Position Papers - October 2014

A review of Catholic affairs

Taking the Islamic State seriously

Law and morality in public discourse Believe it or not, there is one good thing about Sin City On the loneliness of the sexual revolution

Blessed Alvaro del Portillo

Calvary

480 October 2014

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480 October 2014

Editorial

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Letter to the Editor

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Law and morality in public discourse!

Charles J. Chaput

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Believe it or not, there is one good thing about Sin City!

Michael Kirke

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9/11, Belloc, and Islam!

Fr. C. John McCloskey

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On the loneliness of the sexual revolution!

Msgr Charles Pope

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It’s time to take the Islamic State seriously!

Rev. James Schall SJ

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Our First (Grand)Parents!

Dr. Sean McDermott

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Breaking the Silence: Redefining Marriage Hurts Women Like Me – and Our Children!

Janna Darnelle

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Blessed Alvaro del Portillo!

Bishop Javier Echevarría

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A moment of special joy!

Pope Francis

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Calvary!

John Mulderig

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Rev. Gavan Jennings!

Michael Kirke, Pat Hanratty, Brenda McGann!

Liam Ó hAlmhain!

Dick Kearns!

Víctor Díaz

Contact us The editor, Position Papers, P.O. Box 4948, Rathmines, Dublin 6 email: editor@positionpapers.ie; website: www.positionpapers.ie Tel.+ 353 86065 2313 For new or renewed subscriptions contact: info@positionpapers.ie Articles ©Position Papers, who normally will on application give permission to reproduce gratis subject only to a credit in this form: ‘Reprinted, with permission from Position Papers, Dublin’. Please note: the opinions expressed in articles do not necessarily reflect those of the editor nor of the Opus Dei Prelature of which he is a priest.

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EDITORIAL On Saturday I was in Madrid to attend the beatification of a man who defined himself as a shadow. That man was Bishop Alvaro del Portillo, the first successor of St Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, whose shadow Blessed Alvaro was claiming himself to be. And there’s why Alvaro is indeed now Blessed Alvaro: because he could not only call himself another man’s shadow, but also live the greater part of his life as a living shadow. And there we also see the single greatest obstacle to our own sanctity: that overweening desire of ours to be in the full glare of the sunlight, to be seen, to be the one casting shadows.

At the time Alvaro del Portillo discovered – completely unexpectedly – his vocation to give his life entirely to God in Opus Dei, he was twenty-one, exceedingly bright, and on course for a stellar career in engineering. Then he heard St Josemaria preach a thirty minute meditation on God’s love which lit up his soul and changed his life for ever. Instantly he asked Opus Dei’s founder for permission to join the fledgling organisation, and from that moment had no other ambition than to assist St Josemaria in the incredibly arduous task of establishing Opus Dei within the Catholic Church to promote the universal call to holiness of all the faithful. To that end Alvaro became a shadow: an assistant so unshakeably faithful that the founder dubbed him ‘Saxum’ – ‘rock’. There was no life project for him, no projection of his talents or personality, outside of this divinely ordained task.

How much we need this kind of example in the Facebook age where we jostle – face competing with face – to be seen, liked and shared. Who would ever think of making their profile a mere addendum to someone else’s Facebook profile? Well that is what Blessed Alvaro did with his whole life. And last Saturday 200,000 of us attending the beatification ceremony watched as that gentle, smiling face of Alvaro del Portillo was slowly unveiled before us on an enormous screen as Mother Church assured us that this was the face of true success.

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR Dear Editor,

Ages, and they were believed to have great value for military purposes. In the Laws (636b sq) the Athenian Stranger, that is to say Plato, criticises the institutions of Sparta and Crete on the very ground that they were favourable to the abuse of such relationships. In the Ionian States generally, on the other hand, they were considered disgraceful, and, though the Dorian custom had made its way into Athens before the time of Solon, its abuse was condemned both by law and by public opinion…

Your Position Papers interests me more and more. The last issue (Aug/Sept 2014) has a very good article by Michael Kirke, and also a very good one by R.R. Reilly. I like to comment on this one a little.

I have no objection to anything, except to the idea that there was a ‘partial acceptance’ of homosexuality.

This contradicts something that Reilly writes in the same article, the statement

by Socrates that the relation (between a man and a boy) has to be like that of a father and son.

The personal chastity of Socrates is assumed as the foundation of the whole story, and we have therefore no right to interpret his language in a gross sense.

What really surprises a modern reader is the matter-of-fact way in which the abuse of such relationships is spoken of. It will help us to understand that, if we remember that at Megara, only a few miles from Athens, no disgrace attached to it. In these circumstances, we can hardly look for the same reticence on the subject as is commonly observed at the present day, though Plato’s condemnation is unequivocal.

The love, with the involvement of the heart (which obviously has to be controlled) is normal, as that young chap could be your son, and therefore does not involve any homosexuality.

About the problem in Greece, I would like to quote John Burnet in his book Greek Philosophy: Thales to Plato, London: Macmillan, 1932, pp. 138ff (which although published in 1932 is very authoritative, and is still widely quoted nowadays):

There is also something that may be a cause of misunderstandings something: the Greek love of beauty, related to the admiration of young men.

In speaking of his relations with these young men, Socrates habitually used the language of love, tempered, of course, by his usual sly humour. To understand this, we must remember that at Thebes and Elis and in the Dorian States, att a c h m e n t s o f t h i s k i n d w e re a recognised institution. They had their origin in the romantic relation of knight, squire and page in the Greek Middle

Yours sincerely,

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Rev Gonzalo Gonzalez Glasgow, Scotland.

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One of the most contentious issues in contemporary politics is whether religion belongs in the public square or whether it poisons open debate. The Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput, recently addressed this question at a seminar in Toronto. Here is a slightly abridged version of his talk.

Law and morality in public discourse Charles J. Chaput

M

y theme tonight is the relationship of law and morality in public discourse.

And since it’s always a good idea to start at the beginning, I’ll do that.

his glory. They lead us to embody what God intended human beings to be and do. …

If creation has a moral order, then how should we think about our human laws?

In the beginning, Genesis tells us, “the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Gen 1:2).

Creation begins in chaos. On each day of creation, God brings new things into being.

Then he orders them according to a plan.

God makes things for a purpose. He creates the world out of love. As Aquinas teaches, God orders the universe as a whole, and that order reflects his glory.[1]

Since we’re made in the image of God, human beings can order their actions and communities just as God orders his creation.

The German political philosopher Eric Voegelin taught that the law is “the substance of order in all realms of being…

The law is something that is essentially inherent in society,” but we give it practical force through the lawmaking process.[3] Law binds us together.

It reflects our society’s order, but it also secures that order.

It shows who we are as a people, but it also forms us as a people. So if we want to thrive, we need to ensure that the laws we make what we call “positive laws” – ground themselves in a right understanding of what it means to be human.

The world works better when it follows God’s design. We see this in our own moral lives.

God gives us the law and the beatitudes because they lead us to joy. Jesus shows us the plan God writes into human nature so that, by his help, we can flourish.[2] Too often we think of rules as things that keep us from being happy. But rules, understood as God’s order, are good for us because they show us how to live in a way that shares in

Some key points follow from this.

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LAW AND MORALITY IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE

The natural law and our laws

Harmonising with the natural law

H

H

ere’s the first point: The natural law should undergird our positive laws.

Jacques Maritain, the French scholar of Aquinas who helped draft the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, noted that while lots of people can agree on what universal human rights are, they can’t agree on the foundation of those rights. Maritain argued that only the natural law can adequately justify the rights of man.[4] And more than 50 years later, Benedict XVI said much the same thing in an address to the United Nations. In his words to

ere’s the second point: Our positive laws – by their application — teach us to live or not live in harmony with the natural law. They can lead us to freedom founded on truth. Or they can lead us away from it.

Borrowing from Augustine and Aquinas, Maritain argues that human life has two final ends; two purposes that govern the decisions we make. One is earthly. The other is heavenly. One focuses on peace and justice in this world. The other focuses on eternal life with God. Earthly laws should lead us toward our earthly end, which should also ready us for our heavenly end.

that the rights recognised and expounded in the [Universal Declaration of Human Rights] apply to everyone by virtue of the common origin of the person, who remains the high-point of God’s creative design for the world and for history. They are based on the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilisations. Removing human rights from this context would mean restricting their range and yielding to a relativistic conception, according to which the meaning and interpretation of rights could vary, and their universality would be denied in the name of different cultural, political, social and even religious outlooks.[5]

The ultimate goal of our laws is to make us morally good. Our laws should help us accord with the design God has written into human nature.[6] Thus civil law, Maritain writes, “should always maintain a general orientation toward virtuous life, and make the common behaviour tend, at each level, to the full accomplishment of moral law.”[7]

the General Assembly, Benedict stressed

We often hear the claim that we shouldn’t press for laws that impose our morality on others. But no one really believes that kind of argument, because it makes no sense. In practice, all law involves imposing certain moral claims on other people. Persons who support permissive abortion or same-sex unions, for example, are very comfortable in coercing the public through the courts and lawmaking process. As Christians we should be equally comfortable — and even more zealous — in defending the human person and advancing human dignity through legislative and judicial means.

To put it another way, without the natural law, human rights have no teeth. In fact, socalled “human rights,” when they’re divorced from the natural law, become inhuman.

That said, the American Jesuit thinker John Courtney Murray rightly warned that if we try to give everything that’s morally good the force of the law, people will sooner or later

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start to think that whatever is legal is also moral. In other words, laws can’t solve all our moral problems.

Nor do I – quite the opposite. But we need to remember that the battle for hearts and minds runs deeper than winning a particular issue at the polling booths. Conversion is more important, and much more farreaching, than any particular legislative debate.

Rather, Murray concludes, laws should seek “to establish and maintain only that minimum of actualised morality that is necessary for the healthy functioning of the social order.”[8] Beyond this, a nation must look to other, non-legal institutions in civil society to maintain its moral standards.

Now, it’s easy to say that positive law should be grounded in natural law. And positive law does clearly reveal a lot about a culture.

So, good cultures should logically have good laws and bad cultures should have bad ones – right?

Law is supported by culture

T

hat brings me to my third point: The law can’t teach effectively without the support of a surrounding moral culture, because law arises from that culture. As many thinkers, including St. John Paul II, have recognised, culture precedes politics and law.[9] Law embodies and advances a culture, especially its moral aspects. We Christians need to keep this in mind as we work for justice in our societies, despite the very negative climate of today’s culture wars.

We should use political means as fruitfully as we can, without apologies. We should seek and employ political influence in our work on vital issues like marriage and family, abortion, immigration and euthanasia. And it’s right and just that we do so.

But real life is more complex. In Canada and the United States, we have a long legacy of many good man-made laws founded on principles of natural law. And they’re often still in force. But these laws no longer enjoy the cultural consensus that made them. A new, unfriendly cultural consensus demands t h at t h e y b e re d e fi n e d o r d u m p e d altogether.

It’s helpful to know where this new consensus came from. So I want to mention very briefly two political philosophers: the French scholar Pierre Manent, and again, Eric Voegelin.

Manent argues that modern life – the “modern project” – grounds itself on the power of the human will to transform the world around us.[12] Obviously, humans have always known that they could change the world to some degree. But the ancients were more aware of their limits. They were also more modest in their ambitions. They held that we need to reconcile ourselves to an existing order of nature that, even if flawed, is still essentially good. And in recognising nature’s limits and the need to conform to its order, they found real freedom.

But, as Cardinal Avery Dulles once noted, culture wars can’t be won by tactical battles, even on crucial issues such as these. Policy statements by bishops and advocacy by lay men and women have important value. But their words, said the cardinal, “must be backed up by a coherent social and political philosophy.”[10] In the long run, Dulles wrote, “if a consensus exists in favor of a healthy society, the implementation will almost take care of itself.”[11] Again, Dulles never suggested that we should abandon the political arena.

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Moderns see the world very differently.

Modern life “frees” us from thinking that we need to conform to any natural order – or even from believing a natural order exists.

This explains the bitterness of the voices that seek to discredit God in our own time. It also explains the savagery of the totalitarian regimes of the last century. God can be mocked, but in the end, his order can’t actually be overturned.

In Aristotle’s time, men and women saw the natural purpose of marriage —its telos— and they tried to pursue it, however imperfectly.

Moderns also look at marriage. They want marriage to be different. So they work to reshape it according to their will.[13] And since we’ve lost our understanding of an objective human nature and moral order, the desires of our will very quickly take on the mantle of “human rights” that others may not interfere with it.[14]

A Christian approach to law

W

here does this leave us as Christians?

As in every other age, we’re called to preach Jesus Christ to our fellow citizens.

We need to learn for ourselves and be ready to teach others the truth about the human person, the objective foundation of morality in the natural law. We need to fight to keep our human laws obedient to that deeper law.

The reason so many moderns seek to And we need to remind people of the change the order they find in the truths they’ve forgotten, the truths world is that they experience it on which our society is “Christ does not win as confining or unjust. Eric founded. victory over anyone who Voegelin notes that the more does not wish it. He As then-Cardinal Ratzinger modern men and women conquers only by convincing, once wrote, the moral seek to re-create the natural for he is the Word of God.” convictions that undergird order, they more they need the United States — and, I Joseph Ratzinger would argue, Canada – to remove God from its head.[15] In this resentment of the natural “demand corresponding human order and in the attempt to change it attitudes, but these attitudes cannot flourish through the human will, Voegelin sees a new unless the historical basis of a culture and the form of the Gnosticism that Christianity has ethical-religious insights that it preserves are fought from its birth. And yet the Gnostic taken seriously. A culture and a nation that effort at remaking reality will always fail cuts itself off from the great ethical and because the order of being cannot, in fact, religious forces of its own history, commits be changed: As Voegelin says, suicide.”

He continues, “The cultivation of essential “ The closure of the soul in modern moral insights, preserving and protecting Gnosticism can repress the truth of the soul, these as a common possession but without as well as the experiences that manifest imposing them by force, seems to be one themselves in philosophy and Christianity, condition for the continued existence of but it cannot remove the soul and its freedom in the face of all [of today’s] transcendence from the structure of nihilisms and their totalitarian consequences. reality.”[16] It is here that I see the public task of the Christian churches in today’s world. It

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accords with the nature of the Church that [she] is separated from the state and that [her] faith may not be imposed by the state but is based on convictions that are freely arrived at.”

Ratzinger closes with a quotation from Origen: “Christ does not win victory over anyone who does not wish it. He conquers only by convincing, for he is the Word of God.”[17]

Here’s the second, and ultimately more hopeful, example.

At the end of his masterwork After Virtue, the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre famously compares the circumstances of those persons today who have traditional beliefs about virtue, to men and women in the socalled “Dark Ages.” He argues that what mattered for them, and what matters for us now, is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us.

If the problems in our culture boil down to a kind of hubris, an unhealthy over-emphasis on the power the human will, then the conversion of our wills and those of our neighbours must be part of our Christian witness. That conversion can take place especially through culture, and Christian discipleship is especially important for its influence on culture.

"And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope.

This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament.

We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another — doubtless very different — St. Benedict.”[19]

It’s worth mentioning two examples of how this influence can play out, taken from European history.

In his book The Unintended Reformation, the historian Brad Gregory notes that “the failure of medieval Christendom derived… from the pervasive, long-standing, and undeniable failure of so many Christians, including members of the clergy both high and low, to live by the Church’s own prescriptions and exhortations based on [her] truth claims… It was at root a botching of moral execution, a failure to practice what was preached.”[18]

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In other words, if I understand MacIntyre correctly, one of the ways we might begin to live more fruitfully in a world that seems so deeply conflicted is to create parishes, seminaries, clubs, colleges and families that are real schools of sanctification. These would be vital in building up society, changing the culture, and trying to build a renewed sense of Christian community.

When Christians failed to live as disciples, a flood of political, cultural and religious changes followed. Gregory outlines those changes at great length. But for us it’s enough to note that many of them were painful, and they led to a triumph of the sovereign will that Manent and Voegelin see as the central problem of our time.

But, as Benedict XVI said in one of his many talks, the original St. Benedict and his monks never sought to build a civilisation or preserve a culture. Rather, he said, “Their motivation was much more basic.

Their goal was: quaerere Deum [to seek

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LAW AND MORALITY IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE

God]. Amid the confusion of the times, in which nothing seemed permanent, they wanted to do the essential — to make an effort to find what was perennially valid and lasting, life itself. They were searching for God. They wanted to go from the inessential to the essential, to the only truly important and reliable thing there is. … What gave Europe’s culture its foundation — the search for God and the readiness to listen to him — remains today the basis of any genuine culture.”[20]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Charles J. Chaput OFM Cap. is the Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia. He previously served as Archbishop of Denver. A member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi tribe, he is the second Native American to be ordained a bishop in the United States and the first Native American archbishop. He is author of two books: Living the Catholic Faith: Rediscovering the Basics (2011) and Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life (2008) and numerous talks, articles and pastoral letters.

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It’s in seeking Jesus Christ with all our hearts that culture is built and society is renewed.

It’s in prayer, the sacraments, changing diapers, balancing budgets, preaching homilies, loving a spouse, forgiving and seeking forgiveness – all in the spirit of charity — that, brick by brick, we bring about the kingdom of God… This article appeared on www.mercatornet.com

Notes [1] ST I.47.1c.

[9] See also George Weigel, “John Paul II and the Priority of Culture,” First Things, February 1998.

[2] See also Gaudium et Spes, 22.

[3] Eric Voegelin, “The Nature of the Law,” in The Nature of the Law and Related Legal Writings (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 27) (Columbia, MI: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 24–25.

[10] Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “Religion and the Transformation of Politics,” in Church and Society: The Laurence J. McGinley Lectures 1988–2007 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 119.

[4] Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1951), 97.

[12] Pierre Manent, Metamorphoses of the City: On t h e We s t e r n D y n a m i c , t ra n s . M a rc Le Pa i n (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 3.

[5] Pope Benedict XVI. Meeting with the Members of the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization. New York, April 18, 2008.

[6] See also Robert George’s Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

[7] Maritain, 171.

[8] John Courtney Murray, SJ, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960), 166.

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[11] Dulles, 123.

[13] “The principle of consent, set in motion by the will of the individual, penetrates and rearranges the relations that appeared up to then invariably inscribed in the eternal order of human nature and above all the relations between parents and children, and man and woman, or in the eternal order of the world, especially those which constitute religion” ((Pierre Manent, The City of Man, trans.

Marc A. LePain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 161).

LAW AND MORALITY IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE

[14] “Thus severed from being, the notion of human rights by itself lacks ontological density. It will irresistibly conquer the political and moral realms since, available and unattached, it can easily be tied to the various experiences of man that all appear capable of being looked at in its terms. All the desires of nature, like all the commandments of the law, can, it seems, be looked at without violence or artifice in terms of human rights”(Manent, The City of Man, 139).

Ratzinger also identifies three patristic ways of understanding the phrase “the kingdom of God.” First, Origen called Jesus the autobasileia; that is, the kingdom of God is Jesus himself. It’s a person, not a place or a state. Second, other authors say that man’s interority is the place of the kingdom. God reigns in us and therefore his kingdom is within us. Third, the Fathers speak about how God’s kingdom and the Church are brought into closer or farther proximity.

Ratzinger focuses on the first one especially: Jesus is the location of God’s action among us, the seed that must fall into the ground and die in order to bear life, the pearl of great price. (49–50, 61)

[15] Eric Voegelin, Modernity without Restraint: The Political Religions, The New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, ed. Manfred Henningsen (Columbia,MI: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 278–279.

[22] Richard John Neuhaus, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 14.

[16] Voegelin, Modernity without Restraint, 222. In the same volume he also writes: “Men can let the contents of the world grow to such an extent that the world and God disappear behind them, but they cannot annul the human condition itself. This remains alive in each individual soul; and when God is invisible behind the world, the contents of the world will become new gods; when the symbols of transcendent religiosity are banned, new symbols develop from the inner-worldly language of science to take their place” (60).

[23] As Eric Voegelin observes, since Christianity posits that human nature finds its fulfilment only in the final end of the beatific vision, not on earth or by human means, Christian life in this world is shaped by sanctification: moving toward the goal of that vision, which is our ultimate perfection. Unlike the Gnostics, Christians do not think such perfection can be achieved by their own efforts or in this world (Modernity without Restraint, 298).

[24] “But it is our interest that it enjoy this peace meanwhile in this life; for as long as the two cities are commingled, we also enjoy the peace of Babylon.

For from Babylon the people of God is so freed that it meanwhile sojourns in its company. And therefore the apostle also admonished the Church to pray for kings and those in authority, assigning as the reason, that we may live a quiet and tranquil life in all godliness and love. And the prophet Jeremiah, when predicting the captivity that was to befall the ancient people of God, and giving them the divine command to go obediently to Babylonia, and thus serve their God, counselled them also to pray for Babylonia, saying, In the peace thereof shall you have peace, Jeremiah 29:7 — the temporal peace which the good and the wicked together enjoy” (Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin, 2003), 892).

[17] Joseph Ratzinger, Values in a Time of Upheaval (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2006), 51–52.

[18] Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 366. For a relevant review of Gregory’s book, see http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/11/6902/.

[19] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 263. [ 2 0 ] Po p e B e n e d i c t X V I . M e e t i n g w i t h Representatives from the World of Culture. Collège des Bernardins,Paris, September 12, 2008.

[21] Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans.

Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 146.

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Believe it or not, there is one good thing about Sin City Michael Kirke

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he West has lost its sense of sin, but would do well to recover it.

nothing less than our sense of reality, part of our sense of the existence of God.

Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City 2 has been a commercial and a critical flop. That, probably, is no bad thing. It brings Frank Miller’s noir-ish, ultra-violent graphic novels to the big screen for a second time. The first Sin City was a huge box-office hit; now, nine years on, we must roll up our sleeves, snap on our suspender belts, and return to that titillating place of permanent midnight, to where men are men and women are mostly prostitutes, said Kevin Maher in The (London) Times. For another critic, what kills it is its repetitive and un-engaging plot. For a film that tries very hard to shock with its “cartoonish sex and violence”, Sin City 2 is remarkably “dull”, and endurance test, he said.

It is the modern age’s defining characteristic that it has lost the sense of sin – and it has lost this because it has lost its sense of reality, its sense of God. In little more than one generation – my generation – the rot began in earnest. It was there before, indeed the history of thought shows that it was always there, but in embryonic form. It has had a long gestation but with its birth we have been presented with a true monster.

I know parents of my generation, good people who firmly believe in God and who practice their religion devoutly and publicly.

Their children, now adults, are also good people and a credit to their parents, their country. They have all the refinements – kindness, generosity, a sense of responsibility – engendered in them by the civilisation we have the privilege of being part of. But there is a difference between them and their parents. They do not believe.

But at least it has one good thing going for it, even if it is only its lurid billboard advertising we see. It is a reminder to us of what we like to forget. Sin is behovely, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well – but only so long as we don’t forget that sin exists.

Does it matter? Will they be any less good, kind, generous and responsible than their parents for all that? Possibly not. Indeed, by all accounts they may be more so. Their parents were good parents and gave them the milk on which they were nurtured, milk filled with the vitamins of their own faith and vision of man’s origin and destiny. But the one thing which many in this generation did not take from that nourishing milk was faith and a belief in God, their creator. The milk with which they nourished their own children

We need a sense of sin

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he world is divided by sin – not between sinners and non-sinners. We are all, each in our own way, sinners. The great divide now is between those who know that sin exists and those who deny its existence. Sin is behovely because the sense of sin is an essential part of our living the good life. It is

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BELIEVE IT OR NOT, THERE IS ONE GOOD THING ABOUT SIN CITY

in some way failed to be transmitted – on a scale not seen between any two generations in recorded history. If this is an exaggeration please cite chapter and verse to disprove it.

Nor is it an exaggeration to predict some dire consequences of this failure.

civilisation that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” He is right in most cases but to lay this charge against Christian civilisation is to ignore what is at the heart of this culture. Where brutality and barbarism accompanied the spread of Christian civilisation it did so in contravention of its very essence. Invariably the barbarisms which afflicted Christian societies were eventually tamed by the beauty and power the Christian message, leaving us with the jewels we have in expressions of faith – in art, music and literature – and flowing out from those, the treasures of human expression in all those forms as well.

Can the West survive the lost of Faith?

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o society that we know of in history has had the kind of flourishing which the societies marked by Christian civilisation have had. It is in these societies and in this civilisation that our ideas of the qualities of justice, equality, kindness, mercy and a sense of the unique value of a human life have evolved.

They have evolved out of a living source, even when the reality of that source itself has been doubted.

That source is the Judaeo-Christian religion.

The big question however, is how long can this flourishing last beyond the outright rejection of the source from which it springs.

The result of the cultural chasm which has now opened up in the West is the unravelling of the entire fabric of societies founded on those values. What we call the “triumph of the West” is under threat. It is under threat because its source and the ultimate vision which sustained it seems to have died in the minds hearts of those who have inherited it.

Will all this now survive the loss of faith, the loss of vision which was at their heart? The signs in m a are not propitious. Art has nj e become banal at best – think of rB te l those sickening banners we see a W hanging in churches – and at worst, nihilistic. Music, for the most part, has become incomprehensible and is a weak caricature of what it was. Literature, for the most part, speaks of little more than destruction, pessimism and death without redemption – when it is not wallowing in lust which it tries to pass off as love.

If these artefacts are the manifestations of contemporary civilisation, what does it augur for the future human agents who will live, breathe and look for nourishment in that civilisation? What happens when those who look out from within a culture see nothing beyond the vision presented in these artefacts? Do we really think that the human spirit can flourish in this desert? Will each

Has any civilisation in history outlasted the force which gave it life? In the majority of cases those forces were undoubtedly physical and brutal. Walter Benjamin observed that there is “no document of

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BELIEVE IT OR NOT, THERE IS ONE GOOD THING ABOUT SIN CITY

generation which follows the last not slide further and further into the abyss, as the residue of goodness which they have inherited becomes fainter and fainter?

The centre cannot hold

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f the vision of reality contained in these words of Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, written nearly 2000 years ago, shortly after the dawn of Christianity, is now not just ignored but vehemently denied and its adherents persecuted for believing it, the consequences cannot but be other than apocalyptic.

It was not angels, therefore, who made us, nor who formed us, neither had angels power to make an image of God, nor anyone else, except the Word of the Lord, nor any Power remotely distant from the Father of all things. For God did not stand in need of these beings, in order to the accomplishing of what he had himself determined with himself beforehand should be done, as if he did not possess his own hands!

For with him were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit by whom and in whom, freely, he made all things, to whom also he speaks, saying, Let us make man after our image and likeness (Genesis 1:26), he taking from himself the substance of the creatures, and the pattern of things made, and the type of all the adornments in the world.

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.

Deny this vision, reject this truth, live life according to that denial and surely things will fall apart, the centre cannot hold.

Without this vision all we are left with is the misery of Sin City – and without even knowing that we should call it what it is.

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9/11, Belloc, and Islam Fr. C. John McCloskey

The current assault of radical Islam on Christianity may come as a surprise to many people, but one British author clearly foresaw these events nearly a century ago.

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s another sad anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States arrives, it’s clear that we are nowhere near the end of this conflict between the radicalised Muslim world and the Christian (and post-Christian) population. There seems no reason why the jihad of a relentlessly committed sector of Muslims may not continue for decades more.

ancient roots in this biblical part of the world.

A millennium of conflict with Islam

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he modern-day revival of religious conflict between Muslims and Christians is not the main topic of this column, however. The Church, both Greek and Roman, has been in conflict with Islam (the supposed religion of peace) on and off for over a thousand years now.

While Catholics in America are also engaged in legal, political, and social battles to defend our religious liberties, those of us ke e p i n g t ra c k o f t h e n e w s i n n o n mainstream religious ghettos are increasingly horrified by the state of religious liberty elsewhere, and particularly in the Middle East.

Within the first century or so following Mohammed’s death, Islamic forces swept across the Near East and Northern Africa, jumped the strait of Gibraltar to conquer almost all of Spain, and were threatening France. The medieval Song of Roland is a poetic account of the key defence of the Frankish army against Muslim forces in this area, while in Spain tales of El Cid celebrate the early part of Spain’s Reconquista, a centuries-long pushback by Christian Spain that barely concluded as Columbus’s began his voyage to the New World.

The place where our Saviour was born and lived has been under attack, as have surrounding countries such as Syria and Iraq, where many Christians are being driven from their ancestral homelands or even undergoing martyrdom. While we pray for peace in all countries where people of other faiths too are suffering persecution, naturally, what lies uppermost in our minds and hearts is the tragedy and exile of Christians with

After 9/11, no one should be surprised to learn that Islam is turning the West’s

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9/11, BELLOC, AND ISLAM

superiority back on itself. What is surprising is that a lone historian saw this coming in the 1930s. The great Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc, friend of G.K. Chesterton and a prolific historian, was prescient as no other writer about the resurgence of Islam in our own era.

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Here are just of the more salient passages from his work on the threat of Islam to the West: •

“We shall almost certainly have to reckon with Islam in the near future. Perhaps if we lose our Faith it will rise.”

•

“The future always comes as surprise . . . but I for my part cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam.”

•

“And in the contrast between our religious chaos and the religious certitude still strong throughout the Mohammedan world . . . lies our peril.”

•

“There is nothing inherent to Mohammedanism to make it incapable of modern science and modern war.”

•

“[Islam] still converts pagan savages wholesale… No fragment of Islam ever abandons its sacred book, its code of morality, its organised system of prayer, its code of morals, its simple doctrine. In view of this, anyone with a knowledge of history is bound to ask himself whether we shall not see in the future a rival of Mohammedan political power, and the renewal of the old pressure of Islam on Christendom.”

You can read more in this same vein in The Essential Belloc: A Prophet for Our Times, edited by Scott Bloch, Brian Robertson, and myself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Father C. John McCloskey, III, STD is a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei. He currently is Research Fellow of the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington DC. From 1985 to 1990, he was a chaplain at Princeton University. He is perhaps best known for guiding into the Church such luminaries as Dr. Bernard Nathanson, Lawrence Kudlow, Robert Novak, Judge Robert Bork and Senator Sam Brownback.

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On the loneliness of the sexual revolution

The rise and triumph of casual sex has lead to the demise of dating among young people and with it the loss of the thrill of innocent sexual attraction.

Msgr Charles Pope

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’ve pondered with you before on this blog the disappearance of something we used to call “dating,” wherein a young man would summon the courage to ask a young lady out to dinner or perhaps to the movies.

He would do something called getting “dressed up,” go to the young woman’s house, often meet her parents, take her out for the evening, and then return her home at a respectable hour.

one woman for the purposes of having a family and raising children. In the general culture today it really means little more than two (and soon to be two or more) adults consorting for as long as they please, for whatever purposes they please, until it makes them happier to no longer do so.

With the demise of marriage also came the demise of dating, which existed to serve marriage and to provide opportunities for younger men and women to meet and eventually marry.

Dating was something that one did beginning in late high school or in college. Youth too young to date were often encouraged by adults to meet one another, and so the adults often sponsored dances and other social activities for young men and women to meet, learn to dance, and interact socially. All this was in service of something we used to call “marriage,” a term that has lost any real meaning in the general culture over the past fifty years. It used to mean (and still does in the Church) the lifelong, stable union of one man and

An open hostility between the sexes

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s I pondered the disappearance of dating with you some months back, I was surprised at the the sad and sometimes bitter or cynical remarks that came in the comments box. Clearly there is a significant undercurrent of bitterness, cynicism, and lack of trust between the sexes. So many young men wrote in, with great anger at

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ON THE LONELINESS OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION

times, about how they are treated by young women, who seem to see them as predators and as somehow beneath them. Many young women confirmed this by describing men as immature and not interested in anything but sex. The overall climate seems to be deeply imbued with a poisonous cynicism and even an open hostility between the sexes.

was an innocent time when men and women generally observed chastity, and within those safer boundaries, were able to speak more freely of their interest in one another and relate at more subtle levels than all-ornothing sex.

The loss of innocence and the rise of cynicism have rendered the relationships between men and women hostile, fearful, and fraught with posturing and negotiation.

In a certain sense we see today an age of lost innocence. Gone are the days of idealistic young men and women venturing out to find a spouse, excited at the prospect of marriage, family, and future. Now, because of divorce rates unimaginable fifty years ago, idealism has been replaced by cynicism. And with the explosion of easily accessible pornography, sexual innocence is lost very, very early. Almost no young people these days think ahead to a blissful wedding night and having their first experience of sexual intimacy there.

To be fair, men and women have struggled to get along since the time of the book of Genesis. Many women are in fact very different from most men. Men think differently, often have different priorities, and behave rather differently. But, Holy Matrimony had traditionally been an important way that we bridged the wide gap between men and women, getting them to focus on a shared vision of family and children. The differences might well remain, but with a common goal those differences could become a diversity that added strength to the shared work of family.

Yes, it is an age of lost innocence. The word “innocence” is from the Latin in (not) + nocens (harmful or noxious). Thus in seeing someone as innocent, we presume that they mean no harm. But in cynical and jaded times like these, fewer and fewer people presume innocence on the part of anyone. A young man can barely take notice of a woman’s beauty, let alone tell her she’s beautiful, without being suspected of predatory sexual advances. He might even get sued or lose his job if he does so in the workplace. A woman cannot be even subtly flirtatious without fearing significant pressure to go very far, very fast with someone she might just like to get to know slowly.

Defending marriage

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n terms of continuing the discussion on the disappearance of dating and on the tension between the sexes, I’d like to share the insights of Anthony Esolen, who has made some very poignant observations. I would encourage you to read his book Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity, which is one of the finest analyses of the demise of marriage that I have seen.

Throughout the book, Esolen (a professor of English at Providence College) gives many examples of poetry and art from the last thousand years that emphasised romance, beauty, and a love that sought union in marriage and family. He writes,

Almost no one presumes innocence anymore and to do so is scoffed at as naïve.

So cynical and jaded have we become, that we even ridicule the notion that there ever

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But this tradition is in its death rattle … Why should we have expected otherwise? When men and women [since the sexual revolution of the late 60s] are taught to use other people as objects of sexual excitement … as if they were toys or robots, do we really expect that they should all at once see the beauty and the nobility of the other sex? … Today popular musicians do not sing lyrically about a woman’s beauty or man’s courage. Instead they whine and grunt like animals … and have almost nothing kind to say to one another …

The sexual revolution is essentially a lonely one … The sexual revolution isolates. The man says to himself, “I will have this woman now, because it is convenient, but I’ll make sure she doesn’t press things further.” The woman says to herself, “I’ll let this man have his way, because he’s weak and I can manipulate him.” Each one says, “We must make sure that no third person [i.e., a baby] intrudes upon this arrangement”… And if that third person does intrude, he may well be dispatched with cold steel … and his remains be deposited in a bag labeled “biohazard.”

[Young people] also see a world that is vile at every turn—one in which, even before puberty, most children will have pored over things which people of past generations not only had not seen, but could not have imagined, for their squalor and perversity. [It is] a horrible world in which children are precocious and adults childish and selfish. This is the world of the sexual revolution. [Young people] see it … and feel powerless to do anything about it. So the corruption spreads …

Boys now in high school and college do not ask girls out for dates. They can’t. There’s no “language” for them to use … If he says, “I’d like to take you to a movie,” what does that imply? In a more innocent time, it meant that he’d take the girl to a movie, and he might be brave enough to put an arm around her shoulder, or even steal a kiss. In a more innocent time, the kiss itself would be a delight. To walk home with the girl he likes best, holding her hand, would thrill him to the core of his being. A blushing kiss at the front door might’ve been the stuff of dreams; sweeter by far than anything that the bored addict can glean from a hundred pages of body parts.

The bad language has driven out the good. So the boy … dare not kiss her with any passion or hold her hand or give her a warm embrace. All those actions have now lost their old meanings, and have become mere preludes to sexual congress. Therefore we hardly ever see them. Boys do not give girls flowers, or write poems for them. They do not court them. Girls do not present themselves to be courted. If they tease boys, it isn’t [seen] as innocent flirtation. [Things] that were supposed to bring people together, have wrought mass alienation. The evidence is there for all to see, or rather not to see … I do not see boys and girls flirting in a childlike way, or kissing, or holding hands, or bowling at the alley, or dressing up for one another, or giving valentines to one another. At Yale, Valentine’s Day is “celebrated” by “Sex Week,” complete with the sale of sex toys and “how-to” presentations by prostitutes. [A certain play which I won't mention by name on this blog] features spoiled and corrupted college women who cry out for their independence from predatory males by shouting the vulgar name for their private parts. Anger, resentment, self-promotion, immodesty, cruelty, callousness, perversion; try now asking that girl over there what her name is and whether she will go with you to the ice cream social.

The whole of the sexual revolution has been a colossal failure and has brought untold human misery (Excerpts from Chapter 4).

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ON THE LONELINESS OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION

This is a powerful analysis and I have found its truth more and more in my discussions with younger adults today. Even those who do not want to adopt these attitudes find them so pervasive that they don’t know how to break out of the stifling, lonely system and find love again. I am in the perplexing position of knowing many remarkably beautiful women — ones whom I’d have asked out on a date in a minute back in my youth — who are almost never approached for a date. Many young women today are also, frankly, not all that interested in marriage or family. They have careers, etc. and live in a culture that no longer looks askance at having children without marriage.

So who needs men (at least as husbands)?

Or so the thinking in the wider culture goes.

Again, this is all so true. And we in the Church have also gotten out of the work of uniting the next generation. We have to do better.

This piece first appeared on the blog: http://blog.adw.org/author/cpope/

Our culture has gotten very sick, very q u i c k l y. A n d t h e s e x u a l re v o l u t i o n and radical feminism have been the poisons we’ve swallowed.

Esolen makes the following observation about our culture: No culture is perfect — far from it. But all healthy cultures reward virtue and punish vice, encourage what is noble and beautiful and discourage what is base and tawdry, promote liberty, and restrain license. [Every young man] must now dwell in a perverse anti-culture in which his attempt to practice the demanding virtue of purity meets less than approval. It meets snorts of disdain and ridicule. In a healthy culture he would not be alone, and it would not be hard for him to meet a young lady of similar mind. Married men and women, in a healthy culture, would take upon themselves the cheerful task of bringing such boys and girls together in those innocent and lively pastimes that are the seedbed of sexual attraction and love; in dances and concerts, and parties attended by everyone from toddlers to grandparents hobbling on their canes (p. 54).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Msgr. Charles Pope is the pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian, a vibrant parish community in Washington, DC. A native of Chicago with a bachelor degree in computer science, his interest in the priesthood stemmed from his experience as a church musician. He attended Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary and was ordained in 1989.

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It’s time to take the Islamic State seriously Rev. James Schall SJ

IT’S TIME TO TAKE THE ISLAMIC STATE SERIOUSLY

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slam has no central or definitive body or figure authorised to define what exactly it is. Opinions about its essence and scope vary widely according to the political or philosophical background of its own interpreters. The current effort to establish an Islamic State, with a designated Caliph, again to take up the mission assigned to Islam, brings to our attention the question: “What is Islam?”

Is terror intrinsic to Islam?

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hat I want to propose here is an opinion. An opinion is a position that sees the plausibility but not certainty of a given proposition. But I think this opinion is well-grounded and makes more sense both of historic and of present Islam than most of the other views that are prevalent. I do not conceive this reflection as definitive. It is a view that, paradoxically, has, I think, more respect for Islam than most of its current critics or advocates.

The issue of “terror” is a further aspect of this same understanding. Many outside Islam seek to separate “terror” and “Islam” as if they were, in their usage, independent or even opposed ideas. This latter view is almost impossible seriously to maintain in the light of Islamic history and the text of the Qur’an itself.

This comment is an apologia, as it were, for the Islamic State at least in the sense that it accepts its sincerity and religious purpose. It understands how, in its own terms, the philosophical background that enhances its view does, in its own terms, justify its actions, including the violent ones.

John Kerry, however, insists that what we see is “terrorism” with nothing to do with Islam.

The Obama administration seems to have a rule never to identify Islam with “terrorism”, no matter what the evidence or what representatives of the Islamic State themselves say. The vice-president speaks of “Hell” in connection with actions of the Islamic State. Diane Feinstein speaks of “evil” behind the current slaughters in Iraq and Syria. The pope mentions “stopping aggression”. The English hate-laws prevent frank and honest discussion of what actually goes on in Islamic countries or communities in the West. Not even Winston Churchill’s critical view of Islam is permitted to be read in public.

The Islamic State and the broader jihadist movements throughout the world that agree with it are, I think, correct in their basic understanding of Islam. Plenty of evidence is found, both in the long history of early Muslim military expansion and in its theoretical interpretation of the Qur’an itself, to conclude that the Islamic State and its sympathisers have it basically right. The purpose of Islam, with the often violent means it can and does use to accomplish it, is to extend its rule, in the name of Allah, to all the world. The world cannot be at “peace” until it is all Muslim. The “terror” we see does not primarily arise from modern totalitarian theories, nationalism, or from anywhere else but what is considered, on objective evidence, to be a faithful reading of a mission assigned by Allah to the Islamic world, which has been itself largely procrastinating about fulfilling its assigned mission.

Ecumenism and liberalism both, in their differing ways, because of their commitment to tolerance and free speech, make it difficult to deal with what is happening in Islamic states. Islam is not friendly to relativism or to subtle distinctions.

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IT’S TIME TO TAKE THE ISLAMIC STATE SERIOUSLY

To look elsewhere for an explanation is simply not to see what the Islamic State and its friends are telling us about why they act as they do. The tendency among pragmatic Western thinkers, locked into their own narrow views, is to exclude any such motivation as an excuse of raw power. This view shows the intellectual shortcomings of Western leaders and the narrowness of much Western thought.

to use Western political terms to blind ourselves to the religious dynamism of this movement. No wonder our leaders cannot or will not understand it. This purpose, when successful, is a terrible thing. But we are not seeing a group of gangsters, as many are wont to maintain. The roots of Islam are theological, rather bad theology, but still coherent within its own orbit and presuppositions.

Jihadism, as it were, is a religious movement before it is anything else. Allah does grant violence a significant place. It is over the truth of this position, or better the inability to disprove it, that the real controversy lies. A recent essay in American Thinker calculated that over the years of its expansion, from its, beginning in the 7th and 8th centuries, some 250 million people have been killed in wars and persecutions caused by Islam. Nothing else in the history of the world, including the totalitarianisms of the last century, has been so lethal.

Briefly put, Islam, in its founding, is intended to be, literally, the world religion. Nothing else has any standing in comparison. It is to bring the whole world to worship Allah according to the canons of the Qur’an. It is a belief, based on a supposed revelation to Mohammed, of which there is little evidence.

Sufficient justification to expand this religion, once founded, to all the world by use of arms is found in the Qur’an and in its interpreters to explain the violent means used, often successfully, to establish, pacify, and rule tribes, states, territories, and empires.

If Islam is a religion of peace, what sort of peace does it bring?

In Muslim doctrine, everyone born into the world is a Muslim. No one has any right or reason not to be. Hence, everyone who is not a Muslim is to be converted or eliminated. This is also true of the literary, monumental, and other signs of civilisations or states that are not Muslim. They are destroyed as not authorised by the Qur’an.

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ther understandings of Islam’s record, though not its mission, within Islam may be also plausible, but no more so than this jihadist interpretation. It may be possible for some to read Islam as a religion of “peace”. But its “peace”, in its own terms, means the peace of Allah within its boundaries. With the rest of the outside world, it is at war in order to accomplish a religious purpose, namely, to have all submitted to Allah in the passive way that the Qur’an specifies.

It is the religious responsibility of Islam to carry out its assigned mission of subduing the world to Allah. When we try to explain this religion in economic, political, psychological, or other terms, we simply fail to see what is going on. From the outside, it is almost impossible to see how this system coheres within itself. But, granted its premises and the philosophy of voluntarism used to explain and defend it, it becomes

Islam can at times be defeated or stopped, as at Tours or Vienna, but it will always rise again as it is now bent on so doing. To picture the jihadists and leaders of the Islamic State as mere “terrorists” or thugs is

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IT’S TIME TO TAKE THE ISLAMIC STATE SERIOUSLY

much clearer that we are in fact dealing with a religion that claims to be true in insisting that it is carrying out the will of Allah, not its own.

The unfinished business from Tours and Vienna

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ll existing Islamic states are some sort of compromise between the true Islamic mission and forces, usually military forces that limit this world-wide unification.

Almost all standing Muslim governments recognise the danger to themselves of a successful Caliphate. They all have some form of jihadist presence within their boundaries that seek to control it in the name of their very survival. There are or were Christian and other minorities within these states that are, to a greater or lesser extent, tolerated. But they are all, as non-Muslims, treated as second-class citizens. The Islamic movement renews that purist side of Islam that insists in eradicating or expelling nonMuslim presences in Muslim lands.

If we are going to deal with it, we have to do so on those terms, on the validity of such a claim. The trouble with this approach, of course, is that truth, logos, is not recognised in a voluntarist setting. If Allah transcends the distinction of good and evil, if he can will today its opposite tomorrow, as the omnipotence of Allah is understood to mean in Islam, then there can be no real discussion that is not simply a temporary pragmatic stand-off, a balance of interest and power.

Whenever incidents of violence are witnessed in the Islamic world, or in other parts of the world caused by Islamic agents, we hear complaints that almost no Muslim voices rise to condemn this violence. When the original 9/11 happened, there was not condemnation coming from within Islam, but widespread celebration. Islam was seen as winning. But all Muslim scholars know that they cannot, on the basis of the Qur’an, condemn the use of violence to expand their religion. There is simply too much evidence that this usage is permitted. To deny it would be to undermine the integrity of the Qur’an.

The Archbishop of Mosul, on seeing his people exiled and killed, forced to choose between conversion and death, empathised that his buildings were destroyed, the archives and all record of the long Christian presence in that area destroyed. He warned that this form of treatment is what the nations of the West could expect sooner or later. There are now significant Muslim enclaves in every part of America and Europe to be of great concern as centres of future uprisings within each city. There are now thousands of mosques in Europe and America, financed largely by oil money, that are parts of a closed enclave that excludes local law and enforces Muslim law.

Obviously, the enemies of the Islamic State and its jihadist allies are not only the “Crusaders” or the West. Some of Islam’s bloodiest wars were its invasion of Hindu India, where the tension remains marked.

There are also Muslim efforts into China. The Philippines has a major problem as does Russia. But Islam wars with itself. The Sunni/ Shiite struggles are legendary. It is important to note that one of the first things on the Islamic State’s agenda, if it is successful in surviving, is to unite all of Islam in its creedal unity.

Yet, we can ask: is this Islamic State anything more than a pipe-dream? No Islamic state has any serious possibility of defeating modern armies. But, ironically, they no longer think that modern armies will be necessary. They are convinced that widespread use of terrorism and other

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IT’S TIME TO TAKE THE ISLAMIC STATE SERIOUSLY

means of civil disorder can be successful. No one really has the will or the means to control the destructive forces that the Islamic State already in place.

this vision does seem to be the real impetus of the Islamic peoples.

It is easy to write this movement off as fanatical and ruthless, which it is. To the outside world, it sounds horrific, but I suspect not to those who believe its truth and see the current revival of Islam with relief. The second or third class ranking of Islam in the modern world is over. But to the degree that we misjudge what is motivating the renewal of Islam, we will never understand why it exists as it does.

The Islamic State strategists think it is quite possible to take another step in the expansion of Islam, to take up again the assault on Europe left off at Tours and Vienna. Muslim armies have always been known for cruelty and craftiness. Men often shrank in fear before its threat, as they are intended to do. A Muslim theoretician once remarked that their aim was to make the streets of Western cities look like those battlefields we see in the cities of the Middle East. Again with the suicide bomber and believers in their use, for which they are said to be “martyrs”, this may be possible.

This article is reprinted from www.mercatornet.com

Finally, the case of the Islamic State and of the jihadists is not just a threat arising out of Islam’s mission to conquer the world for Allah. It is also a moral case, that the life of the West is atheist and decadent. It does not deserve its prosperity and position. The mission of mankind is the submission to Allah in all things. Once this submission is in place, the sphere of war will be over. No more beheading or car-bombings will be necessary or tolerated. No dissent within Islam will be possible or permitted. All will be at peace under the law of Islam. This is the religious purpose of the Islamic State. It is folly to think of it in any other terms.

But with great opposition both from the West and from within Islamic states to this vision, is there any possibility of its success?

Pat Buchanan thought that a group of Seals would one of these days eliminate the new Caliph. Existing Muslim government officials know that their days are numbered if the Islamic State succeeds. But, at the same time,

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rev. James V. Schall SJ taught political science at Georgetown University for many years. He is the author of numerous books.

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Our First (Grand)Parents Dr. Sean McDermott

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ecent research in psychology and archeology provides some surprising evidence for the importance of grandparents in the development of society.

Feuerstein was showing conclusively that the higher mental abilities or functions like the ability to make comparisons, the ability to categorise things, to form abstract ideas, to analyse situations, to synthesise information and to reason logically are not genetically inherited at all, but are in fact mental skills which are taught, or mediated, to the child by parents, siblings, grandparents and teachers, often instinctively and without their being aware of what they are doing.

Feuerstein demonstrated that not only can these higher level mental skills not be inherited genetically, but that they can’t even be properly discovered by the child without the help or mediation of those around him.

Teaching Intelligence

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’m sure you are aware of what is termed the Nature-Nurture controversy: some people hold firmly to the notion that intelligence is genetically inherited and can’t be changed, while others with equal vehemence insist that intelligence depends more on upbringing than on genetic inheritance. Like a lot of narrow either-or controversies, the truth is in fact somewhere in between: intelligence is due both to genetics and to nurturing. Among psychologists today, there is an ever greater shift towards belief in what’s termed ‘neuroplasticity’, the fact that the human brain is modifiable and can be readily changed for the good. This has been supported recently by the discovery that a part of the brain called the dentate gyrus actually generates over a thousand new brain cells every day. If these cells are properly exercised, the brain continues to develop, even well into adult life. There is nothing new in all of this. As far back as the 1960‘s an Israeli psychologist Reuven

Upper Palaeolithic Revolution

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ery recently, support for this latter view has come from a most unlikely source: archeology. Modern archeological research has shown that the period of pre-history between 20,000 to 30,000 years ago, called the Upper Paleolithic period (late stone age), was an exceptionally productive one for the human family. The period is characterised by a number of quite dramatic changes in human culture. The first and, to the archeologist, the most obvious cultural change is the sheer number, variety and

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OUR FIRST (GRAND)PARENTS

sophistication of the archeological artefacts from this period found at various digs and excavation sites all over Europe. These finds vary from high quality weapons used in hunting (bone harpoons for example), to finely crafted clay figurines and cave paintings, to jewellery, to human burials and even to musical instruments. Did something happen to produce this cultural revolution and improved productivity among our remote ancestors? Rachel Caspari, professor of anthropology at Central Michigan University, thinks that she may have found the answer - Grandparents (Scientific American Vol. 22, No. 1, Winter 2013).

much more important point. Perhaps knowing nothing about what Feuerstein terms ‘mediated learning experience’ she does not realise that in their interaction with their grandchildren the grandparents in fact produced the necessary higher mental functions needed to make the children, and the next generation, effectively more intelligent. All of this was happening while the parents were presumably busy doing what parents did in the later stone age, hunting and gathering.

So the next time its your turn to take the grandchildren, and you’re out for a Sunday drive, and you’re trying to deal with the inevitable barrage of interjections and questions to do with whats and whys and whens, give a thought to the deeper changes which such apparently simple interactions are producing in the mind of the child. Give a little thought also for those first grandparents who, while baby sitting around the fire in the draughty cave, without TV or even books, managed to produce such dramatic changes and effectively invented the whole notion of what we term human culture.

Prehistoric Grandparents

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hrough analysis of teeth found in various remains from different prehistoric epochs, Rachel Caspari was able to show that human longevity increased steadily over the various periods of prehistory, but that in the period in question (30,000 to 20,000 BC) there was a sudden and dramatic increase in the average age to which people lived. In the earlier epochs parents died in their early 30s, now they were living into their 40s. This means that quite suddenly, and for the first time in human history, family groups included not just parents and children, but also grandparents. While it is not clear why people suddenly started living much longer at this time, what is clear from studies of present day hunter-gatherer groups is that once you have grandparents on the scene, definite positive cultural changes result.

Caspari suggests that these changes are due to the fact that grandparents can transfer information from one generation to the next and by telling the family story can give a better sense of continuity and identity to the larger extended family. She’s not a psychologist, however, and she has missed a

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr Sean McDermott is an Educational and Clinical Psychologist working in school and in private practice. His views can be responded to at seanmcdermott7@yahoo.com

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Breaking the Silence: Redefining Marriage Hurts Women Like Me – and Our Children Janna Darnelle

The push to present a positive image of same-sex families has hidden the devastation on which many are built. We must stand for marriage – and for the precious lives that marriage creates.

Introduction by Michael Kirke

The article below, essentially a “victim impact statement” from the Public Discourse website, is one which you are not likely to read in Ireland’s mainstream media, enslaved as it is to political correctness. More is the pity, for it gives a painful picture of the kind of can of worms which the gay revolution has opened up in our society. It would, it should, make any person think twice before going into a polling booth to say yes to the destruction of an institution which has served men, women and children so well for at least as long as human history has been recorded.

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reland, in a matter of months from now, will be going to the polls on the issue of gay unions. The people will be asked by their Government – all the parties are in favour – to change the country’s constitution to allow it to change the meaning of marriage in law – if not in logic.

The people of Ireland have defied their Governments before and with great common sense have rejected proposals for constitutional change which ideologues in power have tried to manipulate them into making.

A propaganda that destroys natural families

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very time a new state redefines marriage, the news is full of happy stories of gay and lesbian couples and their new families. But behind those big smiles and sunny photographs are other, more painful stories. These are left to secret, dark places. They are suppressed, and those who would tell them are silenced in the name of “marriage equality.”

On this occasion – as indeed on others – the media is in bed with the ideologues. Will the people go along with the consensus on this occasion or will they take stock of the social devastation they are going to inflict on the country if this latest assault on human nature is given the green light.

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BREAKING THE SILENCE: REDEFINING MARRIAGE HURTS WOMEN LIKE ME – AND OUR CHILDREN

I represent one of those real life stories that are kept in the shadows. I have personally felt the pain and devastation wrought by the propaganda that destroys natural families.

judge seemed to think that he was correcting a larger injustice.

My husband had left us for his gay lover.

They make more money than I do. There are two of them and only one of me. Even so, the judge believed that they were the victims. No matter what I said or did, I didn’t have a chance of saving our children from being bounced around like so many pieces of luggage.

In the fall of 2007, my husband of almost ten years told me that he was gay and that he wanted a divorce. In an instant, the world that I had known and loved – the life we had built together – was shattered.

I tried to convince him to stay, to stick it out and fight to save our marriage. But my voice, my desires, my needs – and those of our two young children – no longer mattered to him.

We had become disposable, because he had embraced one tiny word that had become his entire identity. Being gay trumped commitment, vows, responsibility, faith, fatherhood, marriage, friendships, and community. All of this was thrown away for the sake of his new identity.

What you feel trumps all laws and promises

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y ex-husband and his partner went on to marry. Their first ceremony took place before our state redefined marriage.

After it created same-sex marriage, they chose to have a repeat performance. In both cases, my children were forced – against my will and theirs – to participate. At the second ceremony, which included more than twenty couples, local news stations and papers were there to document the first gay weddings officiated in our state. USA Today did a photo journal shoot on my ex and his partner, my children, and even the grandparents. I was not notified that this was taking place, nor was I given a voice to object to our children being used as props to promote same-sex marriage in the media.

Try as I might to save our marriage, there was no stopping my husband. Our divorce was not settled in mediation or with lawyers.

No, it went all the way to trial. My husband wanted primary custody of our children. His entire case can be summed up in one sentence: “I am gay, and I deserve my rights.” It worked: the judge gave him practically everything he wanted. At one point, he even told my husband, “If you had asked for more, I would have given it to you.”

At the time of the first ceremony, the marriage was not recognised by our state, our nation, or our church. And my exhusband’s new marriage, like the majority of male-male relationships, is an “open,” nonexclusive relationship. This sends a clear message to our children: what you feel trumps all laws, promises, and higher authorities. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want—and it doesn’t matter who you hurt along the way.

I truly believe that judge was legislating from the bench, disregarding the facts of our particular case and simply using us – using our children – to help influence future cases.

In our society, LGBT citizens are seen as marginalised victims who must be protected at all costs, even if it means stripping rights from others. By ignoring the injustice committed against me and my children, the

After our children’s pictures were publicised, a flood of comments and posts appeared.

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BREAKING THE SILENCE: REDEFINING MARRIAGE HURTS WOMEN LIKE ME – AND OUR CHILDREN

Commenters exclaimed at how beautiful this gay family was and congratulated my exhusband and his new partner on the family that they “created.” But there is a significant person missing from those pictures: the mother and abandoned wife. That “gay family” could not exist without me.

A good marriage doesn’t only depend on sexual desire, which can come and go and is often out of our control. It depends on choosing to love, honor, and be faithful to one person, forsaking all others. It is common for spouses to be attracted to other people – usually of the opposite sex, but sometimes of the same sex. Spouses who There is not one gay family that exists in this value their marriage do not act on those world that was created naturally. impulses. For those who find themselves attracted to people of the same sex, staying Every same-sex family can only exist by faithful to their opposite-sex spouse manipulating nature. Behind the isn’t a betrayal of their true happy façade of many families identity. Rather, it’s a decision headed by same-sex couples, not to let themselves be ruled we see relationships that are There is not one gay by their passions. It shows built from brokenness. They depth and strength of family that exists in this represent covenants broken, character when such people world that was created love abandoned, and remain true to their vows, naturally. responsibilities crushed. They consciously striving to are built on betrayal, lies, and remember, honor, and revive deep wounds. the love they had for their spouses when they first married.

This is also true of same-sex couples who use assisted reproductive technologies such The damage to children as surrogacy or sperm donation to have children. Such processes exploit men and ur two young children were wilfully women for their reproductive potential, treat and intentionally thrust into a world of children as products to be bought and sold, strife and combative beliefs, lifestyles, and and purposely deny children a relationship values, all in the name of “gay rights.” Their with one or both of their biological parents. father moved into his new partner’s condo, Wholeness and balance cannot be found in which is in a complex inhabited by sixteen such families, because something is always gay men. One of the men has a 19-year-old missing. I am missing. But I am real, and I male prostitute who comes to service him. represent hundreds upon thousands of Another man, who functions as the father spouses who have been betrayed and figure of this community, is in his late sixties rejected. and has a boyfriend in his twenties. My children are brought to gay parties where If my husband had chosen to stay, I know they are the only children and where only that things wouldn’t have been easy. But that alcoholic beverages are served. They are is what marriage is about: making a vow and taken to transgender baseball games, gay choosing to live it out, day after day. In rights fundraisers, and LGBT film festivals. sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, spouses must choose to put the other Both of my children face identity issues, just person first, loving them even when it’s hard. like other children. Yet there are certain

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BREAKING THE SILENCE: REDEFINING MARRIAGE HURTS WOMEN LIKE ME – AND OUR CHILDREN

deep and unique problems that they will face as a direct result of my former husband’s actions. My son is now a maturing teen, and he is very interested in girls. But how will he learn how to deal with that interest when he is surrounded by men who seek sexual gratification from other men?

How will he learn to treat girls with care and respect when his father has rejected them and devalues them? How will he embrace his developing masculinity without seeing his father live out authentic manhood by treating his wife and family with love, honouring his marriage vows even when it’s hard?

covenant between one man and one woman today than when I was married. There is another way for those with same-sex attractions. Destruction is not the only option – it cannot be. Our children deserve far better from us.

This type of devastation should never happen to another spouse or child. Please, I plead with you: defend marriage as being between one man and one woman. We must stand for marriage – and for the precious lives that marriage creates.

This article first appeared on www.thepublicdiscourse.com.

My daughter suffers too. She needs a dad who will encourage her to embrace her femininity and beauty, but these qualities are parodied and distorted in her father’s world.

Her dad wears make-up and sex bondage straps for Halloween. She is often exposed to men dressing as women. The walls in his condo are adorned with large framed pictures of women in provocative positions.

What is my little girl to believe about her own femininity and beauty? Her father should be protecting her sexuality. Instead, he is warping it.

Without the guidance of both their mother and their father, how can my children navigate their developing identities and sexuality? I ache to see my children struggle, desperately trying to make sense of their world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

My children and I have suffered great losses because of my former husband’s decision to identify as a gay man and throw away his life with us. Time is revealing the depth of those wounds, but I will not allow them to destroy me and my children. I refuse to lose my faith and hope. I believe so much more passionately in the power of the marriage

Janna Darnelle is a mother, writer, and an advocate for upholding marriage between one man and one woman. She mentors others whose families have been impacted by homosexuality.

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Blessed Alvaro del Portillo Bishop Javier Echevarría

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This is the text of the homily of the Prelate of Opus Dei given at a Mass of thanksgiving for the beatification of Álvaro del Portillo on September 28, 2014.

his is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you”: “ut diligátis ínvicem, sicut diléxi vos” (Jn 15:12).

Dear brothers and sisters, these words of the Gospel echo today in my heart with new joy at the thought that the mass of people gathered yesterday in this very place, in close communion with Pope Francis, and together with all who accompanied us from the four cardinal points, was not so much a crowd but rather a family gathering, united for love of God and love of one another. This very love is strengthened today in the Eucharist, in this Mass in thanksgiving for the beatification of our beloved Don Álvaro, Bishop, Prelate of Opus Dei. A gift of love which transforms us

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ur Lord, by instituting the Eucharist, gave thanks to God the Father for his eternal goodness, for the creation that sprung from his hands, for his mysterious plan of salvation. We give thanks for that infinite love made manifest on the Cross and anticipated in the Upper Room. And we ask our Lord: how can we learn to love as you have loved us, to love as you have loved Peter and John, each one of us, as well as Saint Josemaría and Blessed Álvaro?

Contemplating the holy life of Don Álvaro, we discover our Lord’s guiding hand, the grace of the Holy Spirit, the gift of love that transforms us. And we make our own that prayer of Saint Josemaría that the new Blessed repeated so often: “Give me, Lord, the Love with which you want me to love you[1]”, and that way I will know how to love the others with your Love, and with my poor effort. In my life, the others will discover the goodness of God, as was the case in the daily path walked by Don Álvaro: it was already here in this beloved Madrid that divine mercy could be seen in his solidarity with those who were most poor and abandoned. The

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BLESSED ALVARO DEL PORTILLO

second reading fills us with joy, by reminding us of Christ’s presence in us, which robes us “with compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience (Col 3:12).

Dear brothers and sisters, let us give thanks to God by asking him for more love. In the prime of his youth, when he was twenty-five years old, Don Álvaro was “saxum”, rock, for Saint Josemaría. From the depths of his humility, he responded by letter one day to the Founder of Opus Dei with these words: “In spite of everything, I hope that you can place your trust in one who, rather than rock, is clay without any solidity whatsoever. But, our Lord is so good![2]” Our entire existence ought to be soaked in that trust in divine goodness. We prayed in the Responsorial Psalm, “I thank you, Lord, for your faithfulness and love” (Ps 128 [137]: 2). And our gratitude rises up to the Holy Trinity, because God continues to be with us, through his Word, Jesus Christ Himself (cfr. Col 3:16), and through his Spirit, who fills us with joy (cfr. Jn15:11; Lk 11:13) and enables us to cry out to God, filled with confidence, “Abba, Pater”: “Father! Daddy!”

The spiritual fecundity of the family

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he trinity on earth will take us to the Trinity in Heaven[3]”, Don Álvaro, following the teaching and experience of the Founder of Opus Dei, would often repeat. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph bring us to the Father and the Holy Spirit. In the sacred humanity of Jesus we discover, inseparably united to it, his divinity[4].

The Holy Family! With words from the first reading, we bless our Lord “who fosters men’s growth from their mother’s womb, and fashions them according to his will” (Sir 50:22). The sacred text tells us that even before our birth God loved us. This reminds me of a poem with which Virgil addresses a new-born: “Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem” (Virgil, Eclogue IV, 60): “Little child, learn to recognise your mother by her smile”. Upon birth, a child begins to discover the universe; in his mother’s face, full of love, in that smile of hers that receives him, the new being just barely come to the world discovers a reflection of the goodness of God. On this day, which our Holy Father Francis has dedicated to prayer for the family, we unite ourselves to the pleas of the whole Church for that “comunio dilectionis”, that “communion of love[5]”, that “school[6]” of the Gospel that is the family, as Paul VI said at one point in Nazareth. The family, along with the “interior and profound dynamism of love[7]”, has great “spiritual fecundity[8]”, as taught by Saint John Paul II, to whom Blessed Álvaro was united by a filial friendship.

In giving thanks to Don Álvaro, we give thanks to his parents who received him into this world and educated him, who prepared in him a simple and generous heart to receive God’s love and respond to his calling. “This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you”; Don Álvaro did just that: he was a man whose smile gave glory to God, who “has done wondrous things” (Sir 50:22), and who chose him to serve the Church by spreading Opus Dei, as a faithful son and successor of Saint Josemaría.

We pray that there may be many families that form “bright and cheerful homes, as was that of the Holy Family[9]”, in the words of Saint Josemaría. We lift up our gratitude to God for the gift

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of the family, a reflection of eternal trinitarian love, a place in which each person knows himself to be loved for his own sake, just the way he is. And now we also give thanks to all the mothers and fathers that have gathered together here, and to all those persons who care for children, the elderly, and the sick.

Families: our Lord loves you, our Lord is present within your marriage, image of Christ’s love for his Church. I know that many of you dedicate yourselves with great generosity to helping other marriages along their path of fidelity, to helping many other homes march onwards in a social context that often times is difficult and even hostile. Keep at it! The whole world needs your work of witness and evangelisation. Remember that, as beloved Benedict XVI said, “Faithfulness over time is the name of love[10]”.

“Go and bear fruit”

“B

e thankful”, Saint Paul exhorts us (Col 3, 15). Blessed Álvaro, considering his indebtedness to Saint Josemaría, stated that “good use of gifts received is the best show of gratitude[11]”. In his preaching, in family gatherings, in personal encounters, in all places, he never ceased to speak about apostolate and evangelisation. To abide in the love of God that we have received, we must share it with others; God’s goodness tends to spread.

Pope Francis said that “it is in prayer that the Lord makes us understand this love, but it is also through so many signs that we can recognise in our life, in the many persons he sets on our path. And the joy of the encounter with him and with his call does not lead to shutting oneself in but to opening oneself; it leads to service in the Church[12]”.

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BLESSED ALVARO DEL PORTILLO

“It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you” (Jn 15:16). Our Lord after having insisted that the initiative is always his and in the primacy of his love, sends us forth to spread his Love to all creatures: “I have appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain” (ibidem). “Manete in dilectione mea”: “remain in my love” (Jn 15:9). To bear fruit that also sets down deep roots, it is necessary to remain in the Lord. Jesus had just said so to his disciples: “Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me” (Jn 15:4).

The multitude of people these days, the millions of persons throughout the world, and so many who await us in heaven, bear witness to the fruitfulness of Don Álvaro’s life. I encourage you, brothers and sisters, to abide and grow in God’s love: through prayer, through Mass and frequent Communion, through sacramental confession, so that, with the force of divine predilection, we may know how to transmit what we have received, and implement it through an authentic apostolate of friendship and confidence.

In the letter which Pope Francis wrote to me on the occasion of yesterday’s beatification, he told us that “we cannot keep the faith to ourselves, it is a gift that we have received to give it and share it with others[13]”; and he also said that Blessed Álvaro “encourages us to not be afraid of going against the grain and suffering so as to proclaim the Gospel”, and furthermore that “he also teaches us that in the simplicity and in the daily affairs of our life we can discover the sure path of sanctity[14]”.

Along this path, together with many angels, we are accompanied by the Blessed Virgin. Mary is daughter of God the Father, Mother of God the Son, Spouse and Temple of God the Holy Spirit. She is the Mother of God and our Mother, the Queen of the family, the Queen of Apostles. May she help us, as she did Don Álvaro, respond to the invitation of the Successor of Peter: “to let oneself be loved by the Lord, to open one’s heart to his love, and allow Him to guide our life[15]”, a desire which Saint Josemaría entrusted on so many occasions to the Virgin of Almudena, so loved and venerated in this Archdiocese. Amen.

This homily is reprinted from www.opusdei.ie.

Notes [1]Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, Forge, n. 270.

[8]Ibidem.

[2]Blessed Álvaro del Portillo, Letter to Saint Josemaría, Olot, July 13, 1939.

[9]Saint JosemaríaEscrivá de Balaguer, Christ is Passing By,n. 22.

[3]Blessed Álvaro del Portillo, Pastoral letter, September 30, 1975.

[10]Benedict XVI, Homily in Fatima, May 12, 2010.

[4]Cfr. Blessed Álvaro del Portillo, Pastor letter on occasion of the Golden Anniversary of the foundation of Opus Dei, September 24, 1978.

[5]Venerable Paul VI, Address in Nazareth, January 5, 1964.

[6]Ibidem. [ 7 ] S a i n t J o h n Pa u l I I , Po s t - S y n o d a l A p o s t o l i c ExhorationFamiliarisconsortio, n. 41.

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[11]Blessed Álvaro del Portillo, Pastoral letter, July 1, 1985.

[12]Francis, Speech, Paul VI Audience Hall, July 6, 2013.

[13]Francis, Letter to Mons. Javier Echevarría, Prelate of Opus Dei, on occasion of the beatification of Álvaro del Portillo celebrated in Madrid on September 27, 2014.

[14]Ibidem.

[15]Ibidem.

PRAYER TO BLESSED ALVARO DEL PORTILLO BISHOP AND PRELATE OF OPUS DEI O God, merciful Father, who granted your bishop Blessed Alvaro the grace to be, with the help of our Lady, an exemplary pastor in the service of the Church and a faithful son and successor of Saint Josemaría, founder of Opus Dei, grant that I too may respond faithfully to my Christian vocation, using every moment and event of my life to love you and to serve Christ’s Kingdom.

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Deign to grant the canonisation of Blessed Alvaro, and though his intercession grant me this favour… (here make your petition). Amen.

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Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be to the Father. ! ! ! www.alvarodelportillo.org

A moment of special joy Pope Francis

Pope Francis sent this letter to Bishop Javier Echevarría, Prelate of Opus Dei, on the occasion of the beatification of Alvaro del Portillo

Dear brother,

through friendship and service to others, as when he went to outlying districts to help provide human and Christian formation to so many people in need. And in this city, above all, there took place the event that definitively marked the course of his life: his meeting with St Josemaría Escrivá, from whom he learned to fall more in love with Christ every day. Yes, to fall in love with Christ. This is the path to holiness that every Christian has to follow: to let ourselves be loved by the Lord, to open up our hearts to his love, and to allow him to be the one who guides our lives.

The beatification of the Servant of God Álvaro del Portillo, faithful collaborator of St Josemaría Escrivá and his first successor at the head of Opus Dei, is a moment of special joy for all the faithful of the Prelature, and also for you, who were for so long a witness of his love for God and others, and his fidelity to the Church and to his vocation.

I too wish to unite myself to your joy and to thank God, who embellishes the face of the Church with the holiness of her children.

His beatification will take place in Madrid, the city where he was born and spent his childhood and youth. Here his life began to take shape in the simplicity of family life,

I like to recall the aspiration that the Servant of God would often repeat, especially for personal celebrations and anniversaries:

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A MOMENT OF SPECIAL JOY

“Thank you; forgive me; help me more!”

These words bring us closer to the reality of his interior life and his relationship with the Lord, and can also help to give a new impulse to our own Christian life.

Álvaro knew the need we have of God’s mercy, and devoted a lot of his own energy to encouraging the people he met to go to the sacrament of Confession, the sacrament of joy. How important it is to feel the tenderness of God’s love, and discover that there is still time to love!

In the first place, Thank you. This is the soul’s immediate, spontaneous reaction on experiencing God’s goodness. It cannot be otherwise. He always goes ahead of us.

However hard we try, his love always gets there first, touches and caresses us first, He beats us to it. Álvaro del Portillo was aware of the many gifts God had given him, and thanked God for that manifestation of his fatherly love. But he did not stop at that: his recognition of Our Lord’s love awakened in his heart desires to follow him with greater commitment and generosity, and to lead a life of humble service to others. Especially outstanding was his love for the Church, the Spouse of Christ, whom he served with a heart devoid of worldly self-interest, far from discord, welcoming towards everyone and always seeking in others what was positive, what united, what was constructive. He never spoke a word of complaint or criticism, even at especially difficult times, but instead, as he had learned from St Josemaría, he always responded with prayer, forgiveness, understanding and sincere charity.

Help me more. Yes, the Lord never abandons us, he is always at our side, he journeys with us, and every day he expects new love from us. His grace will not fail us, and with his help we can take his name to the whole world. The heart of the new Blessed beat with the desire to bring the Good News to all hearts. And so he travelled to many countries to foster new projects for evangelisation, undeterred by difficulties, moved by his love for God and his brethren.

One who is very immersed in God is able to be very close to other people. The first condition for announcing Christ to them is to love them, because Christ loves them before we do. We have to leave behind our selfish concerns and love of comfort, and go out to meet our brothers and sisters. That is where Our Lord is awaiting us. We cannot keep our faith to ourselves: it is a gift we have received to give away and share with others.

Thank you, forgive me, help me! These words express the thrust of a life that is centred on God. It is the life of someone who has been touched by the greatest Love and who lives totally on that love; someone who, while experiencing their own human weakness and limitations, trusts in God’s mercy and wants all mankind, their brothers and sisters, to experience it too.

Forgive me. He often confessed that he saw h i m s e l f e m p t y - h a n d e d b e f o re G o d , incapable of responding to so much generosity. But to admit our poverty as human beings is not the result of despair but confident abandonment in God who is our Father. It means opening ourselves to his mercy, his love, which is able to regenerate our life. His love does not humiliate us, nor cast us into the depths of guilt, but embraces us, lifts us up from our prostration and enables us to go forward with more determination and joy. The Servant of God

Dear brother, Blessed Álvaro del Portillo is sending us a very clear message. He is telling us to trust in the Lord, that he is our brother, our friend, who never lets us down and is always at our side. He is encouraging

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A MOMENT OF SPECIAL JOY

us not to be afraid to go against the current and suffer for announcing the Gospel. He is also teaching us that in the simplicity and ordinariness of our daily lives we can find a sure path to holiness.

I ask all the faithful of the Prelature, priests and lay-people, as well as all those who take part in its activities, to please pray for me. At the same time, I give them all my Apostolic Blessing.

May Jesus bless you, and may the Holy Virgin watch over you.

Fraternally,

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Calvary John Mulderig

Kelly Reilly and Brendan Gleeson star in a scene from the movie "Calvary."

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et in rural Ireland, the bleak but powerful seriocomedy "Calvary" (Fox Searchlight) kicks off with a startling premise.

Mature viewers prepared for rugged material, on the other hand, will likely consider their investment of time and attention well rewarded.

In the confessional, a grown victim of childhood sex abuse by a priest tells Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson), the dedicated pastor of the County Sligo parish where he now lives, that in a week's time he intends to avenge himself by killing the innocent clergyman.

As writer-director John Michael McDonagh chronicles the seven days that follow Father James' life-threatening encounter, we learn that this thoroughly decent but otherwise ordinary man of the cloth is a widower and father ordained after his wife's death. This aspect of his past is revealed when his emotionally fragile, Dublin-based daughter, Fiona (Kelly Reilly), comes to town, looking for his support in the wake of a romantic crisis.

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With the perpetrator of the crimes against him dead, and despairing of being healed b y t h e r a p y, Fa t h e r J a m e s ' u n s e e n interlocutor reasons that it would be a futile gesture to slay a bad priest. But to take the life of a good cleric, that would certainly be an act that would draw people's attention.

Along with nurturing Fiona, Father James also tends to the varied needs of the errant or merely eccentric souls who make up his small flock.

This opening scene, which establishes the kind of extreme situation that such Catholic authors as Graham Greene or Flannery O'Connor might once have played on, also makes it clear, through the sufferer's harshly candid description of his experiences, that this is not a film for the summer popcorn set.

They include Jack (Chris O'Dowd), the local butcher, a wronged husband who's not overly anxious to reconcile with his wife, Veronica (Orla O'Rourke); Michael (Dylan Moran), a shady business tycoon out to use a donation to the church to assuage his conscience; Frank (Aiden Gillen), an atheist

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CALVARY

doctor who has nothing but contempt for believers; and Gerard (M. Emmet Walsh), an elderly expatriate American novelist who hopes to evade a lingering end by committing suicide.

The film contains brief but extremely gory violence, drug use, mature themes, including clergy sexual abuse, homosexual prostitution and suicide, a few uses of profanity and much rough and crude language. The Catholic News Service classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

They're a challenging lot, but Father James does his best with each. Less laudable is his response to the plight of socially awkward, sexually frustrated bachelor Milo (Killian Scott). Unsettlingly, Father James advises Milo to move to a city where he'll probably find the girls more open to his casual advances.

Copyright (c) 2014 Catholic News Service.

Reprinted with permission from CNS.

As with an exchange in which Father James and his weasel-like curate, Father Timothy (David Wilmot), discuss the content of a parishioner's recent confession far too openly, this off-kilter interaction with Milo may raise the hackles of Catholic moviegoers. At least in the case of the penitent, however, there are extenuating pastoral circumstances.

Such incidental flaws notwithstanding, overall, McDonagh is mostly respectful, if u n s p a r i n g , i n h i s t re a t m e n t o f t h e contemporary church as he ably explores a range of hefty themes -- faith, moral failure, reconciliation and sacrifice among them.

He's sustained throughout by Gleeson's memorable performance during which we watch Father James display understandable uncertainty about how to respond to the existential threat confronting him. Should he arm himself? Involve the police? Flee the vicinity until the danger has past? Or should he offer himself in Christ-like expiation for the sins of others?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Watching him decide makes for thoughtful drama, though the demands of the process mean that the appropriate audience for "Calvary" remains a narrow one.

John Mulderig is on the staff of Catholic News Service.

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PRAYER FOR GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF BISHOPS ON THE FAMILY

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, in you we contemplate the splendour of true love, to you we turn with trust.

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Holy Family of Nazareth, grant that our families too may be places of communion and prayer, authentic schools of the Gospel and small domestic Churches.

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Holy Family of Nazareth, may families never again experience violence, rejection and division: may all who have been hurt or scandalised find ready comfort and healing.

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Holy Family of Nazareth, may the approaching Synod of Bishops make us once more mindful of the sacredness and inviolability of the family, and its beauty in God’s plan.

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Jesus, Mary and Joseph, graciously hear our prayer.

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Amen

The Bishops of Ireland have recommended this prayer (from Pope Francis on the last feast of the Holy Family) for the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of Bishops which will take place at the Vatican from 5 to 19 October, to discuss the topic: “The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelisation”

PROGRAMMES EACH YEAR IN FEBRUARY & OCTOBER. See website.