Position Papers – March 2020

March 2020 2020 January

Issue 537 €3·Issue £2.50·534 $4

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Beginning the New Year with a Smile REV. DONNCHA Ó HAODHA

A part of Ireland’s heritage PAT HANRATTY F I L M RE V I E W :

The Two Popes Ireland today JAMES BRADSHAW – a deeper shade of blue MICHAEL KIRKE

Inspiration from St Patrick REV. DONNCHA Ó HAODHA FILM REVIEW:

Katyn

TIM O’SULLIVAN

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CONTENT

A REVIEW OF CATHOLIC AFFAIRS

Editorial 2

by Fr Gavan Jennings

In Passing: Ireland today 4 – a deeper shade of blue

by Michael Kirke

From Captivity to Captivation: 10 Gratitude and Apostolate

by Rev. Donncha Ó hAodha

The Best Practices – and Benefits – 14 of Religious Parenting

by David Dollhite, Loren D. Marks and Hal Boyd

The first women members of Opus Dei 19

by Inma Alva

A Case for Priestly Celibacy 23

by Bishop Robert Barron

Books: A Time to Build 28

by James Bradshaw

Films: Katyn 33

by Tim O’Sullivan

Films: A Hidden Life 36 Editor:

Assistant editors:

Rev. Gavan Jennings

by James Bradshaw

Michael Kirke, Pat Hanratty, Brenda McGann

Subscription manager: Liam Ó hAlmhain Secretary:

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Dimo Publishers (Naas, Co. Kildare)

The editor, Position Papers, P.O. Box 4948, Rathmines, Dublin 6 Email: editor@positionpapers.ie Website: www.positionpapers.ie Tel: + 353 86065 2313 For new or renewed subscriptions contact: liamoha@gmail.com

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

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Editorial

f you are a regular reader of Position Papers you will have realised by now that we follow no particular political line. Inspired by St Josemaría Escrivá’s dictum that in politics there are no dogmas, we don’t consider it the place for a magazine dedicated to presenting and exploring the application of Catholic teaching to the issues of the day, to present genuinely political positions as “Catholic”. That said, there are of course matters in the political realm which transcend politics, and are of religious import, broadly speaking. These questions comprise the social teaching of the Church and include, for example, the life and dignity of the human person, the family, the option for the poor and vulnerable. Within this body of social teaching, the Church deals with the question of the principles governing the legitimate use of violence to defend oneself (see Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 497 ff).

Perhaps it is timely for us to reflect on our national attitude to the campaign of violence engaged in by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties. These reflections are occasioned by recent statements and actions of politicians and others, in the wake of our recent elections, which appear to romanticise or legitimate the violence of the IRA. For example, we have seen recently elected public representatives singing songs extolling the IRA, and others referring to their acts of violence as a “war”.

According to the Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), a research project at the University of Ulster, the IRA was responsible for at least 1,705 deaths over the course of its thirty year campaign: British soldiers, police officers, and civilians. All the men, women and children (numbering some dozens) killed by the IRA were the victims of a terrorist campaign, not a justified war. In other words, not one of those killings was what the Church would term “justified homicide”.

Members of the IRA consciously and unjustly murdered almost two thousand human beings.

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This is not to ignore the provocations which led young Irish men and women to turn to violence from the late 1960s onwards. In The Volunteer: A Former IRA Man’s True Story, Derry man Shane Paul O’Doherty describes how a combination of nationalist literature and provocation by British soldiers led him to sign up for the IRA in 1970 and how the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre of thirteen innocent civilians by the Paratroop regiment in Derry led him to solidify his links with the IRA. Nor is it to deny that Loyalist groups carried on a murderous campaign of violence of their own during this period.

However to understand motives is not to justify the subsequent actions, and what the IRA did in the name of Irish freedom was unjustifiable.

Their 1,705 murders are a terrible stain on the Irish nation. To sing “rebel” songs honouring the men who carried them out, or to justify these actions with the appellation “war” is to compound those crimes.

What is more, our national ambivalence about the IRA campaign is to plant the seeds for its rekindling in time to come. What is needed is a national acknowledgment that these actions were truly crimes, and that they were committed by our countrymen, and that we reject any suggestion that we condone these crimes in any way.

Unfortunately, engrained ways of thinking have made it difficult for us Irish to see ourselves as anything others than victims: victims of British imperialist policies, victims of Unionist bigotry or victims of Loyalist violence. The sad truth is that for thirty years Irish Nationalists were amongst the aggressors. They committed the most awful atrocities. Let us not extol their actions but rather acknowledge the terrible injustices perpetrated in our name, and acknowledge our guilt if we ever condoned them. And let us pray to God for forgiveness for ourselves, reconciliation with our traditional “enemies” and that our country be spared from the rekindling of the awful scourge of fratricidal violence.

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In Passing: Ireland today – a deeper shade of blue

by Michael Kirke

N

ow that Ireland’s recent general election has confirmed her to be more Blue than the bluest of American States, with most of its electorate saying that is the way they want it to be, we may be apprehensive about what the next phase of her cultural colonisation is going to bring. We don’t do politics at Position Papers but we do keep our eye on culture and how it is likely to impact on our social and moral values.

I spent about a month in California, in San Francisco, last Autumn - in the beating heart of liberal progressivist America. In the US there is no deeper shade of Democratic Blue than there. As I arrived from Ireland, I wondered would I be experiencing something of a culture shock, would I be

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falling out of the Irish frying pan of PC liberalism into the West Coast fire of ultra-liberalism?

San Francisco at first sight might make you think it was the City of God itself. It is not only that its very name suggests something of that. It’s that wherever you stand you will be within sight of some boulevard or street proclaiming the patronage of some angel or saint. Deep delusion, of course.

So, which is the frying pan now, which is the fire? Really, it’s hard to say. Is the nation once designated as the “Island of Saints and Scholars” now matching West Coast America’s distance from its faith-filled past?

If not quite, it is well on its way to parity. It looks like little Ireland is now firmly in the vanguard of the forces leading all of us to the brave

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new world of ultra-progressivism.

In America, however, some cultural push-back on progressivism is evident, is public and has a medium.

It is not to say that Ireland has no push-back, but the determination to make an alternative voice heard in the media or in the public square is much weaker. Where or when in Ireland has a voice like that of Ana Samuel, a young Texan mother made itself heard, challenging the socio-political platform of one of Blue America’s poster-boys, Pete Buttigieg? Buutigieg, the former Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was Bernie Sanders’ closest challenger in last month’s New Hampshire Democratic Primary.

Social progressives - whether US Democrats, Irish fellow-travellers like Sinn Fein, Fine Gael and most urban Fianna Fáil politicians - also subscribe to or are evolving towards the other standard elements in the pseudo-liberal canon: abortion, euthanasia, surrogacy and gender fluidity, to name just a few.

Samuel’s letter challenged Buttigieg’s right to demand her acquiescence on all these issues.

There are no amphitheatres now, no lions, but the demands of the Empire of progressivism is in essence the same as that of the Roman tyrants: worship our gods; we don’t mind if you only pretend to; just do not stand publicly against us.

Only on those bases will we offer you tolerance. The agenda of Social Justice Warriors is not just straightforward tolerance for alternative life-styles; it is a campaign for an acceptance of an equivalence between the moral principles of radically different ways of life. To achieve that they want to change the moral codes and customs of society, they want to convert the minds and hearts of all members of society whose moral principles are different from theirs.

Ana Samuel, a mother of six children, a graduate of Princeton University with a doctorate from the University of Notre Dame, is a founder CanaVox, the family and marriage think-tank and social media platform. She wrote an open letter to Buttigieg, who, like Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s prime minister for the past three years or so, is gay and happy to be so. The problem for a sizeable number of their fellow citizens, however, is that they cannot tolerate others holding a conscientious moral view that sexual activity is something Ireland’s Junior school curriculum properly exercised between men now has textbooks laying out before and women married to each other. young teenagers the full Kinsey

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(remember him?) sexual menu, his categories of sexual preferences - menu is what it amounts to. His categorisation of sexual preferences is presented - without any moral nuance. The message is this: this is the menu kids. Where do you fit in?

Take your pick.

Kinsey Scale of Sexual Behaviour • Exclusively heterosexual behaviour.

• Incidental homosexual.

• More than incidental homosexual behaviour.

• Equal amount of homo- and hetero-sexual behaviour.

• More than incidental heterosexual behaviour.

• Incidental heterosexual behaviour.

• Exclusively homosexual behaviour.

intentionally altered. Sexual identity is inborn, and you need not have had any previous sexual encounters to understand it.

It goes on to explain that it is just as acceptable for people to choose not to identify with or confine themselves to a single category.

By accepting and embracing your and others’ sexual identity, it is possible to find common ground within a welcoming and supportive community of individuals who have similar feelings, backgrounds and stories. Recognising the differences can help validate the uniqueness of all sexual orientations.

This is the dogma of progressivism and this is straight out of Buttigieg’s handbook of sexual morality. Now Buttigieg is exhorting progressives like himself to “push back” against those who refuse to accept their ideology.

Ana Samuel sprang to the defence of freedom of conscience and the rights of parents when she saw a tweet from Buttigieg with a sub-text which said that anyone who refuses to cheer for same-sex marriage or support the Left’s sexual ideology is a bigot—someone who is out to harm Pete and his family.

Kinsey’s scale, this text explains, is a simplified illustration of sexual orientation. Other modern scales reveal that sexuality lies in a continuum, not in separate boxes, and that it can flow and change with time. However, if a person’s sexuality changes it does not mean that sexual orientation is a “choice” Buttigieg tweeted @PeteButtigieg: or “preference” as it cannot be People will often be polite to you in person, while advancing policies 6

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that harm you and your family. You will be polite to them in turn, but you need not stand for such harms.

Instead, you push back, honestly and emphatically. So, it goes, in the public square.

In other words, politeness won’t wash. Smiling and smiling while being a villain is how Pete Buttigieg reads the politeness, even the charitable demeanour, of those who disagree with his way. In Ireland, Leo Varadkar, Simon Harris, Katherine Zappone throughout their time in government have all been seeking to shame anyone who disagrees with them - or who cannot in conscience accept social policies which they have passed into law.

Ante-diluvian was one of the less offensive categories with which they were labelled. Rational arguments showing these policies to be objectively immoral and harmful to individuals, the family and society, were countered with nothing more than gushing emotion.

families, and hurt our children.

“Enough Is enough”, she cried, as a parent demanding her natural human rights. She saw that behind Buttigieg’s self-pitying gauntlettweet was a whole agenda of sinister social programming. What these people want, on both sides of the Atlantic, is to undermine the entire heritage which all faithful Christians want to hand on to their children and on which, they conscientiously believe, their personal happiness, in this world and the next - as well as the well-being of our society, depends. While the motivation underlying this push-back by people of all faiths is spiritual and religious, the arguments for it are solidly rational.

Samuel wrote: “I’m talking about policies that undermine our parental rights and duties by seeking to indoctrinate our children in progressive sexual ideology without our consent and sometimes despite our explicit protest.” She asked him Ana Samuel pointed out to Buttigieg to consider just a few examples: that tolerance cuts both ways.

• Public schools in my area are As a mother in touch with many giving reading assignments mothers with traditional family which ask: ‘What is values, she wrote, “I can tell you heteronormativity and how is we are faced every day with people it harmful?’ It is not unusual who are ‘polite to us in person’ but for the LGBT theme to find its who advance and execute policies way into history classes, foreign that assault our values, harm our language studies, and even

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STEM courses. The explicit goal is to normalise LGBT lifestyles throughout curricula.

• We have paediatricians who ask to see our teenagers alone and then push to prescribe them contraceptives or ask them about sexual behaviours that we find offensive. Our teens themselves bring these paediatricians’ inappropriate behaviour to our attention. One OBGYN slipped a prescription for oral contraceptives stealthily to a 14-year-old daughter of a Mexican friend of mine, after she had explicitly stated to his face that she did not wish to see her daughter on oral contraceptives.”

She cited numerous blatant efforts within the schools and health system to subvert their values, across such areas as

(published after 2014) that appear to have fairly innocuous plots frequently feature an LGBT teen or gay couple, everso-gently normalising the ideas that are so conflicting to our consciences.

• And finally, the latest round of violence against children: efforts to entice children to question the reality of their sex through school gender-transitioning ceremonies, pronoun-sensitivity training, and other transgender propaganda.

“Parents”, she pointed out, “have historically enjoyed the right to direct the education and upbringing of their children, under the correct presumption that parents— rather than school counsellors, psychiatrists, teachers, government bureaucrats, or any other persons— are best able to act in their children’s • Sex education classes in which best interests. Now, activists are our kids are taught unproven pushing courts to allow minors to Freudian-Kinseyan doctrines receive puberty-blocking drugs and that “sexual repression” will cross-sex hormones against their cause neuroses, parents’ objections.

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• Public library programming where unicorns, rainbows, gingerbread persons, dragqueen story hours, and other symbols of progressive sexual ideology make an appearance,

“Mr. Mayor, it is hypocritical for you to cry foul about policies that ‘harm you and your family’ while your side pushes for government intrusions into the parent-child relationships at the most fundamental levels.

• Trendy middle-school books

“At some point, we say ‘enough is

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enough’. Toleration for You, but you, to have you as our coaches, Toleration for Me Too.” neighbours and friends, but don’t cross the line and tell us what sexual She challenged him on his slur that values to cherish and uphold.” she and her kind were victimising him and his kind. Mothers, she said, This formidable woman spoke tend to emphatically care about the these truths to a US presidential welfare of all children, regardless of candidate. Her challenge was their family’s origin or current form. specific as to time and place, but it They also tend to emphatically can today be applied to many places, care about every LGBT person— not least to the Republic of Ireland, “recognising our common humanity with its new deep blue elected even when we do not agree with parliament. It is very likely that the their lifestyle choices. When we are truths she spoke will need to be polite to you, we are coming from repeated often in that jurisdiction in a place of deep moral principle and the years to come. authenticity. It’s not a superficial cover up for our true beliefs about Her open letter to Buttigieg first appeared on the website, Public you.”

Discourse Finally, she said, “please stop shutting us out of the conversation (https://www.thepublicdiscourse. by the intellectually dishonest com/2019/04/51308/). rhetorical expedient of implying or saying that we are bigots. We are the opposite of bigots. We are prepared to co-exist peacefully and tolerate a great deal of what you propose, but not at the expense of losing our own ability to practice and preach our own values and freedoms. We are happy to work side-by-side with

...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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From Captivity to Captivation: Gratitude and Apostolate

by Rev. Donncha Ó hAodha

of Jesus fresh and vibrant? How to persevere in proclaiming our Lord when we feel the temptation of It is characteristic of the current discouragement or people around Holy Father that he confirms his us seem uninterested? brothers and sisters in the Faith (cf. Lk 22:32), by continually The gratitude of St Patrick encouraging us to go out and spread it, to speak to everyone The gratitude of St Patrick which everywhere of Jesus Christ. Just permeates his entire Confession can a few weeks ago he reminded us: be an inspiration for us in this regard.

“The world needs Christians who Patrick is overwhelmed by the love of allow themselves to be moved, Christ who released him from the who do not tire of walking on life’s severest form of slavery. In Ireland, streets, to bring the comforting enslaved in the physical sense, the Word of Jesus to everyone. Every Lord released him from spiritual baptized person has received the slavery: “The Lord opened my mind vocation to proclaim - to proclaim to an awareness of my unbelief, in something, to proclaim Jesus - the order that, even so late, I might vocation and mission to evangelize: remember my transgressions and to proclaim Jesus!” (Angelus, 2 turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my February 2020). insignificance and pitied my youth How do we keep our proclamation and ignorance” (Confession 2).

A characteristic call from Pope Francis

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Patrick’s zeal to proclaim Jesus comes from his intimate realization that he has been saved by the Redeemer. Patrick is overwhelmed by the love of Christ who has turned his life around and made him a herald of eternal life to all who care to listen. He has moved from being a miserable captive to being truly liberated, captivated by Christ.

live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Cor 5:14-15).

Echoes of St Paul

Another and more recent example of moving from human captivity to loving captivation by Christ, is that of St Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope St John Paul II in 2000. Benedict XVI tells her moving story at the start of his encyclical on Christian hope: “She was born around 1869 - she herself did not know the precise date - in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slavetraders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life.

Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying ‘masters’ who had owned her up to

The life and writing of St Patrick have many parallels with St Paul.

Like St Paul, St Patrick’s zeal to share the Gospel with everyone is born from his realization that he has been eternally loved by God in his Son and saved by the Passion of Jesus. In a graphic and familiar image, Patrick explains this process in the following terms: “I was like a stone lying deep in the mud. Then he who is powerful came and in his mercy pulled me out, and lifted me up and placed me on the very top of the wall. That is why I must shout aloud in return to the Lord for such great good deeds of his, here and now and forever, which the human mind cannot measure” (Confession 12). This is reminiscent of St Paul who exclaims: “For the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might

Renewing our apostolic zeal is a matter of plumbing the depths of God’s saving love for us. If we have been saved, we cannot contain ourselves from proclaiming this salvation to the four winds.

The patron saint of Sudan

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that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of ‘master’ in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name ‘paron’ for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave.

Now, however, she heard that there is a ‘paron’ above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme ‘Paron’, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her ‘at the Father’s right hand’. Now she had ‘hope’ - no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: ‘I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me - I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good’.

Through the knowledge of this hope she was ‘redeemed’, no longer a slave, but a free child of God. She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope

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and without God in the world - without hope because without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her ‘Paron’. On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter’s lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people.

The hope born in her which had ‘redeemed’ her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody” (Spe Salvi 3).

Faithful not to an idea, but to a Person By grace we have been set free

by Christ – “for freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1) - and the joy of this ultimate liberty is the inspiration behind our daily announcement of Christ to all

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the people around us. As Msgr Fernando Ocáriz, Prelate of Opus Dei, put it: “A Christian’s fidelity should be a grateful fidelity, because we are not being faithful to an idea but to a Person: to Christ Jesus, our Lord, who (each of us can say) ‘loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal 2:20).

Gratitude for salvation, captivation by the love of Christ: these are the source of our energetic effort to share the Gospel with everyone. Perhaps many of our contemporaries are suffering from different forms of slavery, or lacking basic human hope, and need to hear the joyful truth that “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (Jn 8:36).

Deepening in Christ so as to share him more widely with others One of the hallmarks of Pope Francis’ teaching is the call to mission in our daily lives. From immersing ourselves in Christ, thereby constantly rediscovering his saving love for each and all, we are moved to offer him to others in an unceasing way without ever

getting discouraged or weary.

The Holy Father challenges us not to “assume that we already know Jesus, that we already know everything about Him. This is not so. Let us pause with the Gospel, perhaps even contemplating an icon of Christ, a ‘Holy face’. Let us contemplate with our eyes and yet more with our hearts; and let us allow ourselves to be instructed by the Holy Spirit, Who tells us inside: It is He! He is the Son of God made lamb, immolated out of love. He alone has brought, He alone has suffered, He alone has atoned for sin, the sin of each one of us, the sin of the world, and also my sins. All of them. He brought them all upon Himself and took them away from us, so that we would finally be free, no longer slaves to evil. Yes, we are still poor sinners, but not slaves, no, not slaves: children, children of God!” (Angelus, 19 January 2020).

...the Author Rev. Donncha Ó hAodha is the Regional Vicar of the Opus Dei Prelature in Ireland, author of several CTS booklets and a regular contributor to Position Papers.

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The Best Practices – and Benefits – of Religious Parenting

by David Dollhite, Loren D. Marks and Hal Boyd

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nformed by the best practices from social science and the best of religious belief, parents can raise their children with the benefits of a meaningful faith, as part of a nurturing community, in a manner that honors children’s humanity, their growing autonomy, and their spiritual choices.

and pray earnestly – all while parents preach a bit less and listen a bit more.

Decades of research support the proposition that healthy, faithbased practices in the home are strongly associated with prosocial outcomes for children, youth, couples, and families – Surveying the growing body of especially among racial minority families, social science research helps bring families, immigrant greater clarity to the complex, and religious minority families. and largely beneficial, interactions It is important to understand the between religion and family life. benefits of religion in the home The research also suggests evidence- and to consider research-based best based best practices for effectively practices when it comes to faith and integrating faith and family life, parenting. including religious-spiritual authenticity, nurturing parent-child When a study was released several relationships, balancing religious years ago claiming to find that firmness and flexibility, and religious families, and specifically encouraging youth to have spiritual children, were “less kind and experiences, sacrifice meaningfully, more punitive than those from 14

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non-religious households,” it made headlines precisely because it seemed to contradict years of study and common wisdom. It turns out, however, that the researchers read the data wrong and, earlier this year, the paper was formally retracted by the journal Current Biology.

relationships that help cultivate healthy interactions. In our research, we give voice to those who have spoken with us. Therefore, all of the articles we link to in the rest of this essay contain direct quotes from parents and youth of faith that illustrate our findings.

In reality, plenty of social science continues to support positive correlations between religious practice in the home and prosocial behaviors. A rarely achieved gold standard of social science research is the multi-generational, longitudinal study in which the same parents and children both offer reports across several years.

One such study by Sarah Spillman and colleagues found that religious involvement predicted positive marital and parenting interactions for both generations examined.

What has been under-studied, however, is why faith and families are such a robust combination.

What is the magic at work here? We think we now have something of an answer.

Meaningful religious traditions, for example, not only provide a sense of connection around the holidays, but families also report meaningful daily and weekly rituals. These include weekly Shabbat practices for Jewish families, weekly Family Home Evening for Latter-day Saint families, daily prayer (Salat) for Muslim families, family Bible reading for Evangelical Christian families, and regular forgiveness and confession for Catholic and Orthodox Christian families. Each of these practices yield myriad reported benefits.

Religious involvement is especially helpful in supporting and strengthening minority families such as African American Christians and Asian American Christians.

The Reasons for Religious Benefits Many may wonder whether shared secular practices within families Over the past two decades, might create the same results. our American Families of Faith As David Zahl observes in his project has studied the reasons why book Seculosity, people may not religious involvement has positive be attending religious services potential for strengthening family as frequently, but contemporary relationships. We’ve identified “replacement religion” is in specific behavioral patterns in abundant supply. Zahl notes that faith-based marital and family 15

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many now divert energy once dedicated to religious devotion to more secular pursuits such as TV shows, sports, shopping, fitness, technology, politics, and other passions. We are not aware, however, of research that links any of these with the same expansive range or depth of benefits to marriage and family documented in connection with religious devotion.

raised in homes with more robust religious experiences are less likely to disaffiliate from religion entirely” (only about 7 percent), it is important to mention that of those who become disaffiliated from their childhood faith, about 70 percent said they stopped identifying with that faith when they were 17 years old or younger.

A 2016 Pew Research Report found that of those who report being religiously unaffiliated (aka, religious “Nones”), 78 percent report that they were raised in a religious family. About half of these say they are no longer religious because they lack belief – and many mentioned “science” as the reason they no longer believe. A striking irony is that social science has repeatedly and conclusively demonstrated that religious belief and involvement Best Practices for Religious is, in most cases, quite beneficial Parents for personal mental and physical To avoid a toxic approach to health and for marriage and family faith and to more fully appreciate relationships. the benefits of religion, parents The religious potential for either and couples should understand harm or help suggests the need research-based best practices to consider better ways in which regarding religion and family religious parents, particularly highly life. According to an American religious parents, can share their Enterprise Institute (AEI), about faith with their children in a healthy 30 percent of young adults who and beneficial manner. Drawing were raised in religious homes are on our findings from dozens of now religiously unaffiliated, while published social science studies, only about 11 percent of older we mention eight key social Americans raised religiously are science ideas or best practices now unaffiliated. Although the AEI regarding religious parenting: report mentions that “Americans Admittedly, religion does not always result in a positive outcome in family life. Along with other scholars, we have found that although religious involvement is largely positive, the nexus of faith and family life contains dualities that allow religion, when misapplied, to cause potential harms to occur to individuals, marriage and family relationships, and to societies.

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Cultivate Religious-Spiritual Authenticity. Both the youth and the parents we have interviewed have emphasized how important it is for parents to be an upright example of what they claim to believe.

Many of the religious parents we interviewed believed it was important to be authentic with their children about their weaknesses and failings, as opposed to trying to seem better than they really are.

Walk an authentic walk.

Nurture the Parent–Child Relationship. While many parents might feel that engaging in religious activities such as prayer, reading sacred texts, and attending religious services are paramount practices, our research (and others’) has repeatedly indicated that the quality of the parent–child relationship is even more important.

Worship with warmth and love.

Balance Firmness and Flexibility. We have found it is vital for parents to balance religious firmness with religious flexibility in their parenting. Parents who learn to avoid unhealthy religious rigidity in their relationship with their children are more likely to maintain more positive relationships with them and their children. Avoid rigidity through balance.

Balance Desire for Religious Continuity with Children’s Agency. The parents and children we interviewed described relational

processes that supported both parents’ desires to pass their faith to their children while honoring their children’s agency. Healthy practices included teaching principles and values, providing expectations of religious participation and responsibility, not forcing faith, allowing exploration and mistakes, and showing respect for children’s views. Honor both family legacy and children’s choices.

Help Youth Make Meaningful Sacrifices. We found that many religious youth take their spiritual and religious identities seriously enough to make significant, religiously inspired sacrifices for others. Giving and serving matter.

Encourage Spiritual Exploration in Youth. Our findings confirm the importance of helping youth explore their own faith and others’ faiths. Parents can expect and should support an active process of religious and spiritual exploration among their children. Parents who understand that it is normal and healthy for such exploration to occur are more likely to provide youth the space they need and want, while being there as a stable, supporting, and faithful resource for them. Encourage deep seeking.

Make Prayer in Families Meaningful. Our research has shown that an important intersection of religion and family occurs with regular family prayer, a 17

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practice that reportedly influences family relationships in various ways, including: family prayer as a time of family togetherness and interaction, as a space for social support, and as a means for intergenerational transmission of moral and spiritual values. Further, for the families we interviewed, family prayer involved issues and concerns of individuals and the family, helped reduce relational tensions, and provided feelings of connectedness, unity, and bonding. Family prayer unifies.

Listen More, Preach Less. Parents and youth told us that the way parents approach parent–youth conversations about religion and spirituality matters. Youth and parents reported that it was a more satisfying and successful religious and relational experience when the conversations were more youthcentered than parent-centered.

Listen more, preach less.

Based on our in-depth interviews with almost five hundred American adults and youth from many religious, racial, and ethnic backgrounds, we found that personal decisions regarding God, religion, and faith have profound relational consequences for individuals and for their loved ones. These consequences often greatly enhance couples and families. Informed by the best practices from social science and the best of religious belief, parents can raise their children with the benefits of a meaningful faith, as part of a nurturing community, in a manner that honors children’s humanity, their growing autonomy, and their spiritual choices.

This article originally appeared in Public Discourse: The Journal of the Witherspoon Institute (see: www. thepublicdiscourse.com) and is reprinted with permission.

...the Authors

David C. Dollahite, PhD, is Camilla Eyring Kimball Professor of Family Life at Brigham Young University where he teaches classes and conducts research on the nexus of religion and family life. He is Co-Director (with Dr. Loren Marks) of the American Families of Faith Project.

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Loren D. Marks is a professor in BYU’s School of Family Life and serves as co-director of the American Families of Faith Research Project.

Hal Boyd is an Associate Professor of Family Life at Brigham Young University and a fellow of the Wheatley Institution.

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Inma Alva at an event entitled “Women who broke down barriers.”

The first women members of Opus Dei

by Inma Alva

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nma Alva, a historian investigating the beginnings of Opus Dei, talks about the first women members: “What stands out is their capacity for great undertakings, their passion, and their enormous faith in the face of difficulties.”

A historian and theologian, Inma Alva does research at the Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer Documentation and Studies Center at the University of Navarre in Pamplona, Spain. Part of her research focuses on the beginning of Opus Dei among women: the first ones who joined, the apostolic initiatives they set in motion, and how they spread Opus Dei to new countries. On the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the women’s section of Opus Dei, we traveled back in time with Inma

to meet some of the women who formed a part of “the history of God’s mercy,” as Saint Josemaría used to describe the beginnings of Opus Dei. Although Saint Josemaría “saw” Opus Dei on 2 October 1928, he did not originally think that his mission was going to involve women. Why was that?

We can’t exactly know for sure, but at the beginning, St Josemaría only worked with men: he was all alone and he was a young priest – just twenty-six years old – so it’s understandable also in human terms. But while celebrating Mass on 14 February 1930, during the moment of Communion, St Josemaría said he received a light from God through which he understood with certainty that 19

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women would also need to be a part of his mission. As St Josemaría would later state, “Opus Dei would have been left ‘crippled’ without women.” I think what he meant is that many essential human realities would have been left out of the mission of Opus Dei, which is to seek holiness in ordinary life.

What did Saint Josemaría do next?

From that moment on, St Josemaría got to work, mainly by sharing the message of Opus Dei with women who were already seeking his guidance in spiritual direction, including young professionals. At this point, the historical circumstances were not all that favorable, because at that time very few women in Spain were attending universities or exercising professions. On top of that, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War made it nearly impossible to offer regular spiritual formation to any of the women he knew. This might explain why none of the women in touch with St Josemaría in those early years followed through with Opus Dei, although many were grateful for the advice he gave them, according to testimonies offered years later. That’s why St Josemaría used to joke that the women’s branch of Opus Dei finally came about “on the third try.”

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What were the first women of Opus Dei like?

The lives of the first women to carry out Opus Dei were extraordinary, especially when you take into account the things that were going on historically at the time they decided to join. It was the 1940s, the Civil War had just finished, and women had very little power in Spanish society. Among these pioneers, one who stands out is Nisa González Guzmán, a woman from Leon who requested admission to Opus Dei in 1941 when she was 33 years old. She ended up starting Opus Dei in the United States and Canada.

Another person to mention here is Encarnita Ortega, a very optimistic and enthusiastic young woman who inspired a lot of trust in St Josemaría. Enrica Botella, the sister of one of the first men in Opus Dei, also was part of this first group of vocations.

These women came from different parts of Spain, and many of them met St Josemaría through the spiritual retreats he was preaching.

Things generally spread by word of mouth, through friends, relatives, and other contacts.

But who was actually the first woman to join Opus Dei? Lola Fisac is regarded as the first woman to join. She asked to be admitted in 1937, when the

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Civil War was at its peak, under extraordinary circumstances.

Lola “met” St Josemaría in a very unusual way, through the letters he was sending to her brother. In one of these letters, as St Josemaría knows Lola is reading them, he asks her – in coded terms, as mail was being intercepted and inspected during the war – if she would like to be part of his “supernatural family” as well. Lola answers in the affirmative and immediately starts to live her life according to the spirit of Opus Dei, as she is able to understand it at the time.

Once the war is over, St Josemaría finally meets Lola, confirms that her intentions remain the same, and explains in better detail what the vocation to Opus Dei entails.

So Lola is the first numerary of the women’s section, although her personal circumstances do not allow her to actually live in an Opus Dei center until many years later, in 1965. Until that point, Lola takes care of her elderly parents and, at the same time, attends to the household administration of one of the women’s centres, all the while living with her parents. When Nisa González Guzmán moves to Bilbao to set up the first center there, St Josemaría designates Lola as the director of the center in Madrid, even though Lola it still taking care of her parents. This suggests that St Josemaría felt he could count on Lola to be a support for the others.

Speaking of centers, when did the first women’s center of Opus Dei open up?

The first center for women opens on Jorge Manrique Street in Madrid in 1942, and they begin by offering activities of Christian formation for university students.

From 1944 onward, a steady stream of vocations arrives, and these women are introduced to Opus Dei thanks to the spiritual retreats that St Josemaría preaches in Jorge Manrique. Some of those who join Opus Dei from that date onward include: Guadalupe Ortiz de Landázuri, Victoria López-Amo, Marichu Arellano, Sabina Alandes, Josefina de Miguel, Enrica Botella, Mari Tere Echeverría and Carmen Gutiérrez Ríos.

The promptness with which these women decide to respond to the vocation to Opus Dei is striking and worthy of attention. It’s true that many of these women had already developed a spiritual life before meeting St Josemaría, and most were receiving spiritual direction, perhaps in their parishes.

Many of them had desires to do something for others and to serve them. What many of them also share is that, prior to meeting Opus Dei, they already felt that God was calling them to something greater, but not necessarily to religious life. Hence you could say that the vocation St Josemaría presented to 21

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them was exactly what they were looking for.

When did the women start Opus Dei in other countries?

These women I mentioned earlier are some of the ones who take up the expansion of Opus Dei from Spain to the rest of the world. This small group, which in 1942 did not even number ten people, grew to about eighty to ninety women by around 1947. During this period, they were also making trips to different cities in Spain, opening centres in Bilbao, Valencia, Valladolid, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Granada, Cordoba, Santiago de Compostela... Keep in mind that the means of transportation at that time were not the same as they are today, and it was a lot more burdensome to travel. In some of these cities, there were already women who had seen their vocation to Opus Dei and would go on to become the first supernumeraries. In 1946, some of these women also moved to Rome.

In 1950, a group of these early women head to America to try to start Opus Dei there. Nisa and several other women go to the United States, which was not just a geographical leap but also a great 22

cultural leap as well. At the same time, Guadalupe and four others go to Mexico. There are actually a lot of letters being written between these two teams as they make their first inroads in two huge countries.

In the following years, Opus Dei began in several more countries in Europe. What stands out in all these women is their capacity for great undertakings, their passion, and their enormous faith in the face of all kinds of difficulties.

This article is reprinted from the www.opusdei.ie website, and is reprinted with the kind permission of Prof. Alva. Prof.

Alva works in the University of Navarre in Spain and specialises on Philippines colonial studies and Women’s History.

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A Case for Priestly Celibacy

by Bishop Robert Barron

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here is a very bad argument for celibacy which has reared its head throughout the tradition and which is, even today, defended by some. It runs something like this: married life is morally and spiritually suspect; priests, as religious leaders, should be spiritual athletes above reproach; therefore, priests shouldn’t be married. I love Augustine, but it is hard to deny that this kind of argumentation finds support in some of Augustine’s more unfortunate reflections on sexuality (original sin as a sexually transmitted disease; sex even within marriage is venially sinful; the birth of a baby associated with excretion, etc.). I once ran across a book in which the author presented a version of this justification, appealing to the purity codes in the book of Leviticus. His implication was that any sort of sexual contact,

even within marriage, would render a minister at the altar impure. This approach to the question is, in my judgment, not just silly but dangerous, for it rests on assumptions that are repugnant to good Christian metaphysics.

The doctrine of creation ex nihilo necessarily implies the essential integrity of the world and everything in it. Genesis tells us that God found each thing he had made good and that he found the ensemble of creatures very good. Expressing the same idea with typical scholastic understatement, Thomas Aquinas commented that “being” and “good” are convertible terms. Catholic theology, at its best, has always been resolutely anti-Manichaean, anti-gnostic, anti-dualist – and this means that matter, the body, and sexual 23

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activity are never, in themselves, to be despised. In his book A People Adrift, Peter Steinfels correctly suggests that the post-conciliar reaffirmation of this aspect of the tradition effectively undermined the dualist justification for celibacy that I sketched above.

But there is more to the doctrine of creation than an affirmation of the goodness of the world. To say that the finite realm in its entirety is created is to imply that nothing in the universe is God. All aspects of created reality reflect God, point to God, and bear traces of the divine goodness (just as every detail of a building gives evidence of the mind of the architect), but no creature and no collectivity of creatures is divine (just as no part of a structure is the architect). This essential distinction between God and the world is the ground for the anti-idolatry principle that is reiterated from beginning to end of the Bible: do not turn something which is less than God into God. Isaiah the prophet put it thus: “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my thoughts above your thoughts and my ways above your ways, says the Lord.”

And it is at the heart of the first commandment: “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods besides me.” The Bible thus holds off all forms of pantheism, immanentism, and nature 24

mysticism – all the attempts of human beings to divinize or render ultimate some worldly reality. The doctrine of creation, in a word, involves both a great “yes” and a great “no” to the universe.

Now there is a behavioral concomitant to the anti-idolatry principle: it is the detachment which is urged throughout the Bible and by practically every figure in the great tradition from Irenaeus and Chrysostom to Bernard, John of the Cross, and Thérèse of Lisieux. Detachment is the refusal to make anything less than God the organizing principle or center of one’s life. Anthony de Mello looked at it from the other side and said that “an attachment is anything in this world – including your own life – that you are convinced you cannot live without.” Even as we reverence everything that God has made, we must let go of everything that God has made, precisely for the sake of God. Augustine saw to the bottom of this truth, commenting that creatures are loved better, more authentically, precisely when they are loved in God. This is why, as G.K. Chesterton noted, there is an odd, tensive, and bi-polar quality to Christian life. In accord with its affirmation of the world, the Church loves color, pageantry, music, and rich decoration (as in the liturgy and papal ceremonials), even as, in accord with its

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detachment from the world, it loves the poverty of St. Francis and the simplicity of Mother Teresa. The same tensiveness governs its attitude toward sex and family. Again in Chesterton’s language, the Church is “fiercely for having children” (through marriage) even as it remains “fiercely against having them” (in religious celibacy). Everything in this world – including sex and intimate friendship – is good, but impermanently so; all finite reality is beautiful, but its beauty, if I can put it in explicitly Catholic terms, is sacramental and not ultimate.

According to the Biblical narratives, when God wanted to make a certain truth vividly known to his people, he would occasionally choose a prophet and command him to act out that truth, to embody it concretely. Hence, he told Hosea to marry the unfaithful Gomer in order to sacramentalize God’s fidelity to wavering Israel. In Grammar of Assent, John Henry Newman reminded us that truth is brought home to the mind, becoming convincing and persuasive, when it is represented, not through abstractions, but through something particular, colorful, and imaginable. We might be intrigued by the formula of Chalcedon, but we are moved to tears and to action by the narrative of Christ’s appearance on the road

to Emmaus. Thus, the truth of the non-ultimacy of sex, family, and worldly relationships can and should be proclaimed through words, but it will be believed only when people can see it. This is why, the Church is convinced, God chooses certain people to be celibate: in order to witness to a transcendent form of love, the way that we will love in heaven.

In God’s realm, we will experience a communion (bodily as well as spiritual) compared to which even the most intense forms of communion here below pale into insignificance, and celibates make this truth viscerally real for us now. Just as belief in the real presence in the Eucharist fades (as we have seen) when unaccompanied by devotional practice, so the belief in the impermanence of created love becomes attenuated in the absence of living embodiments of it. Though one can present practical reasons for it, I believe that celibacy only finally makes sense in this eschatological context.

I realize that my reader might be following the argument to this point and still feel compelled to ask, “Yes, granted that celibacy is a good thing for the Church, but why must all priests be celibate?”

The medievals distinguished between arguments from necessity and arguments from “fittingness.”

I can offer only the latter kind of 25

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argument, for even its most ardent defenders admit that celibacy is not essential to the priesthood.

After all, married priests have been, at various times and for various reasons, accepted from the beginning of the Church to the present day. The appropriateness of linking priesthood and celibacy comes, I think, from the priest’s identity as a Eucharistic person.

All that a priest is radiates outward from his unique capacity, acting in the person of Christ, to transform the Eucharistic elements into the body and blood of Jesus. As the center of a rose window anchors and orders all of the other elements in the design, so the Eucharistic act of the priest grounds and animates everything else that he does, rendering qualitatively distinctive his way of leading, sanctifying, and teaching. But the Eucharist is the eschatological act par excellence, for as Paul says, “Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” To proclaim the Paschal Mystery through the Eucharist is to make present that event by which the new world is opened up to us. It is to make vividly real the transcendent dimension which effectively relativizes (without denying) all of the goods of this passing world. And it is therefore fitting that the one who is so intimately conditioned by and related to the Eucharist should be 26

in his form of life an eschatological person.

For years, Andrew Greeley argued – quite rightly in my view – that the priest is fascinating, and that a large part of the fascination comes from celibacy. The compelling quality of the priest is not a matter of superficial celebrity or charm; that gets us precisely nowhere. It is something much stranger, deeper, and more mystical: the fascination for another world, for that mysterious dimension of existence hinted at sacramentally by the universe here below and revealed to us, however tantalizingly, in the breaking of the bread. I for one am glad that such eschatologically fascinating persons are not simply in monasteries, cloistered convents, and hermits cells, but in parishes, on the streets, and in the pulpits, moving visibly among the people of God. There are, I realize, a couple of major problems with offering arguments for celibacy. First, it can make everything seem so pat, rational, and resolved. I’ve been a priest now for over thirty years, and I can assure you that the living of celibacy has been anything but that. As I’ve gone through different seasons of my life as a priest, I’ve struggled mightily with celibacy, precisely because the tension between the

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goodness and ephemerality of creation of which I spoke of earlier is no abstraction, bur rather runs right through my body. The second problem is that reason only goes so far. As Thomas More said in that wonderful scene from A Man for All Seasons, as he was trying to make his daughter understand why he was being so stubborn: “Finally, Meg, it’s not a matter of reason; finally, it’s a matter of love.”

People in love do strange things: they pledge eternal fidelity; they write poetry and songs; they defy their families and change their life plans; sometimes they go to their deaths. They tend to be over-the-top, irrational, and confounding to the reasonable people around them. Though we can make a case for it – as I have tried to do – celibacy is finally inexplicable, unnatural, and fascinating, for it is a form of life adopted by people in love with Jesus Christ. ...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.

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Books: A Time to Build

by James Bradshaw

by Yuval Levin 256 pages

A

Time to Build is the American political theorist Yuval Levin’s newly-published book.

and less, and the corresponding increase in the size and power of centralised government, is exacerbating social problems and political divisions dramatically.

In A Time to Build, he continues in Following on from his last work – this vein by further examining the The Fractured Republic, released in causes of growing social division in 2016 – the man who is arguably America. But this time, he zeroes America’s foremost conservative in on how declining faith in social intellectual once again addresses institutions is creating an America the theme of civil society and the which is beginning to resemble role it plays in mediating between two warring camps. By institution, the individual human being and the author refers to “the durable forms of our common life … the the state. frameworks and structures of what In The Fractured Republic, Levin we do together.” described a growing atomisation and collectivism which is taking It can be the family, the Church, place simultaneously in the United a school system, a political States, not to mention elsewhere. institution, not to mention a He argued that the increasing wide variety of professions, each alienation of individuals in a world with their specific ethos. The where community means less key issue being addressed here is 28

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not necessarily the work that any of these institutions perform in society. Instead, it is the role that institutions play in socialising individuals from an early age, teaching them how to behave and helping them to relate to the world around us in all its complexity.

in the government, the media, the trade unions, the universities and the specific professions fell gradually from the 1970s onwards.

In recent years, the decline has accelerated.

Consider some of the statistics.

Not long after the scandal of Individuals form institutions; Watergate, 52% of Americans but these same institutions also expressed confidence in the help form us in turn.“They presidency, now less than a structure our perceptions and our third of Americans do. Public interactions, and as a result they confidence in organised religion structure us,” Levin writes. “They has almost halved in four decades. form our habits, our expectations, The professions have suffered too: and ultimately our character. By in less than fifty years, confidence giving shape to our experience of in the medical profession sank life in society, institutions give from 80% to 36%. shape to our place and to our understanding of its contours.” The results are stark but hardly Being part of a positive and surprising to anyone who has purposeful social institution has followed the social science a major impact on how we act, literature in this area recently, which helps us to exercise freedom especially the work of authors as diverse in ideological persuasion in a free society responsibly. as Robert Putnam and Charles Institutional formation of Murray. But you don’t have to dig character, the author contends, deep to see this is so. The evidence “moves us to ask how we ought to that people no longer believe in think and behave with reference to the institutions which were crucial a world beyond ourselves: ‘Given to the lives of their parents and my role here, how should I act?’” grandparents is all around us.

One of the key problems afflicting America, as Levin sees it, is that Political parties which truly were trust and confidence in America’s mass movements struggle on with institutions has plummeted. This fewer and fewer devoted followers, is undoubtedly true. Gallup has in a political environment where conducted polls on the confidence the “outsider” is exalted and the of Americans in their major “insider” is castigated. Religious institutions for many decades and affiliation rates have dropped the results are crystal clear. Faith significantly in recent decades, 29

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along with church attendance.

Newspaper sales have fallen, and more and more people prefer to get their news from more selfcentred sources such as through their social media accounts. There are more people in employment than ever before and yet the influence of trade unions has weakened significantly. The makeup of the most important social institution of all – the family – has been changed beyond recognition with fewer and fewer children being raised in two-parent homes by their married parents.

and expectations had been shaped by important institutions then played a key part in building the thriving institutions of a healthy civil society.

At the heart of Levin’s argument is the question of formation: and the important change which has occurred from looking at institutions as being “formative” to viewing them as “performative” places in which individuals can play whatever role they deem to be desirable. “We have moved, roughly speaking, from thinking of institutions as molds that shape Institutions are declining or people’s characters and habits dying, and individualism reigns toward seeing them as platforms triumphant. that allow people to be themselves and to display themselves before a Naturally, this brings with wider world,” he writes. it certain advantages. In this more individualistic age, people Once more, it is hard to disagree are unquestionably freer from with Levin’s analysis. social obligations than previous generations were.

Powerful Politics is more focused on institutions of yesteryear limited individuals and optics than freedom certainly, and imposed ever before. Politicians seek upon their members limitations the limelight for its own sake, which were burdensome: the rather than to transmit their necessity of doing this, the vision for a political system undesirability of doing that, and based on the common good. so forth. But in establishing norms Young politicians – Levin cites and ensuring that people lived the New York Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez as up to them, social institutions Alexandria an obvious example – are more also helped to build character in individuals. Those same focused on building their Twitter individuals would then work to following than in learning how maintain the high standards which to play a constructive role in the institution had inculcated in legislative deliberations. Though them. In turn, people whose habits a Republican and a conservative, 30

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Levin does not hesitate to also point a finger of blame at the most self-promoting and narcissistic politician in modern memory: Donald Trump.

is the quality of Levin’s insight across a range of areas. Thankfully, although Levin has been close to several major Republican politicians, his writing is far from partisan. His work is political, but it is not especially party political. His greatest interest as an observer of political and social developments is not which party holds power, or what they choose to do with that power, but what occurs in the space between the individual and the state. This is where society exists, thrives or fails. True, Levin has a conservative worldview, but when it comes to moral formation the question he poses is worth considering by a reader who may not share all of his convictions.

The tendency to use an institution as a theatre in which to perform goes far beyond politics. As an institution like the journalistic profession goes through “this transformation from mold to platform,” many journalists have ceased to think of what they should be (upholders of the best traditions of the industry) and now aspire to become influencers, activists and minor celebrities instead. The advent of social media and the ‘cult of celebrity’ adds further to this, as it incentives us to focus on ourselves while avoiding meaningful commitments to the Institutions – particularly those of institutions around us. an economic or religious nature – are often somewhat feared by Though not a particularly long the Left. Rousseau’s lamentation book, the author addresses a great that “man is born free, but many topics, and Levin’s insights everywhere he is in chains” reflects into the decline of the institutional a worldview which considered power of the Catholic Church are that humanity’s problems lay in particularly interesting, focusing the constraints which societies as he does on how this strength and their important institutions of Catholicism quickly became imposed on ordinary individuals. its greatest weakness in the midst Give the people freedom, of the sexual abuse crisis. Never Rousseau thought, and all would was institutional responsibility be well. “But this vision has always more necessary, and never was it been opposed in our traditions by more lacking, with catastrophic a far more sceptical view, which consequences for an organisation’s assumes that a person begins credibility. imperfect and unformed – not to The greatest strength of this book say fallen,” Levin notes. “It assumes that each of us is born deficient

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but capable of moral improvement, that such improvement happens soul by soul and so cannot be circumvented by social or political transformation, and that this improvement – the formation of character and virtue – is the foremost work of our society in every generation.”

In a world where so many people lack attachments or purpose, those who are concerned with the effects of social atomisation should consider Levin’s arguments about the importance of social institutions.

The happiness of the next generation of society depends on people who will work on building the institutions of tomorrow.

And that work has to start today.

...the Author James Bradshaw, a public policy masters graduate, works in an international consulting firm, based in Dublin, and is a regular contributor to Position Papers.

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Films: Katyn

by Tim O’Sullivan

Hope, a biopic about Lech Walesa, the founder of Solidarity. Wajda’s father was one of those murdered in Katyn in 1940 so a film on this his year will mark the 80th tragedy was long on his mind. anniversary of one of the In Communist times, Wajda stated worst crimes of World War II: the in an interview accompanying murder of an estimated 22,000 the DVD, it would not have been Polish officers and intellectuals by possible to show a film about Katyn the Soviet secret police in Katyn so he didn’t think about it during Forest in Russia in 1940. A recent that period. Post-Communism, bout of flu gave me an unexpected however, he prepared for a long opportunity to view the DVD of time to make the film and it took Katyn, the film made in 2007 about many years of planning before it this subject in Polish, though with was finally completed in 2007. It English sub-titles. was filming on an epic scale with 7,000 extras involved as well as The film’s director, Andrzej Wajda leading Polish actors and actresses.

(1926-2016), was a world-famous The film is told from the point of Polish director, whose films view both of the officers in captivity included Danton, Man of Iron, and of the anguished women and Ashes and Diamonds and Man of families left behind and without Katyn, Artificial Eye, 2007 Director Andrzej Wajda Fit for viewing by persons aged 15 or more

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news of the fate of their loved ones. In the DVD interview, Wajda states that his own mother never really recovered from the death of his father in Katyn.

Katyn, Wajda suggested in this interview, had two aspects: the crime and the lie. What actually happened and what was said about it afterwards. For years, the Soviet Union denied responsibility for the crime and tried to blame it on the Nazis. In recent decades, the facts about Soviet secret police responsibility have become established and were acknowledged by the reforming Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1990. In 2010, there was further tragedy when a Polish Government delegation, including the Polish President, died in an air crash near Katyn, while on their way to a commemoration ceremony there.

There are many extraordinary moments in the film, which is enriched by the haunting music of the Polish composer, Krzysztof Penderecki. In the opening scenes in Poland in September 1939, terrified crowds fleeing Nazi invasion from one side meet equally terrified crowds fleeing Soviet invasion from the other side. There is later a heart-breaking encounter between a captured Polish officer and his wife in a transit area. She 34

pleads with him to flee captivity for her sake and that of their young daughter but he tells her that he can’t renounce his military pledges.

Another grave moment is the mass arrest in 1939 by German SS troops of academics from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.

In other powerful scenes, an officer, who is being held captive by the Soviets and is in anguish, receives comfort from a comrade’s gift of rosary beads. There is later an address of great nobility on Christmas Eve from a Polish general to his fellow captives and he concludes by leading his men in a beautiful Christmas hymn. Then, there are the harrowing final scenes when something of the slaughter that took place is shown in all its horror as officers are led, one by one, to their deaths and only realise at the last moment what is in store for them.

Though focusing on just one terrible episode, the film is a reminder of the carnage of two world wars and the terrible suffering that accompanied that carnage. It reminds us of the huge personal, family and social losses that occurred. After the war, those who survived struggled to know how best to adapt to life in the post-war Polish People’s Republic.

Wajda himself in his interview

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raises the question of whether there might have been a more effective earlier resistance to post-war Stalinism in Poland if the officers and leaders murdered in Katyn had survived.

And yet the film also points to the constant possibility of regeneration, even in the toughest circumstances and in the face of great evil. Thousands of officers were murdered in Katyn and the facts about the massacre were covered up for many years but the memory of those who died was

kept alive by relatives and friends and their story was eventually told, not least through this film. Catholic Poland did manage to resist, albeit in a context of great suffering, both the Nazis and the Communists.

In 1978, a son of Poland came to the See of Peter and, in the 1980s, the peaceful Solidarity movement, supported by that Polish Pope, caught the world’s imagination. In 1989, Poland, which had effectively been wiped from the map in 1939

by Hitler and Stalin, emerged again as a free nation.

...the Author Tim O’Sullivan has degrees in history and social policy and taught healthcare policy at third level. He is a regular contributor to Position Papers.

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POSITION PAPERS

Films: A Hidden Life

by James Bradshaw

tragic tale, it is probably hard to create a genuine warmth. Malick, however, achieves this from the he release of A Hidden Life opening few minutes where a – for which filming began snapshot of the lives of Franz way back in 2016 – is finally (played by August Diehl) and his bringing the story of Blessed Franz wife Fani (Valerie Pachner) in an Jägerstätter to a global audience. idyllic Austrian village high up in During the Second World War, the Alps. That same loving warmth this Austrian farmer and devoted between husband and wife is felt Catholic father and husband from the beginning right to the refused to fight for Nazi Germany. end, in spite of the terrible ordeal For this, he was imprisoned, and which Franz is put through. ultimately put to death. More than sixty years later, he was Given the outstanding visual declared a martyr by the Church beauty of the mountains and and beatified. meadows around them, it is no surprise that so much of the film It is a timeless story, and in the is shot outdoors. Without any hands of the writer and director doubt, A Hidden Life is stunning, Terrence Malick, it is told here and the soundtrack is similarly with an extraordinary beauty and moving. Never was Alpine beauty sensitivity. In the telling of such a more breathtaking. The director Director Terrence Malick January 2020

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A REVIEW OF CATHOLIC AFFAIRS

uses natural beauty in front of us to demonstrate the striking contrast between the goodness in the world and a terrible evil which has overwhelmed one part of it.

Franz and Fani’s doomed love story plays out in an environment where this evil lurks in the shadows.

As Fani steps out of the barn, her eyes are directed upwards by the ominous sound of a large airplane flying above. We do not see, but we know. It is the sound of war.

At other times, the juxtaposition is less subtle. At night, we hear the quiet birdsong in the darkened fields, along with the voice of Hitler being played on a radio.

The opening part goes a long way to setting the scene for the ordeal of the Jägerstätter family to take place.

In social standing and education, Franz does not stand apart from his fellows in any way. Though it becomes clear that he and his wife are religious, we learn along the way that this was not always so. His decision to refuse to fight for an evil regime is not tainted by the slightest hint of opportunism. Early on in the war after the conquest of France, we see him with a group of conscript recruits being made to watch a propaganda video highlighting Germany’s triumphs on the

battlefield. The other young men are exultant, yet Franz is disturbed by what he sees. When the new recruits are demobilised and sent back to their farms, he questions other local men about what their country is doing to itself and to Europe. Stopped on the road by a man offering what appear to be valuables pilfered from one of the occupied nations, Franz walks on.

It was an important point for the director to make: after all, the real-life Franz had opposed Nazism from the very beginning, being the only person in his village on the Austro-German border to oppose the unification of the two countries. Whether Germany was winning or losing the war had no impact on Jägerstätter’s decision.

Faced with the knowledge that he will likely be recalled to military service, the central character then embarks on a period of deep reflection about what he will do.

His opposition to Nazism is total, and is inspired by Germany’s aggression overseas, the killing of the disabled as part of the eugenics programme and the Nazi regime’s persecution of the Church. At first, his acts of resistance are small. He refuses to provide any donation in support of the war effort while also refusing to accept government benefits. He will 37

POSITION PAPERS

neither support an unjust war nor will he profit from it. His stance soon raises the ire of the local Nazi mayor and others whose family members have left to fight.

There is, however, a deep conversation taking place, even though we cannot hear it. From the beginning of the process of resistance until the very end, many of Franz’s interlocutors – including This process accelerates the aforementioned parish priest, throughout the movie with serious and the judge who will eventually consequences for the entire family, pass sentence – pose a question: who begin to be shunned by the what will his resistance achieve? other villagers. Other women spit on the ground when Fani walks It is a fair question. past and their young daughters are ostracised by the village’s children. In Hitler’s Germany, Franz’s Still, Franz will not back down. stance meant death. It meant his Apart from his relationship with wife became a widow and his his wife, it is not made explicit children were raised without a where he derives the strength to father. The taking of one more innocent life made no difference continue to resist. to the government he was defying.

By all measures, he knows that he Nobody outside of his own village would be better off if he agrees – which had already rejected him to fight, as his father had done – would know about it. in the previous war. He knows the consequence of resistance is At a time when the China’s execution, thus leaving his wife Catholics are debating their relationship with and children without support. He Church’s seeks guidance from his parish the secular authorities and the priest and local bishop, both of difficulties the current situation whom are too browbeaten to join presents, there is no point him in opposing the monsters pretending there are easy answers who have taken over their country to such questions. Communist and made it monstrous in turn. China is by any definition Every day, its The cross he bears he bears almost tyrannical. alone. Jägerstätter’s taciturn nature government commits industrialmeans that these discussions tend scale barbarism against innocent to be one-sided, with the other people, the Christian minority party being heard almost without included. Choosing martyrdom by reply. resisting their control completely 38

A REVIEW OF CATHOLIC AFFAIRS

would be a noble act for a Chinese man or woman. But an individual believer has other responsibilities: to help their family, to preserve their Church and to make the most of the life they have been gifted with.

a film as good, by a director as renowned, there has been relatively little said about it. It raises the question as to whether a movie as spiritual in its focus can be appreciated by a secular audience.

A story about the challenges posed to the individual conscience will Then consider the other point of always have a resonance with view. filmgoers, but this film is centred Among the four million men on the relationship between the who died fighting for Germany martyr Franz Jägerstätter and the in the war, there must have been God he died for. a great many Christians who left On countless occasions their families and marched off to throughout the film, we are shown war with a heavy heart, knowing the pristine church and its white that their country’s leaders were steeple and distinctive dome committing great crimes. Had towering above the fields where many more of them refused the the peasants of the village work. It oath to Hitler and the uniform is always there, often reminding us and rifle that came with it, it of its presence through the ringing would have made an impression. of the bells. The family home is There would have been far more filled with religious iconography. executions of conscientious objectors. But more Franz Prayers are recited and references Jägerstätters and White Roses to Scripture are made by the main would have inevitably stirred up characters, acting as if they are more resistance, and possibly narrators at crucial points. created enough Count von As Franz considers his options Stauffenbergs to overthrow Hitler. before he is due to be called up, It is a hard question to answer and he walks alone along a country it is a luxury to be able to ponder road and stops momentarily to look at a small crucifix erected on it from afar. the roadside. He looks at Christ A Hidden Life has received positive in his agony for just a moment, reviews in the secular press and turns and continues onwards has been awarded various prizes, along the path he knows he must including at Cannes. And yet for choose. The true battle here is not 39

POSITION PAPERS

between an evil regime and the man they killed, but between an evil regime and the God whose power they could not overcome, and whose servant would not serve two masters.

Languishing in prison, and asked by one of his captors whether he would like his freedom back, Franz’s answer is delivered without grandeur or emotion.

“I am free,” he says.

...the Author James Bradshaw, a public policy masters graduate, works in an international consulting firm, based in Dublin, and is a regular contributor to Position Papers.

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Interdiocesan Retreats For Priests Monday 20 Apr (9pm) - Friday 24 Apr (10am) 2020

The retreat will be preached by a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature and will also include plenty of time for silence and private prayer. www.lismullin.ie