Just briefly, I want to draw the attention of concerned Catholics to two international news events whose timing (last Sunday and Monday, right at the end of the Rome Synod on the Family) is especially poignant. First, after years of dispute the Italian Council of State decided on Monday to quash court decisions that had allowed [...]
I prayed, and understanding was given me; I entreated, and the spirit of Wisdom came to me. I esteemed her more than scepters and thrones; compared with her, I held riches as nothing. That was the first reading at Mass yesterday morning, and the Fathers at the Synod in Rome must have been moved by it. Just like [...]
Every aspect of the learning and teaching experience in a school is -or ought to be – about growth and development. Newman observed that even the mere fact of being in a vibrant and intense atmosphere of intellectual work can itself be an agent for the intellectual, social and cultural development of the young. (He claims [...]
"We can talk a lot about God, and in the end, do so without faith", said Cardinal Mueller a couple of weeks before last year’s Synod on the Family in Rome. And now, a year later, and another Synod about to happen, I am thinking it is the most sensible observation I've noted out of all [...]
... Dear Jennifer, Thanks for the letter and enclosure you sent me a while back. In them you suggested a dialogue about the popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. You also implied that perhaps they were not popes at all. Your main problem was that, in your view, they emphasised universal salvation and thereby effectively denied all the Church’s doctrine about sin and the need for redemption from it. You took issue with the idea that “hell is not God’s initiative”; that souls send themselves to Hell. My response is not going to be sophisticated, I’m afraid. I think that if you want to find texts to hang the popes with, you can find them. I have plenty of texts that people have sent me that do this, if you ignore all the other evidence. Taken in context, and in a spirit of docility, they are not for me a source of impossible dilemmas. The Second Vatican Council asks us to give an assent of our intellect and will the frequent and clearly expressed teaching of the Pope. You complain that texts you have seen are doctrinally unclear. Seek clarification from the official doctrinal pronouncements and teachings of these same popes, and especially the Catechism, which John Paul II intended as an authoritative text of the Magisterium. Another key point is that it is the CCC that is in the hands of all the faithful now. I had never before read the extracts you sent me, and I doubt many others have. But I have many times consulted and studied the CCC. It seems to me the most natural place for a Catholic to go to find out what the Church (or its errant leaders, if you prefer) is saying. I do not find it unclear on these matters. You say that John Paul II and Benedict XVI give us a religion where man is not free. I say the same of the religion you seem to propose in your letter. You suggest that man is not free because he is forced to go to Heaven whether he likes it or not. Well, I typed in Hell in a search engine for the Catechism and this is what I got: 1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, "eternal fire." The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs. Does God take the intiative on damnation? No, says the Catechism: 1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores [...]
The person of Jesus and the truth of his resurrection are two giant megaliths that stand in the path of every atheist; megaliths so big that, though he walk around them, our atheist has only to look up from contemplating his own affairs and he will see them shining in the distance, every step of his way. [...]
No, I am not talking about military intervention, but intellectual intervention. Has it ever struck you that cultured American Catholics look to Europe for the basic elements of their intellectual and spiritual identity? And yet, the great intellectual tradition which has given us Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Euclid, Dante and Shakespeare is dying here in Europe. More [...]
The first time I went to Rome (in 2004) it was at the invitation of the then Cardinal Ratzinger. We talked about books and education. I'm going again (hurray, I love Rome!) in a few weeks at the same time as the Synod on the Family. But I'm not going because of the Synod. And I [...]
A number of years ago I visited Poland and stayed in a special hotel attached to the parliament, as a guest of one of the deputies. It was an interesting experience: there was a gas mask under the bed - only one, even though we were two friends sharing a room, so thankfully I never had [...]
Once more into the breach, then, this time against that slipperiest of enemies: numbers, as presented by journalists. The L.A. Times, on 28 September, published a piece by Mitchell Landsberg entitled, ?Atheists, Agnostics Most Knowledable About Religion, Survey Says?. Mr. Landsberg goes on to cite a recent Pew survey, which seems to indicate that atheists and [...]