Position Papers – March 2018

Number 517 March 2018 €3 · £2.50 · $4

A review of Catholic affairs

What is Jordan Peterson saying?

KEVIN O’ROURKE, ASHLEY MCGUIRE & FR GAVAN JENNINGS

Book review: Plan of Life

DWIGHT G. DUNCAN

Film review: The 15:17 to Paris JOHN MULDERIG

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Number 517 · March 2018

Editorial

by Rev. Gavan Jennings

In Passing: “Snowflakes” now targeting the Crusades

by Michael Kirke

The Curious Case of the Canadian Psychologist

by Kevin O'Rourke

Jordan Peterson’s Radical Take on Marriage

by Ashley McGuire

To Serve Human Life is to Serve God (Pastoral Message for 2018)

by Archbishop Eamon Martin

St Josemaría on St Joseph as family man

by Fr Lucas F. Mateo-Seco

Book Review: The truthfulness, courage and optimism of Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life

by Fr Gavan Jennings

Book Review: Plan of Life

by Dwight G. Duncan

Film Review: The 15:17 to Paris

by John Mulderig Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

2 3 9 14 18 22 29 36 39

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

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Editorial T

his month we are giving pride of place to the Jordan Peterson phenomenon which has been sweeping YouTube, and which is now sweeping the bookshops. We have three articles in which we look at his two published works: Maps of Meaning, and the new book 12 Rules of Life – an antidote to chaos, as well as an article on his fascinating views on marriage.

Watching recently a YouTube video (google: “How to: academy Jordan Peterson”) in which Peterson summarises his 12 Rules for Life, it struck me how simply captivating he is as a speaker. He communicates with his whole being: the tone of his voice, his body language and hand gestures, his smiles and occasional laughter or at times an angrily raised voice, the fixing of his eyes on different members of the audience as he speaks. This is not a stilted TED talk, clearly rehearsed for hours before the mirror. He seems unconcerned with how what he is saying is going over. He speaks from the heart (always without notes) and conveys a conviction that what he is saying is not only true, but is also desperately important for people’s lives.

He seems to give no importance to the fact that much – if not most – of what he has to say runs diametrically opposed to the orthodoxies of our age. And yet people in their millions are desperately hungry to hear what he has to say.

And this has made me think about how we Catholics (and clerics particularly) often fail to communicate the Gospel message with anything like the same magnetism. We say that people are not interested in what we are saying (or preaching). Is it rather that people are waiting to hear someone who preaches “with authority” (Mt.7:29) – the authority that comes from staking one’s whole life on the message?

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In Passing: “Snowflakes” now targeting the Crusades

by Michael Kirke

H

erbert Butterfield, the great English historian, once wrote that “the study of the past with one eye on the present is the source of all the sins and sophistries in history.”

we become wiser by remembering it, we do not mistake it for the present.

The sad confusion evident in a small and apparently insignificant item of news from a small American university campus recently exemplified both the sophistry which Butterfield warned of and the foolish judgements made by those who do not really know their history.

And yet we also tell each other that without knowledge of our past, in our present we will be doomed to repeat, again and again, the follies and crimes of our ancestors.

How do we resolve this paradox?

Both these observations are true.

But, as by definition a paradox is an apparent contradiction, not a real contradiction, we can happily subscribe to both. We must not forget our past but we must also make sure that while

The students of Holy Cross College, Worcester, Massachusetts, run a newspaper which – up until now – bore the masthead, The Crusader. From now on they are going to call it The Spire. I wonder do they

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know that Dublin’s iconic millennium spire in the centre of O’Connell Street, a sort of a steel needle soaring 121 metres over the rooftops, is famous for signifying precisely nothing? In his leader article announcing the change, the editor has declared that after studying the history of the Crusades, he and his colleagues have decided to disassociate themselves from that historical epoch.

societies are caricatured as less sophisticated, more primitive, cruder, alien. Such attitudes reveal nothing so much as a collective desire to reassure the modern observer by demeaning the experience of the past. Within the cultural traditions of Europe and Western Asia, since the sixteenth century the Crusades have regularly attracted precisely such condescension from hostile religious, cultural or ideological partisans. The Crusades have been dismissed as a symptom of a credulous, superstitious and backward civilization in order openly or covertly to elevate a supposedly more advanced and enlightened modern society. Yet this hardly helps understanding of past events.

OK, who cares? This is just one more entry in the growing catalogue of snowflake gestures of “virtue signalling” which continue to pollute modern academia. But we should care.

This is a disease of the mind, the wages of the sophistry and sins of which Herbert Butterfield warned us and which Christopher Tyerman alluded to in his superb and scholarly history of the Crusades, God’s War. In that book Tyerman wrote:

The editor of The Crusader – sorry, The Spire – writes, referring not just to the title of his paper but also to his college’s mascot,

A familiar but baneful response to history is to configure the past as comfortingly different from the present day. Previous

No matter how long ago the Crusades took place, this paper does not wish to be

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associated with the massacres (i.e. burning synagogues with innocent men, women, and children inside) and conquest that took place therein.

Surely, the word “crusade” has come to mean “an energetic campaign” in common parlance, but can a school whose mascot wields a sword and shield really lay claim to this interpretation?

the environment; for respect for different perspectives, cultures, traditions, and identities; and for service in the world, especially to the underserved and vulnerable,” they explained in an email to the college community.

Holy Cross’ president, Rev. Philip Boroughs, and board chair John J. Mahoney said that the board had decided that the literal definition of the name Crusaders – “one who is marked by the cross of Christ” – was consistent with the college’s mission.

The college authorities, clearly feeling under some pressure from the virtue signallers, have, however, stood their ground on the mascot. Nevertheless, they have also failed the Butterfield test.

This really does not get the college out of this pickle of its own creation – because this is exactly how the crusaders of the eleventh, twelfth thirteenth centuries also saw themselves.

To be a crusader was to be designated crucignatus in the later twelfth century.

While they acknowledge, they say, that the Crusades were “among the darkest periods in Church history”, they choose to associate themselves with the modern definition of the word crusader, one which is “representative of our Catholic, Jesuit identity and our mission and values as an institution and community.”

These people, modern iconoclasts, should study the past seriously and do so in the spirit and with the intellectual discipline of a Butterfield or a Tyerman. We study history to

“We are crusaders for human rights, social justice, and care for

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understand our past, not to judge it by our standards. We study to learn, not to praise or condemn – because we have no right to bring our ancestors to a court of justice of whose statutes they have no understanding – no more than a citizen of one country has a right to judge a citizen in another by foreign laws. The past is another country.

they did. With the passing of centuries and an ever-deepening understanding of humanity and what it is to be human, they helped us to deal more effectively with our propensities for violence – and eliminate a good number of the pestilences which afflicted us.

Tyerman points out that while “the moral certainties fostered by crusading left physical or cultural monuments and scars from the Arctic Circle to the Nile, from the synagogues of the Rhineland to the mosques of Andalusia, from the vocabulary of value to the awkward hinterland of historic Christian pride, guilt and responsibility”, nevertheless, one path to the thought-world of Christopher Columbus stretched back to Pope Urban II’s first call to arms for the Christian reconquest of Jerusalem in 1095.

We cannot understand the Crusades unless we understand the world, the entire worldview, of the men, women and children who made them happen – and women and children were as much a part of the Crusades as were men. Tyerman reveals this world to us. His work reveals to us that the glories of the Middle Ages, the faith, the gothic cathedrals, the great twelfth century renaissance, the flowering of monasticism, the mendicant orders, the seeds of the fifteenth century renaissance and the enlightenment, all grew out of the same fertile soil as the Crusades. They were ages in which violence was as endemic as other pestilences they had to live with – but live with them

Tyerman, who is Professor of the Crusades in Oxford University, reminds us that violence, approved by society and supported by religion, was a commonplace of civilized communities.

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What are now known as the Crusades represent one manifestation of this phenomenon, distinctive to western European culture over 500 years from the late eleventh century of the Christian Era. The Crusades were wars justified by faith conducted against real or imagined enemies defined by religious and political elites as perceived threats to the Christian faithful.

nobility, the faith and the idealism does not imply that you condone those things that we today know to be evil. Capital punishment in our time is now deemed morally unacceptable.

That does not necessarily mean that our ancestors were morally culpable when they either executed or condoned the execution of justly tried and condemned contemporaries.

The students of Holy Cross, Worcester, could greatly benefit from Tyerman’s reflections on his task. His perspective is western European – and as he explains it, there is nothing wrong with that. It accords best with his own research experience. He is a professional.

More importantly, he says, it matches the origins, development, continuance and nature of the phenomenon.

Although having an impact far beyond western Europe, the crusade as an ideal and human activity began and remained rooted in western European culture.

The religious beliefs crucial to such warfare placed enormous significance on imagined awesome but reassuring supernatural forces of overwhelming power and proximity that were nevertheless expressed in hard concrete physical acts: prayer, penance, giving alms, attending church, pilgrimage, violence. Crusading reflected a social mentality grounded in war as a central force of protection, arbitration, social discipline, political expression and material gain.

We might say to the students of Worcester, Mass., “Get over it!”

To look back at a time in the past, to see the good in it, the

The stance adopted by Tyerman in no way implies approval of

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everything associated with crusading. His perspective does not ignore the sources generated by the opponents and victims of crusading. Nor does it privilege the value or importance of the experience of western Europeans over others involved.

His constant effort is directed at seeing the subject clearly and dispassionately through the fog of ignorance, obscurity, the passage of time and the complexity of surviving sources.

His study is, he says, intended as a history, not a polemic, an account not a judgement, an exploration of an important episode of world history of enormous imaginative as well as intellectual fascination, not a confessional apologia or witness statement in some cosmic law suit.

while admiring their motives, we may regret their manner of pursuing them. But we can never, ever, say that they are not part of what we are. It is in reading history in this spirit that we resolve the paradox with which we began.

As for the students of Holy Cross disassociating themselves from this epoch in history, they should think again. They, none of us, can anymore do that than we can disassociate ourselves from the genetic inheritance bequeathed to us by our ancestors. We may regret some of the things they did, and even

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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The Curious Case of the Canadian Psychologist

by Kevin O'Rourke

O

ne day I requested Jordan B. Peterson’s first book, Maps of Meaning, from the university library stacks. I already had an electronic copy and watched the whole lecture course, so the hassle was probably a waste of time, but I still had this strange impulse to encounter a real copy (in the cellulose, so to speak). I wanted to hold it in my hands and contemplate its significance for a few minutes, as if it was one of Shakespeare’s pens or a Gutenberg Bible.

likes to point out how the Ford Model T was a mode of transport but it was also a societal transformation, a powerful antiauthoritarian statement, and the biggest change in human-horse relations since some IndoEuropean steppe-dwellers looked at the horse’s ancient ancestors and went “hmm…”.

In this sense, it’s not obvious what Maps of Meaning actually is. It is a book, as is a tray, a table support, a paperweight, etc., but it is something else as well. The heavy paperback in my hands felt like a minor relic, with a deeper significance beyond the familiar passages and diagrams I recognised from before. I suspect it struck me like that because it had come to represent

It isn’t always easy to tell what exactly an object is, not least because what something is depends on what you want to do with it and what it becomes over time. Peterson

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what happens when someone decides to do something properly.

About thirty years ago, the notyet-Professor Peterson decided he’d do his best to work out where belief systems and cultures come from, what their biological and psychological significance might be, and why people would fight over them.

The explanations on offer for inter-group conflict were deeply unsatisfying, especially given that there were, and still are, thousands of ICBMs just waiting for a signal to deliver the hydrogen bombs which could effectively reset civilisation to 400 AD. After years of intense effort the full work was published in 1999.

It begins: “Something 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.”

In PDF form it amounts to nearly 400 A4 pages in small

print. It’s a work of stunning depth, weaving comparative mythology, neuropsychology, psychoanalysis, history, literary analysis and philosophy into an argument that the patterns that come up in mythology from different places and times are dramatic, imagistic representations of what it is like to be human, regardless of where or when.

The oldest stories of our species are not a simply incompetent science, rather they deal with the question of how to approach the tragic realities of the human experience without making everything a trillion times worse.

The most successful societies are built upon these stories, whether we realise it or not.

Maps of Meaning was a book by an anonymous Harvard lecturer, which impressed those who read it but made no great impact. The book remained relatively unknown for seventeen years, the kind of book university libraries keep in an off-campus warehouse, to be retrieved in the unlikely event that someone asks for it.

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Peterson went on and worked as a clinical psychologist and conducted research into the psychology of personality, becoming a tenured professor at the University of Toronto. There he taught two undergraduate courses, one about personality and one based on Maps of Meaning. Then, on the twentyseventh day of September 2016, almost by accident, a sleeping giant woke up.

he had already been uploading his university lectures for quite some time.

Peterson must often wonder what his life would be like had he just gone back to sleep that night. He was concerned about the policies surrounding a new hate-speech law in Canada, ostensibly brought in to protect trans people from harassment.

He didn’t think it would do anything of the sort. He argued that the law was the work of people who either didn’t understand or actually hated the society in which they lived, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission was an institution fundamentally opposed to the maintenance of a free state.

He started talking at his computer. He put his thoughts on his YouTube channel, where

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The response was overwhelming, largely because he was addressing questions that went much deeper than the proposed law. After his thoughts on Bill C-16 had made their way around the planet several times, people got curious about his lectures. His University of Toronto course Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief gained something of an international cult following. His appearances on the Joe Rogan podcast quickly attained legendary status.

Later on, he publicly wondered why so many people care what some random psychology professor thinks about anything.

More than likely it’s his ability to articulate things that people half-know, things they’ve picked up bit by bit from books, teachers, TV, parents, friends, but never explicitly grasped.

Peterson became even more famous after his Channel 4 interview with Cathy Newman went viral online a couple of days ago. If you have not seen it,

I would advise you to do so as soon as you can. It is nothing short of spectacular.

there are many reasons for any average difference you observe between men and women.

Newman did not want to know.

Thirty years ago, Jordan Peterson decided to take on the problem of how humans work with single-minded determination. He has done so ever since. Cathy Newman charged headlong into the person sitting opposite her and, apparently for the first time in her professional life, met solid steel.

Peterson, backed by decades’ worth of research and experience, and now with dozens of hostile interviews under his belt, is hard to faze. Where the average guest is routinely bowled over, flattened or burnt to a crisp, Peterson stood fast, stated facts with precision and patience, and let Newman’s credibility shatter against him.

You have to wonder if she’ll ever utter the phrase “so you’re saying” again without blushing.

The interview showed in painful detail the vast chasm between the competent and the incompetent, the genuine and the fake. For instance, Peterson had to state repeatedly that

This whole episode could turn out to be a watershed moment in the history of Britain’s relationship with the news. Why watch Cathy Newman act the clown in an expensive studio when you can get Sam Harris vs Jordan Peterson on your phone?

If you have something to say to the public, why let journalists filter it when you can talk to a camera and put it on YouTube?

The most remarkable thing about all this, however, is not the interview fallout but the fact that this was just something Jordan Peterson did one day between promoting his new book (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos), giving lectures on identity, culture, the modern university, and drowning in fan mail. He has received tens of thousands of messages of thanks, from people he has helped to understand themselves and the world more fully and, from there, approach life with greater confidence and strength.

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There are thousands of people giving him a few dollars a month on Patreon, as if to say “whatever you’re up to, I want to help”. Around early 2017, hyperbolic comments started appearing on Peterson’s YouTube videos along the lines of “this man is single-handedly going to save civilisation”. A bit over enthusiastic perhaps, but it’s no accident that Peterson has suddenly become one of the world’s most popular public thinkers.

Nobody will agree with him on absolutely everything. This is no great surprise. Be that as it may, over the last thirty years he has reached a point where just about everything he says is at least

worth considering. As Douglas Murray of The Spectator so brilliantly put it: “Whatever else anybody might think of him, Professor Peterson is a man of remarkable learning and experience, and does not appear to have arrived at any of his views by the now common means of ‘I reckon’.”

There’s no particular magic going on, no arcane, esoteric secrets of the Universe.

This is someone who left his ego at the door and put in the effort.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin O’Rourke is a medical student at Trinity College Dublin and a frequent contributor to The Burkean Journal, a recently established online political and cultural magazine in Ireland that promotes conservative thought and ideas.

This article is republished with the permission of the editors.

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Jordan Peterson’s Radical Take on Marriage

by Ashley McGuire

J

ordan Peterson is not your average YouTube star. While he finds himself in the company of those like “PewDiePie” and “Smosh,” Peterson is not reviewing memes and toys or mixing techno. He is preaching the truth in YouTube vignettes with searing candor. And much of what he has to say is about marriage.

4 News. In one of the most entertaining and stunning intellectual volleys I’ve ever seen, Newman lobs some of postmodernism’s hardest fastballs at Peterson, and he hits a homer in response every time.

While I had heard of Peterson over a year ago as one of the first and few academics to resist the gender ideology movement and its absurd anti-grammatical demands, I really discovered him a week ago like so many others after seeing his now infamous interview with the UK’s Cathy Newman on Channel

When I first watched it on YouTube, it had around 50,000 views. It now has over five million, and that number will surely climb. When I checked back on the video, the top comment from a viewer was simply, “My God that was amazing.”

Peterson is a Canadian professor and clinical psychologist whose background includes the likes of Harvard and McGill. But unlike

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most academics, Peterson has managed to straddle both the worlds of academia and social media, using YouTube to speak especially to young people disenchanted with a morally bankrupt culture caught in the chokehold of political correctness. To be sure, he’s a media sensation, and much of that is due to his occasionally sensational style of speaking. He swears, he shouts, and he stages.

But he’s worth listening to all the same, especially on the topic of marriage.

In particular, Peterson is a rare and pointed critic of divorce. Put more magnanimously, he is one of the most persuasive advocates for fidelity and permanence in marriage as a positive good and a path to inner freedom. In various videos, Peterson emphasizes the idea that when we don’t take our marriage vows seriously, we cripple our ability to be open with one another because we fear that being truthful to ourselves with our spouse will give them license to leave us. In a world where the majority of divorces are filed

unilaterally, his point is well taken.

In his video, “The Shackles of Marriage,” Peterson says: What do you do when you get married? You take someone who’s just as useless and horrible as you are, and then you shackle yourself to them.

And then you say, we’re not running away no matter what happens…If you can run away, you can’t tell each other the truth…If you don’t have someone around that can’t run away, then you can’t tell them the truth. If you can leave, then you don’t have to tell each other the truth. It’s as simple as that, because you can just leave. And then you don’t have anyone to tell the truth to.

Marital permanence is not a shackle, in other words, but the only way to be true to oneself and to another in love and intimacy.

In his column for The New York Times, “The Jordan Peterson Moment,” David Brooks notes

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that a theme of Peterson’s videos is the line between chaos and norms. According to Peterson, Brooks writes, “we’ve decided not to have any values” and “we deny the true nature of humanity.” Brooks continues, “The downside is we live in a world of normlessness, meaninglessness, and chaos…

All of life is perched, Peterson continues, on the point between order and chaos. Chaos is the realm without norms and rules.”

And Peterson’s view is that we’ve made a chaos out of marriage. In another video, “The Real Reason for Marriage,” Peterson notes that people say they want to leave open the possibility of divorce so that they “can be free.”

“You want to be free, eh? Really?

Really? So, you can’t predict anything? That’s what you’re after?” he demands, going on to admonish, “It’s a vow. It says, look: 'I know you’re trouble. Me too. So, we won’t leave. No matter what happens'…That’s why you take it in front of a bunch of people. That’s why it’s supposed to be a sacred act.

What’s the alternative?

Everything is mutable and changeable at any moment.”

Many call marriage a form of “voluntary enslavement,” Peterson says, but really, “it’s an adoption of responsibility.” The responsibility, he argues, is to help each other solve each other’s hardest problems, which is only possible, he says, within that boundary of permanence, with the knowledge that your vows truly do hold their meaning.

Peterson’s vision of marriage is a dynamic one. Properly understood, it’s a lifelong wrestling between two worthy adversaries who strengthen each other and help one another to sort out and improve upon their various personal struggles and weaknesses. It’s a radical take on a traditional view.

Of course, Peterson tackles much more than marriage. In fact, there are few topics he doesn’t touch. As critics have pointed out, his style can be severe. But it’s important that the truth in his arguments not be

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inextricably associated with the harshness in which it is delivered. The 40 million and counting views his videos boast suggests that the culture is hungry for the verities he speaks, especially, perhaps, his font of wisdom on marriage.

It’s difficult to get the culture’s ear on marriage. For now, at least, Jordan Peterson’s got it, and that’s a good thing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ashley McGuire is a Senior Fellow with The Catholic Association. Ashley writes and speaks widely about religious freedom, Catholicism, and women. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children. This article is reprinted from the website of the Institute for Family Studies (https://ifstudies.org/blog/jordanpetersons-radical-take-on-marriage) with the kind permission of the author and editor.

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To Serve Human Life is to Serve God (Pastoral Message for 2018)

by Archbishop Eamon Martin

M

y brothers and sisters, as 2018 begins, I wish you, your family and all your loved ones the gifts of hope, love, and “life to the full” in the New Year.

realise that “humanity is precious and sacred to the Lord”.

Human life is sacred

On 1st January this year, the Feast of the Motherhood of Mary, Pope Francis said that calling Mary: “Mother of God” reminds us that, in Jesus, God became a living human being. God is therefore intimately close to humanity – as close as a child is to its mother in the womb. This is miraculous, Pope Francis said human beings are “no longer alone”. God is with us. In “the frail and infant God resting in his mother’s arms”, we see a “reflection of ourselves” and

All human life is sacred. All human life is precious. This is why the direct and intentional taking of innocent human life is always gravely wrong. In his New Year Homily, Pope Francis teaches us that: “to serve human life is to serve God. All life, from life in the mother’s womb to that of the elderly, the suffering and the sick, and to that of the troublesome and even repellent, is to be welcomed, loved and helped.”

Just before Christmas the Joint Committee on the Eighth

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Amendment of the Constitution submitted its report to the Oireachtas. In the name of “modernising healthcare”, the Committee proposes a very liberal abortion regime, including unrestricted access to abortion up to twelve weeks, and, thereafter during pregnancy, very broad grounds for abortion and access to abortion.

foundations and substructure of our laws, a conviction that all human life is equally worth cherishing. To repeal this Article will leave unborn children defenceless, and completely at the mercy of whatever abortion laws are introduced in Ireland – both immediately, and as will inevitably be further broadened in future years.

In the coming weeks, Oireachtas members will be discussing the possibility of holding a referendum aimed at repealing Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution of Ireland. This Article – the eighth amendment – gives an undertaking to respect, defend and vindicate the equal right to life of a mother and her unborn child. Article 40.3.3 reads as follows: “The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right”.

Two Lives, One Love!

Article 40.3.3 is a declaration of equality and respect for human life – it represents, at the very

Today we celebrate Nollaig na mBan, an Irish tradition which marks the contribution that women make to our families and to society. Women’s lives are precious, to be loved, valued and protected. Their babies’ lives are precious, to be loved, valued and protected. Two lives, one love!

Both lives deserve protection from the tragedy and irreversible decision of abortion.

It is falsely claimed that wide access to abortion will mark Ireland out as a “modern” country, placing the needs of women “at the centre”. Abortion ends the human life of an unborn girl or boy. It deceives women – and men – by creating a culture

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where the decision to end the life of an unborn child is portrayed as simply a matter of individual “choice”.

Since the introduction of the 1967 Abortion Act in Britain there have been almost nine million abortions. One-in-five pregnancies in Britain end in abortion; one-in-four in Sweden.

International experience shows a similar trend elsewhere. Are these the so-called “modern abortion regimes” that Ireland is seeking to emulate?

When women are in crisis during pregnancy, feeling frightened or isolated, they need to know they are not alone. A woman facing such a crisis deserves time, compassion, meaningful support and life-affirming alternatives to abortion and its harmful legacy.

Our ambition as a people should be to guarantee genuine care for pregnant mothers, encourage responsible support from fathers, and to truly cherish all children equally.

We should focus our energies and resources on making Ireland the most welcoming country in the

world for a woman and her baby in the womb. Our doctors, nurses, midwives and other care professionals have already helped to earn Ireland’s place as one of the safest countries in the world for mothers and their babies during pregnancy. Ireland now has an opportunity to give even stronger witness that: we value all life equally; we care for the weakest and smallest, the strongest and healthiest, the youngest, the oldest, and the whole wonderful and beautiful spectrum of life in-between.

Intervention Regarding medical intervention, Catholic teaching is clear: where a seriously-ill pregnant woman requires medical treatment which may put the life of her baby at risk, such treatments are ethically permissible provided every effort is made to save both the mother and her baby. Such an intervention would be different from an abortion, which is the direct and intentional taking of the innocent life of the unborn.

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Be missionaries for life!

The power of prayer

The innate dignity of every human life, from conception to natural death, is a value for the whole of society, rooted in reason as well as in faith. The Catholic Church, in common with many other people of goodwill, teaches that ending the life of an unborn child, like the taking of any other innocent human life, is always evil and can never be justified.

Please pray earnestly with me that Ireland will “choose life” and that the lives of all women and their unborn children will always be loved, valued, welcomed and respected in this country.

Brothers and sisters I encourage you to be missionaries for the cause of life. Remember those words of Pope Francis: “To serve human life is to serve God”. Speak to your families, your children and grandchildren, friends and colleagues about cherishing the precious gift of life at all times from conception to natural death.

Speak the truth about life, and speak it with love. Despite the strong pressures to remain silent, do not be afraid to witness to the equality of all life in private conversations and public discussions in the coming months.

As citizens committed to the Common Good, you have a democratic right to make your views known, respectfully, to our public representatives.

Prayer of Pope Francis (Laudato Si’) All powerful God, you are present in the whole universe and in the smallest of your creatures.

You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.

Pour out upon us the power of your love, That we may protect life and beauty.

Fill us with peace, that we may live as brothers and sisters, harming no one.

Amen

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Archbishop Eamon Martin is Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland.

St Josemaría on St Joseph as family man

by Lucas F. Mateo-Seco

F

rom his earliest writings, Saint Josemaría describes Saint Joseph as a young man, perhaps a bit older than our Lady, but imbued with vigour and strength: “The Holy Patriarch was not an old man, but a young, strong, upright man, a great lover of loyalty, a man with fortitude. Holy Scripture defines him with a single word: just (see Mt 1:20-21).

Joseph was a just man, a man filled with all the virtues, as was fitting for the one who was to be God’s protector on earth.”1 Underlying these words is the conviction that God, on giving a vocation, gives the graces 1

suitable to the one who receives it, and therefore he adorned Saint Joseph with all the gifts of nature and grace that made him a suitable spouse of our Lady and head of the Holy Family.

Saint Josemaría’s emphasis on the youthfulness of Joseph finds support in three fundamental reasons: in reading Sacred Scripture with common sense (which presents his espousal to our Lady as something normal, and the marriage of a young girl with an old man would not have been viewed as normal); in the communion of spirits proper to marriage (the love existing between them); and above all in the conviction that holy purity is

La escuela de José, p. 80.

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not a question of age, but rather stems from love.

“I don’t agree with the traditional picture of St Joseph as an old man, even though it may have been prompted by a desire to emphasis the perpetual virginity of Mary. I see him as a strong young man, perhaps a few years older than our Lady, but in the prime of his life and work. You don’t have to wait to be old or lifeless to practice the virtue of chastity. Purity comes from love; and the strength and joy of youth are no obstacle for noble love. Joseph had a young heart and a young body when he married Mary, when he learned of the mystery of her divine motherhood, when he lived in her company, respecting the integrity God wished to give the world as one more sign that he had come to share the life of his creatures.”2 For Saint Josemaría it was “unacceptable” to present Joseph as an old man for the

2

purpose of silencing the “evil thinkers.”3 And it was equally unacceptable to doubt the truth of his marriage to our Lady, as well as to fail to take into consideration the love that existed between them.

The love between Saint Joseph and our Lady Bishop Javier Echevarría is a valuable witness to how Saint Josemaría contemplated the relationship between Mary and Joseph, passing on his words addressed to Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico in 1970: “A family made up of an upright, hard-working young man; and a woman, hardly more than a girl: with a betrothal full of clean love, they find in their lives the fruit of God’s love for mankind.

In her humility she says nothing.

What a lesson for all of us, so ready as we are to boast about our achievements! He reacts with the refinement of an upright man – what a hard moment it must have been when

In Joseph's Workshop, no. 40.

To better “guarantee” our Lady’s virginity some apocryphal writers spoke of a previous marriage and presented Joseph as of an advanced age.

3

23

he discovered that his wife, so holy, was expecting a child. And as he did not wish to stain her reputation; he remained silent, while thinking how to resolve things, until God’s light came to him, which he was no doubt asking for from the first moment. And without hesitation he accepts heaven’s plans.”4 The authenticity of marriage brings with it the reality of conjugal love, the eagerness to spend life together and mutual self-giving; therefore it is only natural to view these features as very much a part of the marriage between Joseph and Mary. God added to that love the fruit of our Lady’s womb: the Eternal Son made man, who chose to be born into a human family.

As we have seen, Saint Josemaría takes it for granted that the marriage between Joseph and Mary is a true marriage. This leads him to reflect on the love existing between the two spouses: “Saint

Joseph must have been young when he married our Lady, a woman who had just emerged from adolescence. Being young, he was pure, clean, and very chaste. And he was so precisely because of his love. Only by filling our heart with love can we be sure that it will not rebel and go off the track, but will remain faithful to the most pure love of God.”5 For Saint Josemaría, love is the key to every person’s life, as it was in the life of Joseph. There we find the reason for his fortitude, his fidelity, his chastity. “Can you imagine the reaction of Saint Joseph, who loved our Lady so much and knew her spotless integrity?

How much he would have suffered on seeing that she was expecting a child! Only the revelation of God through an Angel calmed him. He had sought a prudent solution: to not dishonour her, to leave without saying anything. But what

Saint Josemaría, Notes from his personal prayer before Our Lady of Guadalupe, May 21, 1970; cited in Bishop Javier Echevarría, Letter, December 1, 1996 (AGP, P17, vol. 4, pp. 230-231).

4

5

De la familia de José, p.134.

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sorrow, since he loved her with his whole soul. And imagine his joy when he knew that the fruit of her womb was the work of the Holy Spirit!”6 Although he doesn’t focus on the reason for Joseph’s inner turmoil, Saint Josemaría suggests that it consisted in his “not seeing,” rather than in doubting the virtue of his spouse. He didn’t know what to do. “Joseph was a just man, a man filled with every virtue, as was proper to the one who was to be the protector of God on earth. At first he was troubled, when he discovered that his Immaculate Spouse was with child. He saw God’s hand in that fact, but he didn’t know how he should behave. In his uprightness, in order not to defame her, he thought of secretly taking leave of her.”7 Joseph’s pain seems to be concentrated in the need to abandon his spouse. Saint Josemaría holds soberly to the New Testament text, reading it 6

Ibid., p. 138.

7

La Escuela de José, p. 80.

with faith and common sense.

According to the text, the reason for Joseph’s concern is clear: his ignorance of what was happening, which the angel’s message dispelled. Joseph’s love and knowledge of Mary led him to think that in this event, which he did not understand, God was involved. Saint Josemaría suggests here what numerous exegetes have said: that Joseph’s doubt was not about the virtue of our Lady, but about how he should react, realising that something divine was involved.

Saint Josemaría never doubted the existence of an authentic conjugal love between the two.

Moreover Joseph’s chastity is protected by that love, founded on faith: “His faith nurtured his love of God, who was fulfilling the promises made to Abraham, Jacob and Moses, and his affection for Mary his wife, and her Son. This faith, hope and love would further the great mission which God was beginning in the world through, among others, a carpenter in

25

Galilee: the redemption of man.”8

her virginity, I give all of this to you, just as I ask you to give him his name.”9

The fatherhood of Joseph Saint Josemaría never wavered on how to express the fatherhood of Saint Joseph.

From his earliest writings right to the end of his life, he called him the father of Jesus without any qualification. We can view his thought regarding the theology of Saint Joseph as inscribed within the coordinates of two Fathers of the Church: Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Augustine. From Saint John Chrysostom he cites a text that places on God’s lips these words: “Do not think that, since the conception of Christ was the work of the Holy Spirit, you are apart from this divine work. For even though it is true that you had no part in the generation, and that the Virgin remains intact; nevertheless, all that is related to fatherhood without adversely affecting the dignity of 8

The exercise of fatherhood towards Jesus is an essential part of a “mission” that filled Joseph’s entire life: “He had a divine mission: he lived with a dedicated soul; he dedicated himself entirely to the concerns of Jesus, sanctifying his ordinary life.”10 Here lies one of the main attractions that the Holy Patriarch exerted over Saint Josemaría: his total dedication to Jesus in “sanctifying ordinary life,” that is, in the exercise of the duties proper to his office and as a good father of a Jewish family of his epoch.

Saint Josemaría in Christ Is Passing By offers a long description of the paternal-filial relationship that existed between Saint Joseph and our Lord. It is a beautiful page, sober and pious, filled with attention to details: “The life of Jesus was,

In Joseph’s Workshop, no. 42

Saint John Chrysostom, In Mat., Hom. 4, 6: BAC 141, 70. See La escuela de José, pp. 80-81.

9

10

La escuela de José, p. 81.

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for Saint Joseph, a recurring discovery of his own vocation.

We recalled earlier those first years full of contrasting circumstances: glorification and flight, the majesty of the wise men and the poverty of the manger, the song of the angels and the silence of mankind.

When the moment comes to present the child in the temple, Joseph, who carries the modest offering of a pair of doves, sees how Simeon and Anna proclaim Jesus as the Messiah: ‘His father and mother listened with wonder’ (Lk 2:33) says Saint Luke. Later, when the child stays behind in Jerusalem, unknown to Mary and Joseph, and they find him again after three days’ search, the same evangelist tells us, ‘They were astonished’ (Lk 2:48). Joseph is surprised and astonished. God gradually reveals his plans to him, and he tries to understand them . . . Saint Joseph, more than anyone else before or since, learned from Jesus to be alert to recognise God’s wonders, to have his mind and heart awake.”11

11

Here we have the interior life of Saint Joseph described as an authentic pilgrimage of faith, in a certain sense very similar to our Lady’s. Both of them, Mary and Joseph, discover God’s will little by little, and transform their first self-giving into a fidelity that mutually strengthens them. At the same time, in the exercise of his fatherhood, Joseph transmits to Jesus his profession as an artisan, his way of working and viewing the world: “But if Joseph learned from Jesus to live in a divine way, I would be bold enough to say that, humanly speaking, there was much he taught God’s Son . . .

Joseph loved Jesus as a father loves his son and showed his love by giving him the best he had. Joseph, caring for the child as he had been commanded, made Jesus a craftsman, transmitting his own professional skill to him. So the neighbours of Nazareth will call Jesus both faber and fabri filius (Mk 6:3; Mt 13:55): the craftsman and the son of the craftsman. Jesus worked in

In Joseph’s Workshop, no. 54.

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Joseph’s workshop and by Joseph’s side. What must Joseph have been, how grace must have worked through him, that he should be able to fulfil this task of the human upbringing of the Son of God! For Jesus must have resembled Joseph: in his way of working, in the features of his character, in his way of speaking. Jesus’ realism, his eye for detail, the way he sat at table and broke bread, his preference for using everyday situations to give doctrine—all this reflects his childhood and the influence of Joseph.”12 Here is a paradox that Saint Josemaría is very aware of. The One who is Wisdom Incarnate “learns” from a man the most basic things, including the skills of carpentry. Manifested in this paradox is the “sublime mystery” of the Incarnation and the truth of Joseph’s fatherhood.

From his Mother, our Lord learned to speak and to walk; in the home presided over by Saint Joseph, he learned lessons of 12

Ibid., no. 55.

13

Ibid.

industrious and upright work.

Mutual affection made Joseph and Jesus similar to each other in many things: “It’s not possible to ignore this sublime mystery: Jesus who is man, who speaks with the accent of a particular district of Israel, who resembles a carpenter called Joseph, is the Son of God. And who can teach God anything? But he is also truly man and lives a normal life: first, as a child, then as a boy helping in Joseph’s workshop, finally as a grown man in the prime of life. ‘Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and grace before God and men’ (Lk 2:52).”13

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This is an excerpt of an article that appears on www.opusdei.ie. It was written by the late Fr. Lucas Mateo-Seco who lectured for many years in the theology faculty in the University of Navarre in Spain. The feast of Saint Joseph is celebrated in the Church on March 19.

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Book Review: The truthfulness, courage and optimism of Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life

by Fr Gavan Jennings

Introduction The Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson has been an internet sensation since releasing a series of videos in late 2016 on his YouTube channel. In the videos he challenges political correctness as well as the Canadian government’s infamous Bill C-16. His website has been viewed over 40 million times since its creation, but his fame has grown exponentially since his interview with Channel Four’s Cathy Newman in January (seven million views and climbing) and the release of his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos which has shot to the top of the international best-seller lists.

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos Jordan B. Peterson

Random House Canada

Jan 23, 2018

448 Pages

Peterson is beginning to look like a twenty-first century C.S. Lewis, or even a Western Solzhenitsyn; certainly the colossal response he is garnering across the English speaking world astounding. What is it about this son of the Northern prairie of Canada which has brought him to such intellectual stardom? If I were to distil it down to three things they would be: his commitment to truth, his raw courage and his profound optimism. These three elements are woven through the fabric of his 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos – in a sense they are the distillation of his twelve rules.

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Commitment to truth “That’s just not true, it’s wrong!” is something of a catch cry for Peterson. We find it throughout the book, and said often with exasperation in many of the interviews he has given, particularly since the release of the book. It is a reflection of a deep, personal and emotional commitment to the truth.

Peterson is widely read in the great twentieth century analysts of dystopia: Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Viktor Frankl and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, and is aware that ideologies are based on “simple ideas” which explain away the complexity of the world; “Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangers when they come to power, because a simpleminded I-know-it-all approach is no matter for the complexity of existence” (Foreword).

Peterson’s fear of the prospect of a postmodern dystopia (think of Pope Benedict’s “dictatorship of relativism”) fuels this commitment to truth and passionate rejection of the

untruth. Totalitarian regimes, he tells us, are built on lies. Soviet Russia, as described by Solzhenitsyn in his Gulag Archipelago, was propped up by the “almost universal proclivity of the Russian citizen to falsify his own day-to-day personal experience”. Viktor Frankl was lead to a similar conclusion from his Nazi Germany experience: “deceitful, inauthentic individual existence is the precursor to social totalitarianism”. These murderous regimes required many lies at the micro level, before building the macro level lie: “For the big lie, you first need the little lie” (Rule 8: Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie).

Another factor playing into Peterson’s commitment to truth is his robust common sense – a quality which often evaporates at the dizzy heights of ivory tower academia. His sometimes homespun and even folksy common-sense belies the academic qualification of a one time Harvard lecturer and author of the serious work Maps of Meaning: The The Architecture of Belief. Such life experiences as his student summer job

30

alongside tough men on a railway line crew in Saskatchewan, his life as a husband and father, as well as his work as a clinical psychologist have produced a very grounded individual.

There are three features of his dedication to truth which strike me as particularly Aristotelian: the first is one which Peterson himself mentions in connection with Aristotle’s study of virtue: the Nicomachean Ethics, a book which is, he writes, “based on experience and observation, not conjecture…” (Foreword). I think the same can be said of 12 Rules for Life.

Secondly, Peterson as a psychologist, like Aristotle, takes the animal substrate of human nature seriously, famously when comparing the role of serotonin in the lobster and in man. The fact that he takes our animal substrate seriously leads him to conclusions at times at odds with PC dogmas (such as taking differences between men and women as significant).

insights into human nature: myth and religion, literature and cinema, science and philosophy.

This has earned him a few sniffy sneers (“the stupid man’s smart person”, “not an original thinker”). Whereas much of the charm of the book, and the real smartness of Peterson, lie in his esteem – in true Aristotelian fashion – for perennial wisdom, wherever it is to be found – including in Judeo-Christian sacred scripture. He draws lessons from the Cain and Abel story as well as from the story of the sacrificial death of Christ in Rule 7 (Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient). Does he take Christianity to be literally true? It isn’t clear (neither are the answers Peterson gives when asked about this in interviews) and to my mind his ambiguity is a justified defence against being pigeon-holing, but more importantly it reflects Peterson’s refusal to embrace the modern world’s science-saturated dichotomy: science = truth, anything else = false.

Thirdly, Peterson has recourse to wide-ranging sources for his

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Courage

afraid of any conflict or upset, no longer dare to correct them, and leave them without guidance” (Rule 5: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them).

The second feature of Peterson’s presentation of his ideas in 12 Rules, and in every YouTube video I have seen, is the clarity with which he presents uncomfortable or unfashionable truths. He is clearly an unusually courageous man who would rather jeapordise his academic career than keep silent about the truth. He has certainly embodied the book’s eighth rule: Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie.

Peterson challenges, head on, the Marxist-postmodern assault on the “dominance hierarchies” of Western civilisation. He does not buy into the view that that humankind, especially the male of the species, is the enemy of creation. He rebutts the ultrafeminist expression of this dogma: that human masculinity – the patriarchy – is the source of all that is wrong in the world.

Masculinity is not an evil thing: boys must allowed to be boys, and for their part,“Men have to toughen up” (Rule 11: Do not bother children when they are skateboarding).

Underlying his courage lies the conviction that speaking the truth is essential to the ordering of reality: “When things fall apart, and chaos re-emerges, we can give structure to it, and reestablish order through our speech …. Ignored reality manifests itself in an abyss of confusion and suffering” (Rule 10: Be precise in your speech).

Much of what he writes flagrantly deviates from postmodern orthodoxy, in particular his ideas about the differences of the sexes, marriage and parenting, eg.

“Children are damaged when those charged with their care,

How often do we hear parents tempted to raise snowflakes being admonished that “It is far better to render Beings in your care competent than to protect them”? How often are people told to “Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous” (Rule 1: Stand up

32

straight with your shoulders back)?

Incidentally, it is a delight to watch online the intelligence, candour (and charm) with which Peterson answers the kinds of questions that make many of us Catholics blanche (or at least apologise). When asked about cohabitation before marriage for instance, his answer is that the cohabitating couple are simply saying to one another: “You’re better than anything else I can trick, but I’d like to reserve the right to trade you in … conveniently.” And on abortion: “Abortion is clearly wrong, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. You wouldn’t recommend that someone you love have one.”

Peterson speaks clearly; it is the most salient feature of his communication skills. It comes as no surprise to learn that as a lecturer in Harvard he was nominated for its prestigious Levenson Teaching Prize.

Optimism The third and final key characteristic I take to be optimism. This might be surprising since he speaks at length about both suffering and human brutality. But it is precisely because Peterson does not brush suffering and moral evil under the carpet that his optimism is potentially genuine.

Regarding suffering, he sees it as an inescapable and significant part of human existence. He writes extensively of the experience of his own daughter’s suffering: she was only a toddler when diagnosed with severe juvenile arthritis requiring multiple joint replacements and a great deal of extreme pain. He writes (Rule 12: Pet a cat when you encounter one in the street) of how the experience of such suffering in a loved one can tempt us to reject Being itself, and certainly God – one thinks Stephen Fry’s rejection of the God who would allow eye-worms and bone cancer.

The reality of suffering “brooks no arguments. Nihilists cannot

33

undermine it with skepticism.

Totalitarians cannot banish it” (Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient). The only correct reaction to unavoidable pain is sacrifice: “Pain and suffering define the world. Of that there can be no doubt. Sacrifice can hold pain in abeyance, to a greater or lesser degree ….”

your house in order before you criticise the world).

Peterson does not go down Fry’s path of rejection when faced with suffering; what is needed instead is a “conscious decision to presume the primary goodness of Being.”

Regarding moral evil, he asserts frankly that “Each human being has an immense capacity for evil” (Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient). He refuses to explain evil away in medical or social terms. He presents the examples of the early twentieth century American serial killer and rapist Carl Panzram, whose “destructiveness was aimed in some fundamental manner at God himself…. Panzram raped, murdered and burned to express his outrage at Being” (Rule 6: Set

There are evil actions for which no excuses are available.

Essentially Peterson is confronting the inexplicable mystery of evil: “The worst of all possible snakes is the eternal human proclivity to evil. The worst of all possible snakes is psychological, spiritual, personal, internal. No walls, however tall, will keep that out” (Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping). But he sees such evil as a fundamental rejection of Being – of God and his creation. Actions such as the 1999 Columbine school massacre have at their root a nihilistic – we might say diabolical – rejection of creation.

Peterson looks squarely at the evil lurking in the heart of every man (and quotes Solzhenistyn’s famous observation that the line separating good and evil passes through the heart of each individual person); and yet he sees the person as full of unbounded potential. Peterson’s optimism about man is not superficial and polyannish; it is

34

metaphysical – Dorothy Cummings McLean sums it up nicely: Peterson is a man who truly loves humanity, not just as a grand concept, but as individual members of a race of beings, none of whom ought to be sacrificed to save the whales or usher in the latest Five Year Plan. Love for the individual human being fuels Peterson’s rejection of Sovietstyle totalitarianism no less than it condemns the antihumanism of Columbine killer Dylan Klebold (Catholic World Report, February 11, 2018).

bluffness. Peterson tackles the fundamental causes of the malaise of our epoch with a bewitching frankness. The result is a book is destined to become a classic. Read it!

There is a profundity at the core of this work belied by its simple

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fr Gavan Jennings is a priest of the Opus Dei prelature and is editor of Position Papers.

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Book review Plan of Life

A book review by Dwight G. Duncan

I

n an age of self-help books, this one is geared to help people turn to God for strength, joy and peace. I totally love this book, and think it will be invaluable for people intent on loving God and developing godly habits and practices.

Father Roger Landry, a priest of the Fall River diocese who presently works for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations, has just written an invaluable guide to developing a solid Christian life entitled Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God (Pauline Books and Media, 2018).

Full disclosure: In his acknowledgments, Father Roger

Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God

Roger J. Landry

Pauline Books and Media, 2018

first thanks his parents, whom I have been friends with for over twenty-five years, and then the priests and lay people of Opus Dei whom he got to know during his college years at Harvard College. They, he says, “introduced the Plan of Life to me and inspired me to live it.”

Since I was one of those people who met young Roger during his first week of college, I’m not exactly impartial on the subject.

Plus, the book comes recommended by glowing blurbs from what amounts to a Who’s Who of American Roman Catholicism, from Matthew Kelly, author and founder of “Dynamic Catholic,” who wrote the foreword, to Cardinals

36

Timothy Dolan of New York and Sean O’Malley of Boston, to George Weigel, biographer of St John Paul II, and Father George William Rutler, famous convert and author, as well as Peggy Noonan, columnist and speechwriter for President Reagan.

true means of spiritual progress: daily mental prayer, Bible and other spiritual reading, Mass, Holy Eucharist, rosary, examination of conscience, frequent confession and so forth, all under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, “a sanctifying fire,” as Father Roger calls him.

Based on a series of columns Father Roger originally wrote for The Pilot and The Anchor on various spiritual practices, the book lays out a game plan for holiness and intimacy with God. In an age of self-help books, this one is geared to help people turn to God for strength, joy and peace. I totally love this book, and think it will be invaluable for people intent on loving God and developing godly habits and practices.

This little book has the power to inspire and guide many on the path to holiness.

In encouraging the frequent practice of aspirations, which he calls “short prayers of love and

Vatican II solemnly proclaimed that everyone is called to holiness, which should be the goal of our life. Father Roger carefully explains the means to grow in holiness under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Bible and the Church’s rich tradition of sanctity and apostolate. “Plan of Life” concentrates on the tried and

37

trust,” Father Roger helpfully gives us some examples drawn from the Bible and the lives of saints. Words like “Fiat!” (Let it be with me according to your word! Luke 1:38) or “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

Devote” hymn, when he says that Thomas the Apostle saw Jesus’ wounds; but this is really a quibble. Even Homer nods once in a while. And Father Roger, like all of us, can grow in humility.

This latter contains the one minor error I found on my reading, as he says, “echoing Saint Thomas Aquinas’ words.”

Of course, as the scriptural reference indicates, the words echo St Thomas the Apostle, Doubting Thomas, in response to one of Jesus’ postResurrection appearances, whatever subsequent use St Thomas Aquinas made of them.

I know that the Angelic Doctor references them in his “Adoro Te

His book, though, is an invaluable and reliable guide to building a vibrant spiritual life.

In the New Year, when we formulate resolutions to improve in various ways through diet, exercise, and better habits of work and study and family life, we would do well to get a copy of this book and try to gradually put its recommendations into practice. If so, it will change our lives for the better. Judge for yourself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dwight G. Duncan is professor at UMass School of Law Dartmouth. He holds degrees in both civil and canon law. This article first appeared in the Boston Pilot and is reprinted with the kind permission of the editor.

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Film review The 15:17 to Paris

by John Mulderig

T

he good news about the drama The 15:17 to Paris (Warner Bros.), as well as the real-life events on which it’s based, is that, given the right circumstances and motivations, ordinary people can achieve great things.

Traveling from Amsterdam to the French capital as tourists, a trio of Americans – Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone, who all portray themselves – courageously stop a heavily armed jihadist bent on a shooting spree among the captive passengers. In quelling the assailant, Skarlatos and Stone are able to rely on the training they received, respectively, in the Oregon National Guard and the U.S. Air Force. Stone also uses his knowledge of first aid to keep a grievously wounded fellow traveler alive as the train races to the nearest station.

The bad news is that, when they are not doing so, such everyday folks tend to lead lives that are not of much interest to moviegoers. Thus, the uneven nature of director Clint Eastwood’s film recounting the circumstances that led up to the thwarting, in August 2015, of a terrorist attack and potential massacre on the train of the title.

The portion of the movie devoted to these headline-

39

grabbing incidents is taut and compelling. But, in adapting the three friends’ book about their exploit and their lives before it, written with Jeffrey E. Stern, screenwriter Dorothy Blyskal fails to evoke much interest in the lads’ humdrum childhoods and fitful careers.

More honorable than entertaining, The 15:17 to Paris reaches an exciting destination.

But, in this case at least, getting there turns out to be a good deal less than half the fun.

As kids, they have minor skirmishes with their easily provoked teachers. Once grown, they chat about the ups and downs of their professional lives in a way that doesn’t make eavesdropping on them particularly rewarding. They talk sports, trade gentle insults and, once embarked on their European vacation, debate whether to include Paris in their itinerary. Edge-of-your-seat material this is not. Still, faith and prayer are shown to be an important part of Stone’s life.

Twice we see him kneeling at his bedside reciting the “Peace Prayer” often attributed to St Francis of Assisi. And selfsacrificing heroism is obviously an integral element in the makeup of all three pals.

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The film contains gunplay and nonlethal violence, a sequence involving gory wounds, a bit of sexual humor, a couple of uses of profanity and a pair of milder oaths as well as numerous crude and crass terms. 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

Nazareth Family Institute Pre-marriage preparation.

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