americans surveyed feel that experts, not government, should “make decisions according to what they think is best for the country.” Undemocratic feelings have risen especially among the wealthy.3 This didn’t happen overnight.

And it didn’t happen by accident. We behaved ourselves into this mess by living a collection of lies. And the essence of those lies is summed up in the so-called “mystery clause” of the 1992 Planned Parenthood vs. Casey Supreme Court decision upholding the Roe vs. Wade abortion decision.

We now live in a country where marriage, family and traditional religion all seem to be failing.

And – inevitably — support for democracy itself has dropped.

Fewer than thirty percent of U.S. millennials think that it’s vital to live in a nation ruled democratically. Nearly a quarter of those born in the 1980s or

Writing for the majority in Casey, Justice Anthony Kennedy claimed that “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” This is the perfect manifesto of a liberal democratic fantasy: the sovereign, self-creating self. But

3

Rebecca Burgess, “When it’s democracy itself they disavow,” American Enterprise Institute, August 22, 2016; data drawn from Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mouk, writing in the Journal of Democracy.

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it’s a lie. It’s the very opposite of real Christian freedom. And to the degree we excuse or cooperate with it, we make ourselves liars.

The Gospel of John reminds us that the truth, and only the truth, makes us free. We’re fully human and free only when we live under the authority of the truth. And in that light, no issue has made us more dishonest and less free as believers and as a nation than abortion. People uncomfortable with the abortion issue argue, quite properly, that Catholic teaching is bigger than just one issue. Other urgent issues also need our attention.

Being pro-birth is not the same as being prolife. And being truly “prolife” doesn’t end with defending the unborn child.

But it does and it must begin there. To borrow some words from one of Notre Dame’s distinguished alumni: Abortion has been “the beachhead for an entire ethic that is hostile to life, hostile to marriage and, as we see from the [HHS]

contraceptive mandate, increasingly hostile to religion, religious Americans and religious institutions.”4 Abortion poisons everything. There can never be anything “progressive” in killing an unborn child, or standing aside tolerantly while others do it.

In every abortion, an innocent life always dies. This is why no equivalence can ever exist between the intentional killing involved in abortion, infanticide and euthanasia on the one hand, and issues like homelessness, the death penalty and antipoverty policy on the other.

Again, all of these issues are important. But trying to reason or imply them into having the same moral weight is a debasement of Christian thought.

This is why so many Catholics – beginning, to his credit, with Bishop Rhoades — were so deeply troubled when Vice President Biden received the university’s Laetare Medal earlier this year….

4

Rachel O’Grady, The Observer, August 30, 2016, interview with William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal.

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What the Church needs now is a university that radiates the glory of God in an age that no longer knows what it means to be human. What the people of God need now is a university that fuses the joy of Francis with the brilliance of Benedict and the courage, fidelity and humanity of the great John Paul.

I said at the start of my remarks that the task of renewing the life of our nation requires a different kind of people. It demands that we be different people. The power of the powerless, Václav Havel once wrote, consists not in clever political strategies but in the simple daily discipline of living within the truth and refusing to lie. Surely there’s no

better way to begin that work than here and now. And creating the “different kind of people” we need is — and should be — the mission of this university.

This is an excerpt from an address that was given as the 2016 Tocqueville Lecture in the University of Notre Dame, on September 15, 2016.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Joseph Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. is the ninth and current Archbishop of Philadelphia.

He previously served as Archbishop of Denver (1997–2011) and Bishop of Rapid City (1988–1997).

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The Three Love Diet

by Patrick F. Fagan

T

here is a very simple fact that social scientists have neglected to make clear to the country: Only a fraction of our children are fully nurtured, relationally, because of the breakdown in family structure over the last fifty years: Children in single parent homes get a one-love diet while children in always-intact married families get a three-love diet.

Only one adult love is present in the single parent family while three adult loves are present in the always intact married family (the love of mother, the love of father and the love between mother and father). The love between mother and father is especially powerful. It makes a big difference in their lives and to the social infrastructure of the county.

One set of adults can bear a lot more weight and traffic than the other. For instance: just one of the many critical tasks is the modeling of living in a world of male and female where both

cooperate on serious and significant tasks. The child raised in the single parent family has less chance of learning that.

These are uncomfortable facts, but facts nonetheless. And they have huge consequences.

Some will object, with good reasons, that the single parent family can produce strong adults – and many do. But, on average, the children of single parent families do not become as strong as adults as do the children of married parents (even as single parents often give heroically of all the love they have). This is tough for many to take and in academia many still deny it. It is a sad and strange phenomenon but many social science professors are quite antiscientific; they deny or avoid the disquieting data as a form of short-sighted “kindness�.

On average the single-love diet cannot deliver what the threelove diet does. How do we as a society move from the single love diet to the three love diet

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for all children? The answer: restoration of a culture based on – bear with me – chastity.

Without a culture of chastity society does not get a culture of strong marriages. Folk may laugh but there is no alternative and savvy parents, single or married, work hard to transmit this to their children for everybody’s sake – for the young folk’s own future, the future of the grandchildren, and for a more peaceful old age future for the grandparents.

What makes it possible for an adolescent to come up with such a resolve? How do we grow such young people? Parents cultivate it be they married or single by telling the truth about the relationship between chastity and life-long love between a man and a woman. And the data show that teenagers (deep down) welcome their parents when they raise these issues.

so that they will have the happiness of being at the wedding of their children, and their grandchildren. Such a movement needs alongside it a solidarity movement of everyone else to cheer them on and help them. This is the infrastructure work we need most if we are to have future citizens who can take over running a country.

It is amazing how sex, children, marriage, chastity and the future are all intertwined. It is time for all families to link together to pull this off for the next generation. Everything else in society is connected to this.

Everything.

Single parents have a tougher task here, and it is therefore one of the most critical projects for our society. There is a need for a movement among single parents, a movement to raise chaste children, chaste teenagers

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pat Fagan is Senior Fellow and Director of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI). This article is reproduced from www.mercatornet.com with permission.

1994 Interview with Bishop Javier Echevarría

by Pilar Urbano

I

n 1994, prior to his appointment as Prelate of Opus Dei, Javier Echevarría spoke about his life in Opus Dei in a lengthy interview with the Spanish journalist Pilar Urbano.

were intrigued by it. But I wasn’t.

How did you come to know the Work? …Back in 1944, the magazine Catolicismo published an article about three engineers, members of Opus Dei, who had just been ordained to the priesthood. Four years later a friend of mind happened to find a copy of that issue at home, and showed it to six or seven of us. That struck us as quite unusual, and my friends

Then, one Sunday – June 6, 1948 – we had planned to attend a movie, but one of those friends phoned to suggest a different plan: “How would you like to go to a house on Diego de León to see what Opus Dei is all about?” So the six of us went over, and they were happy to see us. Each of us was able to speak individually with a member of Opus Dei, asking whatever most interested us. As we left, I picked up a prayer card of Isidoro Zorzano, an engineer and member of Opus Dei, whose process of beatification had just opened. The idea of a “lay saint”

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struck me as attractive – someone you could imitate….

That summer the family stayed in Madrid, something we had never done before, and this made it possible to visit another house of the Work located, by chance, on my own street – Españoleto…. That house offered activities for high school boys.

Whenever I would stop in, they would give me some small job to do around the house: sanding old chairs for a new coat of paint; helping redecorate or fixing something that had broken. I liked to feel useful and to be treated as someone able to help out. On Sept. 8, I asked to become a member of Opus Dei. I was 16.

What was it that attracted you?

The cheerful atmosphere. Even though everybody was studying and working hard, they were cheerful about it. I saw that one could become holy that way without having to make a big change. And it offered an immense possibility of reaching many people and bringing Christ

to them. From an early age I had enjoyed being with people, and had come to have many good friends.

How did you meet the Founder of Opus Dei? The Father had moved to Rome in 1946, but he returned to Spain rather often. On one of those trips – in November 1948 – we were invited to a get-together with him in Diego de León….

There were about thirty-five of us. When it ended, the Father singled out the three youngest and suggested we go with him that very afternoon to Molinoviejo, a country house near Segovia for workshops and retreats.

Six people climbed into an old Vauxhall, three in the front and three in the back. The Father sat in the back; I sat up front with the driver, Dr Odón Moles, and one of the other two boys. There was a little bit of everything on that trip – talking, singing, laughing, praying. The Father told us about the great number of apostolic tasks the Work had

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to carry out throughout the world, tasks awaiting us….

matter, a soccer game we were about to play – he made his own. We were his very life!

When you think of Blessed Josemaría, what thought, what experience most comes to mind?

What about Don Álvaro, with whom you spent forty years?

His truly astounding passionate love for Jesus Christ and the fatherhood of God. During the twenty-six years I had the good fortune to spend at his side, I was surprised at the sincerity of his affection for everyone in the Work, even those he had not yet met. Whatever he heard about a daughter or son of his by letter or in a get-together interested him and affected him personally.

He really loved us as children of his prayer and mortification….

When you close your eyes, how to you picture him?

I see him speaking with people about God. I see him going out to meet people. I see him giving himself to all of us “full time,” without thinking of himself, without reserving a single minute for himself. Whatever was going on with us – a toothache, an exam, some family

I see him as always retiring to the background, watching and listening to our Father and attending to him, eager to learn from him. And this was in spite of his own great resources which enabled him to lead others. I can say without flattery that Don Álvaro was a giant, given his splendid mind, broad culture, refined manner, and sociability, as well as his lofty thoughts, deep interior life, and the whole series of moral virtues he lived to an heroic degree. I’m not exaggerating. But in spite of that, he was attentive to the Founder, supporting him in everything so as to do Opus Dei. He faithfully carried out everything indicated by the Founder.

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Is it true that you were a favourite of the Founder?

Me? Not at all! Certainly not!

Possibly he had more confidence in me, as with the others who lived close to him. But he never had favorite sons. If he ever did have a favorite, it would have been Don Álvaro because of his valuable role in the Church and in the Work. We have to remember, too, that the Founder used to say, “I didn’t choose Álvaro; it’s God who put him at my side.”

I could tell that the Founder loved me, but he also demanded very much of me. Sometimes he would give me strong corrections. Once he even told me, “My son, if you don’t change, I won’t be able to trust you!” It was hard for me to hear that, but the Father was right, and it helped me a great deal….

For you as his successor, it seems that it will be quite a challenge; from one saint to the next, the crossbar is very high.

It’s true that they have left the bar very high, but they have also left a strong vaulting pole. On the one hand, they continue to help from heaven, and on the other hand, they left the clear example of what to do.

Confronted with any situation, it’s enough to ask, “What would the Founder do? What would Don Álvaro do?” Almost without a doubt, that will lead straight to the mark….

When Msgr. Escrivá died…, Bishop del Portillo took the “lignum crucis” from around his neck, and put it on “until a new Father is named.” When Don Álvaro died, did you do the same thing with that relic of the Cross?

Yes, but not right away. It was a few days later….

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Is that when you felt “the weight” of the Work?

I did feel the weight of the Work, but I also felt the power of God. Like it or not, the Work is spiritually all of one piece, or more clearly, “one heart, and one soul.” Everyone is praying that I make the right decisions.

Letters are arriving by the thousands from every corner of the world and from all kinds of people.

ordinary duties, in their relationships with others. That weight is felt because all of us are fragile; we can all fail to respond in harmony with the great symphony of the Church.

This article appears on the Opus Dei website: www.opusdei.ie

What is that “weight” of the Work?

It’s the holiness of more than 70,000 persons, all called by God to show their commitment to him in their work, in their

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Valencia in 1940, Pilar Urbano is the author of several widely acclaimed biographies. Currently she writes for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. The full interview was published in the magazine Época in May, 1994.

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Why We Should Address Jesus as Thou

by Bishop Robert Barron

O

n the final morning of the November meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, we were treated to a fine sermon by Archbishop J. Peter Sartain. The leader of the church in Seattle spent a good deal of time discussing Pier Giorgio Frassati, a saint from the early twentieth century to whom he and I both have a strong devotion. But what particularly struck me in his homily was a reference to the great St. Catherine of Siena. One of the most remarkable things about that remarkable woman was the intimacy which she regularly experienced with Mary, the saints, and the Lord Jesus himself.

Archbishop Sartain relayed a story reported by Catherine’s spiritual

director, Raymond of Capua.

According to Raymond, Catherine would often recite the office while walking along a cloister in the company of Jesus, mystically visible to the saint. When she came to the conclusion of a psalm, she would, according to liturgical custom, speak the words of the Glory Be, but her version was as follows, “Glory be to the Father, and to Thee, and to the Holy Ghost!” For her, Christ was not a distant figure, and prayer was not an abstract exercise. Rather, the Lord was at her side, and prayer was conversation between friends.

Archbishop Sartain invited us to muse on Catherine’s use of the intimate form of the pronoun, in her Latin tibi (to you), and rightly rendered in English as “to Thee.”

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As is the case with many other languages, Latin distinguishes between more formal and more informal use of the second person pronoun, and it is the familiar “tu” that Catherine employs when speaking to Jesus. It is an oddity of the evolution of spoken English that today “thou, thine, thy, and thee” seem more rarified, more regal and distant, when in fact just the contrary was the case up until fairly modern times. These were the words used to address family members, children, and intimate friends, in contradistinction to the more formal “you” and “yours.”

How wonderful, Archbishop Sartain reminded us, that this intimate usage is preserved in some of our most beloved prayers.

We say, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done…” and we pray, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” Again, I realize that to our ears, this language sounds less rather than more intimate, but it is in fact meant to convey the same easy familiarity with the Father and the Blessed Mother

that Catherine of Siena enjoyed with Christ.

And all of this signals something of crucial significance regarding the nature of Biblical Christianity.

Many mysticisms and philosophies of the ancient world –Platonism, Plotinianism, and Gnosticism come readily to mind – indeed spoke of God or the sacred, but they meant a force or a value or an ontological source, impersonal and at an infinite remove from the world of ordinary experience. These ancient schools find an echo, moreover, in many modern and contemporary theologies. Think of the Deism popular in the 18th century and so influential on the Founders of the United States; or think of Schleiermacher’s and Emerson’s pantheist mysticisms in the nineteenth century; or consider even the New Age philosophy of our time. All of these would speak of a “divine” principle or power, but one would never dream of addressing such a force as “thou,” or of engaging with it in intimate conversation.

Then there is the Bible. The Scriptures obviously present God as overwhelming, transcendent,

30

uncontrollable, inscrutable, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, but they insist that this sublime and frightening power is a person who deigns to speak to us, to guide us, and to invite us into his life. They even make bold to speak of the awesome God “pitching his tent among us,” becoming one of us, taking to himself our frail humanity. And this implies that we can speak to God as we speak to an intimate colleague. Conversing with his disciples the night before he died, Jesus said, “I no longer call you slaves, but friends,” and in making that utterance, he turned all of religious philosophy and mysticism on its head.

I believe that one of the major problems we have in evangelizing our culture is that many Christians don’t walk with Jesus personally. Finally, evangelization is not a sharing of ideas – though this can be very important at the level of pre-evangelization or clearing the ground – but rather the sharing of a relationship. But as the old adage has it, “nemo dat quod non habet” (no one gives what he doesn’t have). If we don’t speak to Jesus as “thou,” we won’t draw others into a real friendship with him, and the establishment of that friendship is the terminus ad quem of real evangelizing.

This article first appeared at: www.wordonfire.org.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

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Book review:

With God in America: the Spiritual Legacy of an Unlikely Jesuit

Author Walter J. Ciszek, SJ Publisher Loyola Press, 2016 Paperback, 254 pp.

by Edward N. Peters

W

ith God in America landed on my desk hot off the press in September but various projects prevented me from turning to it for some weeks.

Finally, late one Monday morning, I poured a cup of hot tea and settled down in my comfy recliner to peruse this collection of writings by and recollections about the American Jesuit missionary, Fr Walter Ciszek (1904-1984), to see what historical tidbits or personal insights might remain for those of us already moved by Ciszek’s gripping first book With God in Russia (1963), the narration of his twenty-three years in Stalinst prisons and labor camps, and his more reflective second text He Leadeth Me (1973), wherein Ciszek attempts to explain and apply the spiritual insights that decades of sufferings under an atheistic regime had offered him.

Barely a dozen pages into Fr Ciszek’s third work, however, I was suddenly seized by the urgent desire to go to noon Mass at our parish and to stay for confessions available on Mondays. I dropped Ciszek’s book on my chair, went straight to Mass, and afterwards made one of the most fruitful confessions I had made in many years. That Ciszek’s prayers had rousted me from my comfortable seat in time for a midday Mass and that they had obtained for me the grace of a good Confession, I have not the slightest doubt. Walter Ciszek brought countless people closer to God while he lived; and today, more than thirty years after his death, he still brings people closer to God. Reviews of Ciszek’s third work, aptly subtitled “the Spiritual Legacy of an Unlikely Jesuit”

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and focusing on his more than twenty years’ of work as a retreat master and spiritual director back in America, will be read by two kinds of people: those who already know Ciszek’s volumes With God in Russia and He Leadeth Me, and those who don’t. The first group needs no encouragement to read With God in America, though I have some comments to offer them below; the second group, however, needs to be warned against starting their Ciszek studies with his posthumous third volume. To them I say (and I mean it), if you have not read With God in Russia and He Leadeth Me, set this review aside and go read those first two works. Afterward, not only will you need no encouragement to read With God in America but you will draw much, much more from it.

I now continue my remarks on With God in America for the benefit of those who already know Ciszek’s incredible story. It contains far more than the tidbits I went looking for in its pages.

At the risk of pretending to the sort of pietism for which Ciszek had no use, or of engaging in the kind of academic analysis that Ciszek respected but never employed, or, worst of all, of focusing on Ciszek instead of on Jesus (remember, this is the man who spiritually told me to stop reading his book and go see Jesus in the sacraments, now!), Ciszek’s words as recorded in With God in America and the stories told about him by others therein, underscored for me, more than anything else, how profound, how simple, and how manly, Christian holiness really is.

Ciszek’s spirituality is, of course, Ignatian but his holiness is Catholic in every sense of that word: it is pure, unswerving, is what holiness completely is, and is nothing else. To see Ciszek’s holiness covered in icy mud and coal dust some days, leading tough teens to a New York city park for a game of catch on another, buying drinks for Soviet guards in Moscow, or celebrating Mass for a lone retreatant in America, is to see how the holiness of Christ is

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truly everywhere, all time.

Moreover, to move through With God in America is (again, for those who have read With God in Russia) to watch Ciszek’s spiritual life evolve from one of almost Abrahamic faith (a phrase used by others, but which struck me as exactly right long before I saw that description) into a life in Jesus focused entirely on holy love.

If there is a secondary note to Ciszek’s spirituality beside his striving for holiness, it is probably (and again, we see how thoroughly Ignatian was Ciszek) his “blessed indifference” to plans—and I say “plans” instead of “goals”, for Ciszek always had goals (chiefly, to bring God to the people suffering under Soviet Communism), while at the same time he had almost no plans for how to do it. Instead, he took opportunities for pastoral works as they arose, he pursued those opportunities how and while he could, and when they were shut down by the Evil One and his lackeys, as they so often were, Ciszek watched out for, and seized, what others might arise. If there

was one gesture that, in my mind’s eye, expressed Ciszek’s response to the many barriers placed by Soviet persecutors between him and his goals, I frankly doubt it was the sign of the cross and words of blessing.

I can much more easily imagine that it was a shrug, accompanied by a comment like “I’m not breaking any laws, but I’m sure not turning away any one who comes to me for help. I’ll do what I have to do, and you’ll do what you want to do. Either way, it’s Jesus’ concern.”

Ciszek did not, of course, write With God in America in the sense that he sat down and wrote With God in Russia or He Leadeth Me. Instead, editors John Dejak (an American layman and lawyer) and Marc Lindeijer (a Dutch Jesuit historian) collected the materials for Ciszek’s third volume from his various writings and from personal interviews with those who knew him. Not knowing what sort of raw materials they had to work with, I cannot pronounce upon the wisdom of Dejak’s and Lindeijer’s selections, but I can say that the

34

text they assembled is admirably edited and clearly arranged.

I appreciated, for example, that most of Ciszek’s pleasantries in his letters to persons under his direction were left in place; such disarming comments set off well the suddenness with which he dropped spiritual gems in notes and conversations. Frankly I look forward to the day when passages, perhaps whole paragraphs, culled from by-then St Walter Ciszek’s letters to spiritual sons and daughters or from his spiritual journals, might make their way into the Office of Readings. Or again, I like knowing, say, that Ciszek was unimpressed with The Exorcist as a book and a movie, but that he happily accepted small stipends for the celebration of Mass. I even liked having my hunch confirmed that Ciszek was not much of a writer, strictly speaking, and that he needed, and accepted, the help of a younger Jesuit editor to help him put his wisdom on paper. It reinforces the point that Ciszek’s holiness was simple and it was humble.

May I offer, though, one related observation? A mediocre student his whole life (notwithstanding his gift for languages, as long as they had a pastoral application), Ciszek’s story is, nevertheless, I suggest, a testament to the “old school” kind of education that the Church (or at least the Jesuits) used to offer seminarians, instilling as it did in Ciszek categories of thought and ways of assessing concrete situations (doctrinal, sacramental, moral) that the priest would need to draw on countless times in pastoring souls from frozen Siberia to the bustling Bronx. If there is no school like real life (and there is no school like real life), we must yet say that life’s lessons are more quickly and easily learned if they are met, not as if they are sudden novelties arising out of the blue, but as things that the Church has seen before, and with something like the Church’s accumulated pastoral wisdom as organized by her traditional education system and as guided by her disciplinary codes.

Ciszek’s story bears out the value of that kind of education. May we recover it whilst we can.

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Finally, as noted above, Ciszek had survived the worst of the Stalinist persecution of religion in Russia and returned to America just in time to see the worst of the post-Conciliar confusion in the Catholic Church. Rather as he carried on with the work of God in the face of anti-religious schemes in Russia, however, so did Ciszek carry on with the work of God in the face of many anti-ecclesial temptations in the wake of Vatican II. I have little doubt that Ciszek saw what was unfolding around him in the Church and in Jesuit community life during his years back in the States, but those looking in this work for lengthy analyses of said crisis, let alone for stirring

condemnations of problems from a living saint, will look in vain. Ciszek stayed above such reproaches of Communists in With God in Russia and he seems to stayed away from reproaches of dissenters in With God in America. Further research might confirm or challenge these impressions, but there is little doubt but that Ciszek exudes a remarkable tranquility in the presence of God in America just as he did in the presence of God in Russia.

This article first appeared on catholicworldreport.com and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the editor and the author.

ABOUT THE
 AUTHOR

Edward N. Peters is an American canonist and Referendary of the Apostolic Signatura (an advisor/consultant to the Holy See's top tribunal). He is professor of canon law at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary of the Archdiocese of Detroit.

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Director Martin Scorsese Starring Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson USA

Film review: Silence

by Brad Miner

W

hen St Francis Xavier brought Catholicism to Japan in 1549, conversions were hard to come by. Xavier struggled to learn Japanese, and initially relied on imagery, usually illustrations of Christ, Mary, and the saints to tell the Christian story. He died just three years into his mission.

had been killed for being Kirishitan.

Yet hundreds of thousands did convert, and the Japanese Church flourished for more than a generation, until the persecutions began. In 1597, twenty-six Christians were crucified in Nagasaki. Then beginning in the following year and continuing into the 1630s, another 205 were martyred throughout the country. And by the time the two Portuguese priest-heroes of Shūsaku Endō’s 1966 novel, Silence, came to Japan in 1639, an additional 206

What Japanese authorities had taken to be a curious adjunct of trade with Western nations was now considered a lethal threat to the nation’s cultural patrimony.

Missionary work was dangerous, and those fictional priests, based on real missionaries, fully expected to die for Jesus.

But Endō’s book (and Martin Scorsese’s new film version of it) isn’t about martyrdom; it’s about avoiding it. Above all, the authorities want apostasy (sincere or not), and most of the main characters apostatize.

Now it’s easy at the distance of half a millennium to look with disdain upon a priest who knows the risks and yet abandons the profession of faith to which his ordination bound him. Scorsese

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seems to ask: What would you do when asked to trample on a sacred image of Jesus, if doing so would save the lives of others? Kirishitans are hanging upside down in a pit, small incisions in their necks, slowly bleeding to death, and only you can save them. All you have to do is stamp your foot on a fumi-e – a sort of demonic icon depicting Christ. What would you do?

Well, those hundreds of real Japanese martyrs, saints one and all, perished because they refused to apostatize – because they believed their lives, though ending in agony, were redeemed

by Christ. Eternal joy awaited them.

Endō was a Catholic convert, and it’s fair to wonder how complete his conversion was.

Martin Scorsese is a cradle Catholic who, despite meeting with Pope Francis during promotion of his movie (which premiered on December 23rd), shows no signs of being a faithful Catholic.

The book is very much a retelling of Joseph Conrad’s anti-colonial novel, Heart of Darkness (1899), the tale of a man named Marlow who travels up the Congo in search of an ivory trader named Kurtz, described as “an emissary of pity, and science, and progress,” but who has become a god to the “natives.” Conrad’s book was also the basis of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Apocalypse Now, in which a spec-ops officer goes up the Mekong in search of a rogue colonel, also Kurtz, now a godlike figure for the Montagnards. Both Kurtzes die uttering the famous line: “The horror! The horror!”

What does this have to do with Scorsese’s Silence? The two Jesuit priests, Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garrpe (Adam Driver), have come to Japan to find Father Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who is said to have gone native, even to the point of apostatizing and marrying.

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When Endō read Heart of Darkness, he must have been impressed by the fictional organization with which Kurtz corresponds, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs, because that is surely a part of what missionary activity everywhere has amounted to – in the minds of the “natives” anyhow – and it’s likely Endō loved Christ but wasn’t particularly fond of Christians.

When Marlow/Rodrigues/ Garfield finally confronts Kurtz/ Ferreira/Neeson, it is the older man, formerly Rodrigues’ teacher back in Portugal, who secures the younger man’s apostasy.

Scorsese’s film is actually the second adaptation of Endō’s book, the first being Masahiro Shinoda’s 1971 Chinmoku (“Silence” in Japanese). Two American actors portrayed the Portuguese priests, but with a difference: both were able to speak most of their lines in Japanese, whereas Mr Garfield manages, towards the end of Scorsese’s film, just a few words

in that language. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the earlier film is the casting of Tetsurō Tamba (who played Tiger Tanaka in the Bond film You Only Live Twice) as Ferreira. As if to say: here’s a Portuguese Jesuit who has really gone native!

Shinoda’s film runs a manageable two hours; Scorsese’s is nearly three, and it’s because of repetitiveness, not because there was more to tell of Silence than Shinoda did.

As the book reaches its climax, Rodrigues feels the sand giving way beneath him: From the deepest core of my being yet another voice made itself heard in a whisper.

Supposing God does not exist….

This was a frightening fancy….

What an absurd drama become the lives of [the martyrs] Mokichi and Ichizo, bound to the stake and washed by the waves. And the missionaries who spent three years crossing the sea to arrive at this country – what an illusion was theirs.

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Myself, too, wandering here over the desolate mountains – what an absurd situation!

Scorsese’s Silence is not a Christian film by a Catholic filmmaker, but a justification of faithlessness: apostasy becomes an act of Christian charity when it saves lives, just as martyrdom becomes almost satanic when it increases persecution. “Christ would have apostatized for the sake of love,” Ferreira tells Rodrigues, and, obviously, Scorsese agrees.

Silence is rated R for its multiple scenes of torture. The Americans and Brits mostly have the movie stolen from them by a superb Japanese cast, including: Yôsuke

Kubozuka as Kichijiro, a Judas who earns a lot more silver than the original one; Issei Ogata as the missionaries’ principal antagonist, the inquisitor Inoue; Shin’ya Tsukamoto (Mokichi) and the great Yoshi Oida (Ichizo) as Catholic villagers martyred by the inquisitor. I won’t be surprised if either Mr Oida or Mr Kubozuka receives an Oscar nomination as a supporting actor. If so, that will likely be the film’s only nod from the Academy.

This column first appeared on the website The Catholic Thing (thecatholicthing.org).

Copyright 2016. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brad Miner is senior editor of The Catholic Thing, senior fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute, and a board member of Aid to the Church In Need USA. He is a former Literary Editor of National Review. His new book, Sons of St Patrick, written with George J. Marlin, will be published on St Patrick’s Day, 2016.

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