Position Papers - May 2018

Number 519 May 2018 €3 · £2.50 · $4

A review of Catholic affairs

Abortion, autonomy and rights FR KEVIN E. O’REILLY OP FR GAVAN JENNINGS JENNIFER M KEHOE

History’s greatest event

Film review: A Quiet Place

FR GEORGE W RUTLER BISHOP BARRON

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Number 519 · May 2018 Editorial

by Fr Gavan Jennings

In Passing: Is Machiavelli alive and well in Silicon Valley?

by Michael Kirke

Abortion, autonomy and rights

by Fr Kevin E. O’Reilly OP

A Guide to The Eighth Amendment Referendum

by Fr Gavan Jennings

I hoped she’d die that night

by Jennifer M Kehoe

Holy Mary, Mother of God and our Mother

by Bishop Javier Echevarría

Me? A Catholic?

by Andrew Larkin

History’s greatest event

by Rev. George William Rutler

Book Review: How to raise kind kids — and make family life happier

by Andrew Mullins

Film Review: A Quiet Place

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

2 4 10 13 20 24 26 31 33 37

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

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Editorial

“T

he unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations.”

The Irish nineteenth century historian W. E. Lecky wrote these lines of the anti-slavery campaign in Britain at the beginning of that century. Someday, undoubtedly, historians will write similar words of the pro-life campaigns of our day. Whatever the result of the Irish referendum on abortion on May 25, the hard – “unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious” – work of those who spoke in TV and radio debates, put up posters, canvassed door to door and handed out flyers on the streets has done much to ensure that there is a “virtuous page” in the history of this country.

No society or epoch is, of course, perfect but there are instances in history when something particularly aberrant takes root and attains widespread social acceptance. We could think of the gladiatorial shows in Rome, the infanticide of the ancient Greeks, the hundreds of thousands of slaves bought and sold in the Roman Empire and in the New World, and the witch hunts of seventeenth and eighteenth century. (While of a much different scale, we could perhaps think of our own Industrial Schools as a once socially accepted aberration).

We look back at such episodes with perplexity. Even when we – rightly – contextualise such behaviour within the historical setting we still find it hard to fathom how such things happened. We ask did people not oppose this? Were ordinary people not horrified by what was going on? Were there not some who tried to wake up the others to the reality of what they were doing? Invariably when we look back we do find voices – always few in number but there nonetheless – who did speak up in defence of our common humanity, protesting against the aberrant social norm and risking ridicule, ostracisation and even persecution in the process. And these few have always ensured that even the dark pages of the history of a people is not without its virtuous pages.

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There will come a time when abortion will be a thing of the past. It will take its place in the sad museum of gigantic societal aberrations, alongside the likes of infanticide, slavery, and witch-hunts. And then the names of those who campaigned against it and who helped restore society to sanity will be remembered with great gratitude.

In this month’s issue of Position Papers we dedicate three pieces to the pro-life question: my own “A Guide to The Eighth Amendment Referendum” in which I present some basic information on the Referendum; Fr Kevin O’Reilly’s article “Abortion, autonomy and rights” which looks at how the “autonomy” talk of those campaigning for abortion founders on the rock of the undeniable humanity of the unborn person; and finally Jennifer Kehoe’s very moving account of her personal experience of the birth of her daughter Louise: “I hoped she’d die that night”.

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In Passing: Is Machiavelli alive and well in Silicon Valley?

by Michael Kirke

F

loundering might be the word which springs to mind as we look at the spectacle of poor Mark Zuckerberg trying to cope with – or, depending on your point of view, making excuses for – the failure of Facebook to protect us from predators of one kind or another.

the same reason that it was also absent from all the imagination and energy which went into Dr. Frankenstein’s creation more than two centuries ago. There are indeed those who see Dr. Zuckerberg’s – I’m hazarding a guess that at this stage he has picked up a few honorary doctorates along the way – creation as something of a mirror image of Mary Shelly’s.

For Mr. Zuckerberg the search for a solution seemed to be in the same territory from which the creature which has made him one of the wealthiest men in the world has come – technology. Totally absent from his horizon was the one feature in the landscape where the solution ultimately must lie. We suspect that it may be AWOL for

Sadly, unlike Mary Shelly’s monster, which was embodied only in fiction, a wise and salutary tale about the folly of a man who gave life to a powerful man-like instrument he could not control, Mark Zuckerberg’s creation is a real nuts and bolts,

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now apparently out-of-control, creation.

of his time and if we can learn anything from his predicament it will be by looking beyond his and his company’s problem to the bigger picture.

There seems to exist a multiplicity of black holes in the universe of modern technology.

As the Netflix series, Black Mirror, worryingly illustrates for us, our lives can be sucked into these in any number of ways with the most dire personal and social consequences imaginable.

Zuckerberg has now apologised to Facebook’s users for the “breach of trust”. What “trust” really means in the world of big tech is anyone’s guess. This breach allowed University of Cambridge researcher, Aleksandr Kogan, to harvest the details of about 270,000 people who took part in something as seemingly innocuous as an online quiz. A former Facebook manager has warned now that hundreds of millions of users are likely to have had their private information used by firms in ways that they know nothing about.

The unifying element which should offer us protection from most of these black holes is embodied in the single phrase, moral sense. The absence of this sense in the integral structure of all the myriad of pursuits of modern man is the source of many of the woes which accompany them in the form of unintended consequences.

“Unintended” may modify culpability for those consequences but if our poverty of intention stems for our neglect of serious and responsible reflection, then culpability is present as darkness is present with night.

But all the talk about this is now about control, technical control, regulation and more regulation.

Does anyone really understand any more why we regulate? If the moral sense which the modern world now lacks were a real force in our society our need for regulation, controls and all the rest would be much less. If

But let us not be personal about this. Mark Zuckerberg is a child

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all we have are external regulations and controls we are lost souls.

greatest moral voices of our time, back in 2005, just a year after Facebook moved from being a glint in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye to its launch in 2004, gave a prescient address at Subiaco in Italy.

A “reckoning is coming” for Facebook and its fellow tech giants, said The Sunday Times – and “not before time”. The issue in this scandal is not whether harvested Facebook data enabled Trump to steal the US election. “It did not – however much liberals would love to overturn the result.” Rather, it’s that Facebook has failed to protect the personal data of its users. The company has been “unforgivably lax” about thirdparty use of this information, agreed The Times. It has arrogantly shirked “the responsibilities that come with power”, and been wilfully blind to the consequences of its inaction until problems have reached the headlines.

In that address Ratzinger – who would become Pope Benedict XVI a few weeks alter – spoke of the “disquieting… possibilities of self-manipulation that man has acquired. He has plumbed the depths of being, has deciphered the components of the human being, and is now capable, so to speak, of constructing man himself, who thus no longer comes into the world as a gift of the Creator, but as a product of our action, a product that, therefore, can also be selected according to the exigencies established by ourselves.”

The black hole into which the private information of “hundreds of millions of users” has plummeted may be the least of the threats to the common good emanating from Facebook’s army of busy bees.

Joseph Ratzinger, one of the

As we know, there are plenty of people who are concerned about the manipulative characteristics deliberately built in to modern technology – from the colour coding of iPhone screens to the subtle designs of homepages across the internet. Others are

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concerned about the contribution which Facebook, for example, contributes to the cancer of gender confusion sweeping across our culture with its amoral subscribing to a bewildering plethora of genders.

to deny any of the good elements. I use Facebook and will continue to do so.

Dr. Brad Gregory in The Unintended Reformation, his masterful study of how our civilization has reached the point at which it now stands, explains that Machiavelli’s ideas about human nature influenced the rejections of the Christian (and Aristotelian, and Platonic) claim about the inseparability of morality and politics. In the Florentine’s view, efforts expended in trying to live virtuously could only seem quixotically futile, aspirations to create a correlative moral community unrealistic. In his views about human nature, Machiavelli would find successors in Hobbes, Hume, and many other thinkers.

If our world, our cultures and our civilization suffers from a moral malaise it did not begin – nor will it end – with technology and the power it places in the hands of men. In one understanding its roots are of course immemorial and the struggle it demands of us is endemic in our nature. But in recorded history we can also see a turning point at which western civilization fell deeper into the mire of confusion of which Facebook’s amorality is just another modern manifestation.

The turning point which occurred at the dawn of the modern age – and the falsehood at its heart – led Machiavelli to offer his advice to those who exercise power in this world. The spirit of this advice is also responsible for the destructive elements at work in forces of modern technology. This is not

If in the following quote from Gregory’s book, we substitute in our mind the wielders of technological power for the wielders of political power we will see how Machiavelli is alive and well in Silicon Valley.

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In theory, at least, Machiavelli’s practical distinction between the demands of political life and moral norms severed the exercise of power from teleological virtue ethics in public affairs, the “realism” of the former contrasted with the “idealism” of the latter.

Successful and therefore good politics was unavoidably immoral, and immoral politics was the norm.“ No longer aspiring to encompass traditional morality, politics becomes instead “the art of the possible”—and as people grow accustomed to new human realities, their views change concerning what is and is not possible. What his contemporaries and Reformation-era successors who offered advice to princes continued to regard as the telos of human nature within an inherited Christian worldview, Machiavelli consequentially disdained as the “imaginary world.” Human beings are what they are; the world is as it is; the effective exercise of power requires the abrogation of morality; successful rulers override the virtues

with virtu. One could exercise power or be moral, but not both.

But while “successful rulers override the virtues with virtu“, Silicone Valley overrides all morality with science and technology.

Ratzinger, who like Tiresias, perceived the scene, and foretold the rest— explained in his Subiaco address, how in the modern world the principle is now valid, according to which, man’s capacity is measured by his action. What one knows how to do, may also be done. There no longer exists a knowing how to do separated from a being able to do, because it would be against freedom, which is the absolute supreme value. But man knows how to do many things, and knows increasingly how to do more things; and if this knowing how to do does not find its measure in a moral norm, it becomes, as we can already see, a power of destruction.

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Man knows how to clone men, and so he does it. Man knows how to use men as a store of organs for other men, and so he does it; he does it because this seems to be an exigency of his freedom. Man knows how to construct atomic bombs and so he makes them, being, in line of principle, also disposed to use them. In the end, terrorism is also based on this modality of man’s self-authorization, and not on the teachings of the Koran.

to succumb to our inept regulations and continue to weave our way around them and wriggle our way out of them.

This is the miserable human condition to which we condemn ourselves to by our arrogance.

Until we escape from the delusion that we are masters of this universe, that we are orphans in this world and that we are answerable to no one but ourselves, then our fate will be

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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Abortion, autonomy and rights

by Fr Kevin E. O’Reilly OP

O

ne often hears those in favour of repealing the 8th Amendment appealing to the ideas of autonomy and to rights.

Women should be allowed to make decisions for themselves independently of others, so this argument goes, a right denied to them in Ireland at the moment, thanks to the 8th Amendment.

This appeal to autonomy and to rights is of course attractive to many today. This philosophy, however, proves to be detached from human reality. As human beings we are by nature relational: we live in a network of relationships, whether for good or for bad.

The idea that pregnant women will become fully independent in their ability to make moral decisions if the 8th Amendment is repealed lacks any reference to the pressure women can come under to have an abortion. This pressure will arguably be greater than at the moment since abortion will be readily available and there will less of an “excuse” for not availing.

The idea that pregnant women will become fully independent moral agents also ignores the fact that the abortion industry is precisely that – an industry. Its purpose is to make money and more abortions performed means more money. In some places where Planned

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Parenthood operates, it also means more body parts of aborted foetuses for sale.

spurious notion of absolute autonomy will ensure that the Irish people hand over any influence they might have over future legislation.

This practice, and others, that have been uncovered in recent times in the abortion industry should be a cause of worry to everyone since they greatly undermine the independence of pregnant women at a time when they need love and support.

They are certainly not designed to promote the happiness and well-being of the expectant mother.

The government’s proposal is for abortion up to twelve weeks but if the referendum is passed the Irish people will cease to have any say in the matter. Repeal of the 8th Amendment will leave the door open for abortion throughout pregnancy in its entirety.

One might note in passing that the sale of body parts for medical research indicates an implicit acceptance of the humanity of the aborted unborn.

Other kinds of body parts would be useless for this purpose.

The only ones who exercise unrestricted freedom when it comes to abortion are rich and powerful lobbies who have a vested interest in abortion. We are all too aware of the huge amount of money that comes from abroad in order finally to establish an abortion regime in Ireland. Buying into the

There are of course those who either doubt or deny the personhood and moral status of the foetus and therefore the right to life due to it. That fact itself, however, does not in itself warrant any kind of support for abortion any more than does the claim that at the point of conception a human being comes into existence and that, as a human being, it is has a right to life.

Both claims ought to be subjected to the rigours of reason informed by science. The scientific evidence is overwhelming: at conception a

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human being comes into existence. Those who support the so-called “right” to abortion must ignore this incontestable evidence.

that women who have had an abortion can experience ongoing trauma at the realization of what has happened.

At any rate, much abortion involves disposing of human life in the womb that is much more physically developed than it is at its first beginnings. Abortion is therefore a bloody and violent affair. Pro-repeal advocates must also ignore this fact.

The language of “embryos” and of “foetal life”, which we all use, serves to screen and to sanitize the reality of what some prefer to refer to as the “termination” of a pregnancy. It is precisely because of its violence, however,

One wonders, in passing, how many abortion clinics offer support, including financial, to those who, after having succumbed to pressure to abort their child, suffer psychological trauma. The present reaction seems to be a denial that this painful reality exists.

So much for their commitment to women’s autonomy and rights! Retention of the 8th Amendment will continue to protect mothers and their children.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fr Kevin E. O’Reilly, is a member of the Irish Province of the Order of Preachers. He is the author of Aesthetic Perception: A Thomistic Perspective and The Hermeneutics of Knowing and Willing in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. He currently teaches moral theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome.

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A Guide to The Eighth Amendment Referendum

by Fr Gavan Jennings

1. What is Amendment about?

laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

On Friday, May 25 2018 the people of Ireland will vote on whether or not to repeal Article 40.3.3 of our Consitution. That article, known as the Eighth Amendment, was voted into the Irish Constitution by a referendum in 1983, and it guarantees constitutional protection for the life of the unborn child. The article states:

The article gives equal constitutional status to the mother and the unborn and effectively bans abortion from taking place legally in most scenarios in Ireland. If it is repealed the Irish government will introduce new legislation; draft proposals for such legislation include unrestricted abortions up to twelve weeks and abortion on “health” grounds up until viability, with no gestational limits applying at all in cases of so-called “fatal foetal abnormalities”.

“The state acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and as far as practicable, by its

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2. Who is behind it?

In the thirty-five years since losing the 1983 Referendum campaign (by a two to one majority) promoters of abortion have engaged in a sustained campaign in Ireland to remove Article 40.3.3 from the Irish Consitution. This culminated in the setting up last year of an Oireachtas (Parliamentary) Committee to make recommendations regarding the introduction of abortion in Ireland. The Committee – which manifested a clear pro-abortion prejudice from the very outset, leading to a walk-out by several pro-life members. Tellingly, the Committee voted not to retain Article 40.3.3 before even hearing from all the witnesses which they had planned to call, and a full two months before publishing their full recommendations. In the end, they found that the current constitutional provision prohibiting the termination of pregnancy in Ireland was “unfit for purpose and that constitutional reform is necessary.” They voted in favour of a referendum on the matter

and the government swiftly announced a May date for the Referendum – perhaps in haste to ensure it took place before the visit of Pope Francis in August.

The pro-repeal campaign is led by the “Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment” – an umbrella group representing many political and activist groups. Only two left-wing political parties, the Labour Party and Sinn Féin, have imposed a pro-abortion policy on their parties, but the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and the various government ministers have been openly campaigning for the Repeal side.

There is unsurprisingly a strong pro-Repeal bias at work in the country’s main media outlets also, which routinely fail to cover stories which would portray the pro-abortion lobby in unflattering terms, or which would show the public the full reality of the ‘abortion culture’ which has developed in the UK and elsewhere.

The pro-life campaign to maintain the wording of the Constitution as it stands is led by two groups: the Pro Life

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Campaign (PLC), and the Life Institute (who are running the “Save the 8th” campaign) both established in the 90s. Both are very professionally run organisations – a fact borne out by their capacity to bring tens of thousands of people onto the streets for pro-life rallies and marches. They have been assisted by a third group called One Day More; a support group made up of parents who received poor pre-natal prognoses for their babies.

3. The arguments The Repeal campaign is firmly based on two planks: a feminist critique of the status quo, and an implicit denial of the humanity of the unborn child (usually termed “embyro” or “foetus”).

The Repeal campaigns holds that: “The amendment equates the life of a pregnant woman with that of an embryo or foetus and has created an unworkable distinction between a pregnant woman’s life and her health ….

The presence of the Eighth Amendment in the Irish Constitution is a source of discrimination against all women living in Ireland. It

creates a discriminatory health system where a pregnant woman only has a qualified right to health care” (from the Repeal campaign website: www.repealeight.ie). Most of the pro-repeal rhetoric is centred on women – something echoed in poster slogans such as “Trust Women” (which it must be admitted is surprisingly patronising of women, quite on a par with talk of women as “the weaker sex”).

The pro-life campaign seeks of course to affirm the humanity of the unborn, while recognising the genuine hardship often caused by unwanted pregnanies – and hence their principal slogan: “Love Both.” The campaign seeks to address the pro-repeal dichotomy between the well-being of the unborn, and the health of women.

4. Who will win?

The latest polls (Behaviour & Attitudes/Sunday Times and Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI of late April) show roughly the same result: 62% to 38% in favour of repeal (with undecided voters removed). The question is

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whether the pro-life campaign can convince at least 13% of that 62% to change their minds, within a month. It is certainly not impossible and the pro-life campaign is engaging in a very vigorous campaign around the country – by all accounts much more vigorous than their counterparts. What we may be seeing is that the core point of their argument – the humanity of the unborn – is getting through, but as of yet this has not translated into a decision to vote to safe-guard unborn life.

babies] suck their wee thumbs and they have toenails, fingernails and arms and legs.”

She said that in an abortion “they scrape the contents of the womb. The pro-lifers are right.

Out come the wee arms and legs, and I thought: ‘Oh God, is this what I am advocating?’” And yet despite this she confirms that she will vote to repeal the Eighth Amendment since she believes abortion is still necessary.

However who knows what will happen in the polling booth on May 25?

An interesting case in point is that of the Nell McCafferty a renowned Irish feminist and founder member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement.

Recently she told a Women in Media conference in Co Kerry that she was trying to make up her mind on abortion: “Is it the killing of a human being? Is it the end of potential life?” She said she could not answer the question. “But it’s not that I’m unable – I am unwilling to face some of the facts about abortion.” She said she recently googled what a pregnancy looks like at twelve weeks. “They [the

5. What is the role of the Catholic Church in all of this?

It has been claimed that the Catholic Church has been very quiet in the referendum campaign. In March the Economist carried a piece under the heading “Catholics are keeping a low profile in Ireland’s abortion referendum campaign” in which the claim is made that – in contrast with the 1983 prolife campaign – “overt Catholicism has all but vanished from the [current] scene”. The article goes on: “Although the religious affiliations of many

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activists are, of course, known, contemporary pro-life groups like the Iona Institute, the Pro Life Campaign, the Life Institute, and Save the 8th present themselves as non- or multi-denominational, or simply leave such matters vague.”

This is a very strange claim to make, though perhaps it is a case of wishful thinking by the Economist. Firstly, as far as I can remember, the pro-life campaign in Ireland has never been confessionally Catholic, but genuinely pluralist.

Furthermore, there was manifestly no shortage of “overt

Catholicism” on the March 2018 “Rally for Life” in Dublin (rosaries, statues, banners, nuns, monks and priests – including yours truly). Nevertheless the pro-life campaign rightly affirms that abortion can and should be rejected on human rights grounds, regardless of overt or covert religious beliefs.

Furthermore eleven bishops have released pro-life pastoral letters over the past few months (for example, to list but a few: Two Lives, One Love, Bishop Denis Brennan, 15 April 2018; Supporting a Culture of Life, Bishop Denis Nulty, 15 April 2018; Life is both sacred and a

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human right, Bishop Francis Duffy, 23 March 2018; Every human life is sacred, Bishop Leo O’Reilly, 6 March 2018).

That said, since abortion has been firmly framed as a women’s health issue the opinions of men, and even of women beyond child-bearing age, tend to be rejected tout court.

Understandably then the chief public proponents of the pro-life cause are younger women (such as Cora Sherlock, Caroline Simons, Sinead Slattery and Lorraine McMahon of the PLC and Niamh Uí Bhriain of the Save the 8th campaign). These women are presenting the prolife position in a very attractive and articulate manner.

Priests certainly have not been silent on the matter in their parishes, even though this has drawn criticisms which are sexist and even ageist. One notorious case has been that of the former chair of the Oireachtas abortion committee, Senator Catherine Noone who, following Easter Sunday Mass in the national shrine of Ireland tweeted: “Easter Mass in Knock Basilica this afternoon with my

parents – an octogenarian priest took at least three opportunities to preach to us about abortion – it’s no wonder people feel disillusioned with the Catholic Church.” The tweet led to an angry out pouring across social media and was eventually withdrawn.

6. What will the result mean for Ireland?

A loss would obviously be a source of terrible discouragement to many in Ireland and beyond; it would come as a confirmation Ireland’s commitment to the stripping away of centuries’ held values, coming as it would hot on the heels of the introduction of same-sex marriage through our last referendum in May 2015.

Victory while sweet, would not be without its own potential pitfalls. It would exacerbate what was termed after the 1983 Referendum “the second partitioning of Ireland” between conservatives and liberals in moral matters, and would invariably deepen the existing hostility towards the Catholic Church so prevalent in many sectors of Irish life. This would

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add a new and problematic dimension to the planned papal visit to Ireland in August for the World Meeting of Families.

Another very serious and worrying consequence of a successful campaign to repeal the 8th Amendment would mark a fatal step in the move away from the natural law model of law towards a positive law model on the part of the Irish State.

There have been several significant steps in this direction over the past few years, most notably the gradual dismantling of the natural rights of the family vis a vis the State, culminating in the “State takeover” of marriage through the same-sex marriage vote of 2015:

the State no longer “acknowledges” marriage as an institution that antecedes law, but now sees itself as the arbiter of marriage. Similarly, and more dramatically, a pro-abortion result would see the State – for the first time in its history – become the arbiter of who should live and die. Once this principle is established, the who, when, where and why of who should die is only a matter of legal quibble. No doubt the element of ageism voiced by some within the pro-repeal milieu would soon find full expression in a campaign to introduce euthanasia into Ireland.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fr Gavan Jennings is the editor of Position Papers.

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I hoped she’d die that night

by Jennifer M Kehoe

I’

ve never written this before and I’m not sure I’ll hit share when I’m finished writing it because it seems shocking.

situation. NOBODY can ever be prepared for it, NOBODY ever thinks it’ll be them.

The day we discovered that our twenty week old unborn daughter had multiple heart and brain problems was shocking beyond anything one can imagine it would be. Whatever you think it’s like, it’s worse, much worse. I have never, before or since, felt the avalanche of emotions and terror of that day and the few days that followed.

It was in the middle of deep dark November and my world had just collapsed in a matter of minutes.

Honestly, I cannot emphasise enough how devastatingly terrifying it is to be in that

Here’s the shocking bit. What you think you know of me is not the full picture.

That evening, in the middle of a tear-drenched rosary I turned to my husband John and said: “I hope she dies tonight”. Read that again. Louise who I love beyond language that exists, I hoped she’d die that night.

Now it was not for one trillionth of a nano second an option that I would kill or authorise anyone else to kill this beloved beloved child, but I was in the worst situation of my entire life and I

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wanted out of it as quickly as possible. I have a long history of miscarriage, it has been part of our marriage from the start – baby … miscarriage … baby … miscarriage – until I had grieved seven of my children.

Immediately previous to this pregnancy we had lost the twins I had always dearly hoped for; there are twins in both sides of our family. The grief for those twins was crippling and I wasn’t managing too well with it. I was worn out with grief after grief and to be honest I didn’t think I would survive the grief of watching a newborn child die in my arms.

So I hoped she’d die that night.

Because I was terrified, and grief stricken, and terrified. You cannot imagine it. The doctor had offered a quick way out: “go to England”. I was never going to go to England. I could no more kill my little child than I could kill my thirteen year old.

But I wanted out of this situation.

I was terrified. And terrified. I had grieved for seven of my

beloved children. Now this child was much bigger, much older, much more see-able than her older siblings who hadn’t made it, but it would still have been a miscarriage and I thought I could survive it. I didn’t think I could survive a born child dying. I thought her last breath would be my last breath.

If she died tonight I could get on with my grief and maybe next year sometime I could come out of the familiar cloud of crippling, caustic, smothering grief which I hated so much. Maybe next year I could forgive my body for killing my child and start to treat it properly instead of deliberately eating rubbish and not exercising because why would I care for the thing (me) which kept killing my children.

Now here’s the thing. Had I said to our doctor: “OK, give me the letter” (which I later heard from other mothers was also offered to them by the same doctor). We would have been on a rollercoaster of booking planes, organising babysitters, planning meals and school runs and who would bring the girls to ballet, and athletics, and piano … a

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rollercoaster doesn’t stop to let you think and cry.

But I had no control over whether this baby died tonight or tomorrow or the next day, because I wasn’t going to go to England. I was going to stay in Ireland, where another doctor would someday call her baby and use the word ‘hope’.

I spent the next day crying. My brother dropped all his activities and came to me. He sat at our kitchen table for several hours and said nothing while I cried and cried and cried. My best friend and neighbour, a nurse, told me I could do this; we’d love her and she would too. My sisters called over and cried with me because there weren’t that many words you can say to a terrified grieving mother whose world has crashed. My father came and we prayed the rosary together. The children prayed for the baby of someone they knew who was very sick, they prayed so lovingly for that unknown – yet oh so known – baby. And my husband, he was there. I believe in a crisis that one person is given the grace to carry everyone else. He was that person. It wasn’t me because I

was terrified. How could we tell these children that they may never hold their beloved sister alive? How could you do that?

A day later I didn’t want that child to die that night. I wanted her to hang in there for a few more weeks. I wanted a birth certificate. I became fixated on a birth certificate. I wanted her to live for four more weeks so that Ireland would recognise that she was here and that she had passed through and that her name was Louise. It meant everything to me that she would be officially acknowledged as having existed.

Had we boarded the rollercoaster of planes and babysitters and abortion appointments, I wouldn’t have had time to shed the river, the tsunami of tears that gave me courage to accept a twenty-four week stillbirth over a twenty week miscarriage.

A few days later I didn’t want that child to die before she was born. I wanted her to live for every last second she could squeeze out of life. After a few days I was willing to hold a dying baby in my arms and to kiss her into eternity. I was willing to take whatever grief

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would allow me to kiss this child even if she only lived for one hour, one minute, one second. I wanted to be the one who loved her into the arms of Jesus.

who was told they could take her upstairs now from ultrasound room to abortion room.

I could not possibly have reached the point from wanting her to die tonight to being willing to take whatever it was going to take to mother this baby who was in trouble. It took me a few days of tears and undignified soulwrenching sobbing and the prayers of a drowning mother to muster enough courage, however ragged, to face the future. I couldn’t have done that had I been given a next day appointment for an abortion. I couldn’t have done that had we been like a friend in Liverpool

Time healed. Just enough to give me courage for the future and whatever it held.

As you know, she didn’t die that night. As you know, she loves her little puppy. As you know, she is beloved beyond language can describe.

The eighth amendment has saved numerous Louises. It has saved numerous babies, sick or well.

Because sometimes we need a few days to adjust to terror and to decide I don’t want my child to die, I want her to LIVE, if only for a minute.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

Her daughter Louise is now 8 years old.

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Holy Mary, Mother of God and our Mother

by Bishop Javier Echevarría

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he life of our Lady teaches us, as St Josemaría wrote, that great sanctity doesn’t require spectacular deeds. Rather it is found “in the hidden and silent sacrifice of each day…. To become God-like, to be divinized, we must begin by being very human, accepting from God our condition as ordinary men and women and sanctifying its apparent unimportance. Thus did Mary live. She who is full of grace, the object of God’s pleasure, exalted above all the angels and the saints, lived an ordinary life.”

We see reflected here one of the essential features of our Lady’s earthly existence, and therefore of the call to lead a holy life that her own life represents. This is one of the marvelous and simple truths that we discover by entering the home of Jesus, Mary and Joseph

in Nazareth. A person seeking to serve and please God can find the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier in ordinary life, in the midst of daily work and ordinary occupations. Mary’s life teaches us with great clarity that it is possible to be fully immersed in one’s daily occupations and, at the same time, to divinize them. It is possible to be “contemplatives in the middle of the world,” keeping up an intimate dialogue with God in the normal activities of our day.

To attain this goal, we need to strive to direct our daily activity to God. And if the greatness of the ideal should ever threaten to overwhelm us, the consideration of our Lady’s faithful response can spur us on. Moreover, let us never forget that we have in our hands not only the treasure of her example but also her constant

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help, since she reigns alongside her Son in heaven and is always ready to come to our assistance with her maternal affection and care. As soon as we invoke her, and even beforehand, Mary comes to our help, although quite often her effective and loving protection passes unnoticed to us.

Let us also remember that our Lady’s path, like her Son’s, does not turn aside from the Cross. We should not fear the Cross, because there, if we look towards and follow Mary, we will discover as she did the joy that floods our soul when we forget about ourselves and entrust ourselves to Jesus’ redeeming love. Her maternity, exercised to the fullest possible extent alongside her Son on Calvary, is a strong yet gentle invitation to accompany her and share in her self-giving for the salvation of the world, embracing her as our Mother….

dealings; and in penance and sacrifice, sought out and loved in our ordinary occupations. We find it the joyful testimony of our temperance, of our love for holy purity, and of solidarity with the suffering and needs of all mankind, especially those who are weakest. We find it in avoiding every occasion of sin; in fleeing from temptation; and in quickly returning to God through sacramental confession.

As John Paul II told us, Mary brings us the light and help we need to return to the house of the Father, to undertake the path of repentance for sin, which leads to the joy of knowing we are God’s children.

We discover the rich treasure of the Cross in daily effort to understand others and show them generosity; in small, everyday opportunities to serve others – even when it is hard – occasioned by our family life, work environment and social

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This is an extract from Chapter 4 of Paths to God (Scepter) by Bishop Javier Echevarría, the late Prelate of Opus Dei who died in December 2016.

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Me? A Catholic?

by Andrew Larkin

This is the text of a talk to Sixth Year students on the occasion of Catholic Schools Week in March 2018.

A

s the title of this talk implies, this is going to be a personal response to Catholicism, how it has affected and influenced my life and ultimately brought me to where I am now. I would like to highlight here in my talk, the joy of being a Catholic and how it is ultimately for my happiness.

So let me answer the question within the title. Why of course, yes! IF I could paraphrase the ending of James Joyces’ great novel Ulysses: “Yes I said Yes I am Yes”. For me, it is my faith,

my Catholicism, my belief in Jesus Christ who died for my sins and rose from the dead that animates and orientates my whole life. It is this faith which gives me my primary identity. I would like to share with you something very intimate which not even my family have read. IT is something I came across written as a young man in my early twenties. It is my mission statement (you all know what a mission statement is don’t you?

– in business terms it is a formal summary of the aims and values of a company. I made out a mission statement for me as a person, summarising who I am and what I stood for.) So here goes: “I acknowledge that my whole life and being comes from

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God and that I want to strive to live a life worthy of a son of God. I want to be a loving and caring son to my parents, the best brother to my brother and sister, and a loyal friend to my friends.”

Despite the passage of more years than I quite realise, I don’t think I would change very much of that mission statement, apart from adding now about being a loving and caring husband and father which correspond to my new vocation in life.

Do you notice how I use the word vocation? Perhaps you only thought that priests had vocations. Well, they do, but so do we all. I would like to say to you boys, that each one of you has a unique and special role that God has mapped out for you and that only you can play it.

Perhaps we are frightened and scared of this idea. But we shouldn’t be. Do you know how many times the phrase “Do not be afraid” is mentioned in the Bible? 365 times. That’s it boys.

Once for every day of the year.

God is telling us not to be disheartened, not to be frightened, not to give in to despair. Because it is our

vocations and our fulfilling of our vocations that will give us the greatest joy and true happiness in life.

In this talk, I would like to take four sacraments: Confession, Eucharist, Marriage and the Sacrament of the Sick, flag key points in my life in my journey as a Catholic where these sacraments have really touched my life. I would like to draw conclusions for you that might be useful ideas as you move onto university and your working life.

Confession: If there is one thing I really learned in Rockbrook School, it was the concept of confession. I am not sure if any of you have seen the excellent series called Prison Break?

Highly addictive, so don’t watch it while you are studying for the Leaving Cert, but afterwards it’s worthwhile. In the second season, one of the rogue CIA agents who in the process of trying to indict a criminal, talks to him about confession. “You know what the best thing about Catholicism is? It’s confession.

You can go into a box and tell a priest all your sins and then

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you’re free, your slate is wiped clean.” It’s rare that one can learn orthodox theology from TV. It’s a sacrament of great joy.

I can still remember the times coming out of confession leaping for joy, a great weight having been lifted from my mind. And the grace of the sacrament can really help you work on small faults of character. So for instance, I remember finding it difficult not to get distracted by books or TV when studying for my Leaving Cert. It’s not a sin per se, but you will agree it is a weakness. Well, with the help of confession, God gave me the grace to overcome this weakness. And remember, human nature doesn’t change – there’s no sin you can say that the priest hasn’t heard hundreds of times before. But don’t take my word for it: experience the love and the joy by going to confession this Lent.

University life: In a very short time, you may well be off to university or some other college pursuing the dream, the subject you always wanted to study in depth. I loved my time at university: there is a heady

combination of freedom and youth. Certainly, it is a time, where you will have no one telling you what to do: go to Mass, to pray. It was at university that I really became inspired by my faith in two ways: both intellectually and emotionally.

I remember attending a talk by the Catholic Chaplain at Cambridge University on human flourishing. The concept could be simplified to this: that God is not some policeman in the sky who is trying to catch us out with the commandments. No, rather he is a loving father who wills our happiness, who wills us to flourish humanly. I cannot say how much this idea revolutionised my faith. Instead of seeing religion in purely binary legalistic terms of whether some action was a sin or not, I now had the blueprint to live well all the myriad moments and actions that constitute life. Whether it be sipping champagne, fine dining, gallant balls – provided they were in accordance to one’s dignity and state in life – then they were absolutely willed by

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God and something we should rejoice in as goods of the earth.

That’s not to state that university is one big party – much as I love parties, I think that would be rather dull, don’t you? Life must have its balance.

There is a serious obligation on you as a student to study to the best of your abilities: so when you are working, you work assiduously, producing a brilliant essay, a masterful thesis or whatever is appropriate in your field of study. Because that too, it is part of human flourishing. God wills that we should give the time needed to our studies.

It is important at university to be able to tap into the Catholic world. It is this community that will help you live out your faith.

I would like to share a very personal experience of God’s revelation to me in my heart. At university I had joined a Catholic group called Youth 2000. IF the truth be told, I fancied the girl who had invited me to join and I felt this was an excellent way of getting to meet her regularly! Anyway, on one of

these retreats there was Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in silence. As I was praying before the Blessed Sacrament, I became aware of a burning heat within my heart area and an intuition that God is love and that in order to love Him worthily we must allow him to fill our hearts with His Love.

That experience has stayed with me: I recall it as vividly now as it was when it happened. As I was to discover a long time afterwards, and after much reading, this is very much the essence of our Christian vocation and it had all been revealed to me within an instant, an extraordinary grace, bestowed with the generosity of a God who gives back a hundred fold. “No one who has left Father, mother, brother, sister, house or land for my sake will receive one hundred times and will inherit eternal life.” I don’t know about you but these words from the Gospel have always struck a pleasant chord within me. Maybe, it is the happy knowledge that we have got the sweet end of the bargain.

Imagine going up to the bank

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and putting in one euro and then a week later being able to draw down one hundred euro! It sounds like Bitcoin but with only the upswing to it. Imagine if I give God ten or twenty minutes of my time to prayer each day how much more will God give back to me! I can say that from years of personal experience.

The days when I am tired and don’t want to pray, I get nothing done, I mope re lack of time and the unending chores of life. The other times when I do set aside some time for personal prayer, I feel so much happier and joyful and it is funny but it also seems that I have much more energy.

My to-do list shrinks wonderfully and I get so much more from my time than I would

have if I hadn’t of prayed. When I was in Sixth Year I prayed that I would study well and then as I got closer to the exams that I would study the things that would come particularly attentively. I think we can say that God gave me that help to study very well indeed.

And think about the second half of the bargain – eternal life.

What a magnificent prospect!

Only God could be so generous in giving us so much for so little in return.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andrew Larkin is a teacher, musician and

music critic based in Dublin. He is also a director of Family Enrichment Ireland. Next month we will include the second part of this talk where Andrew deals at some length with marriage and also gives an insight on the Sacrament of the Sick.

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History’s greatest event

by Rev. George William Rutler

W

e know directly from Saint Paul that Greek philosophers thought the Resurrection was a curious absurdity. Politicians more pragmatically feared that it would upset the whole social order. One of the earliest Christian “apologists” or explainers was Saint Justin Martyr who tried to persuade the emperor Antoninus Pius, that Christianity is the fulfillment of the best intuitions of classical philosophers like Socrates and Plato.

Justin was reared in an erudite pagan family in Samaria, in the land of Israel just about one lifetime from the Resurrection.

Justin studied hard and accepted Christ as his savior, probably in Ephesus, and then set up his own

philosophical school in Rome to explain the sound logic of the Divine Logos. Refusing to worship the Roman gods, and threatened with torture by the Prefect Rusticus, he said: “You can kill us, but you cannot hurt us.” Then he was beheaded.

Fast forward almost exactly a thousand years, and another philosopher, Bernard of Chartres, also admired the best of the Greek philosophers and coined the phrase “We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.” There had been long centuries without much effort to explain the mystery of the Resurrection with luminous intelligence. In the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton would describe himself the same way.

Being intellectual dwarfs may

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sound pessimistic, but there was also optimism in the fact that, lifted on the shoulders of giants, they could see even farther than the giants themselves. In witness to that, less than fifty years after Bernard died, building began on the great cathedral of Chartres. The magnificent rose window in the south transept depicts the evangelists as small men on the shoulders of the tall prophets. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are closer to Christ in the center of the window, than Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel who lift them up, seeing in fact what the prophets had longed for in hope.

advocates of any merely human doctrines.”

The Resurrection was the greatest event in history, and unlike other events that affect life in subsequent generations in different degrees by sequential cause and effect, the Resurrection is a living force for all time, making Christ present both objectively in the Sacraments, and personally in those who accept him. Thus, indifference to the Resurrection is not an option. The future life of everyone depends on a willingness to be saved from eternal death.

The Risen Christ is neither a ghost nor a mere mortal. Ancient philosophies could be vague about things supernatural, and ancient cults could be distant from personal conduct. The Resurrection unites ethics and worship. A famous letter of an anonymous contemporary of Justin Martyr meant to be read by the emperor Marcus Aurelius, said that the way Christians live “has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Father Rutler is a priest of the

Archdiocese of New York. He has made documentary films in the United States and England, contributes to numerous scholarly and popular journals and has published twenty-one books on theology, history, cultural issues, and the lives of the saints. This article first appeared on “Fr. Rutler’s Weekly Column” and is published here with the kind permission of the author.

Book review How to raise kind kids — and make family life happier

by Andrew Mullins Author: Thomas Lickona.

Publisher: Penguin Books (April 10, 2018)

K

indness is not moral confetti that good people sprinkle randomly and benignly. It is not a nice but casual quality of character; rather, it is the indispensable building block of character and of relationships.

To raise kind children is core business for every parent.

This parenting gem by renowned developmental psychologist Tom Lickona reminds us just how crucial is kindness in the formation of a child, and how much, as adults, we must model it and reinforce it daily.

One cannot have a habit of kindness and remain selfcentred. Our lives have to revolve around others or fall far short of their design brief. No parent sets out to raise selfish children, yet there are many selfish, restless, and ultimately unhappy adults in prosperous societies.

Why are our minds and hearts full of our own plans? Why are we reluctant to give time to others, yet so good at justifying preoccupation with our own needs?

The West does not get it. In our civilised self-satisfaction, how much thought do we give to the one billion people living on less

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than $1 a day? Or to the 10 percent of the world’s population hungry each night?

Or to the frequent warnings of Pope Francis about the “rampant individualism” of our age?

importance of good habits if we wish to be able to think wisely and take others deeply into account, rather than give scope to self-indulgence. Ultimately, he says, human beings must be fulfilled in relationships of love founded on truth, or we selfdestruct.

We don’t join the dots; a focus on others comes with the habit of kindness. Our families need to be schools of kindness and often they are not.

In other words, we need Dr Lickona’s book. It will help us counter the breakdown of family; relationships shredded by an all-about-me ethic; the sense of entitlement to sexual pleasure above any commitment to the wellbeing of others; and a political landscape marked by back stabbing and self-indulgent consumerism. Ultimately, kindness is a duty, not a take-itor-leave-it extra.

Too many parenting books are collections of random insights without an authentic anthropology or a convincing psychology of what children need. The bedrock of Lickona’s psychology is the crucial

Unlike so many other parenting and educational writers, Lickona is not afraid of concepts such as “good” and “right”, and so is able to articulate a clear message about character development: “We know that good character involves knowing what’s right, caring about what’s right, and doing what’s right — and that doing is the hardest part.

Modern moral psychology confirms what Aristotle taught centuries ago: We become good by doing good.”

This book is the outcome of his lifetime commitment to character education. Lickona is the founding director (in 1994) of the Centre for the 4th and 5th Rs (Respect and Responsibility) at the State University of New

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York. He has trained thousands of teachers from around the world in how to instil character education in their classrooms and schools. Perhaps nobody in the West has done more to put character education in the curriculum.

contemporary character education movement.

Unlike so many other parenting and educational writers, Lickona is not afraid of concepts such as “good” and “right”, and so is able to articulate a clear message about character development: He is a past president of the Association for Moral Education, and served for fifteen years on the board of directors of character.org, where he authored the influential 11 Principles of Character Education. His work is known the world over. He has been featured in a lead article of the New York Times Magazine.

When the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtue launched its comprehensive study of character education in UK schools, Lickona was the keynote speaker. He is arguably the most influential figure in

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Most importantly, although so much of his professional work has been addressed to teachers, much of his writing has also been addressed to parents. He understands that parents not only have the duty to be, but are best placed to be the decisive influence in the lives of their children.

His new book is immensely readable because it is full of life examples and surprising research findings. Lickona is a genius at packaging the most substantial of messages with a light touch. To dip into How to Raise Kind Kids is to be delighted by the breadth and practicality of the information.

It is a goldmine of parenting resources, the distillation of Lickona’s forty-five years of writing and research into what makes effective discipline, best builds family culture, fosters character, counters the impact of screens on children or the impact of our hypersexualised culture.

Lickona weaves his Christianity into the book in a totally natural way, making it clear that kindness is a universal value.

Christianity simply affirms this: if we say we love God and fail to love others, we are kidding ourselves; unless we love as Christ loved, the penny has not dropped. Religion demands habits of kindness. Kindness is anything but a discretionary quality of character.

day showing me the local sights as we talked. Since then, he and Judy drove up to meet me when I was visiting Canada. He knows more than a little about kindness. Treasure this book and give it to every young parent you know. They and their children will draw great benefit from it.

Some years ago I visited Tom and Judy Lickona in their home in Cortland, their guest for two delightful days. Even before he had met me personally Tom had invited me to stay in his home, and driven an hour to an airport to pick me up. Then he spent a "

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Mullins was the Headmaster of Redfield College and Wollemi Colleges in Sydney for 18 years. He is the author of Parenting for Character. He now works with university students in Melbourne. This article is reprinted with permission of MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons Licence.

Copyright © 2018 Mercatornet.

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Film review A Quiet Place

by Bishop Robert Barron (SPOILER ALERT! Article contains many spoilers about the film)

deft strokes. We learn that a terrible plague of fierce, devouring creatures has descended on the earth. Where are the monsters from? Outer space, maybe? We’re never told —which makes the story more compelling. The few people who have survived the holocaust have learned that the creatures, though blind, are extraordinarily acute of hearing. Therefore, the key to survival is silence. Our attention becomes focused on the Abbot family, two youthful parents and three small children, making their quiet way through a beautiful but dangerous open country. When the youngest of the kids flips a switch on his toy rocket,

I

went to see A Quiet Place, John Krasinski’s new thriller, with absolutely no anticipation of finding theological or spiritual themes. I just wanted a fun evening at the movies.

How wonderful when a film surprises you! I don’t know if I can find the golden thread that draws all of these themes together into a coherent message, but I think one would have to be blind not to see a number of religious motifs in this absorbing film.

The basic structure of the narrative is laid out in simple,

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causing buzzing sound to pierce the silence, one of the beasts devours him just before his terrified father can save him.

We flash-forward several months later, and we watch the Abbots (can the name have possibly been accidental?) going about their lives in what could only be characterized as a monastic manner: no conversations above a whisper, elaborate sign language, quiet work at books and in the fields, silent but obviously fervent prayer before the evening meal, etc. (I will confess that this last gesture, so thoroughly absent from movies and television today, startled me.) Given the awful demands of the moment, any gadgets, machines, electronic entertainment, or noisy implements are out of the question. Their farming is by hand; their fishing is done with pre-modern equipment; even their walking about is done barefoot. And what is most marvelous to behold is that, in this prayerful, quiet, premodern atmosphere, even with the threat of imminent death constantly looming, a generous

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and mutually self-sacrificing family flourishes. The parents care for and protect their children, and the remaining brother and sister are solicitous toward one another and toward their parents. The young girl even regularly risks her life to pay silent tribute to her fallen brother at the spot where he was killed.

Monsters and beasts in the more reflective horror movies are evocative of those things that frighten us the most: illness, failure, our own wickedness, death itself. How wonderful that a Hollywood movie would suggest that what is needed to keep the darkness at bay in our time is silence, simplicity, a return to the earth, prayer, and care for one another.

The central drama of A Quiet Place is that Mrs. Abbott is expecting a child. The entire family realizes, of course, that a wailing infant would, given the circumstances, mean almost certain death for all of them.

And yet, they decide not to kill the child at his birth but to hide

him and mute his cries in various ways. When so many in our culture are willing to murder their children for the flimsiest of reasons, when the law gives full protection even to partial-birth abortion, when people blithely say that they would never bring a baby into such a terrible world, the monastic family in this film welcomes life, even into the worst of worlds, and even when such an act is of supreme danger to them. As the baby is coming into the light, the mother finds herself alone (watch the film for the details) and in the most vulnerable situation, for one of the beasts has made its way into their house. As she labors to give birth, the devouring animal lurks. I was put immediately in mind of the scene in the book of Revelation, where Mary is in the throes of child birth as the dragon patiently waits to consume the child.

As the abbess is struggling to give birth, the abbot has gone in search of his endangered children. He finds them, to his horror, trapped in an

abandoned car, one of the beasts clawing at them through the roof, like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. After mouthing the words, “I love you; I have always loved you” to his daughter, who gapes at him through the car window, the father screams, drawing the monster to himself. This act of self-emptying love, which serves to liberate his children from danger, is beautifully evocative of the speculations of the Church Fathers regarding the death of Jesus. In his act of self-sacrifice on the cross, the fathers argued, Jesus lured the dark powers into the open and away from the human beings who had been in their thrall.

Along similar lines, in an odd working of plot or Providence that can be likened to the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice, it becomes clear in the wake of the father's death that he has left behind for his family the means by which the monsters can be defeated.

I have no real idea whether any or all of this was in the mind of the filmmaker, but I do know from John Krasinski’s

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Wikipedia page that he is the son of a Polish-Catholic father and an Irish-Catholic mother and that he was raised a devout practicer of his faith.

So until definitively shown otherwise, I am going to maintain that A Quiet Place is the most unexpectedly religious film of 2018.

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.

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