Economic Success: Work as Gift

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” Albert Einstein (source unknown)

Economic Success: The Object of Work as Artistic Gift

The Good:

It has been a consistent conundrum to ascertain the origin of value. When reality is reduced to quantity, value is reduced to an epiphenomenon of quantified matter, or transmogrified into the rarified “ether” of subjective lucubration. If you think it’s good, it’s good. Or in the parlance of Jane Fonda: “How can you be wrong if you’re so sincere?”

Those are the two sides of the San Andreas Fault (Walker Percy) between matter and thought that has plagued us since Descartes. Karol Wojtyla changed that with his simple phenomenology of the person experiencing himself as good or bad. Wojtyla discovered that the origin of good or bad is the self experiencing itself as either self-transcending or self-seeking. Very simple. Good or bad is not to be discovered outside in the sensibly experienced world (Hume), nor in categories of the mind (Kant), but in the ontological experience of the “I” as acting. This is a very simple brand of self-examination to which they give the name “phenomenology” since Edmund Husserl.

Experience becomes the missing key to find that it is the real ontological self and not things “out there” nor ideas or principles “in here.” As we all sense that an action that we perform is either good or bad, Wojtyla was able to put his finger on the source of that sense. It came from an “experience” of the self itself. He went to work and distinguished what he found to be consciousness and conceptualization as distinct ways of knowing. He didn’t work with an abstractive sensible-abstractive first order epistemology which understands reality as substance and accident. He didn’t deny it, but saw it as “metaphysical terrain” whereby there is an intellect and will as accidents of a substance that is an “’in-itself.” Intellects don’t know, and wills don’t will. It is the Self conscious of its inner experiences who desires.

The major inner experience is self-determination vis a vis an act to be freely performed. Prior to it, there is the experience of potency and act as to the ability to perform the act. Posterior to the act there is the experience of joy or sadness, which results from the actualized state of the being of the “I.” Prior to the act there is freedom to do it or not. It is not a choice between this or that object, but the mastery, or failure of mastery, over the self. If there is no self-mastery, any action is sub-human, and therefore not good as human action. If there is self-mastery, then the action must be in conformity with reality perceived as true. If that occurs, the action is “good.” If the self-mastery is in disconformity with reality it is false and therefore “bad.”

The next question, then, is what is the reality to be conformed to? Joseph Ratzinger may be most helpful here. In his “Truth and Conscience” he presents the “ontological tendency” of the self in imaging the divine Persons as the metaphysical ground of the good and the bad. He says: “(T)here is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine. From its origin, man’s being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the god-like constitution of our being, is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is, so to speak, an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that t he one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears its echo from within. He sees: That’s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.”[1] Note that we are dealing with the image of God that is an “ontological tendency” and hence a most realist grounding tendency that becomes consciousness: “That’s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.” The good. When I determine myself to act in conformity with that tendency, I become good. The “I” then is what I mean by “good.” Good is the ontological “me.”[2]

The theological grounding of this axiology is Christ’s reference to God: “No one is good but only God” (Mk. 10, 18). If this is the grounding origin, then the value “good” can be predicated of man only in so far as he images in the same dynamic mode the prototypical Reality of the Trinity of Relations. As God is prototypical Communio, such must be man. John Paul II wrote in the “Original Unity of Man and Woman:” “If… we want to retrieve also from the account of the Yahwist text the concept of ‘image of God,’ we can deduce that man became the image of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons, which man and woman form from the very beginning. The function of the image is that of mirroring the one who is the model, of reproducing its own prototype. Man becomes an image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion. He is, in fact, ‘from the beginning’ not only an image in which the solitude of one Person, who rules the world, mirrors itself, but also and essentially the image of an inscrutable divine communion of Persons.”[3]

This point is large and scarcely understood today in the light of the faulty eschatology of the second millennium – which we have yet to emerge from - following on the split between Christian East and West and the condemned but sociologically influential formulation of Joachim of Fiore concerning three stages of Salvation history (13^th c.). The split in the year 1054 was the formalization of the individualizing forces in the Church whereby the East – separated from the unifying power of the papacy - became ensnared by the nation states such as Russia, Rumania, Greece, etc. In the West, the absence of the intersubjective dynamic of communio produced an ongoing rationalization and individualization whose end we have not seen. The Parousia has been removed from the “now” of present day history and postponed to coincide with the chronological end of history and the Second Coming. The hope of “development” into “another Christ” as the paradigm of the human person has been replaced by the anticipation of “progress” in science and technology whereby the person called to image God has been replaced by the individual, the unencumbered Self – alone - dominating matter and becoming a self-sufficient god. As alone, man shrinks from everything: death (fear), judgment (guilt), Heaven (achieved pharmacologically in drugs), and Hell (depression).

David Schindler has the chronology of true eschatology right. He remarked: “The crucial points… are whether and in what sense the transformation toward this communion is to begin already now and ‘publicly,’ and not merely in the future and ‘privately;’ and whether this dynamic transformation is to originate from within the core of liberal social order or only by way of addition to it.”[4]

The Computer:

Schindler’s insight consists in seeing technology as a form of anthropology, an anthropology that is mechanistic in nature and that is aided and abetted by an epistemological prejudice that persistently reduces the real to sensibly empirical facts. It must be cautioned that reality is not facts. Facts are mental judgements concerning the real. To consign reality to the data base, small, medium or unimaginably large, is to reduce the real to our way of knowing it, which is to cut it down – Procrustean-like - to our medium of measurement. What else is this but a praxis of force-fed binge of rationalism?

And it creates an anthropology. It is enough to see – at any given moment - half the people on a city street, or in a bus, talking on a cell-phone, working a Blackberry or – child or teenager - mesmerized with the video game. They may be talking or texting with another person, but they are always doing something else at the same time. They are alone. They are in control. They are self-sufficient. They are apprentices – or masters - of the unencumbered Self on the way to becoming like gods. This is an anthropology that is turned back on self. It is an anthropology that does not see.

Schindler points out that “the computer is an arrangement or ordering of space and time and matter and motion for the purpose of realizing a certain kind of knowledge. The ordering is binary and digital. The knowledge sought consists in the gather of discrete bits of information. Knowledge takes the form of acquiring, manipulating, and controlling data. The knowledge proper to a computer is more a matter of power and of ‘summing’ than of ‘seeing.’”[5] And he goes on to point out that “the technological order of the computer is weighted against habits of patient interiority, of contemplativeness, of wonder, of sustained mutual presence, of an embodied being-with, of the wisdom that sees the order to the whole.”[6]

Subordinate the Computer to Art

The computer replaces insight.

Within the theme of Caritas in Veritate, there is the topic of the quality of the product made. I have always been a fan of John Paul II’s “Letter to Artists” where he proclaims that the artifact, as the product of human work, resembles the artist: “In producing a work, artists express themselves to the point where their work becomes a unique disclosure of their own being, of what they are and of how they are what they are. And there are endless examples of this in human history. In shaping a masterpiece, the artist not only summons his work into being, but also in some way reveals his own personality by means of it. For him art offers both a new dimension and an exceptional mode of expression for his spiritual growth. Through his works, the artist speaks to others and communicates with them. The history of art, therefore, is not only a story of works produced but also a story of men and women. Works of art speak of their authors; they enable us to know their inner life, and they reveal the original contribution which artists offer to the history of culture.”[7]

This would come to mean that the goodness of the artist would overflow into the goodness of the artifact as “disclosure of their own being, of what they are and of how they are what they are.” Even more clearly: “(Works of art) enable us to know their (the artist’s inner life.”

Faith as Artistic Act

The knowing that is faith and the concomitant anthropology that is self-gift. In reality they are the same thing. Faith is the ontological obediential act of self gift.

---

[1] J. Ratzinger, “Conscience and Truth” On Conscience, Ignatius (2007) 32.

[2] But note that the whole of creation, including man, was seen by the Creator to be “good.” But after the naming of the animals and actualizing the subjective reality as obeying (and therefore relational) subject, it was revealed that as subject, it was not good for him to be “alone.” As subject, man becomes “good,” only in relation when in fact the first man and woman form a communio as image of the Communio of the Triune God. Cf. “A Theology of the Body”#9, November 14, 1979 DSP (Waldstein) 163.

[3] John Paul II “A Theology of the Body,” Ibid.

[4] David Schindler, “‘Homelessness’ and Market Liberalism” in Wealth, Poverty and Human Destiny ISI Books, (2003) 395.

[5] Ibid 408.

[6]

[7] John Paul II, “Letter to Artists,” #2.

Dear Matthew,

You've got it right. The metaphysics of substance and accident as really distinct arises within an epistemology of sensible perception and abstraction into concepts as "bundles of intellligibility." The notion of being as substance corresponds to that level of sensible and abstract knowing. It is not alse, but merely inadequate as a true metaphysics of the real. It is our way of knowing, not the way things are.

There is another level of experience of reality which is the self in the moral action. This kind of knowing is pre-conceptual. It corresponds to the revelation of the divine Persons as relations and Christology as relational self-gift. It is also available to, as I mention, to direct experience if one has the sensitivity to do the phenomenology involved - as Wojtyla did in his "Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the human person:" Person and Community Lang (1993) 209 -> This latter is a truly real metaphysic since it is immediate experience and not merely mediate through sense perception and conceptual abstraction.

This latter is the key to the future without throwing out the previous abstractive knowing which has been immensely beneficial and will continue to do so in complementarity to the phenomenological. Fr. Connor

Planned Parenthood Director Resigns After Viewing Ultrasound

[Me: This is the way Communism collapsed. The Polish People got up and walked out!!]

Director of Planned Parenthood at 40 Days for Life Birthplace Resigns after Watching Abortion Ultrasound - Planned Parenthood seeks restraining order

By Kathleen Gilbert

BRYAN, Texas, November 2, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The director of the Texas Planned Parenthood abortion mill where the 40 Days for Life campaign began has resigned, saying she experienced a conversion after watching an ultrasound video of a child being killed by abortion.

"I just thought I can't do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that's it," said Abby Johnson in an interview with local news network KBTX 3.

Johnson had been affiliated with Bryan's Planned Parenthood facility for eight years, and worked as its director for two. She said she began to feel uncomfortable with Planned Parenthood's business philosophy after the organization, suffering from the economic downturn, told her to try to bring more abortions in the door. "The money wasn't in family planning, the money wasn't in prevention, the money was in abortion and so I had a problem with that," said Johnson.

But the turning point for Johnson was reportedly when she witnessed an actual ultrasound image of an abortion being performed on an unborn child.

"I feel so pure in heart. I don't have this guilt, I don't have this burden on me anymore," said Johnson. "And that's how I know that this conversion was a spiritual conversion."

Johnson resigned on October 6th, near the beginning of Bryan's sixth annual 40 Days for Life campaign, and she has since joined up with the nearby Coalition for Life to begin praying near her old workplace. Coalition for Life is the local group that began 40 Days for Life, the national prayer and fasting campaign that was ongoing at the time of Johnson's resignation.

"This is by far the most amazing thing that has happened to the Coalition for Life throughout its entire history ... we thank God!" wrote Coalition for Life director Shawn Carney, who has been working with Johnson since her resignation, on the group's website.

40 Days for Life national director David Bereit said that Johnson's "amazing conversion demonstrates the importance of a constant, peaceful prayer presence in front of abortion facilities."

"From that first campaign in 2004, we've prayed for Abby - and for all abortion workers - that they would come to see what abortion really is, and that they would leave the deadly business. In this case, those prayers have been answered," said Bereit. "We are so proud of Abby's courage to leave the abortion industry and publicly announce her reasons for leaving."

The story is receiving broad attention after it was posted on the Drudge Report website today.

Planned Parenthood reacted with legal action on Friday by filing for a temporary restraining order, seeking to prevent Johnson and the Coalition for Life from disclosing confidential information. "We regret being forced to turn to the courts to protect the safety and confidentiality of our clients and staff; however, in this instance it is absolutely necessary," said Planned Parenthood in a statement.

A hearing for the restraining order has been set for November 10.

Johnson is one of eight abortion industry workers who left their jobs during the fifth coordinated 40 Days for Life campaign that concluded yesterday in 212 cities. She was the highest-ranking of the eight. Others who quit their clinic jobs included nurses, office staffers and security personnel.

In addition, a Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Kalispell, Montana announced that it will close its doors on November 20, citing a decline in business as the reason for the closure. That clinic was the site of a 40 Days for Life prayer vigil this past spring.

Christopher West: Lust and Eschatology

West’s Context: The Theology of the Body:

West raises the question of whether we can live a divine life on earth. He presents it in the light of the teaching of John Paul II and the Theology of the Body. He says (as posted in toto a few days ago): “Of Which Man Are We Speaking? The pivotal question as I see it is this: What does the grace of redemption offer us in this life with regard to our disordered sexual tendencies? From there, the questions multiply: Is it possible to overcome the pull of lust within us? If not, what are we to do with our disordered desires? If so, to what degree can we be liberated from lust and how can we enter into this grace? Furthermore, what does it actually look like to live a life of ever deepening sexual redemption? (…)

“‘This is what is at stake,’ John Paul II maintained, ‘the reality of Christ’s redemption. Christ has redeemed us! This means he has given us the possibility of realizing the entire truth of our being; he has set our freedom free from the domination of concupiscence’ (Veritatis Splendor 103).” West goes on: “What is the alternative to an effective sexual redemption? If man remains bound by his lusts, is he even capable of loving with a pure heart? Marriage, in this view, comes to be seen and lived as a “legitimate outlet” for indulging our disordered desires and the celibate life comes to be seen and lived as a life of hopeless repression. And we end up ‘holding the form of religion’ while ‘denying the power of it’ (2 Tim 3:5). ‘Ne evacuetur Crux!’ — John Paul II exclaims, ‘Do not empty the Cross of its power!’ (see 1 Cor 1:17). ‘This,’ he said, ‘is the cry of the new evangelization.’ For ‘if the cross of Christ is emptied of its power, man no longer has roots, he no longer has prospects: he is destroyed’ (Orientale Lumen 3).”[1]

Ratzinger's Eschatology and Lust

Consider the same point from the perspective of Joseph Ratzinger’s Eschatology:

The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ is an historical occurrence. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is eschatological. It is the end and the meaning of history. It is the insertion of the Creator-God immanentized in resurrected Flesh as the eschaton (end) of history. It is the “subsistere” of the Logos as the actio in the “est” of history. It means that the historical action of the Resurrection trumps every metaphysics of sensibly perceived being and all theologies of being and existence. Ratzinger writes: “It thus becomes obvious … that the concept of God is removed from the realm of a mere ουσία. I believe that it was here that the definitive boundary between the biblical and the Greek concept of God became obfuscated, that this obfuscation was the crux of the repeated patristic attempts to combine Greek thought with biblical faith and that from this arose for Christian theology a task that is till far from being accomplished.”[2] And, of course, what he means by this is the completion of first order knowing through sensation and abstraction by the second order of experience of the self in the moral act of self-transcendence, beginning with the act of faith. This relational act, that is the obedience of faith, is the metaphysical translation of the supernatural life of Zoë in a world of ín-itself, substantialist life of Bios and Psuche.

Ratzinger asserts the following: “(T)he Resurrection is an action of God…(N)ow we must extend this statement by saying… the Resurrection is an eschatological action of God. No other word in the language of theology today has assumed such a wide range of meanings as the word ‘eschatological;’ hence we must immediately ask ourselves: What does it mean in this context when we designate the action of God as eschatological? The answer must be given in several stages. The starting point is the fact that Israel awaited the awakening of the dead as the end of history, that is, quite literally as the eschaton, as the final action of God (my underline). Using the stylistic devices of the apocalyptic writers, therefore, the Evangelists, and especially Matthew, described Christ’s Cross and Resurrection as the final hour; they wanted to make it plain that his was not just any resurrection, such as an Elias or some other miracle-worker might have brought about, but a resurrection of a kind never before known, after which death would be no more. That means also, then, that in this awakening the realm of history has been transcended, that he who arose from the dead did not return, as anyone else might have done, to a this-worldly history but stands above it, though by no means without relationship to it.

“Thus the Resurrection cannot be an historical event in the same sense as the Crucifixion is. For that matter, there is no account that depicts it as such, nor is it circumscribed in time otherwise than by the eschatological-symbolical expression ‘the third day.’ On the one hand, it belongs intrinsically to the totality and ultimate greatness of this event that it is ‘eschatological,’ that is, that it transcends history; on the other hand, it belongs just as intrinsically to its inherent importance that it also touches upon history, that is, that this person who was dead is not no longer dead; he – really he himself and as such – is eternally alive in his individuality and uniqueness. Thus, it belongs, at the same time, to this event that it both reaches above history and is founded and anchored in history. Indeed, we could almost say, that the definitive transformation that eschatology underwent by virtue of the Christian belief in the Resurrection is its transposition into history. For late Judaic expectation, eschatology lay at the end of history. To believe in the Resurrection of Jesus means, on the contrary, to believe in the eschaton in history, in the historicity of God’s eschatological action.”[3]

The whole thrust of Benedict’s eschatology is the “Now-Already” of the presence of Jesus Christ in history now. It is also clearly proclaimed by Escriva as the very grounding locution and charism of Opus Dei. Jesus Christ lives! And because He lives, we are able to live a divinized life historically, not without defects and sins. But we can – possumus – live supernatural life, the resurrected life of Christ. We can live an ordinary life of radical self-gift in the middle of the historical world. This is dramatic point Christopher West is making together with John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Romano Guardini, etc. confronting the question: Is it possible to overcome the pull of lust within us? Assumed into the Logos as Jesus of Nazareth, we can.

---

[1] Ref. the blog of Christopher West, October 24, 2009.

[2]

[3] J. Ratzinger, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” Ignatius (1987) 184-190.

Feast of All Souls: The Meaning of Purgatory

II Maccabees 12, 42-45: “And they found under the coats of the slain some of the donaries of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbiddeth to the Jews, so that all plainly saw that for this cause they were slain. Then they all blessed the just judgment of the Lord, who had discovered the things that were hidden. And so betaking themselves to prayers, they besought him that the sin which had been committed might be forgotten. But the most valiant Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves from sin, forasmuch as they saw before their eyes what had happened, because of the sins of those that were slain. And making a gathering, he sent twelve thousand drachmas of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection. (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain t o pray for the dead). And because he considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them, it is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed form sins.”

1) What is Purgatory?

1 Corinthians 3, 10-15: “…it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each ne has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”

Ratzinger: “If…we hold that Purgatory is understood in a properly Christian way when it is grasped Christologically in terms of the Lord himself as the judging fire which transforms us and conforms us to his own glorified body, then we shall come to a very different conclusion” [than J. Gnilka who says: “There is no fire, only the Lord himself. There is no temporal duration involved, only eschatological encounter with the Judge. There is no purification, only the statement that such a human being will be saved only with exertion and difficulty;” “Eschatology” J. Ratzinger, CUA (1988) 229]. Does not the real Christianizing of the early Jewish notion of a purging fire lie precisely n the insight that the purification involved does not happen through some thing, but through the transforming power of the Lord himself, whose burning flame cuts free our closed-off heart, melting it and pouring it into a new mold to make it fit for the living organism of his body? … In what does such ‘exertion’ and ‘difficulty’ consist?... Surely these terms must refer not to something external to man, but to the man of little faith’s heartfelt submission to the fire of the Lord which will draw him out of himself into that purity which befits whose who are God’s? One really can’t object that Paul is only talking here about the Last Day as a unique event: that would be hermeneutical naiveté, though exercised in the opposite sense from the type we considered [earlier]. Man does not have to strip away his temporality in order thereby to become ‘eternal;’ Christ as judge is ho eschatos the Final One, in relation to whom we undergo judgment both after death and on the Last Day. In the perspective we are offered here, those two judgments are indistinguishable. A person’s entry into the realm of manifest reality is an entry into his definitive destiny and thus an immersion in eschatological fire. The transforming ‘moment’ of this encounter cannot be quantified by the measurements of earthly time. It is, indeed, not eternal but a transition, and yet trying to qualify it as of ‘short’ or ‘long’ duration on the basis of temporal measurements derived from physics would be naive and unproductive. The ‘temporal measure’ of this encounter lies in the unsoundable depths of existence, in a passing over where we are burned ere we are transformed…[1]

“The essential Christian understanding of Purgatory has now become clear. Purgatory is not, as Tertullian thought, some kind of supra-worldly concentration camp where man is forced to undergo punishment in a more or less arbitrary fashion. Rather is it the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints. Simply to look at people with any degree of realism at all is to grasp the necessity of such a process. It does not replace grace by works, but allows the former to achieve its full victory precisely as grace. What actually saves is the full assent of faith. But in most of us, that basic option is buried under a great deal of wood, hay and straw. Only with difficulty can it peer out from behind the latticework of an egoism we are powerless to pull down with out own hands. Man is the recipient of the divine mercy, yet this does not exonerate him from the need to be transformed. Encounter with the Lord is this transformation. It is the fire that burns away our dross and re-forms us to be vessels of eternal joy. This insight would contradict the doctrine of grace only if penance were the antithesis of grace and not its form, the gift of a gracious possibility….Purgatory follows by an inner necessity from t he idea of penance, the idea of the constant readiness for reform which makes the forgiven sinner.”[2]

2) How can a third party enter into this need for internal purification? “How can a third party enter into that most highly personal process of encounter with Christ, where the ‘I’ is transformed in the flame of his closeness? Is not this an event which so concerns the individual that all replacement or substitution must be ruled out? Is not the pious tradition of ‘helping the holy souls’ based on treating these souls after the fashion of ‘having’ – whereas our reflection so far have surely led to the conclusion that the heart of the matter is ‘being,’ for which there can be no substitute? Yet the being of man is not, in fact, that of a closed monad. It is related to others by love or hate, and, in these ways, has its colonies within them. My own being is present in others as guilt or as grace. We are not just ourselves; or, more correctly, we are ourselves only as being in others, with others and through others. Whether others curse us or bless us, forgive us and turn our guilt into love – this is part of our own destiny.”[3]

---

[1] J. Ratzinger, “Eschatology” CUA (1988) 230.

[2] Ibid 231.

[3] Ibid 232.

Eve of All Saints

Could this be true?

"I'll tell you a secret, an open secret: these world crises are crises of saints. "God wants a handful of men 'of his own' in every human activity. Then...'pax Christi in regno Christi' - 'the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ'" [The Way 301].

Fr. Neuhaus commented:

“I'm not sure what Malraux meant by it, but it is one of those oracular pronouncements that have about them the ring of truth. At the threshold of the Third Millennium, it seems that the alternatives to religion have exhausted themselves. That is true of the materialistically cramped rationalisms of the Enlightenment encyclopaedists, which, along with ideological utopianisms, both romantic and allegedly scientific, have been consigned, as Marxists used to say, to the dustbin of history. The perversity of the human mind will no doubt produce other ideological madnesses, but at the moment it seems the historical stage has been swept clean, with only the religious proposition left standing. That is certainly the intuition that informs John Paul II's repeated exhortation, "Be not afraid!"--an exhortation addressed to the entire human community.”[11]

Is This Theologically Feasible?

The ideological structures have in fact collapsed. Could a new truth be emerging now by dint of the praxis of prayer and self-giving as service in ordinary work (where the whole philosophical corpus of modernity has been heading [but incorrectly understood and labeled “German Idealism”]). Could it be understood not as a doctrinaire conservatism but as a true “liberalism” of self-transcendence – a praxis - where the truth emerges from the experience of the self as self-transcendence? And could this truth be the truth of the human person that can be found, as the Second Vatican Council teaches in Gaudium et spes #24: “Man, the only earthly being God has willed for itself, finds himself by the sincere gift of himself.” Could it be that this non-doctrinaire liberal formulation of the Magisterium of the Church be the key to the emergence of the truth that has its prototype in Jesus Christ that will make us free (Jn. 8, 32)? Recall that the “theological epistemology” of Ratzinger offers a “liberal” praxis to achieving a “knowledge” of Jesus Christ as transcendent, personal Deity. He offered St. Luke’s “And it came to pass as He was praying in private, that his disciples also were with him.” They were able to transcend contingent sensible knowledge of the man Jesus of Nazareth to draw from the experience and consciousness within themselves as “Other Christs” and transfer that consciousness as the concepts and word: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16, 16).

Could this be where the Spirit is leading the entire world at the present moment? Could it be that we have actually reached the historical moment when The words uttered to St. Josemaria Escriva become historical actual: “If you put me at the center of all human activities… by fulfilling the duty of each moment, in what appears important and what appears unimportant, I will draw everything to myself. My kingdom among you will be a reality!”

---

Chaput on the Down Baby: "Icon of God's Face and Vessel of his Love"

The Task of the Catholic Medical Professional

by Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

10/19/09

A number of my friends have children with disabilities. Their problems range from cerebral palsy to Turner's syndrome to Trisomy 18, which is extremely serious. But I want to focus on one fairly common genetic disability to make my point. I'm referring to Trisomy 21, or Down syndrome. You may already know that Down is not a disease. It's a genetic disorder with a variety of symptoms. Therapy can ease the burden of those symptoms, but Down syndrome is permanent. There's no cure. People with Down syndrome have mild to moderate developmental delays. They have low to middling cognitive function. They also tend to have a uniquely Down syndrome "look" -- a flat facial profile, almond-shaped eyes, a small nose, short neck, thick stature and a small mouth which often causes the tongue to protrude and interferes with clear speech. People with Down syndrome also tend to have low muscle tone. This can affect their posture, breathing and speech. Currently about 5,000 children with Down syndrome are born in the United States each year. They join a national Down syndrome population of roughly 400,000 persons. But that population may soon dwindle. And the reason why it may decline illustrates, in a vivid way, a struggle within the American soul. That struggle will shape the character of our society in the decades to come. Prenatal testing can now detect up to 95 percent of pregnancies with a strong risk of Down syndrome. The tests aren't conclusive. They can't give a firm yes or no. But they're pretty good. And the results of those tests are brutally practical. Studies show that more than 80 percent of unborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome now get terminated in the womb. They're killed because of a flaw in one of their chromosomes -- a flaw that's neither fatal nor contagious, but merely undesirable. The older a woman gets, the higher her risk of bearing a child with Down syndrome. And so, in medical offices around the country, pregnant women now hear from doctors or genetic counselors that their baby has "an increased likelihood" of Down syndrome based on one or more prenatal tests. Some doctors deliver this information with sensitivity and great support for the woman. But, as my friends know from experience, too many others seem more concerned about avoiding lawsuits, or managing costs, or even, in a few ugly cases, cleaning up the gene pool. We're witnessing a kind of schizophrenia in our culture's conscience. In Britain, the Guardian newspaper recently ran an article lamenting the faultiness of some of the prenatal tests that screen for Down syndrome. Women who receive positive results, the article noted, often demand an additional test, amniocentesis, which has a greater risk of miscarriage. Doctors in the story complained about the high number of false positives for Down syndrome. "The result of [these false positives] is that babies are dying completely unnecessarily," one med school professor said. "It's scandalous and disgraceful... and causing the death of normal babies." Those words sound almost humane -- until we realize that, at least for the med school professor, killing "abnormal" babies like those with Down syndrome is perfectly acceptable. In practice, medical professionals can now steer an expectant mother toward abortion simply by hinting at a list of the child's possible defects. And the most debased thing about that kind of pressure is that doctors know better than anyone else how vulnerable a woman can be in hearing potentially tragic news about her unborn baby. I'm not suggesting that doctors should hold back vital knowledge from parents. Nor should they paint an implausibly upbeat picture of life with a child who has a disability. Facts and resources are crucial in helping adult persons prepare themselves for difficult challenges. But doctors, genetic counselors, and med school professors should have on staff -- or at least on speed dial -- experts of a different sort. Parents of children with special needs, special education teachers and therapists, and pediatricians who have treated children with disabilities often have a hugely life-affirming perspective. Unlike prenatal caregivers, these professionals have direct knowledge of persons with special needs. They know their potential. They've seen their accomplishments. They can testify to the benefits -- often miraculous -- of parental love and faith. Expectant parents deserve to know that a child with Down syndrome can love, laugh, learn, work, feel hope and excitement, make friends, and create joy for others. These things are beautiful precisely because they transcend what we expect. They witness to the truth that every child with special needs has a value that matters eternally. Raising a child with Down syndrome can be hard. Parents grow up very fast. None of my friends who has a daughter or son with a serious disability is melodramatic, or self-conscious, or even especially pious about it. They speak about their special child with an unsentimental realism. It's a realism flowing out of love -- real love, the kind that courses its way through fear and suffering to a decision, finally, to surround the child with their heart and trust in the goodness of God. And that decision to trust, of course, demands not just real love, but also real courage. The real choice in accepting or rejecting a child with special needs is never between some imaginary perfection or imperfection. None of us is perfect. No child is perfect. The real choice in accepting or rejecting a child with special needs is between love and unlove; between courage and cowardice; between trust and fear. That's the choice we face when it happens in our personal experience. And that's the choice we face as a society in deciding which human lives we will treat as valuable, and which we will not. Nearly 50 percent of babies with Down syndrome are born with some sort of heart defect. Most have a lifelong set of health challenges. Some of them are serious. Government help is a mixed bag. Public policy is uneven. Some cities and states, like New York, provide generous aid to the disabled and their families. In many other jurisdictions, though, a bad economy has forced budget cuts. Services for the disabled -- who often lack the resources, voting power and lobbyists to defend their interests -- have shrunk. In still other places, the law mandates good support and care, but lawmakers neglect their funding obligations, and no one holds them accountable. The vulgar economic fact about the disabled is that, in purely utilitarian terms, they rarely seem worth the investment. That's the bad news. But there's also good news. Ironically, for those persons with Down syndrome who do make it out of the womb, life is better than at any time in our nation's history. A baby with Down syndrome born in 1944, the year of my own birth, could expect to live about 25 years. Many spent their entire lives mothballed in public institutions. Today, people with Down syndrome routinely survive into their 50s and 60s. Most can enjoy happy, productive lives. Most live with their families or share group homes with modified supervision and some measure of personal autonomy. Many hold steady jobs in the workplace. Some marry. A few have even attended college. Federal law mandates a free and appropriate education for children with special needs through the age of 21. Social Security provides modest monthly support for persons with Down syndrome and other severe disabilities from age 18 throughout their lives. These are huge blessings. And, just as some people resent the imperfection, the inconvenience and the expense of persons with disabilities, others see in them an invitation to be healed of their own sins and failures by learning how to love. About 200 families in this country are now waiting to adopt children with Down syndrome. Many of these families already have, or know, a child with special needs. They believe in the spirit of these beautiful children, because they've seen it firsthand. A Maryland-based organization, Reece's Rainbow, helps arrange international adoptions of children with Down syndrome. The late Eunice Shriver spent much of her life working to advance the dignity of children with Down syndrome and other disabilities. Last September, the Anna and John J. Sie Foundation committed $34 million to the University of Colorado to focus on improving the medical conditions faced by those with Down syndrome. And many businesses, all over the country, now welcome workers with Down syndrome. Parents of these special employees say that having a job, however tedious, and earning a pay check, however small, gives their children pride and purpose. These things are more precious than gold. The Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer once wrote that, "A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives." Every child with Down syndrome, every adult with special needs; in fact, every unwanted unborn child, every person who is poor, weak, abandoned or homeless -- each one of these persons is an icon of God's face and a vessel of his love. How we treat these persons -- whether we revere them and welcome them, or throw them away in distaste -- shows what we really believe about human dignity, both as individuals and as a nation. The American Jesuit scholar Father John Courtney Murray once said that "Anyone who really believes in God must set God, and the truth of God, above all other considerations." Here's what that means. Catholic public officials who take God seriously cannot support laws that attack human dignity without lying to themselves, misleading others and abusing the faith of their fellow Catholics. God will demand an accounting. Catholic doctors who take God seriously cannot do procedures, prescribe drugs or support health policies that attack the sanctity of unborn children or the elderly; or that undermine the dignity of human sexuality and the family. God will demand an accounting. And Catholic citizens who take God seriously cannot claim to love their Church, and then ignore her counsel on vital public issues that shape our nation's life. God will demand an accounting. As individuals, we can claim to be or believe whatever we want. We can posture, and rationalize our choices, and make alibis with each other all day long -- but no excuse for our lack of honesty and zeal will work with the God who made us. God knows our hearts better than we do. If we don't conform our hearts and actions to the faith we claim to believe, we're only fooling ourselves. We live in a culture where our marketers and entertainment media compulsively mislead us about the sustainability of youth; the indignity of old age; the avoidance of suffering; the denial of death; the meaning of real beauty; the impermanence of every human love; the dysfunctions of children and family; the silliness of virtue; and the cynicism of religious faith. It's a culture of fantasy, selfishness and illness that we've brought upon ourselves. And we've done it by misusing the freedom that other -- and greater -- generations than our own worked for, bled for and bequeathed to our safe-keeping. What have we done with that freedom? In whose service do we use it now? John Courtney Murray is most often remembered for his work at Vatican II on the issue of religious liberty, and for his great defense of American democracy in his book, We Hold These Truths. Murray believed deeply in the ideas and moral principles of the American experiment. He saw in the roots of the American Revolution the unique conditions for a mature people to exercise their freedom through intelligent public discourse, mutual cooperation and laws inspired by right moral character. He argued that -- at its best -- American democracy is not only compatible with the Catholic faith, but congenial to it. But he had a caveat. It's the caveat George Washington implied in his Farewell Address, and Charles Carroll -- the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence -- mentions in his own writings. In order to work, America depends as a nation on a moral people shaped by their religious faith, and in a particular way, by the Christian faith. Without that living faith, animating its people and informing its public life, America becomes something alien and hostile to the very ideals it was founded on. This is why the same Father Murray who revered the best ideals of the American experiment could also write that "Our American culture, as it exists, is actually the quintessence of all that is decadent in the culture of the Western Christian world. It would seem to be erected on the triple denial that has corrupted Western culture at its roots: the denial of metaphysical reality, of the primacy of the spiritual over the material, [and] of the social over the individual . . . Its most striking characteristic is its profound materialism . . . It has given citizens everything to live for and nothing to die for. And its achievement may be summed up thus: It has gained a continent and lost its own soul." Those who serve in the medical profession have a sacred vocation. That vocation of healing comes from Jesus Christ himself. I don't mean just curing people's aches and pains, although physical healing is so very important. I mean the kind of healing that comes when a suffering person is understood and loved, and knows that she's understood and loved. That requires a different kind of medicine. The medicine of patience. The medicine of listening. The medicine of respect. Over the years, I've learned that when God takes something away from a person, he gives back some other gift that's equally precious. Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, is a friend of mine. Rick has always been Catholic, and always prolife. But it's one thing to argue in Congress for the sanctity of life. It's another to prove it by your actions under pressure. Last year Rick's wife gave birth to a beautiful daughter named Bella. Bella has Trisomy 18. Against the odds, that little girl is still alive and still growing. And she's surrounded by a family devoted to loving her, 24 hours a day. Rick and his wife have no illusions about the prospects for their daughter. No one "recovers" from Trisomy 18. But he said to me once that each day he has with Bella makes him a little bit more of a "whole person." It's one of God's ironies that the suffering imperfection brings, can perfect us in the vocation of love. Rick's daughter is an education in the dignity of every human life; a tutor in the meaning of love -- and not just for themselves, but for me as their friend, and for dozens of other people who encounter the Santorum family every week. Another friend of mine has a son with Down syndrome, and she calls him a "sniffer of souls." He may have an IQ of 47, and he'll never read The Brothers Karamazov, but he has a piercingly quick sense of the heart of the people he meets. He knows when he's loved -- and he knows when he's not. Ultimately, we're all like her son. We hunger for people to confirm that we have meaning by showing us love. We need that love. And we suffer when that love is withheld. The task of the Catholic working in medicine is this: Be the best doctors, nurses and medical professionals you can be. Your skill gives glory to God. But be the best Catholics you can be first. Pour your love for Jesus Christ into the healing you do for every person you serve. By your words and by your actions, be a witness to your colleagues. Speak up for what you believe. Love the Church. Defend her teaching. Trust in God. Believe in the Gospel. And don't be afraid. Fear is beneath your dignity as sons and daughters of the God of life. Changing the course of American culture seems like such a huge task. But St. Paul felt exactly the same way. Redeeming and converting a civilization has already been done once. It can be done again. But we need to understand that God is calling you and me to do it. He chose us. He calls us. He's waiting, and now we need to answer him. Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., is the archbishop of Denver. This article is adapted from remarks he delivered to the Phoenix Catholic Physician's Guild on October 16, 2009.

NYT Anti-Catholicism Confronted by Archbishop Dolan

October 29, 2009


The following article was submitted in a slightly shorter form to the New York Times as an op-ed article. The Times declined to publish it. I thought you might be interested in reading it.

FOUL BALL!

By Archbishop Timothy M. DolanArchbishop of New York

October is the month we relish the highpoint of our national pastime, especially when one of our own New York teams is in the World Series! Sadly, America has another national pastime, this one not pleasant at all: anti-catholicism.

It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime. Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as “the deepest bias in the history of the American people,” while John Higham described it as “the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history.” “The anti-semitism of the left,” is how Paul Viereck reads it, and Professor Philip Jenkins sub-titles his book on the topic “the last acceptable prejudice.”

If you want recent evidence of this unfairness against the Catholic Church, look no further than a few of these following examples of occurrences over the last couple weeks:

On October 14, in the pages of the New York Times, reporter Paul Vitello exposed the sad extent of child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. According to the article, there were forty cases of such abuse in this tiny community last year alone. Yet the Times did not demand what it has called for incessantly when addressing the same kind of abuse by a tiny minority of priests: release of names of abusers, rollback of statute of limitations, external investigations, release of all records, and total transparency. Instead, an attorney is quoted urging law enforcement officials to recognize “religious sensitivities,” and no criticism was offered of the DA’s office for allowing Orthodox rabbis to settle these cases “internally.” Given the Catholic Church’s own recent horrible experience, I am hardly in any position to criticize our Orthodox Jewish neighbors, and have no wish to do so . . . but I can criticize this kind of “selective outrage.”

Of course, this selective outrage probably should not surprise us at all, as we have seen many other examples of the phenomenon in recent years when it comes to the issue of sexual abuse. To cite but two: In 2004, Professor Carol Shakeshaft documented the wide-spread problem of sexual abuse of minors in our nation’s public schools (the study can be found here). In 2007, the Associated Press issued a series of investigative reports that also showed the numerous examples of sexual abuse by educators against public school students. Both the Shakeshaft study and the AP reports were essentially ignored, as papers such as the New York Times only seem to have priests in their crosshairs.

On October 16, Laurie Goodstein of the Times offered a front page, above-the-fold story on the sad episode of a Franciscan priest who had fathered a child. Even taking into account that the relationship with the mother was consensual and between two adults, and that the Franciscans have attempted to deal justly with the errant priest’s responsibilities to his son, this action is still sinful, scandalous, and indefensible. However, one still has to wonder why a quarter-century old story of a sin by a priest is now suddenly more pressing and newsworthy than the war in Afghanistan, health care, and starvation–genocide in Sudan. No other cleric from religions other than Catholic ever seems to merit such attention.

Five days later, October 21, the Times gave its major headline to the decision by the Vatican to welcome Anglicans who had requested union with Rome. Fair enough. Unfair, though, was the article’s observation that the Holy See lured and bid for the Anglicans. Of course, the reality is simply that for years thousands of Anglicans have been asking Rome to be accepted into the Catholic Church with a special sensitivity for their own tradition. As Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s chief ecumenist, observed, “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond.” Not enough for the Times; for them, this was another case of the conniving Vatican luring and bidding unsuspecting, good people, greedily capitalizing on the current internal tensions in Anglicanism.
Finally, the most combustible example of all came Sunday with an intemperate and scurrilous piece by Maureen Dowd on the opinion pages of the Times. In a diatribe that rightly never would have passed muster with the editors had it so criticized an Islamic, Jewish, or African-American religious issue, she digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust, condoms, obsession with sex, pedophile priests, and oppression of women, all the while slashing Pope Benedict XVI for his shoes, his forced conscription -- along with every other German teenage boy -- into the German army, his outreach to former Catholics, and his recent welcome to Anglicans.

True enough, the matter that triggered her spasm -- the current visitation of women religious by Vatican representatives -- is well-worth discussing, and hardly exempt from legitimate questioning. But her prejudice, while maybe appropriate for the Know-Nothing newspaper of the 1850’s, the Menace, has no place in a major publication today.

I do not mean to suggest that anti-catholicism is confined to the pages New York Times. Unfortunately, abundant examples can be found in many different venues. I will not even begin to try and list the many cases of anti-catholicism in the so-called entertainment media, as they are so prevalent they sometimes seem almost routine and obligatory. Elsewhere, last week, Representative Patrick Kennedy made some incredibly inaccurate and uncalled-for remarks concerning the Catholic bishops, as mentioned in this blog on Monday. Also, the New York State Legislature has levied a special payroll tax to help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority fund its deficit. This legislation calls for the public schools to be reimbursed the cost of the tax; Catholic schools, and other private schools, will not receive the reimbursement, costing each of the schools thousands – in some cases tens of thousands – of dollars, money that the parents and schools can hardly afford. (Nor can the archdiocese, which already underwrites the schools by $30 million annually.) Is it not an issue of basic fairness for ALL school-children and their parents to be treated equally? The Catholic Church is not above criticism. We Catholics do a fair amount of it ourselves. We welcome and expect it. All we ask is that such critique be fair, rational, and accurate, what we would expect for anybody. The suspicion and bias against the Church is a national pastime that should be “rained out” for good. I guess my own background in American history should caution me not to hold my breath.Then again, yesterday was the Feast of Saint Jude, the patron saint of impossible causes.