The Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Theology of Benedict XVI

Father Mark D. Kirby, O.Cist.

'We see who Jesus is if we see him at prayer' "In the pierced heart of the Crucified, God's own heart is opened up; here we see who God is and what he is like. Heaven is no longer locked up. God has stepped out of his hiddenness. That is why St John sums up both the meaning of the Cross and the nature of the new worship of God in the mysterious promise made through the prophet Zechariah (cf. 12:10). 'They shall look on him whom they have pierced' (Jn 19.37)".1 Pope Benedict XVI: Theologian of the Heart of Christ In July of 1985, 1 was standing in the bookstore of the Abbey of Sainte-Cécile of Solesmes in France when, by a wonderful providence of God, I met the Benedictine scholar, Mother Elisabeth de Solms. The encounter remains unforgettable. I had long studied and used her admirable translation of the Life and Rule of Saint Benedict, as well as her Christian Bible,2 a series of volumes setting the commentaries of the Church Fathers line by line alongside the Scriptures. The simplicity of so great a woman was a marvel. She engaged me in conversation, asking if I had read the works of Cardinal Ratzinger. I admitted that I was familiar with certain writings of his, surely not with everything published. "Read him", she said. "You will see. God will make of him a great gift to his Church". That was 20 years ago. I began reading Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. I devoured, in particular, his writings on the sacred liturgy in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. I discovered, among other things in the writings of Cardinal Ratzinger, elements of a theology of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In Pope Benedict XVI God has given the Church a shepherd who has contemplated the pierced Heart of the Crucified and already written of it, notably in Behold The Pierced One3 and, more recently, in The Spirit of the Liturgy. Cardinal Ratzinger's writings on the Sacred Heart are warm and luminous. Fire and light are characteristic of a theology forged in experience. Theologians who do not persevere in a humble prayer of amazement and adoration fall inevitably into one of two syndromes. Either they generate heat without shedding any light, or they shine a cold light, one that fails to warm the heart. The true theologian at once warms the heart and illumines the mind. Recall the words of Jesus concerning John the Baptist: "He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light" (Jn 5:35). In our new Holy Father, God has given the Church "a burning and shining lamp" (Jn 5:35). Those already familiar with his writings and liturgical preaching know what I mean. Theology itself is a difficult word. Theology of the Sacred Heart thrusts us into deep waters. The Song of Songs assures us that "many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it" (8:7). Theology is more than a mere flood of words. All words oblige us, in some way, to wrestle with meaning. Words are the vehicle of meaning. Words wait to be unlocked. The words we use in talking about God, or in talking to God, can be unlocked only in prayer. Before we can reflect on a theology of the Sacred Heart, we have to ask ourselves this question: "What do we mean by theology?". The Greek etymology of the word discloses both God (theós) and word (lógos). Lógos, in turn, has a huge richness: it can mean word, but it also signifies meaning, message, poem and even hymn. When we speak of theology we mean not one thing but at least three: word from God; word to God; and word about God. All theology, and therefore a theology of the Sacred Heart, is more adequately understood in terms of: God's self-revealing word addressed to us; the doxological word of Christ and of the Church addressed to God; and the healing word of the Church addressed to the world. Sacred Heart: God's Word  addressed to us s. Apply this immediately to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The pierced Heart of the Crucified is God speaking a word to us, a word carved out in the flesh of Jesus' side by the soldier's lance. It is the love of God laid bare for all to see: "God stepping out of his hiddenness".4 When we speak of a theology of the Sacred Heart, we mean this first of all: not our discourse about love, but the love of God revealed first to us, the poem of love that issues forth from the Heart of God. This is exactly what St John, whom the Eastern tradition calls, "The Theologian", says in his First Letter: "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins" (I Jn 4:10). The difficulty here is that, in order to receive this word inscribed in the flesh of the Word (cf. Jn 1:14), we have first to stop in front of it, to linger there and to look long at the wound made by love. "They shall look on him whom they have pierced" (Jn 19:37). To contemplate is to look, not with a passing glance, but with the gaze of one utterly conquered by love. Jeremiah says, "You have seduced me, O Lord, and I was seduced; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed" (20:7). The call of the Sacred Heart is addressed to every Christian. The apostle is, in essence, the bearer of a word, one sent forth and entrusted with a message. The message that the apostle carries into the world is the one he has learned by looking long with the eyes of adoration at the pierced Heart of the Crucified. The word of Crucified Love is hard to pronounce — not with our lips but with our lives. Adoration is the school wherein one learns how to say the Sacred Heart. It is in adoration that the apostle receives the word of the pierced Heart that, in turn, becomes his life's message. Adoration and apostleship together model a spirituality accessible to all Christians: the word received in adoration is communicated in the dynamism of one sent forth with something to say. Sacred Heart: Our word addressed to God Theology is, in the second place, our word addressed to God. Applying this also to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we see that all we could possibly want to say to God has already been uttered and is being said eternally through the "mouth" of Christ's glorious pierced Heart in heaven. It is through the Sacred Heart that the Blood of Christ speaks "more graciously than the blood of Abel" (Heb 12:24). The Letter to the Hebrews puts it this way: "Christ is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he lives for ever to make intercession for them" (7:25). Christ exercises his priesthood of intercession in "the inner sanctuary behind the veil" (Heb 6:19) by presenting to the Father the glorious wounds in his hands, his feet and his side. The wound in the side of Christ, "great high priest over the house of God" (Heb 10:21), speaks to the Father on our behalf. It is our word addressed to God. At the core of devotion to the Sacred Heart is a passing-over into the prayer of Christ to the Father, a long apprenticeship to silence by which we begin to let the Heart of Christ speak in us and for us to the Father. The mystics of the Sacred Heart, in particular St Gertrude and St Mechthilde, speak of offering the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the Father. This means allowing the Sacred Heart to speak for us, to pray in us, to pray through us, taking comfort in what Scripture says, "that we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Heb 4:15). This suggests a simple way of praying, one accessible to all: "Lord Jesus, I come to be silent in your presence, trusting that your Heart will speak for me, knowing that all I could ever want to say, that all I would ever need to say, is spoken eternally to the Father by your Sacred Heart". In this way, everything that prayer can or should express — adoration, praise, thanksgiving, supplication and reparation — finds its most perfect expression. Devotion to the Sacred Heart, thus understood, is a manifestation in the Church of the Holy Spirit, "helping us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought" (Rom 8:26).5 The Sacred Heart is, in the life of the Church, the organ by which "the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God" (Rom 8:27). Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: "We see who Jesus is if we see him at prayer. The Christian confession of faith comes from participating in the prayer of Jesus, from being drawn into his prayer and being privileged to behold it; it interprets the experience of Jesus' prayer, and its interpretation of Jesus is correct because it springs from a sharing in what is most personal and intimate to him".6 This is the prayer of the Sacred Heart, the prayer that filled the days and nights of Jesus' earthly life, the prayer that suffused his sufferings and ascended from the Cross at the hour of his death, the prayer that with him descended into the depths of the earth, the prayer that continues uninterrupted in the glory of his risen and ascended life, the prayer that is ceaseless in the Sacrament of the Altar. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that "by entering into Jesus' solitude", and "only by participating in what is most personal to him, his communication with the Father, can one see what this most personal reality is; only thus can one penetrate to his identity".7The Sacred Heart represents and invites us into what is most personal to Jesus: his communication with the Father. In words that today sound almost prophetic, Cardinal Ratzinger concluded that "the person who has beheld Jesus' intimacy with his Father and has come to understand him from within is called to be a 'rock' of the Church. The Church arises out of participation in the prayer of Jesus (cf. Lk 9:18-20; Mt 16:13-20)".8 Prayer of the Sacred Heart in the New Testament The Letter to the Hebrews tells us exactly what was the prayer of the Heart of Christ at the moment he took flesh in the Virgin's womb: "When Christ came into the world, he said, 'Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure'. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God', as it is written of me in the scroll of the book'" (Heb 10:5-7). This is the first prayer of the Heart of Jesus, "substantially united to the Word of God".9 The prayer of the Heart of Christ revealed in the Letter to the Hebrews resonates throughout the Fourth Gospel. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: "We could say that the Fourth Gospel draws us into that intimacy which Jesus reserved for those who were his friends" (ibid., 22). The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple belongs, in a special sense, to the friends of the Heart of Jesus. The liturgy gives us the Gospel of St John on every Sunday and weekday during Paschaltide. Holy Thursday's Gospel of Jesus washing his disciples' feet at the Last Supper (cf. Jn 13:1-5) becomes Good Friday's Gospel of the Heart from which flowed blood and water: "They shall look on him whom they have pierced" (cf. Jn 19:34-37). By continuing to read the Fourth Gospel on Easter Sunday (Jn 20:1-9) and for the 50 days following, the liturgy guides us into the prayer of the Heart of Christ. The Second Sunday of Easter, that of Divine Mercy, invites us in a particular way to the contemplation of the Sacred Heart. In the Gospel (Jn 20:19-31), the Risen Christ stands before Thomas, inviting him to touch his wounded side. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: "All of us are Thomas, unbelieving; but like him, all of us can touch the exposed Heart of Jesus and... behold the Logos himself. So, with our hands and eyes fixed upon this Heart, we can attain to the confession of faith: 'My Lord and my God!'".10 The liturgical lectionary's repartition of the Fourth Gospel is integral to the mystical pedagogy of the Church. When the liturgical Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus arrives on the Friday following the Second Sunday after Pentecost, it finds us already prepared, ready and full of desire to pass fully into the prayer of the Sacred Heart. For Cardinal Ratzinger, "the entire Gospel testimony is unanimous that Jesus' words and deeds flowed from his most intimate communion with the Father; that he continually went 'into the hills' to pray in solitude after the burden of the day    (cf., Mk 1:35; 6:46; 14:35, 39)".11 He notes that "Luke, of all the Evangelists, lays stress on this feature. He shows that the essential events of Jesus' activity proceeded from the core of his personality and that this core was his dialogue with the Father".12 The psalms also express and communicate the prayer of the Heart of Christ. The Psalter is for the Church a "sacrament" of . Jesus intoned two psalms from the Cross, leaving it to his Church to continue them: Psalm 21 in Matthew 21:46, and Psalm 30 in Luke 23:46. "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"' (Mt 27:46). The Church, imaged in the Mother of Jesus, the beloved disciple and the other holy women at the foot of the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25), prays the psalm through to the end to discover in its triumphant final verses (cf. Ps 21:22-31) the promise of a banquet for the afflicted and the hope of the resurrection: "The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; and those who seek him shall praise the Lord! May your hearts live for ever" (Ps 21:26). Psalm 30 gives the verse, "Into your hands I commit my spirit" (Ps 30:5). Praying it from the Cross at the hour of his death, Jesus adds a single word, a word that rises out of the depths of his Heart and utterly transforms the psalmist's prayer into one by which the Son entrusts everything to the Father. "Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!'. And having said this he breathed his last" (Lk 23:46). "Jesus died praying.... Although the Evangelists' accounts of the last words of Jesus differ in details, they agree on the fundamental fact that Jesus died praying. He fashioned his death into an act of prayer, an act of worship.... The last words of Jesus were an expression of his devotion to the Father.... His cry was not uttered to anyone, anywhere, but to Him, since it was of his innermost essence to be in a dialogue relationship with the Father".13 Prayer of the Sacred Heart in the Liturgy The prayer of the Heart of Christ at the hour of his sacrifice passes entirely into the heart of the Church, where it is prolonged and actualized "from the rising of the sun to its setting" (Mal 1:11) in the Liturgy of the Hours and in the mystery of the Eucharist. Cardinal Ratzinger asks if, after the once-for-all Pasch of Jesus, anything more is needed. "After the tearing of the Temple curtain and the opening up of the heart of God in the pierced heart of the Crucified, do we still need sacred space, sacred time, mediating symbols? Yes, we do need them, precisely so that, through the 'image', through the sign, we learn to see the openness of heaven. We need them to give us the capacity to know the mystery of God in the pierced heart of the Crucified".14 It is through the liturgy, first and above all, that we pass over into the prayer of the Sacred Heart, the word to the Father forever inscribed in his pierced side. Sacred Heart: the Church's Word to the World Theology is, finally, a word about God addressed to the world, a word about God addressed to anyone who will listen. The Sacred Heart, pierced in death, becomes a word of life for the world. "Death, which by its very nature is the end, the destruction of every communication, is changed by Jesus into an act of self-communication; and this is man's redemption, for it signifies the triumph of love over death. We can put the same thing another way: death, which puts an end to words and to meaning, itself becomes a word, becomes the place where meaning communicates itself".15 This means that after the mouth of Jesus fell silent in death, there remained the open side and the pierced Heart that speaks of nothing but love, the ultimate and everlasting word about God. In the final analysis, one "impelled by the charity of Christ" (cf. II Cor 5:14) will have but one message, that of the pierced Heart revealing the love of the Father and "drawing all to himself" (cf. Jn 12:32). One who has contemplated the message carved in the flesh of Jesus' side by the soldier's lance and learned to read it in adoration has but one language in which to speak to the world: the language of the heart. It is learned not in conferences or classrooms or books, but in silence and in the contemplation of the Pierced One. It is learned especially in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. The language of the heart encompasses a thousand local dialects, a million accents. Devotion to the Sacred Heart impels the Christian to an inventive charity, a charity ready to explore every dark and treacherous place in search of the lost sheep. "Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame" (Lk 14:21). "The great gesture of embrace emanating from the Crucified has not yet reached its goal; it has only just begun."16 Word from God, Word to God, Word for the World Word of God addressed to us, word addressed to God, word of the Church addressed to the world: herein lies one approach to a theology of the Sacred Heart. The liturgy remains its primary articulation. Together with the Liturgy of the Hours for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, the 12 biblical texts provided for the Mass — a First Reading; Psalm, Second Reading and Gospel for each of the three years A, B and C— become a fundamental resource, an inexhaustible treasure waiting to be mined for every one called to hear, to pray and to offer the healing word that is the pierced Heart. The Sacred Heart is the Heart of God laid bare for man: word from God. It is a human Heart lifted high on the Cross: word to God. It is the Heart of the Church open to all who seek, to all who thirst, to every lost sheep waiting to be found and carried home: word for the world. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the full and irrevocable message of the Father to us. It is everything we ever could or should need to say to the Father. It is all we have to say to one another and to the world. Pope Benedict XVI, writing in 1981 as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, challenges us to nothing less: "In the Heart of Jesus, the center of Christianity is set before us. It expresses everything, all that is genuinely new and revolutionary in the New Covenant. This Heart calls to our heart. It invites us to step forth out of the futile attempt of self-preservation and, by joining in the task of love, by handing ourselves over to him and with him, to discover the fullness of love which alone is eternity and which alone sustains the world".17 NOTES 1 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), p. 48. 2 Mére Elisabeth de Solms, La vie et la règle de saint Benoît (Paris: Téqui, 1984); Bible Chrétienne (Québec: Editions Anne Sigier et Desclée, 1988). 3 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Behold The Pierced One, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986). 4 Card. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 48. 5 Cf. Litany of the Sacred Heart. 6 Card. Ratzinger, Behold The Pierced One, p. 19. 7 Ibid., p. 19. 8 Ibid. 9 Cf. Litany of the Sacred Heart. 10 Card. Ratzinger, Behold The Pierced One, p. 54. 11 Ibid., p. 17. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., pp. 22-24. 14 Card. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 61. 15 Card. Ratzinger, Behold The Pierced One, p. 25. 16 Card. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 50. 17 Card. Ratzinger, Behold The Pierced One, p. 69.

Taken from: L'Osservatore Romano Weekly Edition in English 25 May 2005, page 10 L'Osservatore Romano is the newspaper of the Holy See. The Weekly Edition in English is published for the US by: The Cathedral Foundation L'Osservatore Romano English Edition 320 Cathedral St. Baltimore, MD 21201 Subscriptions: (410) 547-5315 Fax: (410) 332-1069 lormail@catholicreview.org

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On God's Permitting Divorce and Dooming Entire Cities (Not Clear To Me) - Scott Hahn & John Bergsma

Link to Scott Hahn and John Bergsma's Article

Illinois Puts Down Same-Sex Marriage Bill: Bell Weather For The Rest of the Country?

Now that Illinois has left same-sex marriage advocates at the altar, the question is inevitable: Will other states start jilting them as well?

“The momentum has been stopped,” predicted David Smith of the Illinois Family Institute, which opposed the same-sex measure that collapsed Friday in Springfield, under a national spotlight. “It shows that it’s not as popular with people as the national media is telling us.”

After months of moving toward what appeared to be a landmark embrace of the controversial unions, Illinois’ same-sex marriage bill died suddenly in the final hours of the 2013 legislative session.

It had already passed the Senate, and Gov. Pat Quinn was eager to sign it. But the sponsor acknowledged in a tearful, halting speech on the House floor Friday night that he didn’t have the support there to call it for the final vote.

“I apologize to the families who were hoping to wake up tomorrow as full and equal citizens of this state,” said Rep. Gregory Harris, D-Chicago, as angry gay-rights advocates raised so much noise in the overhead gallery that they were threatened with removal.

Harris vowed to continue pushing the bill when the Legislature returns after the summer. He quoted Illinois favorite son Abraham Lincoln: “‘Fellow citizens, you cannot escape history.’”

It was a historic role that Illinois appeared destined to play — 13th in a dramatically growing list of same-sex marriage states, and one of the most prominent.

The sense of a national juggernaut started in the November elections, when gay-rights advocates went 4-for-4: Four states with same-sex marriage on the ballot either approved it or refused to outlaw it. That was followed by a seeming domino effect of three more states in May.

National news organizations and even some conservative leaders had begun referring to it as a tidal wave that had to be heeded. The failure of the measure in Illinois interrupts that narrative.

Just as ominous for advocates is that it’s Illinois. “Bluest” state in the Midwest. Home of President Barack Obama (who, along with former president Bill Clinton, publicly backed the measure). Its Legislature is controlled not merely by Democratic majorities, but “supermajorities” of three-fifths.

If gay marriage fails here, how would a state like Missouri ever even flirt with it?

“The Democrats have 71 votes in the (Illinois) House, and still couldn’t get the 60” needed for passage, noted Smith, of the Illinois Family Institute. “It could be a bellwether.”

Illinois since 2010 has allowed civil unions for same-sex couples, which provides them with most of the same legal benefits as marriage.

Critics of the same-sex marriage measure argued that civil unions should be sufficient to address any concerns about fairness under the law. Proponents say denying those couples the cultural validity of the word “marriage” makes it unfair.

“During the week, I make the coffee. I do the laundry, she does the kitchen,” state Rep. Deborah Mell, D-Chicago, one of several openly gay lawmakers in Illinois, told her House colleagues in an emotional floor speech Friday, after the measure died.

Mell and her partner, Christin Baker, were married in Iowa in 2011.

“On Sunday mornings you’ll find us at church. ... We give to charity, we pay our bills and we pay our taxes,” Mell said. “We are more alike than we are different. At the end of the day, Christin and I want what you want.”

The bill specified that all legal and governmental rights would apply to same-sex couples, but that “nothing in this Act shall interfere with ... the religious practice of any religious denomination or Indian Nation or Tribe or Native Group.”

That assurance wasn’t enough for opponents who worried that religious organizations opposed to gay unions would ultimately be forced or pressured to accept them.

“We are embarked on a profound change in the fundamental institution of society … an institution which is revered and held sacred,” state Sen. Bill Haine, D-Alton, warned during Senate floor debate on the bill in February. He called the measure “a strike at the heart” of marriage.

The fallout of the debate hit both parties. The Illinois Republican Party last month forced out its state chairman, Pat Brady, after he told an interviewer that the GOP should support the measure to prove it’s “a party that welcomes all ideas.” Democrats, meanwhile, were fractured along cultural, racial and religious lines, with rural and black urban legislators bucking their party’s position of support.

Nonetheless, proponents engineered Senate passage on Feb. 14 — Valentine’s Day — by a comfortable 34-21 margin, prompting cheers and applause on the Senate floor.

It headed to the House, and supporters talked as if it was already law. But there the bill stayed for more than three months.

Sponsors, counting their votes in the marble back halls of the state Capitol, were a dozen or more short, according to various estimates. For week after week they didn’t call the bill. By Friday, as the end-of-session clock ticked down, its prospects had gone from sure thing to long shot.

The problem wasn’t the Republicans; they were mostly opposed to the bill, but so outnumbered in the House that that wouldn’t by itself matter. The real roadblock was downstate rural Democrats and urban black Democrats — two groups that have often bucked their party’s support for gay rights based on cultural and religious concerns.

Among the African-American lawmakers caught in the conflict was Rep. Eddie Lee Jackson, D-East St. Louis. He was one of those targeted by a “robo-call” campaign by Rev. James Meeks, a prominent black Chicago pastor, trying to pressure black lawmakers into voting no.

Jackson didn’t need a lot of pressuring, having voted against the measure in committee. “This is a fairly liberal area, but when it comes to this particular topic, there are mixed emotions, because of religion,” Jackson told the Post-Dispatch last month.

Proponents could attempt to revive the issue starting in the fall veto session.

Formal same-sex marriage is currently allowed in 12 states: Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Washington and — as of May — Rhode Island, Delaware and Minnesota.

Additional states recognize various types of same-sex civil unions or domestic partnerships. Missouri is not among them.

“The Democrats have 71 votes in the (Illinois) House, and still couldn’t get the 60. It could be a bellwether.” David Smith of the Illinois Family Institute

You Cannot Proclaim Christ With a Long Face

(No se puede anunciar a Jesús con cara de funeral)

 May 31, 2013

(Vatican Radio) The Holy Spirit is the "author" of Christian joy and to proclaim the Gospel we need to have joy in our hearts gifted us by the Spirit of God. There is a certain understanding of Christian life that is marked by sadness, but long faces cannot proclaim Jesus. Joy alone and praise of God are the only way to advance the Gospel. This was the focus of Pope Francis’ homily at morning Mass in Casa Santa Marta. Emer McCarthy reports:

Pope Francis began by commenting on the daily readings. The first reading, from the prophet Zephaniah, contains the exclamation "Rejoice! Cries of joy, the Lord is in your midst. " The second, from the Gospel, tells the story of Elizabeth and her son that "rejoices" in the womb on hearing the words of Mary. The Pope noted, "it all speaks of joy, the joy that is celebration." Yet, he continues, "we Christians are not so accustomed to speak of joy, of happiness", "I think often we prefer to complain". Instead, it is "the Holy Spirit that gives us joy":

"It’s the Spirit that guides us: He is the author of joy, the Creator of joy. And this joy in the Holy Spirit gives us true Christian freedom. Without joy, we Christians cannot become free, we become slaves to our sorrows. The great Paul VI said that you cannot advance the Gospel with sad, hopeless, discouraged Christians. You cannot. A certain mournful behavior, no? Often Christians behave as if they were going to a funeral procession rather than to praise God, no? And this joy comes from praise, Mary’s praise, this praise that Zephaniah speaks of, Simeon and Anna’s praise: this praise of God! "


And how do we praise God? We praise Him by coming out of ourselves, we praise Him "freely, like the grace that He gives us is free," said Pope Francis. This pushes us to an examination of conscience on how to pray to God, said Pope Francis, who then turned to those present with a question:


"You here at Mass, do you give praise to God or do you only petition God and thank God? Do you praise God? '. This is something new, new in our new spiritual life. Giving praise to God, coming out of ourselves to give praise; spending a little bit of time giving praise. But ‘this Mass is so long!’ If you do not praise God, you will never know the gratuity of spending time praising God, the Mass is long. But if you go with this attitude of joy, of praise to God, that is beautiful! This is what eternity will be: giving praise to God! And that will not be boring: it will be beautiful! This joy makes us free. "

The model of this praise, and this joy, is once again the Mother of Jesus "The Church – recalled Pope Francis – calls her the" cause of our joy, "Cause Nostrae Letitiae. Why? Because she brings the greatest joy that is Jesus ":

"We need to pray to Our Lady, so that bringing Jesus give us the grace of joy, the joy of freedom. That it give us the grace to praise, to praise with a prayer of gratuitous praise, because He is worthy of praise, always. Pray to Our Lady and say to her what the Church says:Veni, Precelsa Domina, Maria, tu nos visita, Lady, thou who art so great, visit us and give us joy. "

Visitation - May 31, 2013

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Listening, decision, and action are traits that Mary shows throughout her life, in particular when she visited Elizabeth. They reflect the eternal relationship with God that every Christian should behold as model and example to follow.

Tonight, St Peter's Square resonated with the voices of 20,000 people reciting the Rosary. As candles cast their light on the crowd, a statue of Our Lady was carried through it.

At the end of the Marian prayer led by the Vicar General for Vatican City Card Angelo Comastri, Pope Francis delivered his meditation.

However, before the meeting with the faithful in St Peter's Square, Francis met a group of 22 children, three sisters among them, hospitalised in the Paediatric Oncology Ward of Rome's 'Agostino Gemelli Teaching Hospital'.

The meeting, Vatican Press Office director Fr Federico Lombardi said, took place in an atmosphere of prayer and great emotion, but also of joy, as it does every time children are involved.

The Pope spoke to the little ones and others who were present. He listened to their questions and accepted their small gifts, urging them to feel the presence of Jesus always near them "because Jesus loves them a lot."

After reciting Hail Mary together, the Pope gave them his blessing, which is "like a hug from God."

Lastly, as he usually does, he greeted with great affection all those present, each child with his or her parents.

In tonight's meditation, he was inspired by today's feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Elisabeth. "Three words," he said, "sum up Mary's attitude-listening, decision, and action-words that point to a road that stands before what the Lord asks of us in life."

"Listening. Where does the Mary's decision to visit her cousin Elizabeth come from? From a word of the angel of God, 'And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son . . .' (Luke, 1:36). Mary knows how to listen to God. Don't forget that it is not just 'hearing'; it is 'listening' by paying attention, accepting, and showing openness to God. It is not the careless way by which we sometimes stand before the Lord or others. We hear words, but do not truly listen to them. Mary pays attention to God and listens to God. Mary also listens to the facts; that is, she reads the events of her life, paying attention to the tangible reality and does not stop at the surface; she goes deeper, to grasp the meaning. Another relative, Elisabeth, who is already old, is expecting a child: that is a fact. But Mary pays attention to its meaning, and knows how to grasp it 'for nothing will be impossible for God'."

"This also applies to our lives: listening to God speaking to us, and listening to everyday reality, paying attention to people and facts because the Lord is at the door of our life, and knocks in many ways, places signs on our path. It is up to us to see them."

"Decision" was the second trait the Pope stressed. "Mary does not live 'in a hurry', stressed out, but, as Saint Luke put it, 'Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.' Even at the decisive moment of the Annunciation by the Angel, she asked, 'How can this be?' Yet, she did not stop to reflect, but took a step forward: she made a decision. She did not live in a hurry, but only when it was necessary did she "go quickly." Mary did not let herself be carried away by events, she did not skirt the difficulty of the decision. This was true both in the fundamental choice that would change her life, the Annunciation, "and in the daily choices, that are also very meaningful," like the marriage of Cana. "Even here, we see Mary's realism, humanity, and pragmatism. She paid attention to facts and issues. She saw and understood the difficulty of the two young newlyweds whose wedding was running short on wine. She thought about and knew that Jesus could do something, and so turned to the Son so that he might act, for 'They have no wine'."

"In life, it is difficult to make decisions; we often tend to postpone them, let others decide for us. We often prefer to be carried away by events, and follow the fashion of the moment. Sometimes, we know what we have to do, but we do not have the courage to do it or it seems too difficult because it means going against the current. In the Annunciation, the Visitation, the marriage at Cana, Mary went against the current. She listened to God, reflected upon and sought to understand reality. And she decided to entrust herself completely to God. She decided to visit, despite her pregnancy, her elderly relative, and was insistent on her Son to save the joy of the marriage."

Last: action. "Mary set out on the road 'in a hurry' . . . . Last Sunday, I pointed out how Mary, despite difficulties and criticism for her decision did not stop at anything. She left 'in a hurry'.  But when she was praying, before God who was talking, and reflecting and meditating on the facts of her life, Mary was not in a hurry; she did not go with the flow and did not let herself be carried away by events. When it was clear what God was asking of her, telling her what she had to do, she did not linger, nor slow down, but went quickly."

"Mary's action is a consequence of her obedience to the Angel's words, together with her charity. She visited Elizabeth to help out. By stepping out of her home, and of herself, for love, she carried what was most precious to her, Jesus: she carried her Son."

"Sometimes, we also stop to listen, and reflect on what we should do. Perhaps, we already know what decision we must take, but fail to act. We especially do challenge ourselves by moving quickly towards others to help them, show them understanding, and charity, so that we too might uphold, like Mary, the most precious thing we received, i.e. Jesus and his Gospel, in words and, above all, concrete deeds."

A Courageous and Holy Woman: Elizabeth Anscombe Geach

ELIZABETH ANSCOMBE

Here’s an odd thing: a British bishop and a professor have reported that, in two different papal audiences with Pope John Paul II,  as soon as they happened to mention their connection with Oxford University , Pope John Paul  immediately leaned forward with  an enthusiastic nod and asked, ----"Do you know Professor Anscombe?" 

Do you know Professor Anscombe??  ((No? Me neither, for far too long.))  Who is she?

Elizabeth Anscombe’s writings provided the intellectual background for key moral teaching found in documents of the Second Vatican Council like Gaudium et Spes (27), encyclicals like Veritatis Splendor (80), and even the Catholic Catechism (2297-98).  The  American Catholic Philosophers Association awarded her the Aquinas Medal of the for her enormous contribution to ethical thought, and the Papal medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice for her service to the Church.  In the last homily he gave before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger lamented that modern life is ruled by a "dictatorship of relativism”  --an idea that echoes the pioneering work of Elizabeth Anscombe.  Mary Warnock, a historian and an unbeliever, said in her survey of women philosophers for the past 4 centuries --- that is, the 17^th, 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th centuries ---- that Elizabeth Anscombe was “THE undoubted giant among women philosophers”. Donald Davidson went even further, since in his opinion Elizabeth Anscombe did the most important work on the ethical theory of action and intention, since Aristotle.

Popes.   Encyclicals.  Aristotle.  “Giant among women.”  Wow.

So who was this wonder-woman? To some, she was G.E.M. Anscombe, a great analytical philosopher. To her students, she was Miss Anscombe---  even after her marriage to fellow-philosopher Peter Geach--- “Miss” Anscombe, the exhilarating teacher.  To some, she was Elizabeth, devoted friend. And to some, no doubt, she was “that awful Anscombe woman,” “the Dragon Lady of Oxford,” the oddball Catholic mother of seven. All in all, she was possibly one of the most holy and courageous women you have never met.

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe was born in 1919 to loving parents were well-educated, progressive, and secular.

Between the ages of 12 and 15,  Elizabeth voraciously read books concerning religious Faith.  Perhaps her rather non-religious parents consoled themselves that perhaps she would decide to be something harmless, maybe a Buddhist?   … maybe a Quaker? She finally announced, at 15, that she wanted to become a Catholic. Now this was really alarming. “Catholic” was the one thing an intelligent person from a progressive, secular, British family really could not be.  Her parents found one last acceptable possibility: perhaps she could join the Church of England??

They sent her to an Anglican clergyman , who tried to convince Elizabeth than in Anglicanism she could have everything that was “good” in Catholicism, without all the ---“negatives” --- For instance, he said, Anglicans believed that in the Eucharist, they received Christ, “in a manner of speaking,”  “in the bread.”  Anscombe listened to him intently, and then asked, “But after the Consecration, is it still bread?”  He admitted that he thought it was still bread.  Anscombe replied that the Eucharist was transubstantiated so that we could be tranformed, and she wanted to be transformed into Christ, not bread.

This clergyman later recommended that Anscombe’s parents let her be baptized a Catholic, since she held Catholic beliefs more firmly than anybody he had ever met in his life.  But her parents would not allow it before she turned 18.

Elizabeth was accepted in St. Hugh’s College at Oxford University, and began to take instruction in the Catholic Faith from the Dominicans at Blackfriars.  And she became embroiled in a most disturbing controversy.

In the fall of 1939, shortly after England declared war on Germany, the Royal Air Force ---the “RAF”---was openly promoting a counter-city bombing strategy against Germany. They were preparing to carpet bomb entire cities. Their first target in each city would be the city water pumping stations --- the waterworks --- and then they would wipe out, not just the military assets, but the entire city of Dresden, Cologne, Hamburg,  together with all their civilian inhabitants. RAF Air Marshal Arthur Harris explicitly declared that area bombing was meant to crush and demoralize the German population as such.

Elizabeth Anscombe recognized that this is NOT the same as focusing on military targets: this would be terror bombing. She and a fellow student, barely out of their teens, wrote, printed, and started distributing a brief, powerful essay entitled "The Justice of the Present War Examined." Elizabeth was not a pacifist --- in fact both her father and her brother were in the British Army, her brother died during WWII, and she understood and respected the sacrifices of Good Soldiers in a Just War. Yet, not on the basis of pacifism, but by the application of  traditional just-war principles, she argued that the British government’s plan to incinerate large numbers of civilians by means of indiscriminate obliteration bombing, was not an act of Just War, but an act of ----murder.

But before Anscombe’s essay could be widely disseminated, her OWN bishop, the Bishop of Birmingham, told her to withdraw it from publication. He said it was not the job of undergraduates to judge their nation’s military policy, and that she had a lot of learning to do before she could make complex judgments. She agreed that she had much learning to do, and she withdrew the pamphlet.  But it is her words, rather than those of her bishop, which remain in our memory and were later echoed by the Second Vatican Council.

She was indeed quite busy with school and learning, and she was also busy with something else.  In 1938, in her first year at Oxford, she had been baptized in the Catholic Church. After mass at Blackfriars on the Feast of Corpus Christi, she met a young man who was also a recent convert to Catholicism--- Peter Geach. 

Like her, Geach was destined to make a name for himself in philosophy, but philosophy isn’t what sparked their romance. Smitten by Miss Anscombe's lovely face and form and her beautiful voice, Geach immediately inquired of mutual friends whether she was "reliably Catholic." Upon learning that she was, he pursued her and, swiftly, their hearts were entangled. Since Oxford did not make provision for married student housing for undergraduates, they postponed marriage. And their families disapproved.  But in 1941 they tied the knot --- and the only ones present at their wedding were the priest, and 2 witnesses.

And there was another man in Elizabeth and Peter’s life, a man who had just come over from Germany to become head of the Philosophy Dept. at Cambridge. This was Ludwig Wittgenstein. He had good reason to get out of Germany, because he was everything Hitler hated. First, he came from an extremely wealthy and highly cultured family.  Second, he was a Jew.  And third, Wittgenstein was --- well, I suppose the most accurate way to put it, was ---Wittgenstein was definitely not heterosexual.

Now, I said he was a Jew; the Nazis would have classified him racially as a Jew, and of course to them it was all about race; but actually, his grandparents on both sides had converted to Christianity, his mother was Catholic, and he was baptized and raised a Catholic.  But, in a process strangely opposite to that of Elizabeth Anscombe, when he was 12, 13, and 14 years of age, he was losing his Catholic faith.  He decided he did not believe any of the things that a Christian was supposed to believe.

He also disliked women. In his opinion women were incapable of logical thought. To some extent he agreed with  HIS teacher, Otto Weininger ---- who, incidentally, like him, also had Jewish roots and was gay ---- who believed that, while MEN are basically rational, women operate only at the level of their emotions and their sexual organs.  So he especially disliked women philosophers. And he extra-specially disliked Catholic women, whose weak minds were supposedly imprisoned in the iron bands of Catholic dogma.

Wittgenstein was an intensely unhappy man. Everyone in his childhood home had been tortured by extreme sensitivity and emotional suffering. His father was a cold, demanding, and rejecting man who had no affection for his children, and his mother was an emotionally needy wreck who was constantly gushing over them with great waves of sentimentality.   Three of his brothers had committed suicide.  Wittgenstein hated his life for many lonely years. His one consolation was his ability to write treatises on logic and mathematics.

So as Wittgenstein was getting established as Chair of  Philosophy at Cambridge, Elizabeth Anscombe and her husband Peter Geach were getting established as a young married couple doing graduate philosophy research at Oxford --- and having babies. The Anscombe-Geaches were 30 years younger than Wittgenstein, and one would think they would have nothing in common with him.  But one would be wrong.  Because both Elizabeth and Peter were deeply respectful of the power of Wittgenstein’s mind; and Elizabeth would travel the 90 miles from Oxford to Cambridge every week to attend his lectures.

Wittgenstein said nobody had ever listened to him as intently as Elizabeth Anscombe listened to him. He was boggled that she could be so Catholic in her beliefs, and so fearlessly logical in her thinking. Plus, she was something of an eccentric, which fascinated him.

Now, there are a lot of stories about Elizabeth Anscombe’s eccentricities. Some of them might be true and some might be mere legends. I’m just going to recount them as I heard them.

One day, Wittgenstein came to visit Anscombe and her family at home, accompanied by Anscombe’s philosopher friend Philippa Foote. At the time, Elizabeth and Peter already had three or four little children, two running around the yard squealing and chasing a dog, and one drooling and squirming in Elizabeth’s arms.  Wittgenstein was appalled and asked, “But how do you concentrate on doing philosophy?”  Elizabeth smiled and, removing ear-plugs from her ears, said, “Oh, I manage.” 

Then she said, “Come in and I’ll clear off a place for you to sit on the sofa.”  Surveying this scene of juvenile hilarity, the piles of children’s things scattered hither and thither, and the shrieks from the kids in the background, Wittgenstein dropped his anguished head into his hands, turned to Philippa and said,  with furrowed brow, “Isn’t it sa-a-a-d…”

Nevertheless, Wittgenstein admired her strikingly independent and even combative spirit. He took to calling her “Old Man” jokingly, in the style of old-school British professors (“I say, Old Man, do you loathe epistemological phenomenalism as much as I do…” yada-yada-yada.) He liked her commitment to dialogue, and she liked his ability to question himself, even to question his own doubts.

Have you ever seen that button that says “Question authority?”  They went further.  Their motto might have been, “Question skepticism.”

Anscombe’s international reputation as a debater had early roots. At Oxford in 1948, at age 29, she took on ---and trounced--- C. S. Lewis in a debate that still discussed now, more than a half–century later. It focused on the third chapter of Lewis’ book Miracles. Everyone present ---including Lewis--- recognized that the young woman’s critique had completely unraveled his arguments. Yet she didn’t disagree with Lewis’ conclusions; she just thought his arguments were too loose, too easy to pull apart. She wanted a more rigorously tough-minded defense of miracles.

Incidentally, she and Lewis remained on friendly terms, and Lewis rewrote the disputed chapter, taking her criticism into account. Anscombe considered this an act of admirable intellectual honesty.

Anscombe believed in miracles, and believed it was important to teach one’s children about the reality of miracles, just as one taught them the reality of logic and math.  When her first daughter, Barbara, was a little girl, Elizabeth told her about Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist.  Once when Elizabeth came back to her pew from Communion, little Barbara asked her, “Mummy, is He inside you?  Is God inside you now?”  Elizabeth whispered, “Yes, He is” and little 3-year-old Barbara scooted out into the aisle, went face-down FLAT on the carpet and prostrated herself to her Christ-bearing mother.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth, now a graduate fellow at Oxford, became Ludwig Wittgenstein’s most trusted intellectual collaborator, as well as a close personal friend. Throughout their 10 years working together, the two of them intensively developed the art of dialogue, with themselves, their colleagues and their students. They learned to appreciate even the value of honest intellectual error on the way towards the truth.

Anscombe’s friend Philippa Foot remembers an Oxford philosophy seminar in 1947, to which they invited Wittgenstein from Cambridge. One of the graduate students began to take part but, feeling his idea was somehow mistaken, broke off his comments and tried to change the subject. At that moment, Wittgenstein interrupted forcefully and asked him to him to please continue saying what he was going to say, because mistaken thoughts are also important: they might contain some fragment of truth that needs to be carefully recognized and retrieved, and the parts that are erroneous will trigger disputes that would eventually carry them even farther toward the truth.

Anscombe’s friendship with Wittgenstein influenced her philosophical style in a decisive way. She said that one shows respect for a sage by accepting his teachings, but one shows respect for a philosopher by arguing with him.

Then regarded as the greatest philosopher of the 20^th century, Wittgenstein had written works totaling almost 3 million words which had neither been translated from German nor published. Despite their differences, he found Anscombe able to deeply understand others’ points of view whether she agreed with them or not. He chose her to be his main literary executor, translator and interpreter of this vast mountain of unpublished work. All this she did in the midst of her Oxford teaching obligations, her marriage and her growing family.

***

One of Anscombe’s daughters, Mary Geach, describes her as being, in some ways, a more attentive parent than most:  she notes that children rarely receive so many and such deeply considered replies to their questions. Both as mother and teacher, Elizabeth Anscombe was good at thinking at the level of the person she was speaking to.

Anscombe was once asked if any of her 7 children was her favourite.  She said, yes, she always had a favourite child: and that child would be whichever one was, at the moment, six years of age.  She delighted in the six-year-old mind, and was deeply and warmly responsive to the six-year-old heart.

It’s said that Wittgenstein once witnessed Elizabeth and Peter Geach and their many children at prayer, saying the rosary.  He stood at the doorway and watched, unwilling to enter the room, but at the same time, unwilling to leave, with --- it is said --- a look of longing on his face.

By 1951, Wittgenstein was dying. He asked his friend Anscombe to put him in touch with a “non-philosophical priest”, as he said ---- which she did, though she never presumed he would formally return to the Faith of his childhood. Yet a short time later, calling for Anscombe, he told her, “You know, Old Man --- Beth --- I have always loved the Truth. I don’t mean I possessed it, or that I understood it, but that I loved it. I do hope my Catholic friends would pray for me.”  He also said, surprisingly, in the light of his famously miserable life experience,  “I am happy.”

Three more of Wittgenstein’s former students arrived at his bedside—and a Dominican monk, Father Conrad Pepler. They were at first unsure what Wittgenstein would have wanted, but then Anscombe explained that he SAID he wanted prayer, and since he was a baptized person, he was entitled to the Last Rites of the Church, the only prayers which were really adequate to the moment.  So although he was now unconscious, they knelt at his bedside and prayed for him, he was anointed, and he was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.

At Anscombe’s urging, he was given a Catholic burial at St. Giles’s Church in Cambridge. Anscombe said she hoped to see him someday in Paradise.

***

Anscombe’s responsibilities in Oxford in the 1950s did not include teaching ethics, which was covered by her friend Philippa Foot. But at one point Foote took a sabbatical and asked Anscombe to fill in for her. When Anscombe started to organize her thoughts by reading the usual texts of modern moral philosophy she was flabbergasted.

Despite the differences between them, all the 20^th century authors she encountered shared one thing in common: they had no moral absolutes. None. There were no actions that could be ruled out if you were aiming at a good enough result. Not rape, not torture, not abortion, not murder. They said it could all be justified by circumstances. And this was an absolute break with 20 centuries of Western Civilization with its basis in Judeo-Christian moral teaching, and even a break from the teachings of Aristotle and the greats of pagan Greek and Roman civilization.

Anscombe knew this was wrong. Two years previously, in 1956, Oxford University had decided to grant an honorary degree to Harry Truman, who, as US President, had been responsible for the deliberate massacre of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She contested this honorary degree, but she was told that she was the only one who found it objectionable. She forced a vote but only four faculty members ---- herself, Philippa Foot, and two other women --- were willing to say that a man who authorized the deliberate killing of innocent human beings ought not to be given public honors. Her essay, “Mr. Truman’s Degree,” which she printed as a pamphlet and distributed to her fellow faculty members, makes exceedingly interesting reading even today --- especially, it seems to me, in the light of much more recent controversies about a much more recent U.S. president, Barack Obama, being awarded  an  honorary degree at the University of Notre Dame. 

Anscombe’s reflections on moral absolutes developed into her 1958 paper ‘On Modern Moral Philosophy’. This is an extraordinary piece of work. She boldly challenged the sheer relativism of almost all 20^th century moral philosophers, as rubbish.  (She didn’t use the word “rubbish,” but if you read her careful academic prose, I think you’d get the point.) Standing practically alone against the entire academic philosophical establishment, she defined, described, and pulled apart ‘consequentialism’, the view that there are no acts, no matter how evil, which cannot be justified if one is aiming for good consequences.

Think of the most patently wicked act you can imagine. Say, pronouncing and carrying out the death penalty on a person you know to be innocent.  If consequentialism were right, then it would be legitimate to argue that executing innocent persons could be not only right, but a duty under certain circumstances. The Scriptures tell us that this is abominable and forbidden by Almighty God; but even without reference to religious law, this is completely outside of the bounds of Natural Law, of common decency, and of human civilization. 

Yet so-called “ethicists” who think there really IS no right or wrong, still use terms like “Moral Law” as if one could be obliged to commit sodomy, or torture, or rape, or murder, if there were a good enough reason.  It’s as if God Almighty had said, “Thou shalt not commit moral abominations --- unless thou are really, really, REALLY tempted.”   

If one does not believe in a divine Moral Lawgiver, one should be honest and stop talking about big words, big authority-words like “Moral Law.”  It’s dishonest. Otherwise, you are like a person who uses a big authority-word like “verdict” even though he has abolished judges and juries; or a person who claims to be an expert on ribs and joints, when he denies the existence of bones.

This essay hit academic ethics----- like--- a ----bomb. It basically blew the stuffing out of the makeshift, ethically minimalist house of cards known as modern moral philosophy.

***

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Geach were still teaching philosophy and still adding to their family.  Keep in mind that she was engaging in all this intellectual combat while washing dirty diapers and surrounded by the noisy Anscombe-Geach children. This raised eyebrows at Oxford, too.

Anscombe already had a reputation as an eccentric woman. Now, keep in mind that at this point we’re talking about Oxford University in mid-century, which until maybe the mid-60’s was a very proper and strait-laced place.  For instance, Oxford had a dress code which required that all the women, both faculty and students, were to wear dresses or skirts.  And women professors were supposed to wear their academic robes --- their full gowns --- in the lecture hall.

Now, Anscombe never wore a dress.  The plain fact is, she disliked dresses. The other plain fact is, she was pregnant for most of the 1950’s, and she felt a lot more comfortable in loose pants and tunics. (You all know what I’m talking about.) So she simply ignored the dress code.  She wore pants everywhere, lecturing and travelling, on campus and off.

The tale is told that she once went to enter a very upscale restaurant, and was stopped by the doorman and told that they did not admit ladies who wore pants.  So ----she just took them off….. I assume she was still wearing one of those long tunic tops!

She also smoked cigarettes. On one occasion, when her second child was sick, she made a bargain with God, that if the child recovered, she would stop smoking cigarettes.  The child did recover, and Anscombe did stop smoking cigarettes….. Now at some point, the pressures of academic life and home life were pressing on her, and denying her nicotine habit was really adding to her stress.  So, being a philosopher attuned to the exact meaning of words, she recalled that although she had promised to swear off cigarettes, she hadn’t said a word about pipes and cigars. So from that point, she took up smoking cigars. 

She once walked into an Oxford lecture hall wearing her academic gown--- this was unusual enough --- FOR HER---that she drew stares ; and shepulled a can of beans out of her pocket, opened it, and proceeded to eat cold baked beans while proceeding with her lecture.   As perhaps a bit of laughter broke out, she just pointed to her academic gown and said, in a portentous voice, “I am a great stickler for convention and propriety.”

But although Oxford could accept a trousers-wearing, cigar-smoking, ban-the-bomb, intellectually combative lady professor who never took her husband’s name --- she was always “Miss Anscombe,” even to him--- something that really and truly disturbed the Oxford community was an outspoken woman who believed in God, believed and lived her Catholic faith, believed and lived chastity, marriage, and a generously proportioned family life.

Another legend: by now it was the 1960’s, and Anscombe, pregnant again, this time with #7, walked into a classroom in which somebody had scrawled on a blackboard an intended insult:  ANSCOMBE BREEDS.  Did she get angry?  No. Did she erase it? Not she. Instead, she added two more words to the intended insult, so that it read:  ANSCOMBE BREEDS …IMMORTAL… BEINGS.

And then there was the matter of--- let’s face it, her name. Reportedly when she was in the hospital to give birth to her seventh baby, the following conversation, or something like it,  ensued between two nurses:

“Oh, I see our old friend MISS Anscombe is here for yet ANOTHER baby. And aren’t you the one who told me she’s a Catholic?”

And the other nurse said, “Yes, but…but… I didn’t say she was a very GOOD Catholic…”

Although Oxford was still, in the 1960’s , a place of considerable outward conventionality, it was inwardly shaken by the moral confusion of the Sexual Revolution.  Undergraduate women often got pregnant, but never had babies, if you catch my meaning.  A male faculty member could seduce a colleague’s wife and nobody was supposed to comment; and if a male professor preferred to take up with handsome male grad student, well, there always was a lot of that in Oxford and Cambridge. At the same time, a girl who was obviously pregnant, or a boy who was outwardly effeminate could be quite brutally shamed and bullied.

Anscombe staunchly defended her friend and mentor, Ludwig Wittgenstein, when he was being unfairly slandered and defamed as a homosexual.  And any person, any person being unfairly attacked --- the pregnant girl, the bullied boy --- could always find shelter under the formidable wings of Professor G.E.M. Anscombe.  Elizabeth was so hospitable that she left the door of her home permanently unlocked: her home was always open to inquiring students , especially the ethically confused looking for a bit of guidance or a safe haven.

Once Professor Anscombe was sought out by a young woman who was pregnant ----pregnant by a professor 30 years older than she ---  and this young student was quite upset and unsure what to do about it.  She confided that  this professor, who was in fact the father of the baby, thought abortion would be the obvious solution.

“And why does he think that?” asked Anscombe.

The girls replied, ‘Well, the first problem is, he doesn’t entirely accept the full humanity ---of the un-born.”

“No, “ Anscombe shot back, “His first problem is that he doesn’t even accept the full humanity --- of the undergraduate.”

Anscombe’s open opposition to sexual exploitation shocked some of her fellow academics. Here’s another story --- told me by a former student ---

One professor, hostile to Anscombe, remarked to this student, “You’ll want to think twice about accepting an invitation to dinner at the Geach-Anscombe table. You don’t know if you’ll be crammed in there next to some “Paki bint” (Pakistani Muslim girl) who’s preggers and wants to keep the brat, or some precious nancy-boy whom Anscombe is shepherding into ethics and chastity. Respectable?  I think she and her whole entourage are batty..”

Now, when an insulting remark was repeated in her presence, Anscombe the Dragon Lady of Oxford sometimes turned fierce.  But not this time.  This time, she merely took a draw on her cigar, blew a smoke ring, and remarked, “Batty? Perhaps I am / Perhaps I am a fool for Christ. I only wish I were more so.”

And she told her children:  “Respect God.  Respect Life.  But don’t respect RESPECTABILITY.”

***

Elizabeth Anscombe’s concern for the victims of World War II  fire-bombings in Hamburg and Dresden,  Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was entirely consistent with  her concern over the killing of unborn children. She said, ‘Each nation that has “liberal” abortion laws has rapidly become, if it was not already, a nation of murderers.’

Although Anscombe’s stand against the atomic bomb was widely reported at the time, when she decided to personally and nonviolently intervene to stop the dismemberment of living babies, the coverage was practically zero. A newspaper photograph that  her family cherishes, shows her being hauled away from the abortion clinic doorway by two policemen, but she is not even identified in the caption or in the article. Her name--- not even mentioned. This, despite the fact that at the time she was arguably the world’s most prominent living philosopher and --- beyond that --- a frail old woman with a mighty heart, heroically and non-violently risking her own well-being to save others.   

You can well imagine that if she were arrested on what is called the “pro–choice” side, it would have hit the 7 o’clock news across the British Isles and beyond.

Perhaps the issue which placed Anscombe furthest from her academic colleagues was her opposition to contraception. People who defend the strategic bombing of civilians or who promote legalized abortion, generally do so because they suppose it to be a “necessary evil.” Even the supporters of such evils don’t see it as a positive good. On the other hand, contraception is typically seen as an unalloyed good, something no intelligent person could disagree with, like soap, sliced bread, electricity, or cotton underwear.

At the Theological Congress held St. Michael's College may refer to:

St Michael's College, Adelaide, Australia, a private Roman Catholic primary and secondary school founded by the Lasallian Brothers

St.

in Toronto in 1967, Elizabeth Anscombe had delivered a very closely reasoned critique of contraception --- so closely reasoned that two Toronto papers reported that she had defended contraception. When the chairman of the session, Professor Elmer Kremer, protested that they had got it exactly wrong,  they refused to print a retraction: she wore  pant
v.
To breathe rapidly and shallpant suits and smoked cigars, they said, and so she must have been in favor of contraception. She definitely was not.

She sometimes remarked that she’d lived long enough to see every promise made by the early contraceptive enthusiasts turn out to be false: the deceptive hope that contraception would reduce unwed childbearing--- false; the foolish notion that contraception would eliminate abortion – false;  the truly soft-minded supposition that contraception would make marriages more secure --- reduce divorce---  make husbands and wives more satisfied with their sex lives --- all demonstrably false.  She was right about that, but few are clear-sighted enough to see the obvious.

Even though none of these promises of utilitarian benefit have been fulfilled after decades of contraception, few are willing even listen to the argument that there is an inherent moral, ethical problem with contraceptive intercourse, either within or outside of marriage.

In 1970, Elizabeth Anscombe was appointed to the Chair of Philosophy at Cambridge, the same position that her old colleague Wittgenstein used to hold, and which she held until her retirement in 1986.  She spent the next 10 years doing more original work in philosophy, writing, speaking, and striving to empower women --- particularly young women --- with the intellectual strength to resist conformism, to seek and love the truth, and to accept no substitutes.

In the many speeches she made to Catholic audiences about chastity --- that is, moral reflection as it relates to sexual goodness ---  Anscombe was sometimes called upon to talk of marriage and married love. Elle le faisait alors en excluant délibérément tout pathos, avec la conviction manifeste que la conception traditionnelle du mariage dans l'Église catholique se tient entre deux rigorismes également dangereux, celui qui méprise la chair et celui qui exalte la pureté idéale du sentiment amoureux. When she did so, she deliberately excluded sentimentality. She believed that the realism of  the traditional concept of marriage in the Catholic Church stands between two equally dangerous extremes: that of a grim austerity which distrusts or denigrates feelings and  flesh, and that of a fluffy sentimentality which demands nonstop passion and fulfillment. Ce dernière déformation, qui peut se comprendre comme une réaction aux excès contraires du passé, est probablement la plus actuelle dans les milieux chrétiens, et Anscombe prend toujours garde, lorsqu'elle parle du mariage, de ne pas oublier qu'un mariage peut exister sans amour, ou sans amour partagé. This last extreme --- you could call it the « bliss mandate, » which can be understood as a reaction to the excesses of the past austerity --- is probably the most dominant in Christian circles today.

Anscombe always took care, when speaking of marriage, to frankly acknowledge that many couples fall short of a richly satisfying ideal relationship, and yet have a marriage they can and will live in, in an ordinary and even a holy way, to the end.  « Nous ne pouvons absolument pas délivrer un enseignement qui flatte les chanceux, et ne parle pas aux malheureux. » (Anscombe, « Contraception and Chastity » ) As Anscombe wisely wrote in her essay, Contraception and Chastity, "We absolutely can not issue an instruction that flatters the lucky ones, and does not speak to the unfortunate".  Le couple Geach semble avoir été un couple chrétien de l'ancien temps.

The couple Anscombe and Geach seems to have practiced the virtues that could be found in  an old peasant household, formed in the hard school of life and tapping into the treasures of a realistic faith :  better than the illusions of passion, made to last,  growing imperceptibly, a chaste love and proud.

After nearly being killed in an automobile accident in 1996, she spent her last years in the care of her family in Cambridge, enjoying the frequent company of her 7 grown children and, at that time, 10 grandchildren, all of them practicing Catholics. In 2001, at age 81, with her family praying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary at her bedside, her last intentional act was kissing Peter Geach.