Pope Benedict XVI

Thoughts about the last eight years with Benedict as Pope
 
As of yesterday, Benedict XVI is no longer Pope; the Sede Vacante has begun.  I remember how strange it seemed when he became pope.  For my age group, John Paul II had "always" been pope.  Even though I wasn't religious at the time, it still seemed pretty surprising not to have John Paul II as Pope anymore.  "Benedict our Pope" in the Eucharistic prayer sounded totally weird.  (And I didn't even go to Mass much then).  A lot has changed for me since then.

During the period while Benedict was pope, I came back to the Church, which is probably the most important fact about my life during that time.  If John Paul II was the Pope of my childhood, Benedict XVI was the Pope of my conversion back to the faith.  This is not to say that him being Pope had anything specifically to do with it.  But his papacy spans from my being an indifferent Catholic to being an active and more faithful Catholic.  And from being a single person to a married person, which probably the second most important thing to happen in my life.  So many of the ideas I had before about the Church, about my life are different now.  Some are more developed, some more mature, some almost opposite (in a good way).  I have learned that conversion is an ongoing journey of faith, and I am still on that journey.  




In April of 2008, my senior year of college, Benedict came to the United States for a visit.  I was able to go with a group of friends and classmates to the youth rally held in Yonkers.  It was a great experience.  After it, my dad encouraged me to write down my memory of the day, while it was still in my mind.  I did, and I still have it.  Here's part of it:

            When it gets closer to time, we all gather near the center aisle [of the field], thinking that’s where he’ll come up in the pope-mobile.  We watch him in the seminary on the big screens, and hear that he is meeting with “an ailing cardinal,” and thought it must be Cardinal Dulles.  (Speaking with a colleague at work Monday night, he confirmed that it was.  The Holy Father jubilantly had gone into the Cardinal’s room, saying “Your Eminence!”).  We finally see him arriving in the pope-mobile! He comes around the back, from the seminary.  But he doesn’t go up the aisle. He goes around the side. Our side. Everyone runs! We all run across the field to the other fence and swarm around it.  My friend caught this on video. It was just surreal. I will never forget running across that field.
            Then he goes up to the stage, and the crowd was cheering like crazy.  Several different chants came up throughout the whole time, "Papa," "Viva Papa," "Benedict 16 Benedict," [that one still makes me laugh] and "We Love You" (of course).  We tried to start "B-16," but it didn’t really catch on.  The whole thing was like a prayer service and he addressed us.  His address was great, I need to find a transcript [darn, I don't think I ever did].  When he spoke to us it was very personal.  It wasn’t only him as Pope, it was him as a person.  We also sang Happy Birthday to him in German, and he specifically thanked us for doing that and gave us “A+ for pronunciation.” 

The Three Divorces I: Faith and Reason

In his book, The Great Divorce, the Christian philosopher and theologian wrote about two things that ought never to have been joined, heaven and hell.  The two were never meant to be joined, but often were by a modern world that denied God and so denied the existence of a real right and a real wrong.  What God has joined, man must not put asunder; but neither ought man to join those things that God has placed asunder. 

Lewis wrote about the attempt to join what ought never to be joined and to put together what ought always to be kept separate.  If a modern world without God will sometimes put together things that ought to be kept apart, it will also keep apart things that ought to be put together.   The separation of a man and woman who have pledged their faith to God and each other in marriage is a common example of this today.  While this separation, divorce, is most common today, other divorces are also common to a pagan world.  

One is the divorce between faith and reason.  Today, many are convinced that to accept one is to deny the other.  To be a man of faith is to deny reason, and to be a man of reason is to deny faith.  Both camps have found adherents throughout history.  In the present day the “new atheists,” led by their prince, Richard Dawkins, call faith, “the great cop-out... belief in spite of, or perhaps even because of, lack of evidence.”  For them, to be rational is per se to reject faith.  At the other end is the fundamentalist Christian who would deny reason, who considers the Bible the only science book necessary, and who would benefit greatly from Galileo’s remark that the Bible tells us the way to heaven, not the way the heavens go.  

The atheist, thinking reason demands the rejection of faith, fails to understand that reason itself is a matter of faith.  As Chesterton remarked, “it is a matter of faith to assume our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”  The atheist cannot prove reason is trustworthy, he assumes it.  In short, he takes it on faith.  

The attempt to reject faith leads only to absurdity and the atheist must do one of two things.  Either he must be consistent to his claim to take nothing on faith and accept only what may be proved by evidence or else he must surrender his principles take reason itself on faith.  In the first case, his position leads only to what Chesterton called “the suicide of thought.”  Accepting only what may be shown by evidence, he is forced to deny reason itself for which no evidence may be found save on pain of circularity.  In attempting to accept only reason, he has destroyed reason.  Only one thing will save him: a leap of faith.  

The fundamentalist attempt to accept only faith and deny reason leads to equal absurdity.  He ought to consider that if the universe is reasonable and the mind able to know it, it is because God made it so and one does no honor to God to reject His gift of reason.  If God made the universe knowable and gave man the ability to know it, then to renounce the attempt (1) can hardly be termed an act of faith at all. 

Some things were never meant to be divided.  What God has joined man must not put asunder.  Two of these things are faith are reason, though there are others.  When one is separated from the other only absurdity can result, in one case, the suicide of reason itself, in the other, the end of faith.  The only hope is to recognize that faith can be eminently reasonable, and that reason itself demands faith.  

See also:
The Three Divorces II: Love and Responsibility
The Three Divorces III: Body and Soul

The Measure of Beauty

Originally hosted by Christina at Reflections of a Catholic in Formation as Day 14 of the series, "You are Beautiful." Thank you Christina!

Is beauty objective or subjective? Is it “in the eye of the beholder” and therefore a matter of mere opinion? Or is there something higher to which beauty must ascribe? I hope and do think that it is something higher.

The definition of beauty is this: “the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest)” (dictionary.com, emphasis added). Beauty is something that conveys or represents the presence of goodness. I think it can be argued that goodness itself is not subjective. Complete, total and true goodness is God. If beauty is connected to objective goodness, then it is not simply a matter of any “beholder’s” opinion. Perhaps it can even be said that beauty comes through goodness. C.S. Lewis has said, concerning beautiful objects, that “Beauty was not in them, it only came through them” (“The Weight of Glory”).

In mainstream culture, because everything is seen as relative and subjective, it follows that beauty would be also. I don’t know how long the phrase has been around, but I would think that “... in the eye of the beholder” likely arrived with modern subjectivity. So what are mainstream culture’s standards of beauty? And what is the main type of “beauty” most emphasized? In secular society, there is no Divine, unseen standard of goodness, and therefore, no non-physical standard of beauty. To add insult to injury, the over-sexualization of the body by secular culture causes beauty not only to become synonymous with physical attractiveness, but almost requires a certain amount of sexual allurement along with it.

As Christians and as Catholics, we use a higher standard. Unlike those who value only the material world, we have revelation of the transcendent. From the transcendent comes the true value of goodness and meaning of beauty. So what is a beautiful woman? A beautiful woman is, most importantly, a good woman. She embraces the goodness of her femininity, and conveys goodness in what she does. But since our standard of beauty is so different from that which is emphasized in the culture around us, how do we know if we are following the true path of goodness and beauty?

We have the most beautiful things of all to show us the paths of true beauty. We have the Church, our Holy Mother, to guide us. We have the Church’s teachings about the dignity of the human person, the dignity of the body, and the vocation of women. We follow Her teachings because we know they are truly His teachings: Jesus Christ, who loves us more passionately than any human can, and accepts us and takes us back after we have fallen.

When mainstream culture’s demands to conform our beauty to its own become too hard to ignore—as we all know it sometimes does! — we have our faith (and each other!) to help us through. We have the ability to measure our beauty not only visually, but internally, with the help of Divine Revelation. We are guided with “the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen.”*

---

* Heb 11:1, emphasis added.

Look for the Church

When I wrote my previous post, I removed a quotation from the end, for fear of making it too long. (In fact, I added it, and then removed it, and forgot to remove that third footnote.) The reason for removing it was not that I had found it to be irrelevant, but that since it is one of my favorite passages by Fulton Sheen, I decided to save it for later so as to give it more attention in a post of its own.

It has been almost a month since that post on having faith in God and the Church (which I wrote for the topic of counseling the doubtful, part of a Lenten series about spiritual works of mercy). Lent is almost over. Today is Holy Thursday. It seems like an appropriate time to go back to thinking about that post, and connecting my additional thoughts to it.

Recently, Marc at "Bad Catholic" was discussing failed attempts to sabotage the Catholic Church. His clever response to the anti-Catholic New York Times advertisement pulls from a message of insensitivity and bigotry an admonition to "repent, and believe in the Gospel," a call for an examination of conscience, and a need to increase faith in the Church. Explaining why such attempts to dishearten the faithful ought not to discourage us, he concludes, "But the reasons our enemies are foaming at the mouth over the Church are the very reasons we embrace Her. . . . they remind us of how good, how true, and how beautiful the Bride of Christ is." His statement brings me to the same excerpt of an essay by Fulton Sheen that I had originally planned to post because I like it so much. 

Here is my continuation of my last post:

It is sometimes difficult to be outwardly Catholic, especially in the face of mainstream culture.  We are confronted by a culture that is not only secular, but often outright anti-Catholic.  Perhaps it may be said that the Church does not "get along well with the world," or that it may be "the Church the world hates" (1).  Fulton Sheen tells us, though, that these are not characteristics of the Church that should cause us to fear it. On the contrary, they tell us why we ought to courageously seek it:

My reason for doing this would be, that if Christ is in any one of the churches of the world today, He must still be hated as He was when He was on earth in the flesh. If you would find Christ today, then find the Church that does not get along with the world. Look for the Church that is hated by the world, as Christ was hated by the world. Look for the Church which is accused of being behind the times, as Our Lord was accused of being ignorant and never having learned. Look for the Church which men sneer at as socially inferior, as they sneered at Our Lord because He came from Nazareth. Look for the Church which is accused of having a devil, as Our Lord was accused of being possessed by Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils. Look for the Church which, in seasons of bigotry, men say must be destroyed in the name of God as men crucified Christ and thought they had done a service to God. Look for the Church which the world rejects because it claims it is infallible, as Pilate rejected Christ because He called Himself the Truth. Look for the Church which is rejected by the world as Our Lord was rejected by men. Look for the Church which amid the confusion of conflicting opinions, its members love as they love Christ, and respect its Voice as the very voice of its Founder, and the suspicion will grow, that if the Church is unpopular with the spirit of the world, then it is unworldly, and if it is unworldly, it is other-worldly. Since it is other-worldly it is infinitely loved and infinitely hated as was Christ Himself. But only that which is Divine can be infinitely hated and infinitely loved. Therefore the Church is Divine.

Notes:

(1)Fulton Sheen, Preface to Radio Replies Volume 1, Catholic Apologetics Online: Radio Replies. http://www.radioreplies.info/vol-1-preface.php  (accessed March 9, 2012).

[I encourage you to follow the link and read the whole preface. There are too many things that I would love to quote, especially the last paragraph of it.]

See also:

I also like this blog post by Alexander Pruss, in which he applies C.S. Lewis's "Lord/liar/lunatic" argument about Jesus's divinity to the divinity of the Church. Found here: http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2010/10/catholic-church-infallible-liar-or.html

Faith in God, Faith in the Church

Bright Maidens Topic: To Counsel the Doubtful

Bright Maidens facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/BrightMaidens

            There were times in the past when I disagreed (or thought I disagreed) with certain teachings of the Catholic Church (or, what I incorrectly perceived the teachings to be).  I can now identify at least two issues that were the main sources of my apparent disagreement, and I suspect that there are many people in a similar circumstance.  It is probably not too inaccurate to say, as Fulton Sheen has said, "There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church.  There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church - which is, of course, quite a different thing" (1).

            My disagreements with Church teaching were, I later recognized, differences in opinion which came out of two underlying situations.  The first situation was a lack of catechesis and correct understanding of the basis of Church teachings.  If someone pressed the topic with me, I likely would have admitted at least that it was something that I had simply not been taught.  In fact, I did exactly that, with the attitude that it was not my fault.  What I failed to recognize at the time, but eventually came to realize during my faith conversion was this: As true as it is that my past lack of catechesis had been no fault of my own, that fact does not and will not excuse me from the responsibility of seeking to learn and understand the truth on my own.  Further, if I am to continue calling myself a Catholic, I must only do so if the truth I am seeking is that of Jesus Christ, as revealed to us by His Church.

            The second situation, which I did not fully understand prior to coming back to the Church, was that in disagreeing as I did with those teachings, I was exhibiting a somewhat general lack of faith in the Church itself.  To explain this reasoning, I propose that a disagreement with a teaching of the Church about "topic X" may often stem from a denial of the Church's authority to speak about "topic X" to begin with.  Since we believe that the Church's authority stems from Jesus Christ Himself, to say that the Church does not have the authority to teach on matters of faith and of morality is to say that the Church does not possess the Truth of Jesus Christ.  If we do believe that the Church is what it says it is, “If one holds the church capable, under the guidance of the Spirit, of declaring her belief on a specific point, it follows that assent to such a declaration might require abandonment of a contrary personal opinion” (2).  This does not mean that to believe in the teachings of the Church is to have no right to a personal opinion.  Belief in the Church does, however, call for acts of faith, humility, and obedience concerning Catholic teachings.

            What I have learned along the way is that Church teachings about individual topics cannot be separated from the bigger picture from which they are deducted. In order to understand such topics, we must first understand the Church itself.  That bigger picture is not just what the Church decides to think about particular topics; it is the Church's rendition of Divine Revelation, history, and natural law.  Understanding all of these things is not always easy for us.  It can be very difficult without having faith that the Church is protected from error by the Holy Spirit, as she reveals to us the Truth of Jesus Christ.  To have this faith, we can be aided by humility in the face of a teaching that may be difficult for us to understand at first, and trust that the Church's statements, must have infinitely more knowledge and experience behind them than our short lifetime on earth has yet or even will.  As we strive to understand what the Church teaches us, our faith and humility will hopefully lead to obedient behavior.  It is based on that same humble trust that faithfully recognizes in the Church infinite wisdom beyond our own comprehension. 

 

Notes:

1. Fulton Sheen, Preface to Radio Replies Volume 1, Catholic Apologetics Online: Radio Replies. http://www.radioreplies.info/vol-1-preface.php  (accessed March 9, 2012).

2. Michael Ivens, S.J. , Understanding the Spiritual Exercises, (Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Cromwell Press, 1998), 260    

[found on Google books]

3. See note 1.

Update: I posted an afterthought to this post here: Look for the Church