Position Papers – March 2019

Number 527 March 2019 €3 · £2.50 · $4

A review of Catholic affairs

What pro-life Ireland can learn from pro-life America MARY REZAC

St Patrick drowns evil in an abundance of good FR DONNCHA Ó hAODHA

Films: Bird Box and spiritual warfare

BISHOP ROBERT BARRON

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Number 527 · March 2019

by Fr Gavan Jennings

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In Passing: Network still gives us a sobering message for our time

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Editorial

by Michael Kirke

Manifesto of Faith

by Cardinal Gerhard Müller

What pro-life Ireland can learn from pro-life America

by Mary Rezac

St Patrick drowns evil in an abundance of good

by Fr Donncha Ó hAodha

Books: From Fire, By Water

by James Bradshaw

Books: Other Losses

by Fr Conor Donnelly

Films: Bird Box and spiritual warfare

by Bishop Robert Barron Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

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

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Editorial

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n 1870 the bishops of the world gathered in Rome for the First Vatican Council debated whether to define Papal infallibility as a dogma of the Church. During the course of the debate a Frenchman, Bishop Verot – a Gallican and so very much against the proposed definition – directed this jibe at the Irish bishops who were very much in the opposite camp: “It is true that the Irish believe in the Pope’s infallibility; but they also believe in their priests’ infallibility – and not only do they believe it, but they beat with sticks any who deny it. But will the Cardinal of Dublin say that they believe Hadrian IV was infallible when he handed over Ireland to the King of England!”

Clearly Irish clericalism was alive and well in 1870. The feature of clericalism – of which there are probably many – picked up by Bishop Verot is an undue deference by the faithful to the hierarchy. It might be a little bit of a caricature to say that the Irish treated everything coming from the clergy as if it were sealed with a kind of papal infallibility, but clearly there is something in this. But this is no longer a problem here in Ireland. If anything a new dogma exists to the effect that everything and anything said by a member of the clergy (and especially if that cleric is a bishop) is ipso facto erroneous! Certainly one sees a lot of “venting” on social media about the words and actions of members of the hierarchy – not just here in Ireland, but everywhere it seems to me. What should be the position of a faithful Catholic regarding criticism of the hierarchy. Should he maintain a deferential silence à la nineteenth century Ireland, or should he tweet at will? Canon Law itself is clear that the faithful need not be silent in the face of what they see as errors on the part of the hierarchy: “According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they [the Christian faithful] possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their

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opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons” (Code of Canon Law #212 §3).

So Canon Law suggests that it is laudable – even a duty – to send a letter to the local bishop if he comes out with a statement that seems funny to you, or to buttonhole your local parish priest if his Sunday homily has strayed from the “straight and narrow” … and you can even tweet your friends to this effect. But please note that the Canon finishes by admonishing that this must be done “with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons [italics mine].” What is not envisaged here are stinging denunciations devoid of respect for the person – a fellow human being – or lacking in respect for their office.

To do otherwise is to damage the unity of the Church, the one mark of the Church for which Christ prayed in Gethsemane. In what must have been the most intense and fervent prayer during his thirty-three years on earth, Christ prayed most assiduously for one thing: the unity of Christians. His prayer was that “all of them may be one” (John 17:21). For Our Lord everything appears to hang on unity. If we Christians are united with one another we will embody Christ’s unity with the Father – and as such will be a sign – a “sacrament” – of God’s love for the world. Christ gives no other touchstone of the Christian than the love they have for one another: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13: 34-35).

No other quality marks out his disciples: not even moral or doctrinal rectitude.

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In Passing: Network still gives us a sobering message for our time

by Michael Kirke

“I’m mad as hell and I won’t take it anymore!”

P

addy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet, in partnership as film writer and film director, have left us with one truly amazing piece of cinematic art.

It is an extraordinary legacy.

Their work together on the film, Network, back in the 1970s – it was adapted as a stage play for the National Theatre in London two years ago – is still almost beyond belief. Almost, but not quite. It is still terrifyingly prescient and terrifyingly real. It is not just a work of art. It is a sobering message for our time.

produce drama for American television in the late sixties and early seventies. The dumbing down of the medium – which to them had shown great artistic and cultural promise in its early days – began in those years.

With Network they attempted to show us what the endgame was going to be.

They assembled a cast of superb actors – the late Peter Finch and William Holden, along with Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall, to name but four of the total ensemble – to fill out this vision of the slide of the medium into crass commercialism and a vehicle for the transmission of imbecilic mindless fodder to

The film’s genesis was the response of the two men to the frustrations they experienced while trying to write and

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pass as entertainment for the masses.

Both satires are too close to the bone to enjoy with abandonment. But one difference between Swift’s satire and that of Network is that mankind, to some extent, learned a lesson from Swift.

Sadly, we do not seem to have learned anything from Network.

But what is astounding about this work is not just that it put the medium of television under the microscope and predicted where it would be at a point of time in the future, it also showed us what this abused artefact of our inventiveness was going to do to our society and what would happen to the individuals, real people, in our society who surrender themselves to this shallow and superficial culture.

What they saw happening to the limited information technology available in that age, we can now extrapolate to everything it makes available to us in our age.

Chayefsky’s screenplay for Network is often regarded as his masterpiece, and has been hailed as “the kind of literate, darkly funny and breathtakingly prescient material that prompts many to claim it as the greatest screenplay of the twentieth century.”

Chayefsky was an early writer for television but eventually abandoned it, “decrying the lack of interest the networks demonstrated toward quality programming”. Network was his attempt to bring it to its senses.

In itself it is a masterpiece. As a lesson, it failed – so far. Among the dreadful things it predicted was the advent of reality television by over twenty years and the “dehumanisation of modern life” that this appalling genre perpetrates.

Network is a grim satire on our frightening capacity to tear our humanity to shreds – while laughing, applauding and cheering ourselves all the way to the slough of despond. The film is funny but it is an uncomfortable laugh. Satire is like that. Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is outrageous, and Gulliver’s Travels is funny – a story told to children but with a deeper meaning for adults.

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Nicholas Barber, writing for the BBC back in 2016 on the fortieth anniversary of the film’s release said that Network was Chayefsky and Lumet’s furious howl of protest about the decline of the industry, and the world.

“It was a triumphant black comedy, winning four Oscars, being nominated for two more, and going on to be held in ever higher acclaim. In 2006, the Writers Guilds of America chose Chayefsky’s screenplay as one of the ten best in cinema history.”

Howard Beale (Peter Finch), a veteran news anchor-man on the UBS (fictional) network who has just been given two-weeks’ notice because his ratings are falling. He confides to his friend that he has decided to take revenge by shooting himself dead on his final show. He backs off from that, but has now got the attention of millions and launches into a diatribe about the world we live in and what the people in charge have been doing to it. On air he asks everyone watching to get up, go to their windows and shout “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” All of New York does so and for the next few hours, across the time zones of the continent, all of America follows suit.

At the time of its release Chayefsky and Lumet’s bleak view of television’s crassness and irresponsibility was considered outrageous. Looking at it now we see it differently.

We ask ourselves why, when we were warned about this, did we still let it happen? Barber says that we now realise that even its wildest flights of fancy no longer seem outrageous at all. “The film was so accurate in its predictions that its most far-fetched satirical conceits have become so familiar as to be almost quaint.”

His ratings soar and he becomes “the mad prophet of the airwaves”. The stock of UBS soars as well and it becomes the darling of corporate global business. News now becomes entertainment and the networks all madly rush to the bottom of the barrel – on the strength of the ravings of an unfortunate human being who has now lost

The plot opens with a film noir type narrator telling us about

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his mind. But what do they care they are all making barrels of money?

and the World Wrestling Federation?”

Barber in 2016 agreed that was a fair question. “A further sixteen years later, though, it’s tempting to ask whether Chayefsky was imagining today’s podcasters, or even today’s shock-jock politicians, who sway voters by ‘articulating the popular rage’ in terms no more sophisticated than Howard’s. Add to that mix the trolls infecting cyberspace on any or all of the social media platforms we live with.”

But his friend, Max Schumacher (William Holden), president of the station’s news division, is appalled that Howard’s mental state is being exploited. He is having an affair with a callous and ambitious producer, Diana Christiansen (Faye Dunaway), and it is through the vehicle of this relationship that Chayefsky exposes the dehumanising effect of a life lived on these terms. She is so poisoned by the values of her world that she is incapable of any real love or affection. The only positive outcome is that Schumacher, awakening to the realities of that whole sordid world and the monsters it has created, goes back to his wife and family asking for forgiveness.

We have every reason to ask ourselves today whether the driving forces behind the multibillion dollar online communication ventures which dominate our culture have any sense of a duty of care for children whose deaths we read about almost daily and which are connected with the facilities they have launched into our world.

“Seen a quarter-century later,” wrote Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times in 2000, “it is like prophecy. When Chayefsky created Howard Beale, could he have imagined Jerry Springer, Howard Stern

Back in January The Daily Telegraph reported on one such tragedy. We were told that little Molly Russell was such a “caring soul” that she did not want to

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burden her parents with the depression she likened to a storm bearing down on her.

Instead, the 14-year-old retreated to a terrifying online world algorithmically tailored to encourage her darkest thoughts.

Can we not work out some policies and practical approaches which will allow us to benefit from the great potential which modern technology gives us to do good in the world, without having to experience the evil fictionally suffered by Howard Beale in the 1970s to the palpable evil suffered by so many in our own time?

As far as her loving family could see, Molly was happy and doing well: she was a keen rider and sailor and had just landed the lead role in her school’s forthcoming production of Fantastic Mr Fox. But Ian Russell, her father, now believes that in private she was being assailed by graphic images of self-harm and suicide on the social media sites Instagram and Pinterest.

(Network is now streaming on Netflix)

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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Manifesto of Faith

by Cardinal Gerhard Müller

“Let not your heart be troubled!” (John 14:1)

there is a growing danger of missing the path to eternal life. However, it remains the very purpose of the Church to lead humanity to Jesus Christ, the light of the peoples (see LG 1). In this situation, the question of orientation arises. According to John Paul II, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a “safe standard for the doctrine of the faith” (Fidei Depositum IV). It was written with the aim of strengthening the Faith of the brothers and sisters whose belief has been massively questioned by the “dictatorship of relativism.”

In the face of growing confusion about the doctrine of the Faith, many bishops, priests, religious and lay people of the Catholic Church have requested that I make a public testimony about the truth of revelation. It is the shepherds’ very own task to guide those entrusted to them on the path of salvation. This can only succeed if they know this way and follow it themselves. The words of the Apostle here apply: “For above all I have delivered unto you what I have received” (1 Cor. 15:3). Today, many Christians are no longer even aware of the basic teachings of the Faith, so

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1. The one and triune God revealed in Jesus Christ The epitome of the Faith of all Christians is found in the confession of the most holy Trinity. We have become disciples of Jesus, children and friends of God by being baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The distinction of the three persons in the divine unity (CCC 254) marks a fundamental difference in the belief in God and the image of man from that of other religions. Religions disagree precisely over this belief in Jesus the Christ. He is true God and true man, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. The Word made flesh, the Son of God, is the only saviour of the world (CCC 679) and the only mediator between God and men (CCC 846). Therefore, the first letter of John refers to one who denies his divinity as an antichrist (1 John 2:22), since Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is from eternity one in being with God, his Father (CCC 663). We are to resist the relapse into ancient heresies with clear

resolve, which saw in Jesus Christ only a good person, brother and friend, prophet and moralist. He is first and foremost the Word that was with God and is God, the Son of the Father, who assumed our human nature to redeem us and who will come to judge the living and the dead. Him alone, we worship in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit as the only and true God (CCC 691).

2. The Church Jesus Christ founded the Church as a visible sign and tool of salvation realized in the Catholic Church (CCC 816). He gave his Church, which “emerged from the side of the Christ who died on the cross” (CCC 766), a sacramental constitution that will remain until the Kingdom is fully achieved (CCC 765). Christ, the Head, and the faithful as members of the body, are a mystical person (CCC 795), which is why the Church is sacred, for the one mediator has designed and sustained its visible structure (CCC 771). Through it the redemptive work of Christ becomes present

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in time and space via the celebration of the holy sacraments, especially in the eucharistic sacrifice, the holy Mass (CCC 1330). The Church conveys with the authority of Christ the divine revelation, which extends to all the elements of doctrine, “including the moral teaching, without which the saving truths of the faith cannot be preserved, explained, and observed” (CCC 2035).

3. Sacramental Order The Church is the universal sacrament of salvation in Jesus Christ (CCC 776). She does not reflect herself, but the light of Christ, which shines on her face. But this happens only when the truth revealed in Jesus Christ becomes the point of reference, rather than the views of a majority or the spirit of the times; for Christ himself has entrusted the fullness of grace and truth to the Catholic Church (CCC 819), and he himself is present in the sacraments of the Church.

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The Church is not a man-made association whose structure its members voted into being at their will. It is of divine origin. “Christ himself is the author of ministry in the Church. He set her up, gave her authority and mission, orientation and goal” (CCC 874). The admonition of the Apostle is still valid today, that cursed is anyone who proclaims another gospel, “even if we ourselves were to give it or an angel from heaven” (Gal 1:8). The mediation of faith is inextricably bound up with the human credibility of its messengers, who in some cases have abandoned the people entrusted to them, unsettling them and severely damaging their faith. Here the word of scripture describes those who do not listen to the truth and who follow their own wishes, who flatter their ears because they cannot endure sound doctrine (cf. 2 Tim 4:3-4).

The task of the magisterium of the Church is to “preserve God’s people from deviations and defections” in order to “guarantee them the objective

possibility of professing the true faith without error” (CCC 890). This is especially true with regard to all seven sacraments. The holy Eucharist is “source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC 1324). The Eucharistic sacrifice, in which Christ includes us in his Sacrifice of the Cross, is aimed at the most intimate union with him (CCC 1382). Therefore, the holy scripture admonishes with regard to the reception of the holy Communion: “Whoever eats unworthily of the bread and drinks from the Lord’s cup makes himself guilty of profaning the body and of the blood of the Lord” (1 Cor 11:27). “Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of reconciliation before coming to communion” (CCC 1385). From the internal logic of the sacrament, it is understood that divorced and civilly remarried persons, whose sacramental marriage exists before God, as well as those Christians who are not in full communion with the Catholic Faith and the Church, just as all those who are not disposed to receive the holy

Eucharist fruitfully (CCC 1457), should not partake in the sacrament because it does not bring them to salvation. To point this out corresponds to the spiritual works of mercy.

The confession of sins in holy Confession at least once a year is one of the Church’s commandments (CCC 2042). When the believers no longer confess their sins and no longer experience the absolution of their sins, salvation becomes impossible; after all, Jesus Christ became Man to redeem us from our sins. The power of forgiveness that the risen Lord has given to the Apostles and their successors in the ministry of bishops and priests applies also for mortal and venial sins which we commit after Baptism. The current popular practice of confession makes it clear that the conscience of the faithful is not sufficiently formed. God’s mercy is given to us, that we might fulfil his commandments to become one with his holy will, and not so as to avoid the call to repentance (CCC 1458).

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“The priest continues the work of redemption on earth” (CCC 1589). The ordination of the priest “gives him a sacred power” (CCC 1592), which is irreplaceable, because through it Jesus becomes sacramentally present in his saving action. Therefore, priests voluntarily opt for celibacy as “a sign of new life” (CCC 1579). It is about the self-giving in the service of Christ and his coming kingdom 4. Moral Law Faith and life are inseparable, for Faith apart from works is dead (CCC 1815). The moral law is the work of divine wisdom and leads man to the promised blessedness (CCC 1950). Consequently, the “knowledge of the divine and natural law is necessary” to do good and reach this goal (CCC 1955). Accepting this truth is essential for all people of good will. For he who dies in mortal sin without repentance will be forever separated from God (CCC 1033). This leads to practical consequences in the lives of Christians, which are

often ignored today (cf 2270-2283; 2350-2381). The moral law is not a burden, but part of that liberating truth (cf Jn 8:32) through which the Christian walks on the path of salvation and which may not be relativized.

5. Eternal Life Many wonder today what purpose the Church still has in its existence, when even bishops prefer to be politicians rather than to proclaim the Gospel as teachers of the Faith. The role of the Church must not be watered down by trivialities, but its proper place must be addressed. Every human being has an immortal soul, which in death is separated from the body, hoping for the resurrection of the dead (CCC 366). Death makes man’s decision for or against God definite. Everyone has to face the particular judgement immediately after death (CCC 1021). Either a purification is necessary, or man goes directly into heavenly bliss and is allowed to see God face to face. There is also the dreadful

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possibility that a person will remain opposed to God to the very end, and by definitely refusing his Love, “condemns himself immediately and forever” (CCC 1022). “God created us without us, but he did not want to save us without us” (CCC 1847). The eternity of the punishment of hell is a terrible reality, which — according to the testimony of holy scripture – attracts all who “die in the state of mortal sin” (CCC 1035). The Christian goes through the narrow gate, for “the gate is wide, and the way that leads to ruin is wide, and many are upon it” (Mt 7:13).

To keep silent about these and the other truths of the Faith and to teach people accordingly is the greatest deception against which the Catechism vigorously warns. It represents the last trial of the Church and leads man to a religious delusion, “the price of their apostasy” (CCC 675); it is the fraud of Antichrist. “He will deceive those who are lost by all means of injustice; for they have closed themselves to the love of the truth by which they should be saved” (2 Thess 2:10).

Call As workers in the vineyard of the Lord, we all have a responsibility to recall these fundamental truths by clinging to what we ourselves have received. We want to give courage to go the way of Jesus Christ with determination, in order to obtain eternal life by following his commandments (CCC 2075).

Let us ask the Lord to let us know how great the gift of the Catholic Faith is, through which opens the door to eternal life. “For he that shall be ashamed of me, and of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation: The Son of Man also will be ashamed of him, when he shall come in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:38). Therefore, we are committed to strengthening the Faith by confessing the truth which is Jesus Christ himself.

We too, and especially we bishops and priests, are addressed when Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, gives this admonition to his

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companion and successor, Timothy: “I charge thee, before God and Jesus Christ, Who shall judge the living and the dead, by his coming, and his kingdom: preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: and will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil thy ministry. Be sober.” (2 Tim 4:1-5).

May Mary, the Mother of God, implore for us the grace to remain faithful without wavering to the confession of the truth about Jesus Christ.

United in faith and prayer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gerhard Cardinal Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2012-2017.

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What pro-life Ireland can learn from pro-life America

by Mary Rezac

W

ith the dawn of legal abortion in Ireland, the pro-life movement in the country is beginning a fight that their U.S. counterparts have been engaged in since 1973.

slogans such as “Say no to abortion in Galway,” Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin urged caution.

For more than forty years, prolife Americans have staged marches, prayer vigils, sidewalk counseling, and political protests. Now, pro-life advocates in Ireland must determine how a robust pro-life movement should look in their country when abortion is legal.

Earlier this week, after hearing news of a group of pro-life protesters who gathered outside of a medical center in Ireland for several hours, holding signs with

While everyone “has a right to make a protest,” he told The Irish Times, General Practitioners perform surgeries for “everybody…for all sorts of reasons.”

He added that he is “not a person personally for protest, what the Church should be doing is strengthening its resolve to help women in crisis and to educate people.”

The word “protest” is a touchy one in the pro-life world. It can conjure up images of angry

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mobs with torches and pitchforks, so some pro-life people prefer terms like “witness” or “sidewalk counselor,” or simply a faithful person at a prayer vigil.

“This makes me mad, so I’m going to go out and protest, because it makes me so mad.”

But for many in the U.S. pro-life movement, it is dialogue and prayer – not protest – that are at the heart of what they do.

Mary Fisher is one of those people.

Fisher had an abortion herself, that caused her deep regret, anger and pain for years. After she found healing through a Bible study, Fisher now works as a regional coordinator for Silent No More, an organization that gives women who regret their abortions a platform from which to tell their stories, and connects women who have had abortions to healing ministries.

While Fisher participates in prolife activism, she is opposed to the term “protest.”

“Protesting is kind of an anger thing. That’s the way it’s perceived,” Fisher told CNA.

But there is already so much anger from people who are prochoice or who have had an abortion, that the only way to win them over is with love, Fisher said.

“Our world is so full of anger, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve got this baby inside me that I don’t want, and everybody says it’s just a bunch of cells. So I’m just going to flush it down the toilet.’ And we do it in anger.”

Fisher herself experienced that anger after her own abortion.

“I lived as an angry woman for so many years, that one of my daughters actually moved from Colorado…to New York to get as far away from me as possible, because I was just so angry at everything.”

Fisher said the only thing that will win over those who are proabortion is to love them.

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That doesn’t mean Fisher does not participate in the pro-life movement. She’s planning on attending her local March for Life, with a sign that says: “I regret my abortion. Ask me why.”

principalities. It is not against flesh and blood.”

Shawn Carney is the president and CEO of 40 Days for Life, a popular form of pro-life activism that holds prayer vigils outside of local abortion clinics throughout the United States.

The 40-day long campaigns of “prayer, fasting, and peaceful activism” have the goal of “repentance, to seek God’s favor to turn hearts and minds from a culture of death to a culture of life, thus bringing an end to abortion,” according to their mission statement.

She also participates in 40 Days for Life prayer vigils, she shares her story through talks, and she helps connect women in need of healing from abortion to bible studies or retreats that can help them.

But ultimately, she says, abortion will never change through political protest, because abortion is not fundamentally a political issue.

It’s not a protest, it’s a prayer vigil, Carney told CNA.

“Abortion is not a political issue.

Abortion is a heart issue. And until we get to the heart, nothing’s going to change,” she said.

“Protest is how we create friction. Just the word protest… just the thought of a protest is angry people, angry people with knives and swords and forks out to fight. This is a fight against

“We take the approach of praying in front of the (clinics) because abortion is overwhelming. And it ends the life of a human being and it causes a woman to think she has no other option than to pay a physician to end the life of her child. And so in that great hopelessness, our Lord is the answer. And his joy is the answer, and his mercy is the answer,” Carney said.

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The campaign has seen great success in turning the hearts of both abortion doctors and women considering abortions.

Since its beginning in 2004, the organization knows of some 200 abortion facility workers who have had a change of heart and left their job, and over 15,000 women who have chosen life, during a 40 Days campaign.

It’s also often an entry point for people who have never participated in any kind of prolife activism, Carney said.

“We’ve had 800,000 people participate in 40 Days for Life around the world in 50 different

countries, and 30 percent of them said this is the first thing they ever did in the pro-life movement,” Carney said. “It has served as a great point of entry because it is peaceful and because it’s effective.”

But there is one word from Archbishop Martin’s comments that Carney does take issue with: caution. “I don’t agree with using the word caution with opposing abortion right now in Ireland,” he said.

“I think they need to do just the opposite…and I think that the Irish have been too timid and a little too cautious with their

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approach to abortion. Now they have it. And that happened to us here in the United States.

Shamefully, we’re the example of this. We were cautious. We were timid. And now we have 61 million children that have been aborted.”

Instead, he said, the Irish should not lose hope, and should cling to God and to their lively Irish heritage, and use that to their advantage to continue to fight legalized abortion.

“The last thing the Irish should do is to throw their hands up in the air…I think they need to get out there. The Irish are a courageous people,” Carney said, adding that he is of Irish descent.

“The Irish aren’t cautious with anything, right? They’re the loudest and they’re the most fun and they like to sing and they have hot tempers. And they take their history and their country seriously,” he said.

“And this, more than at any other time in their history, they need to do the same and they

need to joyfully go out and witness the love and the hope and the mercy to those women who now think that Ireland is just a free for all to have an abortion.”

There are forms of activism that don’t belong in the pro-life movement, Carney added.

Anything violent or with an intent to do harm “aren’t part of the pro-life movement,” he said.

He’s seen people driven away from even peaceful forms of prolife activism after bombings or murders of abortion doctors have taken place, he added.

“And so the archbishop doesn’t want that in their country. Who does?” he said.

“No bishop or no politician or no pro-life advocate in any other country is saying, ‘I want violence in my country to oppose abortion.’ No one’s ever said that, but they all should encourage the peaceful, public opposition to this because abortion is certainly a public issue.”

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Even though abortion is a heavy issue, Carney said his message to pro-life Ireland is to hope.

“And for that, we need to go to the Gospels.”

“There’s practical things: there’s 40 Days for Life campaigns they need to do in Ireland. They need to have a March for Life. They need to get to work and we can help them do that,” he said.

“But the bigger picture is looking down, going to your knees in prayer and reflecting: ‘What is going to be my response? What am I going to tell my children and my grandchildren now that I, as an Irish person living in this country that I love, we have abortion now. And what’s going to be my response?’”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mary Rezac is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency/EWTN News. This article is reproduced here with the kind permission of CNA (www.catholicnewsagency.com).

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St Patrick drowns evil in an abundance of good

by Fr Donncha Ó hAodha

“One should proceed without holding back from danger to make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation, to spread God’s name everywhere with confidence and without fear” (Confessio 14).

T

he fact that we have the Confessio of St Patrick is a real blessing. It not only reveals to us the human and spiritual stature of our patron and apostle, it also provides us with a particular inspiration for the apostolic mission in Ireland today. Specifically the way in which St Patrick responded to difficulties in the apostolate, including the evil and injustice he suffered, can be an encouragement to us in the new evangelisation here and now.

Responding to evil with goodness It is worth reflecting on the fact that Patrick decided to return to Ireland and give his life for the evangelisation of a country where he had suffered so much.

It would have been very understandable if he had worked for the Church in some other place after what he had been through in Ireland and what he would go through in his mission here. He might well have

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decided to leave the heathen Irish to their own devices.

be there to play the blame-game, or to give in to sterile lament about what could or should have been. When history seems to go against us we can easily be tempted to “play God”.

Patrick himself tells us why he returned: “I testify in truthfulness and gladness of heart before God and his holy angels that I never had any reason, except the Gospel and his promises, ever to have returned to that nation from which I had previously escaped with difficulty” (Confessio 61).

The apostle responds to the evil he has experienced and suffered with self-giving love. He follows St Paul’s advice to the Romans: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (12:21).

The temptation of negativity The example of the apostle is perhaps not without relevance in contemporary Ireland. There may be a temptation in postabortion-referendum Ireland for Christians to mentally recoil or to abandon the secularised Irish to their own chosen state, or even to feel justified in judging and condemning certain individuals. The temptation may

Like all temptations these too are to be rejected with the help of divine grace. The Christian response to objective evil and moral degeneracy is not a dispiriting and fulminating condemnation of other persons but a greater commitment to personal holiness and to the apostolic mission.

Not a disaster but a new beginning Without ceasing to work for the true, the good and the beautiful, it is not for us to judge others but rather recommit ourselves to the service of the Gospel of life.

Thus the moral crises of our times become providential opportunities for a new growth in our own Christian life and hence in the Church as a whole.

What seems to be only a disaster is in fact the opportunity for a new springtime.

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As St Josemaría put it: “We shall not call injustice justice; we shall not say that an offence against God is not an offence against God, or that evil is good. When confronted by evil we shall not reply with another evil, but rather with sound doctrine and good actions: drowning evil in an abundance of good. That’s how Christ will reign in our souls and in the souls of the people around us.”1 An ever increasing love for people St Patrick teaches us this fundamental Christian attitude which is always positive, apostolic and full of hope. In spite of his innumerable trials and the opposition he suffered on all sides (cf. Confessio 35), his love for the Irish is expressed in his unstinting dedication to them in spite of often feeling alone or misunderstood. As Pope St Paul VI taught: “The work of evangelisation

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presupposes in the evangeliser an ever increasing love for those whom he is evangelising.”2 While on the Irish mission Patrick longed to go and to visit family and friends both in Britain and in Gaul (Confessio 43), but he sacrificed those very legitimate desires for love of his adoptive people and ends his testimony with the touching prayer: “May it never befall me to be separated by my God from his people whom he has won in this most remote land” (Confessio 58).

Perseverance in the apostolate At times we may feel alone or marginalised in witnessing to the Faith. We may feel that others do not understand the language we use when we speak of Christ, or indeed that many are unwilling even to listen to anything other than the consensus-creed of

St Josemaría Escrivá, Christ is passing by 182.

2

St Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, 8 December 1975.

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contemporary materialist “orthodoxy”.

Such situations are nothing new in the history of the Church and Patrick encountered them in his time. As the Holy Father encouraged us recently in the Phoenix Park: “Of course, there will always be people who resist the Good News, who ‘murmur’ at its ‘hard words’…. May we never be swayed or discouraged by the icy stare of indifference or the stormy winds of hostility.”3 Patrick’s example of determined love, even towards those who seemed resolutely impervious to the “Word of life” (1 Jn 1:1), can speak powerfully to us.

Constant prayer for souls In Evangelii Gaudium (281) the Holy Father teaches that “one form of prayer moves us particularly to take up the task of evangelisation and to seek the good of others: it is the prayer of intercession.” Patrick’s prayer for the Irish informs his entire Confessio and his entire life.

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The mainstay of our apostolic effort will always be prayer for people, which we can do anywhere and everywhere at any and all times. In so far as our intention is to live as an apostle of Christ our very breathing becomes a prayer for souls. In this perspective, spreading the Faith is not an onerous or impossible task but rather a way of being which means loving God and others in and through our ordinary daily life.

Positive, apostolic reparation We know that Patrick was not blind to injustice or sin. In fact they affected him deeply. What was his reaction to evil? A committed life of evangelisation.

Making reparation is not a negative task. The Lord calls us to make a constructive apostolic reparation with serene and joyful hearts. I am reminded of a young man who used the “Yes” (to abortion) posters as a stimulus to pray for vocations.

When he saw a “Yes” poster, it

Francis, Homily, Phoenix Park, Dublin, 26 August 2018.

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reminded him to pray that many people would say “Yes!” to Christ’s call.

Difficulties are opportunities Obstacles to the apostolate can become a fruitful means of spreading the Gospel. It was precisely by his Cross that the Lord brought about the salvation of the world. So too sufferings faced in the work of evangelisation can themselves become a living prayer and a sacrifice offered to the Lord for the sake of the harvest.

St Patrick knew how to turn his sufferings to good account. It was precisely in bad times that he received great graces: “I ought not to conceal God’s gift which he lavished on us in the land of my captivity, for then I sought him resolutely, and I found him there” (Confessio 33).

The Christian grows in the face of difficulties. The devil may well wish for the faithful to submit, to go into their shell, to step back, to feel powerless. For the apostle, difficulties are not

obstacles but opportunities. Like St Patrick, if we do what we can with a generous heart the Lord, with Mary’s intercession, will turn our water into finest wine (cf. Jn 2:1-11).

God is faithful to his promises Besides all this God is always faithful. Patrick leads us in faith and urges us to act accordingly: “I wish then to wait for his promise which is never unfulfilled, just as it is promised in the Gospel: ‘Many shall come from east to west and shall sit at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.’ Just as we believe that believers will come from all the world. So for that reason one should, in fact, fish well and diligently, just as the Lord foretells and teaches, saying, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’… So it behoves us to spread our nets, that a vast multitude and throng might be caught for God” (Confessio 40).

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Onwards! Offer everyone the life of Jesus Christ!

Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964, 49.

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St Patrick teaches us by his words and inspires us by his life.

Moreover he accompanies us here and now in our apostolic effort, “for all who are in Christ, having His Spirit, form one Church and cleave together in Him”.4

Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 24 November 2013, 49.

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The love and zeal of St Patrick are with us today as much as ever, along with his powerful intercession before God. So “let us go forth, then, let us go forth to offer everyone the life of Jesus Christ.”5

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rev. Donncha Ó hAodha is a priest the Opus Dei Prelature, author of 4 Second Vatican Council, DogmaticofConstitution Lumenand Gentium, several CTS booklets a regular 21 November 1964, 49. contributor to Position Papers.

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Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 24 November 2013, 49.

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BOOKS

by Sohrab Ahmari Ignatius Press 240 pages

From Fire, By Water

by James Bradshaw

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he much-awaited spiritual memoir by the IranianAmerican writer Sohrab Ahmari comes two and a half years after the author’s decision to convert to Catholicism accidentally became a topic of worldwide conversation.

Ahmari, already a well-known editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, was among those who reacted to the grim news on Twitter.

His response, however, marked him out as unique. He tweeted that this was “the right moment to announce that I’m converting to Catholicism.”

It was July 26, 2016, and the world’s attention was firmly fixed on a church in northern France.

Two Islamic militants had invaded the church during Mass, before taking the tiny congregation hostage and decapitating the elderly abbé, Jacques Hamel.

This resulted in a frenzy of retweets and news articles: the gist of which being that a Muslim journalist had been so appalled by this cruel act of jihadism that he had chosen to embrace Christianity instead.

This was not the case at all.

Ahmari had never been a

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practicing Muslim, and was converting from atheism, not Islam. Social media, sadly, did not allow for much nuance, and this misunderstanding troubled Ahmari.

been enforced by that country’s rulers from 1979 onwards.

Ahmari was born some years after the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, and in recent times he has developed a reputation as one of the sharpest observers of Iranian and Middle Eastern politics, writing about this for the WSJ, The Boston Globe, The New York Post and a range of other leading publications.

“The tweet had been a mistake,” he writes. “Conversion is foremost a matter of the individual conscience, and the Catholic Church’s cosmic mission is the salvation of souls; everything else flows from that.

In my case, however, the political currents generated by the announcement risked overtaking this more crucial interior dimension.”

In the subsequent period, he has had time to reflect deeply on this interior dimension, and From Fire, By Water is the result.

This book is not about Islam.

Nor is it an argument about the respective merits of Christianity vis-a-vis Islam.

Yet the author’s homeland of Iran looms large in his thoughts, as does the particularly virulent strain of Shia Islam which has

Exceptionally well-read and well-travelled, and blessed with the qualities of clarity and concision, he brings the same set of talents to bear when writing about his own life.

The opening chapters deal with Sohrab’s childhood in Tehran, and his description of his early life under the Ayatollah’s watchful eyes makes for fascinating reading.

Khomeini’s political Islam – mixed with the nationalist resentment which has intoxicated the Persian nation for so long – would quickly reveal itself to be a dramatic step

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backwards compared to the autocracy of the exiled Shah.

The Islamic Republic of Iran did not just place the country at odds with the United States; it also waged never-ending battles against ordinary Iranians.

His parents lived a remarkably bohemian and progressive lifestyle, going as far as to instruct their son to address them by their first names. They routinely flaunted the diktats of the religious authorities and imposed few if any of their own.

Political dissent was banned along with alcohol, music, foreign movies and every other part of life that cosmopolitan Iranians had already grown used to enjoying.

The elder Ahmari’s fecklessness and unreliability as a provider eventually caused this marriage to disintegrate. Like tens of millions of Americans, Sohrab is a child of divorce.

Two key aspects of life in this environment were family and faith.

Unsurprisingly, the writer did not come to appreciate the degree of leniency he was shown as a child. To the contrary, he writes that the experience left him longing “for some cosmic and moral absolutes.”

Far from being the product of a strict Islamic upbringing, Ahmari’s parents were in fact completely secular.

Although Iranian schools were heavily focused on religious education, no effort was made by his mother or father to instil any religious conviction in him, and what little exposure to religion he had came via his moderately religious grandparents.

In a different place and era, he could have found solace in religion. Iran in the 1990s was not fertile ground for a young man searching for a solid religious grounding without the trappings of totalitarianism.

Like other liberal-minded Iranians, Ahmari’s greatest problem with the Islamic

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religion was the restrictions on conscience and free will.

enjoyed before the Shah had been replaced by the Ayatollah.

Refreshingly for a writer dealing with the problems within the Muslim world, he does not mince words when diagnosing the root cause of the authoritarianism all around him.

In Ahmari’s words, Iran provided two default moods: rage and nostalgia. Neither was in any way appealing.

“[I]n broad swaths of the Islamic world, the religion of Muhammad is synonymous with law and political dominion without love or mercy,” he writes. “Islam is, as the French philosopher Pierre Manent has written, a ‘starkly objective’ faith. Where it spreads, a set of authoritative norms and a political community follow.”

In the Ayatollah’s Iran, those authoritative norms involved routine harassment by the religious police and constant fundamentalist indoctrination by all forms of authority outside the home.

When not whipped up into a revolutionary fury, many Iranians wistfully reminisced about the easier life they had

Moreover, those tasked with upholding the Islamic faith were guilty of hypocrisy, and would often go to great lengths to ensure that they did not have to adhere to the high standards which they preached to the masses.

Before he managed to leave for America at the age of thirteen, Ahmari had already abandoned his faith in God. He never appears to have had any faith in Islam.

But this book is not about the religion or the revolutionary fire of his homeland; it is about the religion which he would eventually be baptised into after a long and circuitous journey.

Though the details of his difficult integration into American life are not quite as intriguing as the chapters

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dealing with Iran, his journey into adulthood and drift into revolutionary Marxism were more significant overall.

leftists was always likely to drive him away eventually.

This period is also described with admirable clarity. Whereas the earlier part of the book deals primarily with external matters (his family and the political situation in Iran), from his arrival in America, a strong emphasis is placed on how his worldview gradually began to meander towards its final destination.

America had always been the ideal for him, but it proved difficult to embrace life in Mormon-dominated Utah. This led the moody teenager to become alienated from those around him.

“My mind was now in thrall to a system that radically subordinated the self to the collective and the political party,” he writes. “Had I taken a wrong turn somewhere beyond the ramparts of monotheism?”

A philosopher by training and a voracious reader by habit, he continued to read and to ask questions of himself and of the world around him.

Throughout his journey in the philosophical wilderness, religion remains an ever-present in the background.

For a young intellectual seeking purpose and a cause to believe in, a sharp turn to the Left was always on the cards.

This is not the tale of a person struggling to find his way from one religion to another, and the author’s bad experiences within the most fervent branch of Shia Islam are of little consequence after his departure from Iran.

Ahmari adopted Marxism with the zeal of a convert. Party and ideology became his lodestars, but the reader gets the sense that the dogmatism of his fellow

Instead, this spiritual memoir focuses on a theme which is more widely understood: the difficulties of accepting the existence of a personal God.

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As with most things in the author’s life, the journey was neither short nor direct.

There was no miraculous event; and no spouse, family member or close friend who actively sought to persuade him to believe in any religious truth. No saintly cleric impressed him with their piety or convinced him that he needed to acquire their faith.

In spite of this, he persisted on his path towards greater understanding of life and its purpose.

After a childhood scarred by clerical tyrants of the worst kind, others would have switched off whatever religious antennae they had and given up.

While enjoying his comfortable life and blossoming career in America, Ahmari could have easily become one of the growing number of “nones” – those many Americans who claim no religious affiliation at all.

He did not.

First-hand experience plays a role in explaining the puzzle of his persistence, surely. While his philosophical journey occurs mainly in the realm of books, his voyage also involved significant interactions with those who exhibited what he came to believe was a higher standard of conduct.

These qualities, he believed, pointed to the existence of a universal standard of goodness, indicative of the objective morality, which in turn provided evidence of a personal God. Coming to know this personal God, accepting the divinity of Christ and being received into the Church required another leap into the unknown, and for the remainder of the book, this process is also carefully laid out with commendable grace and honesty.

In truth, the topic of this book would not stand out were it not for the exotic background of its author.

Stories about conversions to Christianity are not new. The

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New Testament is filled with them: so are two thousand years worth of other Christian books.

that way, and have not thought about such matters to that extent.

What makes this book remarkable – apart from the author’s literary skill – is the compelling nature of the journey.

Christian leaders and apologists need to get better at explaining how the Faith has helped to create and sustain the humane societies which we take for granted.

There are important lessons for other Christians along the way.

The starting point for Sohrab Ahmari with respect to religion is actually surprisingly similar to that of most of his Western contemporaries.

Religion was something distant – the belief system of earlier generations – and it was strongly connected to repressive elements in society.

True, Ahmari the philosopher is at pains to highlight how the Judeo-Christian roots of Western civilisation and how this helped him to grow closer to Christianity at a time when he was still a non-believer.

But most younger Americans and Europeans do not see things

Triumphalism certainly needs to be warded off, but the apologetic, milquetoast tone of many modern Christian clerics is no better. They could learn a great deal from the frankness with which Ahmari writes about the problems within Islam, not to mention the emptiness of the secular worldview which he once clung to before rejecting entirely.

At the same time however, Christian readers would do well to reflect upon the situation in the Iran of his childhood, which exhibited features that are not alien to Christian communities either: “My native land smelled of dust mingled with stale rosewater.

There was enjoyment in Iran

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and grandeur of a kind, to be sure. But when it wasn’t burning with ideological rage, it mainly offered mournful nostalgia. Those were its default modes, rage and nostalgia. I desired something more.”

Christian minorities within the post-Christian West will never stage a revolution, but a similar anger can certainly be detected among those struggling to come to terms with a society where the values of the majority differ sharply from their own. Anger with the world – and the corollary that the world is inherently bad – is the result.

This book will appeal to those on their own quest for meaning, though.

And so too will the journey of an author whose talents could yet make him one of the most important Catholic writers of the twenty-first century.

Nostalgia is also a problem for those Christians in mourning for a more attractive yesteryear that never existed.

These twin feelings – rage and nostalgia – did not appeal to Sohrab Ahmari and they will not appeal to others of his generation. A church or community which offers them will be ignored, and deservedly so.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Bradshaw works in an international consulting firm, based in Dublin, and is a regular contributor to Position Papers.

BOOKS

by James Bacque Talon Books, Vancouver 318 pages 2015

Other Losses

by Fr Conor Donnelly

T

he updated version of this book exists to remind us that no country can claim an inherent innocence of or exemption from the cruelties of war. It is an investigation into the mass deaths of German prisoners of war at the hands of the French and Americans after World War II. If the allegations in this book are true, and the evidence is compelling, then it changes the history of the war. The glorified become the butchers.

Eisenhower and De Gaulle come off particularly badly, not so other generals.

The camps are described as being as bad as and worse than the Nazi concentration camps.

One million German prisoners of war are said to have died of starvation while plenty of food was stored nearby. Conditions were appalling and few did anything to alleviate them.

Fortunately or unfortunately what is described is confirmed by people from within the US army and also by 2,000 survivors of the camps.

Politicians and the press stayed silent in spite of warnings. The British and the Canadian camps were much better. When this book was first published in 1989 it created a furore. But when the Berlin Wall fell and Soviet archives were opened, the records there tended to

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corroborate everything written therein.

cover up of sex abuse in the Catholic church is kindergarten stuff compared with the cover up exposed in this work.

The people whose aim was to conquer Hitler ended up using similar methods.

One hopes that when the full truth of the Mother and Baby homes in Ireland comes out, which should include an analysis of the social situation, and not just the partial truth, so that those who relish scandals in the Catholic church may save some of their indignation for one million German prisoners.

For those of us who were reared with the idea that the only concentration camps in the world were Nazi ones, or that all Germans were Nazis or that the allies were paragons of virtue, this work is quite an eye opener and gives strength to the notion that the real history of World War Two has yet to be written.

It means we have been fed anti German propaganda for the past decades. The re-exposition of the Jewish holocaust has kept our attention firmly fixed there.

Maybe someday we will hear more about the Catholic holocaust?

Whoever controls the press proclaims that it is free. Those to whom this freedom is denied have no means to deny it. The same story is played out in the current abortion debate all over the world.

While one cannot condone the uncondonable, the so called

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ABOUT THE
 AUTHOR

Fr Conor Donnelly qualified as a medical doctor in University College Dublin in 1977 and worked for a year at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin. He was ordained a priest in 1981 for the Prelature of Opus Dei. After obtaining a doctorate in Theology from the University of Navarre, Spain in 1982, he spent twenty-two years in Asia, in the Philippines and Singapore. He is currently an assistant chaplain at Kianda School in Nairobi.

FILMS

Bird Box and spiritual warfare

by Bishop Robert Barron

SPOILER ALERT

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he film Bird Box, based on a British novel of the same name, started streaming on Netflix around Christmas time.

Starring Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich, it is a taut thriller that manages, perhaps despite itself, to shed considerable light on the parlous spiritual condition of contemporary culture.

Bullock’s character, Mallorie, is a gifted painter whose work reflects her dismal view of life and her incapacity to maintain real connections to other people.

As the film commences, Mallorie is pregnant, though she is not living with the child’s father, and it appears she intends to put the baby up for adoption. As she is leaving the hospital after a

routine check-up, all hell breaks loose. Strange spiritual forces have invaded the town, and those who gaze upon them are compelled, ferociously and immediately, to commit suicide.

As Mallorie looks around in horror, her neighbors are stepping in front of speeding buses, walking into fires, shooting and stabbing themselves to death. She is rescued by a small group who huddle inside a home (it appears that the specters can only operate in the outdoors), and the rest of the movie unfolds as a tale of their desperate struggle to survive.

In the course of the weeks and months that follow, every denizen of the house is

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eventually exposed to the wraiths and commits suicide, except for Mallorie, her son, and the daughter of one of the victims. Having heard over a crackling radio word of a haven downriver from the home, our heroine and the children set out, blindfolded, by boat. After a terrible journey, during which they are threatened by enemies both physical and spiritual, they find the refuge, which turns out to be, understandably enough, a school for the blind. In that place, marked by both human warmth and the beauty of nature, Mallorie seems to find the sense of connection – especially to the children – that she was lacking as the film commenced. I completely understand the filmmaker’s comment that Bird Box is finally about the main character discovering what it means to be a mother.

But what I found particularly interesting about this film is what is missing from it – namely, any reference to God. I’ve remarked often how in standard disaster movies depicting alien invasions or natural calamities, people hardly

ever invoke God. They band together, show courage, find inner reserves of strength, etc., but hardly ever do they ask for help from a supernatural source.

However, this absence of the divine reference was especially jarring in a movie whose villains are precisely malign spiritual forces – demons, if you will.

There is a tragic/comic moment toward the beginning of Bird Box, just after the little community has gathered for protection. Trying to understand what is happening, casting about for explanations, they propose this theory and that. Finally, a young man gives voice to a disjointed farrago of “spiritual” insights from a variety of religions and mythologies. When everyone else looks at him with utter confusion, he says, sheepishly, “I got that from the internet.” I found that scene sadly emblematic of our cultural situation.

At least in the West, so much of classical religion has broken down or has quietly surrendered to the spirit of the age, devolving into one more form of political correctness. And therefore, in the face of real spiritual danger,

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vanishingly few have the metaphysical framework to understand what’s happening, or the moral will to fight the enemy appropriately. As the film comes to its at least relatively happy ending, the survivors have one another and they have the beauty of nature, but the spiritual threat remains very much alive – precisely because no one knows what to do about it.

Bird Box, as I mentioned, commenced streaming right just before Christmas – in other words, at the very time when the most popular Christmas movie of all time was playing incessantly. As I watched It’s a Wonderful Life for probably the forty-eighth time (I know: nerd alert), I was especially struck by the scene of George Bailey on the snowy bridge. Having come face to face with his worst fears – loss of his livelihood, reputation, fortune, and family – George prayed, and though it took him some time to understand fully what was happening, God sent an angel to help him. His properly spiritual crisis, which led him indeed to the brink of suicide, was

resolved through the use of spiritual means.

The characters in Bird Box speculate that the evil spirits manifest themselves as the sum total of a person’s greatest fears – which explains the devastating effect that they have on those who see them. If God has effectively disappeared, then our fears will indeed overwhelm us; or at best we’ll be able to keep them at bay. To appreciate the difference between George Bailey’s and Mallorie’s response to the power of darkness is to appreciate a certain downward trajectory in our culture.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

Bishop Robert Barron is an author, speaker, theologian, and founder of Word on Fire, a global media ministry. This article has been reprinted with the kind permission of the editors.

LEARN TO COMMUNICATE IN YOUR MARRIAGE Next Programme: 4-6 October 2019

CATHOLIC CHAPEL EXPANSION PROJECT Lenana School, Nairobi, Kenya Lenana School is a public school at the outskirts of Nairobi. We are expanding our school oratory to accommodate the 350 students who come to Sunday Mass. We still need to build a gallery to cater for 120 more students. This will cost €30,000.

The chapel before Phase 1 of our project

If you can help, please contact Rev. Francis Rimbau francisrimbau@gmail.com Euro Bank account: 0241081432003 SBM BANK KENYA LTD Standard Chartered Bank Frankfurt.

Germany SWIFT CODE: SCBLDEFX IBAN: DE31500700100954257200 The chapel after completion of Phase 1