Excerpts In Excellence

Since I accidentally linked to it earlier, I thought I'd make it official and give the link to Peter Kreeft's excellent speech on Christian anthropology vs. the Sexual Revolution, an address to the The Catholic Medical Association's 79th Annual Educational Conference (October 27-30, 2010).

Kreeft is amazing. He is a professor, a theologian, and an author, and yet what he says is in perfectly understandable English! You really should read the whole speech. Here is a little sample:

We moderns think sex is for us; it isn't; it's for our children. We moderns think we're so enlightened because we're not legalists any more, we're personalists, we're about people, not about laws or rules or commandments. We think of the people who make sex, and we want those people to have fun and be happy. Which is fine, but we're so fixated on the fact that people make sex that we've ignored the fact that sex makes people.

h/t Mike in CT (again!)

Ah Ha Moment

Our parochial vicar has a blunt way about him, which is something I can appreciate; there's no guessing involved.  But sometimes he can also take the obvious and carry it through to a conclusion that is profound.

That's when you smack yourself in the head and think, "I should have thought of that!".

Our priest was talking about the woman in the Gospel who married seven brothers who all died without producing children. At the resurrection, whose wife will she be?  The answer of course, is nobody's since there is no marriage in heaven. But why?

The reasoning was fairly straightforward. The primary purpose of marriage is the procreation of children. In heaven there is no more death, therefore the need to continue perpetuating the human race no longer applies. Thus, there is no more marriage.

Similarly, the other major purpose of marriage is the unitive aspect. In heaven we will all be perfectly and radically united to Christ, therefore we will have no need to be united to someone else in marriage.

Ah-ha. I should have thought of that.

Overheard In My House

Students of covenant theology know well that a covenant is much more than a contract. A contract is an exchange of goods; a covenant is an exchange of persons.

Marriage is one such covenant that God has ordained from the beginning. Spouses give themselves to each other completely and holding nothing back. Therefore the marital embrace is rightly called "renewing the covenant".

This week, Nod-girl was studying the Ten Commandments for an upcoming quiz. I asked her what the 9th Commandment was.

She proudly declared, "You shall not covenant your neighbor's wife."

How right you are, girl.

Overheard In My House

Actually, it was overheard on Catholic Radio.

A man calls in regarding whether it is permissible to be sterilized at a certain age if there is a history of begetting children with genetic defects after 40.

The host responds that we need to see children with Biblical eyes, as gifts from the Lord.

He goes on to say, "I, myself, have a genetic defect. I was born with Original Sin."

Best comment ever!

I Am An Immortal

I am an immortal and so are you; it's just that not everybody realizes this.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) teaches that a person's soul is immortal, is created immediately by God, it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.¹

People get some crazy ideas about what we are and why we're here. PETA thinks we're all merely animals and therefore equivalent: bug=fish=dog=boy. Another old heresy comes from the Albigensians² that holds only the soul is important and needs to be freed from the body.

Fact is, the body and soul are a unity³, profoundly linked.⁴ Death itself is only a temporary separation, not the end.

So how do we deal with all this? I'll leave it to you to figure out how to counter PETA - it seems a fairly shallow philosophy; as for Albigensians:

Two men considering a religious vocation were having a conversation. "What is similar about the Jesuit and Dominican Orders? " the one asked.

The second replied, "Well, they were both founded by Spaniards -- St. Dominic for the Dominicans, and St. Ignatius of Loyola for the Jesuits. They were also both founded to combat heresy -- the Dominicans to fight the Albigensians, and the Jesuits to fight the Protestants."

"What is different about the Jesuit and Dominican Orders?"

"Met any Albigensians lately?"

---

[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), para. 366
[2] New Advent, Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01267e.htm
[3] GS 14 § 1; cf. Dan 3:57-80.
[4] Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), para. 365

In The Beginning

In the beginning was the Word ... and the world was made to make room for it -- or so it would seem.

Read on for a fascinating view into Pope Benedict's understanding of covenant theology. Scott Hahn also has a new book out on the subject: Covenant & Communion: The Biblical Theology of Benedict XVI. I haven't read it yet, but it comes highly rated.

The following paragraph taken from Pope Benedict XVI's introductory address on Monday, 6 October 2008, Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI at the Opening of the 12th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, sets his understanding of covenant in perspective. [Emphasis mine]

The following verse says: "Omnia serviunt tibi". All things come from the Word, they are products of the Word. "In the beginning was the Word". In the beginning the heavens spoke. And thus reality was born of the Word, it is "creatura Verbi". All is created from the Word and all is called to serve the Word. This means that all of creation, in the end, is conceived of to create the place of encounter between God and his creature, a place where the history of love between God and his creature can develop. "Omnia serviunt tibi".

The history of salvation is not a small event, on a poor planet, in the immensity of the universe. It is not a minimal thing which happens by chance on a lost planet. It is the motive for everything, the motive for creation. Everything is created so that this story can exist, the encounter between God and his creature.

In this sense, salvation history, the Covenant, precedes creation. During the Hellenistic period, Judaism developed the idea that the Torah would have preceded the creation of the material world. This material world seems to have been created solely to make room for the Torah, for this Word of God that creates the answer and becomes the history of love.

The mystery of Christ already is mysteriously revealed here. This is what we are told in the Letter to the Ephesians and to the Colossians: Christ is the protòtypos, the first-born of creation, the idea for which the universe was conceived. He welcomes all. We enter in the movement of the universe by uniting with Christ.

One can say that, while material creation is the condition for the history of salvation, the history of the Covenant is the true cause of the cosmos. We reach the roots of being by reaching the mystery of Christ, his living word that is the aim of all creation.

Mind blowing!

God's Blueprint For Fathers

Been studying over at Scott Hahn's site, SalvationHistory.com, and came across this snippet, where Hahn lays out God's blueprint for being a father (even to a wayward child).

God in Exodus truly reveals himself to be the divine Father of Israel (see too Deuteronomy 32:6). He saves His children (see Exodus 12:29-31), clothes them (see Exodus 12:35-36), guides them (see Exodus 13:21-22), feeds them (see Exodus 16:1-17:7) protects them (see Exodus 14:10-29; 17:8-16), teaches them (see Exodus 20:1-17; 21:1-23:33), and lives with them (see Exodus 25:8; 40:34-38).

Food for thought.

A Little Lonesome Dove

Found myself watching Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry again. I'm not a big Western fan but both the movie and the book are really well done. The subject matter is rather gritty and earthy (not a family movie) but it does deal with some penetrating issues.

The characters are studies in contrasts who are faced with various moral decisions and sometimes simply with survival. The main characters are Woodrow F. Call and Augustus McCrae; one is serious, a workaholic, a noble leader but out of touch with his feelings and moral responsibilities while the other is a free spirit who loves freely in body and heart, avoids work, but has true mettle underneath it all. Both of them are crusty Rangers and best of friends.



One does the right things for the wrong reasons, the other does the wrong things for the right reasons. Putting it in theological terms in the words of author Peter Kreeft, [Call] "wrongly [destroys] heretics in order rightly to destroy heresies; [Gus] wrongly loves heresies in order rightly to love heretics."

Lonesome Dove is a study in forks in the road of otherwise parallel paths.

That, and it has cool fights.

All Saints Reminds Us Of Family

After all the trick or treat candy has been gobbled down, after the costuming craze has come and gone, just when most people are turning their attention away from the Halloween event -- now comes the real feast: the Feast of All Saints.

The Saints are our family both figuratively and literally, mystically and actually. When we celebrate the Mass the communion of saints is present with us all around. Jesus is present on the altar, and the angels and saints are where He is. In the pews are our brothers and sisters -- saints in training.

Today I did not have my immediate family with me; circumstances conspired to drive us to separate Masses. I must confess I'm at a bit of a loss when they aren't there. It should be an opportunity to focus more completely on the Mass without distraction. However, at this point in my child rearing, I find it distracting when they are absent.

There is a reason that the Mass is made for community; it is after all an act of public worship, the agape love feast with the Bridegroom. God Himself is a family of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He imprints that family on our physical selves: Fathers, Mothers, children.

Just as He is a family, He gives us family, now and to come. The saints are our family. We are all descended from the first Adam and we are all reborn in the new Adam. We were meant to be together.

All you holy saints, ora pro nobis.

Upside Down Theology

We all know what life is like, for we have lived it. Yet none of us has seen what lies in store for us in the heavenly kingdom, or even really what living here is really like. We think that things are a certain way, but really God shows us that they are upside down.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. (Isaiah 55:8)

Fr. Bill said an interesting thing at Mass today on the Feast of All Saints: "Wanting what the saints have isn't envy because you don't want to take it away from them, you just want to share in it."

That got me to thinking about other "upside down" facets of our theology.

• 1 Corinthians 14 says: "Pursue love, but strive eagerly for the spiritual gifts" yet it is not gluttony
• In Mark 8 Christ says: "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel ⁹ will save it."
• In eating Christ's body and blood in the Eucharist, we do not kill Christ; instead we live more fully
• And in giving away all of our love, we end up with more of it than we started

Amazing!

Newsflash: Babies Don't Choose Their Parents

Recently news came that supermodel Heidi Klum and Seal had a fourth child together. That's great and I commend their openness to love and life.

What they don't seem to understand is the relationship between the creator and the created and the parents role in participating in this mystery. Seal writes:

“Lou Sulola Samuel was born, and from the moment she looked into both of our eyes, it was endless love at first sight. She is beautiful beyond words and we are happy that she chose us to watch her grow over the coming years.”

Hello, there is no baby warehouse in the sky where unborn souls wait to become embodied. Before she was conceived the baby simply didn't exist, and therefore didn't choose anything, much less you to be her parents. The created doesn't choose its creator, like the potter and the clay in Isaiah 29:15-16.

You chose to be open to life, and God chose to create a person -- that's how it works. It's an image of the Trinity in the flesh: two persons love each other completely and unreservedly; and that love is so real, so tangible that you have to give it a name 9 months later.

Trinity: Ineffable Mystery

First, the systematic theology way.

Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity, on the Trinity on this, the feast of the Holy Trinity:

The First Person knows Himself; His act of knowing Himself produces an Idea, a Word; and this Idea, this Word, the perfect Image of Himself, is the Second Person.

The First Person and the Second combine in an act of love and ... produce a state of Lovingness within the Divine nature. Into this Lovingness, Father and Son pour all that they have and all that they are, with no diminution, nothing held back.

Thus their Lovingness too is Infinite, Eternal, Living, Someone, A Person, God.

Thus the Son is generated by way of knowledge and the Spirit is breathed, or spirated, by way of Love.

Now the Theology of the Body way:

Can you see now how the very image of the Godhead is imprinted on human nature? A man and a woman when they have intimate knowledge of each other, when they give themselves to each other completely with nothing held back, then a third person, a child, comes into being by way of Love.

[This ineffable mystery can barely be comprehended by our poor finite brains.]

Why Christ Had To Die

Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity, on why Jesus had to die.

[B]ecause He was a man with a true human nature, he could offer a true human act in expiation of human sin, an act of total love to balance humanity's self-love; and because He was God, the human act He offered was of infinite value and so could satisfy and more than satisfy for the sins of men.

But all things are in the power of God. Why, we may ask in all reverence, did the divine plan include the death of the Redeemer?

The two answers that instantly spring to mind are that nothing could show the love of God so overpoweringly as His willingness to die for us, and nothing could show the horror of sin so clearly as that it needed His death to expiate it.

There must certainly have been something in what Our Lord had to do which made His dying the best way to do it.

Although he was Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made perfect he became the source of salvation to all who obey him. Heb 5:8-9

Thinking And Maturity

Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity, on the relationship between thinking and maturity.

[M]ental maturity is worth having: what more suitable companion could there be for that commoner phenomenon, bodily maturity? Thinking is very hard and imagining is very easy, and we are very lazy.

What Your Imagination Shouldn't Do

Another nugget from the master of street corner theology. These little digestible chunks will help us on our way to sanity.

Thus the first test of any statement concerning spiritual reality is not can imagination form a mental picture of it, but does it stand up to the examination of the intellect, do the terms of it contradict each other, is it conceivable or inconceivable?

Imagination can say nothing about it either way. It cannot reject it. It cannot accept it either. It must leave it alone, and that is precisely one of the things that imagination hates to do. -- Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity

Examination Of Intellect

The first difficulty in the way of the intellect's functioning well is that it hates to function at all, at any rate beyond the point where functioning begins to require effort.

The result is that when any matter arises which is properly the job of the intellect, then either nothing gets done at all, or else the imagination leaps in and does it instead. -- Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity

Bumper Sticker Theology

Let's face it: nobody likes your bumper sticker.

For every person who likes your bumper sticker, there are two others who'd like to run you off the road for it. I'm one of them.

Many people have written much more eloquently about the reduction of public discourse to "sound bites" and "sloganeering". They function much like stereotypes in that they convey a world of standardized details in a handy label. Like junk food, they are tasty as a treat but sickening as a full time diet.

Today's inane bumper sticker read:

We are spiritual people having a bodily experience.

The nuances and vagaries of what is wrong with this statement I am probably not qualified to tell, but in the main it misses the point of what we are.

We are NOT mere flesh with no immortal spirit, same as the animals; but God made flesh and matter and saw that it was good.

We are NOT merely pure spirits or intellects or even "consciousnesses" -- those are angels. We are NOT angels. But God gave us an imperishable spirit made after his own image and saw that it was good.

We are NOT even souls who happen to inhabit bodies or "shells" for a short time until we die and our souls go to Heaven or Hell (Purgatory is just a pit stop.) Our souls have NOT been hanging around in Heaven waiting for our turn at a body.

And we are sure as shootin' NOT spiritual people having a bodily experience.

What we ARE is that amazing and absolutely unique creature who is both body and soul at the same time. Your soul is not "more you" than your body, and your body is not "more real" than your soul.

Body and soul go together always and everywhere -- that's why we die if they're separated; and that separation is unnatural -- it only exists because of sin. That's why we will be reunited with our bodies on the Last Day. For us to be completely alive in Christ, we're going to need our bodies and souls conjoined. We are ONE thing, not two things stuck together.

Our selves are both mundane and mystical, at once apprehendable and ineffable. Our bodies are a prayer and a temple. Pope John Paul II wrote extensively on the Theology of the Body which attempts to explore the mystery and holiness of our existence. We have the secret of God's inner life stamped into our natures. It goes on and on ...

I need my own bumper sticker that says:

Your bumper sticker is stupid.