Position Papers - August/September 2015

A review of Catholic affairs

The Escrivá Option The death of God and the loss of human dignity In Passing: Go set a Watchman Cardinal Burke at Fota 2015 Living faith in life Working for love

Number 491 August-September 2015

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Number 491, August-September 2015 Editorial

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The death of God and the loss of human dignity Bishop-elect Robert Barron

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In Passing: Go set a Watchman Michael Kirke

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The Escrivá Option: An alternative to St Benedict Austin Ruse

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Cardinal Burke at Fota 2015 Rev Patrick Burke

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Living faith in life Siobhan Scullion

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Working for love Bishop Javier Echevarria

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Book review: G. K. Chesterton: A Biography Seamus Grimes

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Book review: Defending Marriage: Twelve arguments for sanity Rev John McCloskey

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Film review: Jurassic World John Mulderig

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Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

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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On

June 18 the encyclical Laudato Si was officially

published. This encyclical, subtitled “On care for our common home”, is Pope Francis’ second after Lumen Fidei. The style of Laudato Si is cautious and undogmatic, and the Pope is, in his own words “concerned to encourage an honest and open debate so that particular interests or ideologies will not prejudice the common good (Laudato Si, 188). Nevertheless some Catholics have greeted the document with a degree of reserve or even hostility.

Firstly, I would like to echo a point made by the American blogger Scott Eric Alt who challenges those Catholics who, as he says, poo poo this encyclical on the grounds that it is not infallible teaching. He observes that they sound very like those Catholics who base their rejection of Humanae Vitae on the same premiss:

Editorial

…the suggestion that one can ignore this encyclical, but not Humanae Vitae, is specious. On what grounds? Progressive Catholics are wrong to reject Humanae Vitae, but you’re right to reject Laudato Si? Without a very solid rationale for that kind of thing, all you’re saying is that you accept the one because you like it and reject the other because you don’t. That makes each of us his or her own Magisterium (See scottericalt.org/laudato-si-is-a-hardteaching-and-we-must-accept-it).

So just how infallible is an encyclical? While it is true to say that it is not necessarily infallible, Catholics give “religious assent” to many areas of Church teaching which have not been infallibly defined. In the words of one theologian: Despite the comparative inadequacy of the treatment they give to the papal encyclical, however, all the theological works dealing with this subject make it perfectly clear that

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all Catholics are bound seriously in conscience to accept the teaching contained in these documents with a true internal religious assent (Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, ‘The Doctrinal Authority of Papal Encyclicals’ from the American Ecclesiastical Review, Vol. CXXI, August, 1949, pp. 136-150).

The way language is used in an encyclical, or any other papal pronouncement, points to the degree of assent required by a faithful Catholic. And so when the Pope teaches something as infallible teaching, in an encyclical or elsewhere, this will – and must be – clear to the faithful. This is laid down in Canon Law: “No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless this is manifestly demonstrated” (Code of Canon Law, 749 #3).

So, for instance, the manner in which Pope Francis speaks of global warming in Laudato Si, clearly shows that he is not wishing to enshrine it as Church teaching, but simply that the acceptance of global warming has solid scientific backing: “A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system” (Laudato Si, 23).

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Scott Eric Alt suggests that the reason why some Catholics are uneasy with Laudato Si is simply that it is very challenging: The real problem people are having with the Pope’s teaching is because to follow it would mean to change a style of modern living that we have become so accustomed to that we are addicted to it. To follow it would mean changing our habits of consumption and excess. That is why some people hate Laudato Si so much.

What people hate so much about Laudato Si is that it is telling us that we are not God and we are not the lords of

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the creation; we are not the lords of material things; we are not the lords of our own money; and we are not the lords of other human beings. And we are not the lords of ourselves. That is what people – both on the right and the left – so despise about what the Pope has said here.

This certainly rings true; what Pope Francis teaches here is very challenging to those of us who live within the relative opulence of the Western world. We are liable to consider as normal the rampant consumerism that surrounds us … and we’re not happy to be shaken out of our consumerist slumbers.

Editorial

Now, in Europe at least, we’re seeing headlines which speak of “economic recovery” and of “accelerated business growth in the Euro zone”, but I find myself beginning to wonder if we who live in countries which experienced such hardship and anguish in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crash are a bit like those goldfish who have forgotten their first lap of the goldfish bowl by the time they begin the second. In the encyclical Pope Francis warns us, in words very applicable to the Irish experience, not to be so superficial: Politics must not be subject to the economy, nor should the economy be subject to the dictates of an efficiencydriven paradigm of technocracy. Today, in view of the common good, there is urgent need for politics and economics to enter into a frank dialogue in the service of life, especially human life. Saving banks at any cost, making the public pay the price, foregoing a firm commitment to reviewing and reforming the entire system, only reaffirms the absolute power of a financial system, a power which has no future and will only give rise to new crises after a slow, costly and only apparent recovery. The financial crisis of 2007-08 provided an opportunity to

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develop a new economy, more attentive to ethical principles, and new ways of regulating speculative financial practices and virtual wealth. But the response to the crisis did not include rethinking the outdated criteria which continue to rule the world (Laudato Si, 189) (italics mine).

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Certainly there appears to have been precious little post-crash analysis aimed at getting to the fundamental causes of the 2007-08 financial crisis, and there has been no noticeable critique of the rampant consumerism which preceded the crash, nor any significant rethinking of the kind of economic models which lead to such dysfunction. There has been a certain tweaking of laws related to bank lending etc but nothing touching on the “efficiency-driven paradigm of technocracy” which lay at the heart of the crisis. All of us, Catholics and non-Catholics, should heed the warnings of Pope Francis (fallible or infallible!); otherwise we are doomed as he says, to experience, as he writes, “new crises after a slow, costly and only apparent recovery”.

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The death of God and the loss of human dignity

by Bishop-elect Robert Barron knife and suction typically employed in abortions. For me, the most bone-chilling moment was when one of the kindly physicians, informed that the price she was asking was too low, leered and said, “Oh good, because I’d like a Lamborghini.”

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am sure by now that many of you have seen the appalling hidden-camera videos of two Planned Parenthood physicians bantering cheerfully with interlocutors posing as prospective buyers of the body parts of aborted infants. While they slurp wine in elegant restaurants, the good doctors – both women – blandly talk about what price they would expect for providing valuable inner organs, and how the skillful abortionists of Planned Parenthood know just how to murder babies so as not to damage the goods. One of the doctors specified that the abortion providers employ “less crunchy” methods when they know that the organs of a baby are going to be harvested for sale. Mind you, the “crunchiness” she’s talking about is a reference to the skullcrushing and dismemberment by

Now it is easy enough to remark and lament the moral coarseness of these women, the particularly repulsive way that they combine violence and greed. But I would like to explore a deeper issue that these videos bring to light, namely, the forgetfulness of the dignity of the human being that is on ever clearer display in our Western culture. One has only to consider the over 58,000,000 abortions that have taken place, under full protection of the law, in our country since Roe v.

Wade in 1973, or the ever more insistent push toward permitting

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euthanasia, even of children in some European countries, or the wanton killing going on nightly in the streets of our major cities.

The figures in my home town of Chicago typically surpass those recorded in the battle grounds of the Middle East.

seen with clarity in both ancient times and modern. For Cicero, Aristotle, and Plato, a cultural elite enjoyed rights, privileges, and dignity, while the vast majority of people were legitimately relegated to inferior status, some even to the condition of slavery. In the totalitarianisms of the last century – marked in every case by an aggressive dismissal of God – untold millions of human beings were treated as little more than vermin.

What makes this sort of startling violence against human beings possible, I would submit, is the attenuation of our sense of God’s existence. In the classical Western perspective, the dignity of the human person is a consequence and function of his or her status as a creature of God. Precisely because the human being is made in the image and likeness of the Creator and destined, finally, for eternal life on high with God, he is a subject of inalienable rights.

I use Jefferson’s language from the Declaration of Independence on purpose here, for the great founding father knew that the absolute nature of the rights he was describing follows from their derivation from God: “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”

When God is removed from the picture, human rights rather rapidly evanesce, which can be

I realize that many philosophers and social theorists have tried to ground a sense of human dignity in something other than God, but these attempts have all proven fruitless. For instance, if human worth is a function of a person’s intelligence or creativity or imagination, or her capacity to enter into friendship, then why not say that this worth disappears the moment those powers are underdeveloped, weakened, or eliminated altogether? Or if respect for human dignity is related to the strength of one’s feeling for another person, then who is to say that that dignity vanishes once one’s sentiments change

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or dry up? My suspicion is that if we interrogated people on the street and asked them why human beings should be respected, some version of this argument from sentimentality would emerge. But again, the problem is that feelings are so ephemeral, shifting and changing like the wind. If you doubt me, read some of the accounts of the officers and soldiers in the Nazi death camps, who, after years of killing, lost all feeling for those they were murdering, seeing them as little more than rats or insects.

standing upon Biblical foundations. When those foundations are shaken – as they increasingly are today – a culture of death will follow just as surely as night follows day. If there is no God, then human beings are dispensable – so why not trade the organs of infants for a nice Lamborghini?

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

This article has been reprinted with the kind permission of the editors.

For the past two hundred years, atheists have been loudly asserting that the dismissal of God will lead to human liberation. I would strenuously argue precisely the contrary.

Once the human being is untethered from God, he becomes, in very short order, an object among objects, and hence susceptible to the grossest manipulation by the powerful and self-interested. In the measure that people still speak of the irreducible dignity of the individual, they are, whether they know it or not,

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bishop-elect Robert Barron is an author, speaker, theologian, and founder of Word on Fire, a global media ministry.

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In Passing: Go Set A Watchman

by Michael Kirke

work of literary genius. Indeed, as we now know, Mockingbird is a novel in which painstaking collaborative work between Lee and her editor, Tay Hohoff, played a huge part. Go see Wikipedia’s account for more detail. The first injustice to Lee is to make a like-with-like comparison between the two books.

The

most extraordinary thing about the literary phenomenon that is the publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman is the lack of generosity in so many of the reviews that have greeted it. It all began of course with the very undignified questioning as to whether Lee was compos mentis enough to authorise its publication. Lee is now 89 but by all accounts is a very lively octogenarian.

But apart from its purely literary interest the book is fascinating despite its unedited rawness.

The writer who gave us the later work (1960) can clearly be seen emerging in this. Some of its humour is a delight, as is much of its characterisation. Make allowances for the unedited condition of what you have

This is surely the most interesting literary event of this century so far. The novel presented to us is not To Kill a Mockingbird and should not be compared directly to that novel which is a polished diamond, a

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before you and you will enjoy this book as much as any you have read in this or any other year.

It is however, not just a delight; it is a worrying book grappling with a complex issue. Some reviewers tell us that we will be shocked by the revelation that the heroic Atticus Finch, whom we so admired in To Kill a Mockingbird, is “a card-carrying racist”. This is wide of the mark.

This kind of reading misses the nuance of the historical document which this book is. It also misses the tragedy which is the old South – a tragedy which only a few weeks ago visited us again in the person of the murderous Dylann Roof who went on the rampage in Charleston.

The conflict which is at the heart of this book is complex – both in its manifestation in and between its characters, above all in the heart of Scout – or Jean Louise as we now know her – and in that of her father Atticus.

In 1954 the US Supreme Court ruled in the Brown v. Board of

Education of Topeka case that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional. The decision overturned a decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. The Court unanimously declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”. As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This was the first major victory of the civil rights movement. But for many – not just Southerners and segregationists – it was a step too far in court activism.

The ideas ascribed to Atticus Finch in Go Set a Watchman are those of “gradualism” and a commitment to states’ rights. These were commonplace in the South in the middle of the twentieth century. In his novel built around a very similar scenario, William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust (1948) explored a similar theme.

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Essentially there is nothing in To Kill a Mockingbird which tells us that Atticus Finch has actually changed his views by the time in which Watchman is set. In the 1960 novel he defended an innocent man because he was innocent – not because he was a Negro.

Atticus’ passion is the rule of law, and justice in the law. His politics was something else and politics did not really enter To Kill a Mockingbird. Watchman is all about politics and the question of how best to achieve justice through politics.

In Watchman Atticus identifies differences between African Americans and the dominant culture of European Americans.

But although he expresses these differences in very stark ways and opposes the policy of forced integration, he is not a racist. All his personal behaviour towards the African Americans around him speaks of a deep appreciation of the common humanity of all Americans. If he may be accused of any “ism” it would be paternalism. His chosen political solution, his hopes for an end to the injustices

perpetrated by segregation, may be faulted by us because we have hindsight. It is unfair to Lee’s conception of Atticus to portray him as a racist.

The Brown case is the backdrop to the conflict which rages between Scout and her father. She is, as she says, “colour blind”. She cannot understand his opposition to the campaign for integration. But she is a Southerner and still has the rebellious spirit of the old South. She is now a resident of New York where the free and somewhat cruel spirit of the place has enveloped her.

“I can tell you,” she says at one point, “In New York you are your own person. You may reach out and embrace all of Manhattan in sweet aloneness, or you can go to hell if you want to.”

In To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus says to Scout at one point, ‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.’ That referred to the “outsiders” of that story, Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. This is the theme which also permeates this novel – first of all relating to the

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central characters themselves, Jean Louise and her father, but also more broadly to the protagonists right across the spectrum of the races at war with each other in the Southern States. To call Atticus a bigot in the context of this novel is a gross oversimplification.

In one of the better reviews, Natasha Trethewey in The Washington Post, tells us that “Watchman is compelling in its timeliness. During the historical moment in which the novel takes place, in states such as Georgia and South Carolina, legislators had begun to authorize the raising of the Confederate flag over the statehouse or the incorporation of it into the design of state flags as a reaction and opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision – thus inscribing the kind of white Southern anxiety dramatized in Lee’s novel.…

“Perhaps the best thing about this book is that it gives us a way to look at history from a great distance. It has been sixty-one years since the Brown decision, and now we have the

hindsight to see the larger impact that Lee’s characters could not quite see: an outcome, as Warren suggested – that ‘desegregation is just one small episode in the long effort for justice’.”

There is another dimension to its timeliness as well – almost eerie in the juxtaposition of this book’s publication and the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision on same-sex marriage.

It is seen in the key confrontation between Jean Louise and her father about the Brown judgement, about which both of them were unhappy.

She put it this way: the Court, “in trying to satisfy one amendment, it looks like they rubbed out another one: the Te n t h . I t ’ s o n l y a s m a l l amendment, only one sentence long, but it seemed to be the one that meant the most, somehow…. It seemed that to meet the real needs of a small portion of the population, the Court set up something horrible that could – that could affect the vast majority of folks. Adversely that is. Atticus, I don’t know anything about it – all we have is the Constitution between us

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and anything some smart fellow wants to start, and there went the Court just breezily cancelling one amendment, it seemed to me.”

The Tenth Amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

This was passed to help define the concept of federalism, the relationship between Federal and state governments. As Federal activity increased, so too did the problem of reconciling state and national interests as they apply to the Federal powers to tax, to police, and to regulations such as wage and hour laws, disclosure of personal information in record-keeping systems, and more.

Then, a few lines further on we have this: “She looked at the faded picture of the Nine Old Men on the wall to the left of her. Is Roberts dead? She

wondered. She could not remember.”

Reading all that you are inclined to scratch your head and ask if a bit of doctoring had not been done. No, of course not. Just a coincidence that the current Chief Justice who gave a scathing minority dissenting view on the Kennedy majority judgement in Obergefell should be called John Roberts.

Roberts sounded not a little like Atticus Finch when he said: Stripped of its shiny rhetorical gloss, the majority’s argument is that the Due Process Clause gives same-sex couples a fundamental right to marry because it will be good for them and for society. If I were a legislator, I would certainly consider that view as a matter of social policy. But as a judge, I find the majority’s position indefensible as a matter of constitutional law.

Go Set a Watchman is not, as some arrogant critics have said, a book which should never have been published. It is and will remain, even in the draft form in which we have been

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given it – thankfully no one tried to doctor it without Lee’s collaboration – one of the treasures of American literature.

It is so partly in its own right but especially as a gloss to its beautiful progeny, To Kill a Mockingbird.

If we can complain about anything it might be that Tay Hohoff, after the success of Mockingbird, did not set to work with Lee and begin perfecting Watchman as they did the 1960 masterpiece.

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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.

The Escrivá Option: An Alternative to St Benedict

by Austin Ruse

Nostalgia

lurks always in the near corners of the human imagination. It often takes very little to bring it to life; a sunny day, the wind blowing the grass, a taste of food, a smell, a picture. They all bring us back to sweet and sweeter times, childhood, courting, weddings, childbirth.

These are all nostalgic times from our own lives. But sometimes we grow nostalgic for times we have only read about.

This comes particularly when the present age disappoints us.

And who is not disappointed in the present age? Pornography rampant. Marriages and families disintegrating. Adultery websites with millions of members. The rise of faux and ever fauxier marriage. The persecution of

Christians even in Christian countries like our own.

Who doesn’t long for times when the culture was on our side, when religion was respected and had a dominant say in society, when seminaries were bulging and they had processions in the streets?

Some long for the 1950s. Others long for the Middle Ages. Some long for the early Church. Rod Dreher is one of those, maybe.

Rod Dreher, whom I knew slightly when we were both in New York City though our nascent friendship faltered badly during the Long Lent of 2002, has a truly remarkable knack for marketing his intellectual ideas.

Crunchy Cons, what we discussed briefly back then as “conservative bohemianism,”

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became a sensation for a good long while and blends perfectly into his new project – “The Benedict Option” – one of the hottest of topics among religious intellectuals.

Rod believes the speeding cultural collapse that threatens all we hold dear, including and most especially the souls of our children, requires that we withdraw, at least slightly, from the sturm und drang and create intentional communities either near a monastery or with a monastery in mind, there to protect ourselves from the outside world, though still in some ways to engage it, to protect, defend and grow authentic culture, and to bide our time until we or our ancestors can reclaim the wasteland inevitably to come at the hands of the new barbarians.

Dreher’s most trenchant critics went after him for suggesting that orthodox believers should largely drop out of society including a withdrawal from politics. Though he has noodled inchoately on this topic for years, a recent essay from 2013

certainly points in this direction.

As examples of the Benedict Option, he featured two communities only, one that has grown up around a traditionalist Benedictine monastery in rural Oklahoma and another created in rural Alaska.

That so many have considered this kind of withdrawal to be his aim, including Damon Linker on the left and John Zmirak on the right, Dreher owes his critics a debt of thanks for sharpening his thinking. Dreher now says that is not what he meant, that such withdrawal is really a kind of gathering together and mutual strengthening of the like-minded that could happen anywhere, including the inner city.

The question becomes: is St Benedict a proper model for the laity? Whether there is withdrawal to the mountains or not, the implication of the Benedict Option is that laymen can somehow follow a monastic model. Certainly there are third order Benedictines, there are even third order Trappists, though I suspect they are chattier than those behind the walls. But, laymen need not ape

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the practices of those we may think are spiritual athletes to live out our vocation as laymen.

I am reminded of one of the reasons I do not care for St. Thomas More (heretical, I know). More longed to have been a Carthusian, who are tougher even than the Trappists, and he imposed Carthusian practices on his family including, cruelly I think, interrupting their sleep at 1 a.m. to chant the Night Office. Such a thing is not natural for someone in the lay state.

In one of his many sharpelbowed columns about Dreher and his Option, writer John Zmirak said something quite insightful: If you want a saint to model for the lay state, why not St Josemaria?

Something happened to lay spirituality around the time of the rise of monasteries. As important as their work in maintaining Catholic culture, they also tended to create a clericalism that is with us even today. For centuries it came to be known that spiritual perfection was only for the vowed or ordained. Such

perfection was not for the laymen. His perfection came almost as scraps from the table of the monks and priests. With the exception of St Francis de Sales’s Introduction to the Devout Life, most of the great classics in spirituality were written not for laymen but for the vowed and ordained.

So little were the laity considered by the hierarchical Church that prior to the Second Vatican Council the laity were defined by what they weren’t, not ordained or vowed, and with no recognized unique vocation.

And even today you see this clericalism whenever an obviously devout young man is told he ought to be a priest.

The ancient Church would not have shared this view. And neither did St Josemaria. His vision was that laymen were called to the same heights of spiritual perfection as the vowed and ordained and that such a unique lay vocation was on par with the others.

Escrivá taught something the earliest Church knew quite well, the universal call to holiness, something that became, under

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his influence, a key teaching in the Second Vatican Council. At least a part of the Protestant Reformation was related to a rejection of this spiritual elitism.

Escrivá said laymen need not remove themselves to monasteries to achieve perfection and that the places they would find Christ were precisely in the home and in the workplace. And it was there they would bring others to the Gospel. The seeming revolutionary nature of this proposal is recognized by the reception St. Josemaria received when he first took it to Rome. They said he was a hundred years too early.

Zmirak points out that Escrivá came to this vision in a time and place far worse than what we experience in the United States today. He lived in a time of actual shooting warfare waged against the Church, a time when priests and nuns were hunted and killed by the thousands and Churches burned. He and a few of his followers lived for months in a small stifling room in the Honduran Embassy to Spain in Madrid. He and a few of his men escaped the persecution by

walking through the Pyrenees Mountains and nearly dying in the process.

And all the while, he built what Dreher and others would call an “intentional community” that even and especially today draws individuals and families together in order to learn and teach and gain strength and then to go forth into the market place, the sports arena, the prisons and universities and draw others closer to the Gospel and toward a spiritual perfection equal to the monks and nuns. Escrivá said Christ wanted a few men of his own in every human endeavour.

The Escrivá Option calls men and women to become contemplatives in the middle of the world, to live as best they can in the presence of God throughout the day from the moment of waking to turning out the light at night. This is achieved through prayer and study and a vigorous regimen of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly norms of piety.

Though we would never use such a phrase, my family and I live in such an “intentional community” in Northern Virginia

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where a grade school in a Church has brought dozens of mission oriented families together. Many in the grade school go on to the local Catholic high schools – Oakcrest for the girls and The Heights for the boys. Others have come to this area for the vibrant home-school community.

Many live a little further out, gathered in Front Royal, Virginia around Christendom College and the various Catholic apostolates headquartered there.

initially intended or not a cultural and political withdrawal, that impulse is alive and well in many Catholic imaginations and must be fiercely resisted.

But there is a better model for the layman than monks and nuns and one need not join Opus Dei to find it in the EscrivĂĄ Option. It is open to all, even priests.

Some of these families have begun to intermarry. All of them are fully engaged in the culture; banking, politics, teaching, journalism, medicine, even the movie business. They gather strength from each other and wade into the culture with the Gospel example of their lives.

Similar communities have sprung up all around the country.

I suspect this is precisely what Dreher now considers the Benedict Option, which is a clever phrase upon which has been built a vital and interesting conversation and perhaps a movement. And whether Dreher

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Austin Ruse is president of C-FAM (Center for Family & Human Rights), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute focusing on international legal and social policy. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of C-FAM. This article is reprinted with the kind permission of Crisis Magazine www.crisismagazine.com.

Cardinal Burke 
 at Fota 2015

by Rev Patrick Burke

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recently had the privilege of meeting, for the second time, His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke. This second encounter, like the first, took place during the course of the Fota Liturgical Conference, which is organised by The Saint Colman’s Society for Sacred Liturgy. 1 This international conference brings together some of the most important contemporary scholars working in the area of Catholic Liturgy.

During the eight years it has been in existence speakers have travelled from the United States, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Australia, and Latin America to present papers of the highest academic standards in the charming and intimate setting of Cork City’s Clarion Hotel.

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On the occasions I have met the Cardinal I have found him to be a warm and gracious man, happy to chat with all comers over the coffee and biscuits during the breaks between papers, and particularly eager to talk about his Irish roots (it turns out that both he and I have maternal grandmothers from Cullen in north County Cork, though with different surnames).

He is as far from his caricature in the mainstream-media as some kind of arrogant and aggressive ideologue as it is possible to be.

Proof of his extreme graciousness, if it were needed, is the fact that when I buttonholed him during one of the coffee breaks and asked if it might be possible for him to grant me a brief interview for Position Papers he readily

www.scscliturgy.com

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agreed, despite the informality of my approach and the great pressure he was under due to the busy schedule of the conference.

Alas, it was not to be.

Conference schedules are theoretical things, and the time we planned to conduct the interview was unavoidably eaten up, as was the time we rescheduled it for. His Eminence and I agreed we might try again next year, presuming that we are both spared to attend, and as a compromise I might instead reflect on a few issues he raised at various stages during the conference.

The first point I would like to consider comes from the sermon the Cardinal preached at the Pontifical High Mass celebrated in Ss. Peter and Paul during the course of the conference. 2 During it, His Eminence, referenced the United State’s Supreme Court decision which legalised abortion in 1973 and “took away the right to life from the innocent and defenceless unborn” and the more recent decision in June

this year which “in defiance of ‘the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,’… redefined the nature of marriage and its fruit, the family, the first cell of the life of society.”

His Eminence went on to say that this:

...deadly confusion and error which such decisions represent for the United States of America, and similar confusion and error in other nations, demand from the Church a clear, courageous and tireless witness to the word of Christ, to the truth written upon every human heart, the truth upon which the happiness of the individual and the common good absolutely depend. The Church cannot stand by silent or idle, while a people is destroying itself by lawlessness, even if the lawlessness be clothed in the garment of the highest judicial authority.

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The full text of the sermon may be found online at http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2015/07/cardinal-burkes-sermon-atfota.html#.ValKF_lViko

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It is difficult not to think that the Cardinal’s words concerning lawlessness posing as law resonate with recent events in this country. And, considering the current push by pro-abortion activists to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution which guarantees the right to life of the unborn, of their relevance to future events also. One is reminded in this context of the words of St Peter when he said “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”3 Certainly it would seem that there are difficult days ahead for those who would follow God’s law over man-made laws that contravene it.

The next point to reflect upon was raised during the course of the paper His Eminence presented at the conference. It was titled Selected Canonical Questions regarding the Royal Priesthood of the Baptized4 and during the course of it the Cardinal spoke, almost in passing, of his belief that the current shortage of vocations to the ordained priesthood was due, not to a lack of God calling 3

men to this ministry, but rather due to a lack of men answering the call that God places on their lives. “For how,” said the Cardinal, “could God not call sufficient priests to minister within his Church?”

How indeed? But presuming that His Eminence is correct – and I would believe that he is, for it is something I have often thought myself – that raises the question as to why so many should refuse to answer this call from God with a joyful “yes!”, why they should fail to emulate the example of our Blessed Mother by humbly responding with a quiet “thy will be done” to what the Lord asks of them?

Is it that the spirit of the age, that of rampant individualism, speaks so loudly in the souls of many that they can not or will not hear the voice of the Holy Spirit calling them to come and serve God and his people? Is it that catechesis today is so poor that many have forgotten, if they ever knew, that they have been, to again quote St Peter, “chosen and destined by God the Father

Acts of the Apostles 5.29

4

A brief summary of that paper may be found at http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2015/07/third-report-from-fota-liturgical.html

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and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ” 5 chosen by God “in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”6 Whatever the reason, it is clearly something that all should pray about. And having prayed, be eager to answer that call should it become apparent that God is calling you; and also not be afraid to encourage others to answer that call, and be willing to support in every way possible those who do answer that call.

The last point to be reflected upon was made during the question and answer session during the final portion of the conference. His Eminence raised the issue of the importance of family life within the life of the Church. Spouses’ primary role, he said, is the salvation of each other; and after that that their home should be a little church. Some, he

5

1 Peter 1.2

6

1 Peter 2.9

7

1 Peter 3.2-3

8

1 Peter 3. 7

thought, were so busy in various ministries around the parish that they neglected their role within the family.

It is hard not to be struck by the beautiful simplicity of what the Cardinal has to say here about marriage. Is this not reminiscent of St Peter’s words that wives may aid in their husbands’ salvation by the example of “the purity and reverence” of their lives7 and that husbands are always to keep in mind that their wives are “also heirs of the gracious gift of life?”8 It is certainly an aspect of marriage that was never brought out in the recent debate in this country about radically changing the legal definition of marriage (but then, it could be argued that very little was said during that debate about the nature of marriage). And with regard to families, how many faithful Christian mothers and fathers trouble to pray regularly at home with their children? Or even insist that, come what may, they

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must be at their side in church on a Sunday morning?

I can not find the exact quote, but I think it was the much revered Eastern Orthodox priest the Elder Paisios of Mount Athos who said something like “it is better to speak much to God about your children than it is to speak much to your children about God.” In other words, better to trust in the power of prayer than to try and badger faith into your children. But I would think it better still that a person both pray for their children and pray with them. It is the parents’ role to ensure good and right behaviour in their children in all things. If a father would not let a child neglect his school work in order that he may be well prepared to succeed in this life, why should he let him neglect the prayer life that will prepare him to enter into eternal life? And if a mother will do her best to make that her children eat good food in order to ensure their bodily health, how much more should she have concern for those things that pertain to their spiritual health? That attitude would, I think, be more in keeping with the Cardinal’s remarks.

My musing on these points raised by His Eminence are, of course, my own. But I hope that my reflections on them are not too much out of keeping with the spirit of the thinking behind them. Please God next year that there will be time available in the conference schedule for the Cardinal and I to conduct that interview and he will be able to speak for himself on whatever issues seem most urgent at that time.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The Rev Patrick G Burke is the Church of Ireland rector of the Castlecomer Union of Parishes, Co Kilkenny. A regular contributor to Position Papers, he was formerly a broadcast journalist with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Network. He blogs at thewayoutthere1.blogspot.ie, is a frequent correspondent to the letters page of the Irish Times and other national newspapers, and can occasionally be heard on RTE Radio One’s A Living Word.

Living Faith in life

by Siobhan Scullion

Sunday

Mass these days is more like a lesson in gymnastics while my husband and I struggle to control three little ones five and under. Just last Sunday, the toddler was convinced that the pews are actually a climbing frame, the oldest was practising his spiderman web shooter moves and the baby spent the time loudly announcing her intention to chew the seat in front of her. I just wanted to be able to get through the Our Father and make it up and down to receive Holy Communion with everyone still wearing all their shoes.

Thankfully we’re not alone.

When I look around on a Sunday morning I see a whole host of parents in similar situations, and it’s wonderful to see so many families. Some of the children may not be as young as ours; some have even younger; some have more; some have less. But all of us appear to have one thing in common (and no, it’s not trying to get through Mass) – we’re trying to raise our family as best we can, aware that we need may some element of supernatural assistance from our faith! As much as I need that assistance, I think I’d be lying if I said I’m always full of spirit and

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zeal when returning from Sunday Mass with the little ones. There are many times when I have been so distracted the whole way through and as a result I struggle to remember the Gospel or find myself asking “What did Father preach about this morning?” I’m not proud of that; I’m just being honest. I think any other parent there is in the same position. Despite that I’m fully aware that in order for me to live my life as a wife and mother as best I can, I need that help from God. I am also fully aware that nurturing this relationship takes more than an hour on a Sunday morning. I am willing to be there despite my hair being pulled throughout, my toddler climbing under the seats and my five year old’s running commentary because I know it’s worth it. I know the Mass means something to my life. And I still struggle.

I know I shouldn’t judge the thoughts of those around me but I do wonder, are they thinking it would be easier not to bother?

Juggling young children or trying to persuade reluctant teenagers to come to Mass every weekend

is not easy, especially if the parent is not completely convinced themselves. It could be all too easy to just give up and think it isn’t worth the hassle. I’m fortunate enough to receive help and advice on my spiritual life outside of the homily on a Sunday Mass, but I often wonder if my situation was different would I too be left thinking, what does this really mean to me? How does this actually connect to anything else I do during the rest of my week?

How does Sunday Mass and this faith I profess actually help me in anything I have to do throughout the week? Are those people in the pews thinking does this actually relate to my life as a wife, husband, mother, father, daughter, son?

I get the impression that there’s a sense of gratitude just to have people in the church on a Sunday that perhaps the boat shouldn’t be rocked too much, or that a priest is concerned he will appear judgmental so will steer away from anything that might be an issue of contention, or that they want to give people a form of entertainment. Those

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intentions are well meaning, but they are lacking and are ultimately detrimental. Please don’t assume that just because there are people in pews in front of you, that they do not need evangelising; that they’re not struggling to make sense of their faith and grapple with matters of doctrine. Rather than generic homilies, give the faithful advice from the pulpit that is fitted to the times we’re living in. Give people a reason to be in that pew.

Just a few days ago, I got into a Facebook discussion with a complete stranger which is something I never, ever do. She had just had a baby and had been prescribed a contraceptive pill by her doctor. In her heart of hearts, she knew this just didn’t feel right and was making enquiries about natural family planning. She knew deep down that this was want she wanted but lacked the knowledge and conviction to believe it herself and explain to her doctor. Let me respectfully put a question to the priests who may be reading this, when was the last time you dropped a line into a homily

about the Church’s teaching on natural family planning? Or pointed out somewhere married couples could seek information?

I mention this one example not to be negative or insulting towards the priests who are ministering to the faithful but the world is not faith friendly and the flock are harassed and dejected.

People need guidance in matters of faith and doctrine – where else will they get the tools to give account for the things they believe? Why is the Church so against gay marriage? Why can’t married couples use contraception? Why would you want another child anyway?

What’s the big deal with cohabitation? The Church has a responsibility to uphold the natural law which underpins divine law.

I know that some of these issues may require delicacy and perhaps priests may worry that their voice is not welcome in the discussion. But saying a priest is not qualified to speak on these matters is a little like saying that a doctor needs to have had every illness before they can make a diagnosis, or that a

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teacher should have trouble reading or writing in order to teach children with additional learning needs. Frankly, it’s an argument that doesn't stand up.

And it doesn’t always have to tackle the huge moral issues; one of the best homilies I ever heard was about wives not nagging their husbands, husbands making a conscious effort to listen to their wives and children remembering to say thank you. Not huge things at all but in the context of everyday family life and marriage, those things can have huge consequences.

I’m very thankful for the Synod on the Family which will be taking place in October this year.

There has already been the Extraordinary Synod last year, and in October the Bishops and Cardinals will be meeting again to discuss extremely important issues concerning family life and assisting people who may be in difficult pastoral situations. It’s wonderful that the Church is making every effort to help the faithful in their personal relationship with God, to appreciate their marriage and

family for building up the Church. Sadly, I have heard very little about it in local parishes but I know that will not be the case everywhere. I would urge every priest to encourage prayer for the Synod in their parishes. And also to keep the faithful updated with the catechesis the Pope is giving on the family. Help your flock to recognise that their family can a model of the Holy Family and it is there that they can build their relationship with God and ultimately live a holier life. Then they can clearly see how meeting our Lord in Sunday Mass really does relate to their lives, despite the gymnastics from the children!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Siobhan Scullion is an Arts graduate of Queens University Belfast and a regular contributor to Position Papers.

Working for Love

by Bishop Javier Echevarria

The

new encyclical of the Holy Father Francis is closely tied to the opening pages of Sacred Scripture. God created the human being as man and woman and placed them in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it (Gen 2:15). And he brought all the animals to the man to see how he would name them (cf.

Gen 2:19). This was an act of love on God's part, an expression of his confidence in each human being, to whom he entrusted the task of developing the potentialities that he himself had placed in creatures.

Each of us is a guardian and caretaker of creation. As the Pope reminds us, God placed man and woman in the garden

not only to preserve it, but also to make it fruitful by tilling it, by their work. “Developing the created world in a prudent way”, Francis says, “is the best way of caring for it, as this means that we ourselves become the instrument used by God to bring out the potential which he himself inscribed in things” (Laudato si, 124).

When men and women strive to welcome the Creator’s plan, any noble human work can become an instrument for the progress of the world and the strengthening of human dignity.

The key is found in working as well as possible, with the desire to serve others, out of love for God and neighbour. Certainly

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there are other reasons why we work: to support ourselves and our family, to generously assist those in need, to attain human fulfilment…. But the Pope’s words remind us that the goal is even higher: to collaborate in a certain sense with God in the redemption of mankind.

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the death of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, that holy priest and founder of Opus Dei who proclaimed to the entire world the Gospel value of work done out of love. I am a witness to how Saint Josemaría strove to live what he preached about work in his own life, right to the end of his earthly journey.

“Mankind’s great privilege is to be able to love and to transcend what is fleeting and ephemeral,” he wrote in a book called Christ is Passing By. That is why work “should not be limited to material production. Work is born of love; it is a manifestation of love and is directed towards love. We see the hand of God, not only in the wonders of nature, but also in our experience of work and effort. Work thus becomes

prayer and thanksgiving, because we know we are placed on earth by God, that we are loved by him and made heirs to his promises.”

Work, depending on its aim, can either destroy or strengthen human dignity, care for or disfigure nature, provide or omit the service we owe to our neighbour.

The importance of work for a humanly dignified life is deeply sensed by a person who is unemployed and experiences the anguish of not having an income. Therefore those who are out of work should hold a central place in the prayer and concern of every Christian. As the Pope said, helping the poor or the unemployed by giving money “must always be a provisional solution in the face of pressing needs”. The broader objective “should always be to allow them a dignified life through work” (Laudato si, 128).

The encyclical also reminds us that “to stop investing in people, in order to gain greater shortterm financial gain, is bad business for society” (Ibid.).

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Benedict XVI defined the Christian as “a heart that sees”.

In work, economic effectiveness will certainly be one factor, but never the only one. Christians put their heart into their work because of Christ’s example, and they strive to turn their work into service to others and praise for the Creator. Only work that is seen as service to our fellow men and women, and that is done out of love for God, can open up horizons for the terrestrial and eternal happiness of the people of our day and age.

This article first appeared on the Opus Dei website www.opusdei.ie.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bishop Javier Echevarría is the Prelate of Opus Dei.

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Book review: G. K. Chesterton: A Biography

by Seamus Grimes

G.

K. Chesterton: A Biography

by Ian Ker (Oxford University Press, 2011) has been one of the most enjoyable books I have read for some time, full of laughs, and strangely, by the time I had reached page 729, I had become such a good friend of Chesterton that I became somewhat emotional reading about his final days.

Although one should always read the author at first hand, Ker’s book provides a wonderful insight into this giant of a man – in every sense – and his marvellous writings. But more than anything else, he reveals the true nature of this good humoured and genial, absentminded commentator of English life and thinking in the 1920s and 1930s. Ker refers to “the sheer absent-mindedness of a mind totally detached from

immediate practicalities and constantly engaged in thought” (96).

GKC was an inveterate controversialist and perfect journalist, who delighted in debating the major issues of the day, always with good humour and showing respect for those who disagreed most vehemently with his views. In fact one of the most appealing qualities of his character was his deep and genuine friendship with key figures like George Bernard Shaw and H G Wells, with whom he had on-going, major differences of opinion. Shaw, Wells and many other public figures were strong promoters of eugenics and population control, which Chesterton vehemently opposed. Looking back on his friendship with Shaw, he said he had “learned to have a warmer

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admiration and affection out of all that argument than most people get out of agreement” (202). He was also very close to Hilaire Belloc and many other major writers of this period, and the depth of his friendship with these people is illustrated clearly by their reaction on his death.

The book also provides wonderful insights into his loving relationship with Frances, who, because of his disorderly approach to life, had to put up with his many defects, but did so with great love. In fact, if hopefully the process of his beatification comes to fruition sooner rather than later, there is sufficient evidence in this volume for a double beatification on the same day. How much our contemporary secularised society badly needs the example of this wonderful married couple.

Indeed, our contemporary society badly needs a person of Chesterton’s stature to make sense of the muddled thinking that so badly affects political life in these times.

It is remarkable that Chesterton wrote his book Orthodoxy fourteen years before he converted to Catholicism. It is

clear that his conversion did not c o m e e a s y, a n d h e w a s particularly sensitive about how it might affect Frances, who took a number of additional years before she also converted. But if Chesterton was not a cradle Catholic, it is difficult to believe that compared to many such cradle Catholics, that his thinking was not already deeply Catholic since his youth. In fact he explains that “even during the period when I practically believed in nothing, I believed in what some have called ‘the wish to believe’” (107).

He always seems to have had a thoroughly metaphysical way of viewing life and existence. In many respects he viewed life through the eyes of a child, who wondered with awe at everything he saw and experienced. This wonderment with the world is reflected in the remarks he makes about spending time in dreary rooms, whether in a waiting room, or some other such very ordinary place, and how such moments can allow us to deepen in our awareness of what our life is about. His child-like wonderment with the world is also revealed in the ease with which he could relate to children and how he

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could make the apparently least important person feel quite important and understood.

superior was ashamed of living in a suburb like Clapham, where he and his wife also lived.

Perhaps the most striking feature of his voluminous writings is the very clear metaphysical framework in which he interpreted human existence, and as his life went on this framework was increasingly influenced by his deep Catholic faith, which he was so capable and willing to explain and defend. It is clear that he developed an enormous love for the Catholic faith and a deep appreciation of the answers it provided, saying that “faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all its conquerors” (124). He had remarkable insights into how Catholicism was to be lived and applied in the ordinary life of every day. He had to work exceptionally hard to make a living as a writer, and in many ways he had more appreciation for the wisdom of people who lived quite ordinary lives as opposed to those who felt that their gifts, in some way, raised them above working people. As a young journalist in the Daily News, he was startled to discover that his immediate

His typical reaction to the pompous atheist who told him he did not believe there was any God was to say that there were moments when “I did not believe there was any atheist” (32).

Again, typically, he viewed mere existence as “extraordinary enough to be exciting. Anything was magnificent compared with nothing” (34). He noted that the first effect of not believing in God is that one loses one’s common sense which leads to superstitious gullibility (286).

He was filled with “fiery” determination “to write against the Decadents and the Pessimists who ruled the culture of the age”, and said that “no man knows how much he is an optimist, even when he calls himself a pessimist, because he has not really measured the depths of his debt to whatever created him and enabled him to call himself anything” (35). Again he conceived the scoffer as begging God to give him eyes and lips and a tongue that he might mock the giver of them.

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Chesterton believed it is impossible to be without some kind of “a metaphysical system”, otherwise one ends up believing in the “dogma of facts for facts sake” (148). Thus “religion not only makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary, but makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary” (165). He goes on to say that “to be without ideals is to be in permanent danger of fanaticism. The most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all, and bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions, the appalling frenzy of the indifferent” (147). Chesterton said of his great friend Shaw that he would be worried if the evening newspaper disagreed with him, but “that the tradition of two thousand years contradicted him did not trouble him for an instant” (244).

the memories he later wrote about was of the old lady referring to the possibility of the great day being spoiled by heavy rain said in her own very Irish way: “well, if it rains now He will have brought it on Himself” (673). It would appear that the great man himself had met his match in Dublin.

On a final note, it would appear that Chesterton’s growing love for the Catholic faith throughout his life was not unrelated to his love of Ireland and his appreciation of its difficult history. Towards the end of his life in 1932, he visited Dublin to witness the massive turnout and public display of devotion at the Eucharistic Congress. One of

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Seamus Grimes is an Emeritus Professor of the Whitaker Institute in the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Having taught and researched many aspects of human and economic geography, he is currently researching technology investment and innovation in China, and also looking at the geography of Catholic China.

Book review: Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity

by Rev John McCloskey

Anthony

Esolen’s Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity (St. Benedict Press, 2014) is the best book on marriage I have ever read, and the author, Anthony Esolen, is certainly one of the best Catholic writers in our country.

In his book, Esolen addresses all of the current hot-button issues regarding the state of marriage in America. He explains marriage’s roots in ageold religious, cultural and natural laws, why “gay marriage is a metaphysical impossibility, how the state becomes a religion when it attempts to elevate gay marriage, and as such enshrines a civil right to all consensual sex, and how today’s culture has impoverished and emptied love of its true meaning.”

In his sixth and last argument for marriage, Esolen waxes poetic, as befits a scholar of Dante and Shakespeare – he has written several other books, including a modern translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and is a professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island.”The Beauty of the Country of Marriage” contrasts t h e L a n d o f ( Tr a d i t i o n a l ) Marriage with the Land of Divisia, that is, the image of marriage as it is increasingly seen today:

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In the Land of Marriage, you know your neighbors, because there are neighbors to know. That’s because men and women marry, and stay married, and raise families; and before you know it, you are like a star in a great constellation or a leaf upon a bough of leaves. In the Land

of Marriage, fidelity and not restlessness is the rule, and so you not only know your neighbors, you know their cousins, too. In Divisia, people strive with all their might to make a name for themselves, because no one knows who they are. In the Land of Marriage, you don’t have to make a name for yourself. You have three or four of them already: what your mother calls you, what your brothers and sisters and cousins and friends call you, what your children call you and what your wife calls you.

I wish I had more space to continue to quote from the book.

This book should be read by any couple considering marriage as part of their future – and everyone else, too.

Some civilizations have flourished for many centuries and then disappeared. Unless we get marriage right, as explained in this marvelous book, the West as we have known it will disappear.

In Divisia, people take it as an affront that the human race is divided into two sexes and that these two have certain reliable features. They deny more than Adam. They deny the Adam’s apple. In the Land of Marriage, the division is all the sweeter for the union that it promises. Men do more than love women: They like women, and women like men. What in Divisia is scorned as ‘stereotype’ in the Land of Marriage is a source of delight.… Boys and girls in the Land of Marriage learn about their sexes just as they learn to talk and how to use their arms and legs.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rev C. John McCloskey III is a Catholic priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei and member of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross. He is the former director of the Catholic Information Center of the Archdiocese of Washington. Website: www.frmccloskey.com. This review first appeared on The National Catholic Register in May, 2015.

Film review: Jurassic World

by John Mulderig

L ike

the $2 billion-grossing dinosaur-themed franchise of which it represents the latest instalment, director Colin Trevorrow’s 3-D optional sci-fi adventure is big, gigantic, huge!

And you, a mere homo sapiens, are puny. So know your place, and hand over your credit card.

If the thought springs to mind that, proportionally speaking at least, dinos did not necessarily possess nature’s largest brains, the reflection is not misplaced.

Like the creatures that inhabit it, Jurassic World is all about brawn, sheer visual and commercial heft. Sharpwittedness and emotional subtlety are not on offer, deep characterizations even less so.

Instead, this continuation of the series that began with 1993’s Jurassic Park, Steven S p i e l b e r g ’s w i l d l y p o p u l a r adaptation of Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel, uses its human participants as anachronistically placed Darwinian bait, mere fodder for their outsized adversaries. So it hardly matters that they amount to nothing more than an ensemble of stick figures.

Take, for example, businessobsessed Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard). A driven career woman whose precise role in the management of the titular resort – where patently imprudent tourists come to gawk, for a price, at genetically re-created prehistoric predators – is never made clear, Claire is far too

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worried about getting ahead to have a family of her own.

Nor does she have time to spare for the duo of visiting nephews, 16-year-old Zach (Nick Robinson) and his preteen brother Gray (Ty Simpkins), who have been foisted on her by their soon-to-be-divorcing parents. So Claire, in her turn, hands off the boys to an assistant.

Such adult neglect, of course, gives Zach and Gray the perfect opportunity to wander off on their own. Extricating them from the inevitably resulting danger will require all the acumen of exmilitary animal trainer Owen (Chris Pratt).

Who’s this Owen and what’s he doing here? As with Claire’s job description, information is sketchy.

He’s a consultant of some sort, it seems, and shares some unspecified offscreen history with Claire, the upshot of which is a romantic attraction thinly disguised as mutual dislike.

Well, after all, a story like this needs its Indiana Jones standin, the lads need someone to look up to, and Claire needs a previously untamed he-man with whom to settle down – once the dinosaurs do.

T h e r e ’s s o m e p e r f u n c t o r y discussion, amid all the mayhem, about the proper limits of science: BD Wong reprises his role in the long-ago first picture by playing overly ambitious, if not quite mad, scientist Dr Wu. And it can’t hurt to have a violence-loving warmonger added to the mix, so cue Vincent D’Onofrio as a straw-man militarist named Hoskins.

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But, really, such feints in the direction of seriousness are beside the point. Anyone looking for interaction more meaningful than that which transpires between the DNA disaster of an über-dino to whose rampage Trevorrow devotes most of his attention and the anonymous extras on whom the ill-designed creature contentedly munches have come to the wrong fictional island.

The film contains some gory interludes, a bit of comic innuendo, at least one use of profanity and a few crude and crass terms. The Catholic News Service classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

The elements listed below decidedly rule out the Flintstones crowd. But parents of insistent teens who find their patience in danger of extinction need not feel too guilty if resistance ultimately proves futile.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Mulderig is on the staff of Catholic News Service.

Copyright (c) 2015 Catholic News Service.

Reprinted with permission from CNS: www.catholicnews.com.

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r o f s i chool

Severyone Hands up who wants to stay in school!

For children living in poverty, the obstacles to getting an education are often immense. Staying in school is decisive in determining their ability to prosper in their society, and yet many are left out.

Shouldn’t school be accessible to everyone?

GIVE A CHILD AN EDUCATION. FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO DONATE PLEASE VISIT US AT www.locallives.org

www.locallives.org

Nazareth Family Institute Pre-marriage preparation.

Marriage enrichment, restoration & healing.

Dates of marriage preparation weekends: 25-26 September 2015 13-14 November 2015 Venue: Avila retreat centre, Donnybrook, Dublin.

Extended course: A seven week course by arrangement with the course directors Course directors, Peter and Fiona Perrem 01-2896647 For more information see: www.nazarethfamilyinstitute.net