Or words to that effect

A spokesman for the Diocese of Rochester mouths familiar tripe to the good people of Irondequoit, my mother's childhood neighborhood:

"it’s important to remember that the recommendations of the planning group, based on detailed study and through prayer and discernment, are just that, recommendations."

Get the inside story from Gene here and here.

Special delivery

Buried in the AP's otherwise deplorable coverage of the Holy Father's meeting today with President Obama is this telling nugget:

"There's no question what the pope made his priority," said John Allen, a Vatican expert for the National Catholic Reporter. "When other leaders visited him this week they were only given his new encyclical."

Pope Benedict evidently handed Obama an unnamed "Vatican document on bioethics" that explained the Church's recognition of natural law prohibitions on embryonic stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, and human cloning. For his part, the president promised to make the document airplane reading en route to the next leg of his trip.

Update. According to Zenit, the document was "Dignitas Personae."

Centered on sacrifice

Cincinnati vocations director Fr. Kyle Schnippel has another thoughtful, learned piece in the Telegraph this week. He reflects on the constant theme of sacrifice in worship under the Old and New Covenants:

Worship in the Old Covenant, however, was not just the ‘lifting of eyes to the Lord.’ It was very much centered on sacrifice. Daily in the Temple, at 9:00 am and 3:00 pm, the Tamid would be offered before the Lord. This offering of a lamb, bread and wine was a continual reminder that the people of Israel were to be offered to God. They are marked as God’s Chosen People, and the lamb is symbolic of an offering of self to the Lord God. In this way, all the people participated in Temple worship on a daily basis.

Yet, there was more than one type of sacrifice offered in the Temple, so that while the Tamid was the high point of the day, animals were being offered continually to the Lord through the ministry of the priests, of particular note for our discussion here is the Sin Offering discussed in Leviticus 4. Here, the layman brought an animal before the priest and laid his hands upon it, confessing his sins to the priest as he did so, symbolically placing them upon the head of the sacrifice. The layman then slits the throat and cleans and prepares the animal, which is then presented to the priest. The priest has caught the blood of the animal, and, with the rest of the carcass, burns the sacrifice on behalf of the layman on the Altar of God.

In looking at the Catholic Mass of today, strong parallels leap forward to bring us not just to Jesus’ offering of self on the cross, but back to the very foundations of sacrifice as instituted by God, through Moses, on Mt. Sinai. God truly has planned this out from the beginning. As we enter into the deep mysteries we celebrate at every Mass, all of history becomes present in an eternal, and now even greater, offering back to God the Father, for it is now the offering of Christ back to His eternal Father. Reality is never more “real” than in the Eucharist!

Hence, as Catholics, we see the great need for our priests. It is the priest alone who, unworthy though he is, presides at these great cosmic mysteries. Here, he offers not just the bread and wine to be turned to the body and blood of Christ, but also himself and his people, who are no longer just chosen, but adopted to be sons and daughters of God, in Christ.

For more on this topic, consult Dr. Brant Pitre's informative 22-CD course The Bible and the Mass, which a good friend recently loaned me ahead of a long drive.

Reverse what?

Does anyone else think there's something unseemly about a parish fundraising program that promises "a chance to receive 10% back of what everyone gives"? You can read about it here.

VOTF and the Year of the Priest

The current edition of the Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati reports that the group Voice of the Faithful recently held an advisory board meeting in the archdiocese. The purpose was to contemplate ways of showing support for priests during the priestly year. Near the top of the list is lifting the "marriage restriction," i.e., the celibacy requirement that dates to the time of St. Augustine. They claim it is discouraging vocations and having a negative effect on the morale of priests. Never mind that surveys reveal an extraordinarily high level of career satisfaction for priests and that vocations are strongest in dioceses with an unambiguous commitment to priestly identity. When the only tool in your box is a hammer, the world looks like a nail.

“Our national working group for priest support, the second of the three goals of Voice of the Faithful, was reorganized in October 2006, with mostly new members recruited across the U.S.,” he told The Catholic Telegraph. “We were looking for ways to do more than just honor priests who showed courage by speaking out about the child abuse scandal and other problems facing our church. As an example, in 2005, at our conference in Indianapolis, we honored Msgr. Larry Breslin of Dayton as our 'Priest of Integrity' for speaking out against the decision to send an accused predator priest to Rome for further study.”

He said that the group decided it “needed to look for ways to reach all priests, find ways to best support them and the priesthood due to the decline in vocations.” He said that in their research, VOTF learned that “mandatory celibacy was a key issue, affecting the morale of many” priests, and the organization decided to call for “a serious, unbiased review of this requirement,” which it did a year ago.

The group compiled a list of what it calls “key contacts,” “ranging from quite conservative to very liberal, and added names of other theologians, authors, and noted Catholics to come up with a list of over 400 people.” A new website was created, www.nwgps.org, in which questions for discussion were listed.

Okenfuss says that the action plan “is to focus more on key contacts who we believe will help us spread our message to support priests,” he said. “We want to encourage them to speak out on the problems facing the priesthood and hopefully support or offer encouragement for the ideas we are presenting to them.”

The group believes that priests are its target audience, and is offering the website as a forum where they can discuss their concerns without identifying themselves, if they so prefer, he added.

“We are considering a similar forum for theologians. We would love to have bishops join in the discussions. However, raising the understanding of all of the laity that something must be done is, we believe, likely to be more effective,” he said.

The purpose of the VOTF advisory board meeting in Cincinnati was to hear from expert guests about the challenges facing the church and to discuss topics of “importance to our goal of supporting priests,” Okenfuss said.

D’Antonio told the group that there are many young men who are interested in the priesthood, but the restriction of marriage continues to discourage them from entering the seminary.

As she lay dying

Today's New York Times features a story on Rochester's Sisters of St. Joseph, whose mother house functions as a hospice for members of this (literally) dying order:

PITTSFORD, N.Y. — Gravely ill with heart disease, tethered to an oxygen tank, her feet swollen and her appetite gone, Sister Dorothy Quinn, 87, readied herself to die in the nursing wing of the Sisters of St.Joseph convent where she has been a member since she was a teenager.

She was surrounded by friends and colleagues of nearly seven decades. Some had been with her in college, others fellow teachers in Alabama at the time of the Selma march, more from her years as a home health aide and spiritual counselor to elderly shut-ins.

As she lay dying, Sister Dorothy declined most of her 23 medications not essential for her heart condition, prescribed by specialists but winnowed by a geriatrician who knows that elderly people are often overmedicated. She decided against a mammogram to learn the nature of a lump in her one remaining breast, understanding that she would not survive treatment.

There were goodbyes and decisions about giving away her quilting supplies and the jigsaw puzzle collection that inspired the patterns of her one-of-a-kind pieces. She consoled her biological sister, who pleaded with her to do whatever it took to stay alive.

Even as her prognosis gradually improved from hours to weeks and even months, Sister Dorothy’s goal was not immortality; it was getting back to quilting, as she has. She spread her latest on her bed: Autumnal sunflowers. “I’m not afraid of death,” she said. “Even when I was dying, I wasn’t afraid of it. You just get a feeling within yourself at a certain point. You know when to let it be.”

A convent is a world apart, unduplicable. But the Sisters of St. Joseph, a congregation in this Rochester suburb, animate many factors that studies say contribute to successful aging and a gentle death — none of which require this special setting. These include a large social network, intellectual stimulation, continued engagement in life and spiritual beliefs, as well as health care guided by the less-is-more principles of palliative and hospice care — trends that are moving from the fringes to the mainstream.

For the elderly and infirm Roman Catholic sisters here, all of this takes place in a Mother House designed like a secular retirement community for a congregation that is literally dying off, like so many religious orders. On average, one sister dies each month, right here, not in the hospital, because few choose aggressive medical intervention at the end of life, although they are welcome to it if they want.

“We approach our living and our dying in the same way, with discernment,” said Sister Mary Lou Mitchell, the congregation president. “Maybe this is one of the messages we can send to society, by modeling it.” ...

'Seeing as how he wrote it and all

Amid the raft of interpretations of Pope Benedict's new encyclical that have been released in the past 24 hours (see examples here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, with the last of these including statements from professors at the University of Dayton and Xavier University), the Holy Father provides his own explanation at today's general audience:

The Encyclical, explained the Holy Father, highlights the fact that "charity in truth is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. ... Only with charity, illuminated by reason and by faith, is it possible to pursue development goals that possess a more humane and humanising value".

The document, he went on, "intensifies Church analysis and reflection on social themes of vital interest to humankind in our century. In a special way it harks back to what Paul VI wrote more than forty years ago in his 'Populorum progressio'".

"Caritas in veritate", said Benedict XVI, "does not seek to offer technical solutions to the enormous social problems of the modern world. ...What it does do is recall the fundamental principles that are indispensable for building human development over coming years". Among these principles it highlights "concern for the life of man, seen as the centre of all true progress; respect for the right to religious freedom; ... and the rejection of a Promethean vision of human beings which sees them as the sole architects of their own destiny".

"Upright men and women are needed, both in politics and in the economy, people sincerely concerned for the common good", he said. Referring then specifically to "world emergencies", the Pope spoke of the urgent need to call "public opinion to the drama of hunger and of food security", which "must be faced decisively, eliminating the structural causes which produce it and promoting agricultural development in the poorest countries".

"The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly. It needs to recover the important contribution of the principle of gratuitousness and the 'logic of giving' in the economy and in the market, where profit cannot be the only rule. But this is possible only through commitment on the part of everyone, economists and politicians, producers and consumers, and it presupposes a formation of consciences capable of strengthening moral criteria in the elaboration of political and economic projects".

Another necessity, the Holy Father proceeded, "is for all humankind to practice a different lifestyle, one in which each individual's duties towards the environment are linked to his or her duties towards human beings, considered both in themselves and in relation to others".

Finally, "faced with the vast and profound problems of today's world", he said, "I indicated the need for a world political authority regulated by law, one that observes the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity and is firmly directed towards attaining the common good, while respecting the great moral and religious traditions of humanity".

The Pope asked the faithful to pray that "this Encyclical may help humankind to feel itself to be a single family, committed to creating a world of justice and peace". He also called upon them to pray for "the heads of State and government of the G8 who are currently meeting in L'Aquila, Italy. May this important world summit generate decisions and directives that serve the true progress of all peoples, especially the poorest".

Priestly Bible Study

Two good friends are conducting a Bible study for the Year of the Priest, focusing on the Letter to the Hebrews. They're using the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, a solid resource my couples' group has used to good effect for our review of the Gospel of Mark. Other good subjects for a priestly Scripture study are the Pauline Pastoral epistles, as they're addressed to early bishops Timothy and Titus*. The Catholic Culture site has compiled the writings of Fr. William Most, many of which are scriptural commentaries. His commentary for Hebrews could serve as a "backgrounder" (or text) for anyone similarly interested in a priestly Bible study; the excerpted lead section discusses the letter's much contested authorship:

Authorship: It is one thing to see that the Council of Trent (DS 1503) declared this Letter is inspired or canonical; another thing to say it is by St. Paul.

In the first centuries there were doubts about the authorship. The churches of Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Cappadocia considered it Pauline, but there were doubts in the Latin church. The Muratorian Canon, St. Irenaeus, St. Hippolytus and Gaius of Rome did not consider it Pauline; Eusebius says it is clearly by Paul. A bit later Ambrosiaster did not include Hebrews among the Pauline Epistles on which he wrote commentaries.

St. Jerome and St. Augustine seem to have swayed opinion in the west to considering it was by Paul. Augustine said he was influenced by the prestige of the Eastern churches. After the 6th Synod of Carthage in 419, it became usual in the west to consider it by Paul.

Many today would favor the view of Origen, who notes that the Greek is more literary than is usual for Paul, and that the style and composition differs from Paul's though the teaching is Paul's. We know at least often Paul dictated his Letters. For certain he would have had to do that with 2 Timothy, if we consider it his, for then Paul was in prison with no facilities for writing. But Popes and Presidents and other important people have often, in our time and before, used others to write documents for them, after telling them what content they want. Then they would go over it, perhaps make changes, and sign it. The names of Jude, Luke, Silvanus (Silas), Barnabas, and Apollo have been suggested as actual writers.

* You can find Fr. Most's commentary on the Pastoral epistles here.

Caritas in capsule

The Vatican Information Service provides a summary of Pope Benedict's encyclical Caritas in Veritate, which was released today:

A summary of the Encyclical released by the Holy See Press Office explains that in his introduction the Pope recalls how "charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine". Yet, given the risk of its being "misinterpreted and detached from ethical living", he warns how "a Christianity of charity without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance".

The Holy Father makes it clear that development has need of truth. In this context he dwells on two "criteria that govern moral action": justice and the common good. All Christians are called to charity, also by the "institutional path" which affects the life of the "polis", that is, of social coexistence.

The first chapter of the Encyclical focuses on the message of Paul VI's "Populorum Progressio" which "underlined the indispensable importance of the Gospel for building a society according to freedom and justice. ... The Christian faith does not rely on privilege or positions of power, ... but only on Christ". Paul VI "pointed out that the causes of underdevelopment are not primarily of the material order". They lie above all in the will, in the mind and, even more so, in "the lack of brotherhood among individuals and peoples".

"Human Development in Our Time" is the theme of the second chapter. If profit, the Pope writes, "becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty". In this context he enumerates certain "malfunctions" of development: financial dealings that are "largely speculative", migratory flows "often provoked by some particular circumstance and then given insufficient attention", and "the unregulated exploitation of the earth's resources". In the face of these interconnected problems, the Pope calls for "a new humanistic synthesis", noting how "development today has many overlapping layers: ... The world's wealth is growing in absolute terms, but inequalities are on the increase", and new forms of poverty are coming into being.

At a cultural level, the Encyclical proceeds, the possibilities for interaction open new prospects for dialogue, but a twofold danger exists: a "cultural eclecticism" in which cultures are viewed as "substantially equivalent", and the opposing danger of "cultural levelling and indiscriminate acceptance of types of conduct and lifestyles". In this context Pope Benedict also mentions the scandal of hunger and express his hope for "equitable agrarian reform in developing countries".

The Pontiff also dwells on the question of respect for life, "which cannot in any way be detached from questions concerning the development of peoples", affirming that "when a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man's true good".

Another question associated with development is that of the right to religious freedom. "Violence", writes the Pope, "puts the brakes on authentic development", and "this applies especially to terrorism motivated by fundamentalism".

Chapter three of the Encyclical - "Fraternity, Economic Development and Civil Society" - opens with a passage praising the "experience of gift", often insufficiently recognised "because of a purely consumerist and utilitarian view of life". Yet development, "if it is to be authentically human, needs to make room for the principle of gratuitousness". As for the logic of the market, it "needs to be directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also take responsibility".

Referring to "Centesimus Annus", this Encyclical highlights the "need for a system with three subjects: the market, the State and civil society" and encourages a "civilising of the economy". It highlights the importance of "economic forms based on solidarity" and indicates how "both market and politics need individuals who are open to reciprocal gift".

The chapter closes with a fresh evaluation of the phenomenon of globalisation, which must not be seen just as a "socio-economic process". Globalisation needs "to promote a person-based and community-oriented cultural process of world-wide integration that is open to transcendence" and able to correct its own malfunctions.

The fourth chapter of the Encyclical focuses on the theme: "The Development of People. Rights and Duties. The Environment". Governments and international organisations, says the Pope, cannot "lose sight of the objectivity and 'inviolability' of rights". In this context he also dedicates attention to "the problems associated with population growth".

He reaffirms that sexuality "cannot be reduced merely to pleasure or entertainment". States, he says, "are called to enact policies promoting the centrality and the integrity of the family".

"The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly", the Holy Father goes on, and "not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people- centred". This centrality of the human person must also be the guiding principle in "development programmes" and in international co-operation. "International organisations", he suggests, "might question the actual effectiveness of their bureaucratic and administrative machinery, which is often excessively costly".

The Holy Father also turns his attention to the energy problem, noting how "the fact that some States, power groups and companies hoard non-renewable energy resources represents a grave obstacle to development in poor countries. ... Technologically advanced societies can and must lower their domestic energy consumption", he says, at the same time encouraging "research into alternative forms of energy".

"The Co-operation of the Human Family" is the title and focus of chapter five, in which Pope Benedict highlights how "the development of peoples depends, above all, on a recognition that the human race is a single family". Hence Christianity and other religions "can offer their contribution to development only if God has a place in the public realm".

The Pope also makes reference to the principle of subsidiarity, which assists the human person "via the autonomy of intermediate bodies". Subsidiarity, he explains, "is the most effective antidote against any form of all-encompassing welfare state" and is "particularly well-suited to managing globalisation and directing it towards authentic human development".

Benedict XVI calls upon rich States "to allocate larger portions of their gross domestic product to development aid", thus respecting their obligations. He also express a hope for wider access to education and, even more so, for "complete formation of the person", affirming that yielding to relativism makes everyone poorer. One example of this, he writes, is that of the perverse phenomenon of sexual tourism. "It is sad to note that this activity often takes place with the support of local governments", he says.

The Pope then goes on to consider the "epoch-making" question of migration. "Every migrant", he says, "is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance".

The Pontiff dedicates the final paragraph of this chapter to the "strongly felt need" for a reform of the United Nations and of "economic institutions and international finance. ... There is", he says, "urgent need of a true world political authority" with "effective power".

The sixth and final chapter is entitled "The Development of Peoples and Technology". In it the Holy Father warns against the "Promethean presumption" of humanity thinking "it can re-create itself through the 'wonders' of technology". Technology, he says, cannot have "absolute freedom".

"A particularly crucial battleground in today's cultural struggle between the supremacy of technology and human moral responsibility is the field of bioethics", says Benedict XVI, and he adds: "Reason without faith is doomed to flounder in an illusion of its own omnipotence". The social question has, he says, become an anthropological question. Research on embryos and cloning is "being promoted in today's highly disillusioned culture which believes it has mastered every mystery". The Pope likewise expresses his concern over a possible "systematic eugenic programming of births".

In the conclusion to his Encyclical Benedict XVI highlights how "development needs Christians with their arms raised towards God in prayer", just as it needs "love and forgiveness, self-denial, acceptance of others, justice and peace".

All are welcome to comment here, but we should let the Holy Father's words sink in before offering definitive impressions. (Inevitably, sweeping generalizations and "cherry-picking" will surface in various forums.) Perhaps for now we can point out a statement or theme that surprises us or grabs our attention. I like the fact that he cites solidarity and subsidiarity specifically, and that he identifies the limitations of purely "rational" thinking: "Reason without faith is doomed to flounder in an illusion of its own omnipotence". Powerful stuff. Unfortunately, I won't be able to read the whole thing for a few days.

The Good News brings charity

The Catholic Education Resource Center runs a generous excerpt from chapter 4 of Anthony Esolen's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization. Its theme is how early Christians elevated culture, and typical of Esolen it is erudite and provocative. Here are the concluding paragraphs:

To the ends of the earth, then, came the word, brought by saints, marauders, plowmen, tyrants, ordinary people, that each human being possesses a measureless dignity, by virtue of his having been created and redeemed by a God of love; not by a philosophical idea, and not by a god bound to a mountainside or river. The Greeks had the wisdom to end slavery, but why lose the temporary economic advantage? The Jews understood why, but lacked the power. The Jews who are called Christians, after a long struggle, did put an end to it; too long a struggle, but triumphant at last. If we believe that it befits a man to enter a burning building to save someone else's child, it is because we hear the words ringing in our ears still, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" (Matt. 25:40).

It may offend secularists and those prudes who think that religion ought to be kept behind closed doors, but charity and concern for the poor are integral to our culture today because of Christianity. If we build hospitals for the destitute beyond our own lands, with no desire for personal or national profit, and risking life and limb to do it, it is because we retain a trace, a cultural memory of the voyages of Saint Paul, of Boniface martyred by the Germans, of Cyril and Methodius trekking north among the Slavs, of Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland, of Gregory the Great seeing blond slaves in the marketplace and, hearing that they were called "Angli," replying, "Non Angli sed angeli," "not Angles but angels," and sending missionaries among them, to give them the best he had to give.16

That is only one benefit, and not the most important, which the priests and bishops at those early councils conferred upon us, ensuring that Christianity would survive.

Though it is not polite to say so, still it cries out for notice. Hindus do not send holy men into foreign lands to feed the hungry and house the naked; they will not do so for the pariahs in their own land. Buddhists, practicing benevolent detachment from the world, do not do so. Muslims, who conquer by force, and who reject natural law on the grounds that it "fetters" Allah, are required to take care of their own, but they ignore everyone else.17 All cults of ancestor worship, like Shinto, are too firmly fixed upon the local and the familial to care for people far away. The Jews and Christians would care, because of the God they worship: and they did. If the world speaks of human rights now, and the dignity of the poor, it is because the world has heard of Moses and the prophets -- and, summing them up in himself, Christ. Men have come at last neither to love the world nor to despise it simply, but to love its goodness, not as a final end, but as a manifestation of the goodness that is eternal.

The main things

The chief problem with modern homiletics isn’t so much that the wrong things are said from the lectern – although that certainly happens from time to time – but that the main things get left out. Take this morning’s Gospel reading, for example. It’s primarily about faith. St. Mark situates the story of Jesus’ disbelieving hometown just after the stories of Jairus and the hemorrhaging woman. That's not an accident. In the latter instances, Jesus responds to the faith of His petitioners by performing healing miracles; in the former, he refuses, and "He marveled because of their unbelief." Jesus won't dispense His divine power like pixie dust, but grants it to those who believe in Him. Yet how many of you heard about "discerning the prophets among us" or being "open to strangers" this morning? Sure, one can extrapolate from the story that we shouldn’t shoot the messengers of today, and that those messengers come in a variety of guises. But it’s primarily a story about faith in Jesus Christ. Like I wrote, it isn’t so much that wrong things are said, it’s that the main things get left out.