The only one at your side both then and now

A priest gave me a bit of wisdom the other day that I think worth sharing. A paraphrase:

You cannot change the past; do not dwell on it. Say a prayer for those whom you may have offended long ago; perhaps God has brought them to mind precisely because they need prayer. Offer your regrets to the only one who was at your side both then and now, and ask him to guide your future.

The context of what I was discussing with him probably matters. If I had been talking about "grave matter", the advice might well have been different!

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A Russian parable on generosity

I had mentioned a book of Russian religious tales, Тихий ангел пролетел. I also like the first story in the text, and its theme can be related to the Christmas season, so I thought I'd give a translation here. I especially like how the the story characterizes the result of "good Christian upbringing" to be generosity.

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He who desires less, receives more
A. Afanasyev

Once there were three brothers. They owned only one thing in the entire world, a pear tree. The brothers watched over the tree in turns: one remained beneath the pears, while the other two went to find work for the day.

One day, God sent an angel to see how the brothers were living; if badly, the angel was to provide them with a better livelihood. The angel descended to earth, disguised as a beggar. Coming to the brother who was guarding the tree, he asked him for a pear. The young man plucked one from his share and gave it to him, saying, This is for you from my share; I cannot give you anything from my brothers'. The angel thanked him, and withdrew.

The next day, another brother remained on watch beneath the tree; again, the angel came and asked for a pear. This brother also plucked a pear from his share, gave it to him, and said, This is for you from my share; I cannot give you anything from my brothers'. The angel thanked him, and left.

When the third brother's turn came to watch the tree, the angel again went and asked him to share a pear. And the third brother plucked from his share, gave it to him and said, This is for you from my share; I cannot give you anything from my brothers'.

When the fourth day came, the angel came early in the morning, disguised as a monk. He found all three brothers beneath the tree. Come with me, the angel said to them; I will provide you with a better livelihood. They followed him without saying a word.

The angel led them to a large, rushing stream. He asked the oldest brother, What do you want? He answered, That this water be turned to wine, and given to me. The angel made the sign of the cross with the staff in his hand, and wine flowed instead of water. They then prepared casks, and they poured wine. This is for you, according to your desire! said the angel to the older brother, and left him in that place.

He went on further with the other two to a fresh pasture, where doves covered the entire field. The angel asked the second brother, What do you desire? That all these doves were sheep, and belonged to me. The angel made the sign of the cross over the field with his staff, and in place of doves appeared sheep. Some old ladies brought sheepfolds; others bottled milk; a third group skinned the cream; others made cheese; still others churned butter… This is for you, according to your desire! said the angel.

He took the youngest brother with him to another field, and asked, And what do you desire for yourself? I need only one thing, that the Lord might give me a wife with a good Christian upbringing. The angel replied, Oh, this is not so easy to procure.^* There are only three women like this in the entire world: two are married, and one is a maiden, but two men are courting her.

Traveling far, they came to a town whose king had a daughter of good Christian upbringing. They had come to the town to ask the king for his daughter in marriage, but two kings were already courting her. The monk and the brother likewise approached. When the king spotted them, he said to his companions, What should I think of this? These two are kings, while these others are like beggars in comparison. Well, you know what? said the angel. Let us do thus: let the bride take three twigs and place them in the garden, designating each twig to whichever suitor she wants. Let her marry the suitor from whose twig grows a bunch of grapes in the morning.

Everyone agreed to this.^** The princess placed three twigs in the garden, designating each to a suitor. In the morning they looked, and from the poor man's twig grew a bunch of grapes. The king, having no recourse, gave his daughter to the youngest brother, and they married in a church. After the wedding, the angel accompanied them into the forest and left them there. Here they lived for an entire year.

When the year ended, the Lord said again to the angel, Go, see how those orphans^*** are living; if in need, provide them with more. The angel descended to earth, and disguised himself as a beggar. He went to the brother whose stream flowed with wine, and asked him for a cup. But the man refused, saying, If I were to give everyone a cup of wine, then there wouldn't be enough! When the angel heard this, he immediately made the sign of the cross with his staff, and changed the stream into water as it was before. Then you will have nothing, he said to the oldest brother; be off to your pear tree, and guard it instead!^****

Subsequently the angel withdrew from there; he came to the next brother, who had all the sheep covering a field. He asked for a morsel of cheese, but the man refused, saying, If I were to give a morsel to everyone, then there wouldn't be enough! When the angel heard this, he immediately made the sign of the cross with his staff over the field, and in place of the sheep there fluttered up doves. Then you will have nothing, he said to the second brother; be off to your pear tree, and guard it instead!

After that, the angel flew off to look into how the youngest brother was living. He came and found the man and his wife living poor in the woods, in a mere hut. The angel asked him if he could spend the night. They received him willingly, with all their hearts, but begged him not to ask for wine. They could not offer him that level of hospitality, given the way they lived; We are but poor people! they exclaimed. No matter, replied the angel; I'll be satisfied with whatever you have.

What could they do? They had no flour to make genuine bread, so they took wood bark and prepared bread from it. The mistress of the house now made that for her guest, and placed it in the oven. They sat and talked, and afterwards looked to see if it was ready. Before them sat genuine bread, so glorious, having risen so high… Seeing this, the man and his wife gave thanks to God, Glory to you, Lord, that we might properly host a traveler! They offered the bread to the guest, along with a pitcher of water. As they poured it, they found wine in the pitcher.

The angel then made the sign of the cross with his staff over the hut, and in that very place appeared a kingly palace, with an abundance of everything in it. The angel blessed and left the couple, and they lived out their lives happily, to a hundred years.

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^*Before anyone gets worked up, keep reading and see how many good Christian men there turn out to be.

^**Yeah, I don't see how that's possible, either, but keep reading, because it's beside the point.

^***This is the first time the story mentions that the brothers are orphans.

^****I could be wrong, but since God instructed the angel to see if the brothers were in need, and if so to provide them with more, the implication of this part of the story appears to be that their material wealth left them in need of generosity, so reducing to their former state effectively provided them with more than they had before.

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The Commissar meets the People

I found the following tale from Soviet times in the book Тихий ангел пролетел (A quiet angel has flown by), a book my wife brought from Russia:

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They closed the church in a certain village. As they were throwing icons out of the building, a quiet, gloomy crowd gathered around the ruined relics.

One of the Commissars shouted at the villagers, There is no God! None, no God! Here, look!… And he began to shoot his rifle at the faces on the relics.

You see?! he shouted. You see?! So? Where is your God?… Why doesn't He punish me?

He's already punished you, answered a voice from the crowd.

When did he punish me? How?

He drove you mad.

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Creation and Generation

This entry at Brandon's weblog Siris has a lot to think about. I went to write a reply just now, but I fortunately read the comments first, so I had to pause to think more. Now I've gone & made a fool of myself for sure with my comment.

Don't wade into philosophical waters when there are philosophers about. ;-)

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European Union manages to offend Italy (again)

The European Union's Court of Human Rights recently ruled that the Italian government must pay damages to a family whose daughter had to endure the sight of a crucifix in every classroom. The National Catholic Registrar's daily blog offers disdainful commentary here; the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera editorializes here. Silvio Berlusconi, Prime Minister of Italy, has said that crucifixes will not be removed from the classrooms, adding with some interesting insight:

Non è rispettosa della realtà: l’Europa tutta e in particolare l’Italia non può non dirsi cristiana. …Se c’è una cosa su cui anche un ateo può convenire è che questa è la nostra storia. Ci sono 8 paesi d’Europa che hanno la croce nella loro bandiera… Cosa dovrebbero fare cambiare la loro bandiera?

([The decision] does not respect reality: no part of Europe, let alone Italy, can declare itself non-Christian. …Even an atheist can agree that this is our history. There are eight European nations that have the cross in their flag… What should they do, change their flags?

I think Berlusconi is undercounting here: European countries with the cross in their flag include Denmark, Finland, Greece, Norway, Portugal (implied in design), Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Maybe he's excluding countries that are not (yet) part of the European Union, but at this point we're picking nits. His overall point is appropriate.

To get an idea of the strong reaction throughout Italy, consider these observations that open the Italian editorial:

Il giovane Sami Albertin — la cui madre ha chiesto la rimozione del crocifisso dalle scuole statali approvata dalla Corte europea dei diritti dell’uomo, ricevendo per questo su forum e blog volgari insulti da chi, per il solo fatto di proferirli, non ha diritto di dirsi cristiano — dev’essere molto sensibile e delicato come una mimosa, se, com’egli dice, «si sentiva osservato» dagli occhi dei crocifissi appesi nella sua classe.

The mother of Sami Albertin requested the removal of the crucifix from state schools. The European Court of Human Rights has agreed. For this, they have received vulgar insults on forums and weblogs. Now, the mere fact of proffering such insults strips one of the right to call oneself Christian; nevertheless, this must be a very sensitive child, as delicate as a mimosa, if, as he says, he felt himself "watched" by the eyes on the crucifixes hung on his classroom wall.

This is not, let me point out, an opinion that happens to disagree with the long-term goal of a secular Europe; to the contrary, the author argues,

La difesa della laicità esige ben altre e più urgenti misure: ad esempio — uno fra i tanti — il rifiuto di finanziare le scuole private, cattoliche o no, e di parificarle a quella pubblica, come esortava il cattolicissimo e laicissimo Arturo Carlo Jemolo.

The defense of the secular state requires other, more urgent measures: as one example among many, the refusal to finance private schools, Catholic or otherwise, and to bring them up to par with public schools, as exhorted by the very Catholic and very secular Arturo Carlo Jemolo.

Nevertheless, he disagrees with the notion that the crucifix must be removed.

I myself believe strongly in the symbol of the Crucifix, and I pay money so that my son will attend a school where crucifixes are free to hang from the walls. I don't see it as the symbol of any institution, but as a dual acknowledgment of God's universal and infinite love for fallen creation, and of the wretched depths of that fall, that we would crucify our own God. Yet hanging it in the state schools symbolically runs the risk of making God an instrument of the (fallen) state, rather than the other way around. And I think the arguments made prove my point; since they are along the lines of, "This is our culture and our past and we will keep it."

A better argument, I say, is the following: "We want to direct our youths' minds to the necessity of self-giving, a human value that even state schools should foster. Even if you do not believe in the story behind the Crucifix, there is no symbol of self-giving, universal love that is more effective or pedagogical than this one. Indeed, it transcends our culture."

Update: Grahnlaw corrects a bit of confusion on my part (the EU and the Council of Europe are not the same) and on his website offers some thoughtful analysis. In particular,

The Catholic Church would hardly have reacted as clearly, if the crucifix was only a state symbol (in Italy). …Generally, I prefer the state and the public sector more broadly to be secular and non-discriminatory, but I think that tolerance is sometimes more valuable than a stubborn application of principle. [and in the comments, he adds:] Protection for a 'right' not to be offended cannot go very far (cf. blasphemy).

I'm also reminded some time ago of the EU Parliament's debate (I'm pretty sure it was EU here) on eradicating Nazi symbols from public places. This went on fine until some Eastern Europeans proposed banning Communist symbols from public places. Since Communists Parties so-named are still abundant in Western Europe, this created difficulties. I don't remember how it turned out.

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Chaput's irony

The pronouncements of certain members of the Vatican hierarchy are starting to rub Archbishop Charles Chaput the wrong way, primarily due to what he perceives as their ignorance of American Catholic culture. By way of reply, he addressed them through an op-ed in a Roman newspaper, writes:

Habitual doubt adapts itself too easily into a sort of "baptismal skepticism": a Christianity limited to a vague tribal loyalty and a spiritual vocabulary of convenience. In recent American experience, pluralism and doubt have all too often become an excuse for inertia as well as moral and political lethargy among Catholics.

[La consuetudine del dubbio si adatta fin troppo facilmente a una sorta di “scetticismo battezzato”: un cristianesimo limitato a una vaga lealtà tribale e a un conveniente vocabolario spirituale. Troppo spesso, nelle più recenti vicende americane, il pluralismo e il dubbio sono diventati un alibi per l’inerzia e il letargo politico e morale dei cattolici.]

His next sentence says a great deal more than its length implies:

Perhaps Europe is different.

[Forse l’Europa è diversa.]

Calling this "irony" strikes me as understatement. There is no question that Europe is not different; indeed one might argue that Europe has led America to the state it's in.

Never mind European intellectuals, theologians, etc. and their influence here; examine the ground level. My direct experience of European Catholicism has generally given me the impression that the European Catholic attitude to morality is, "We'll pay for the show, but we won't participate until it's time to attack someone we don't like. We'll especially deride those who take the moral implications of Catholic faith seriously." This deep impression of my youth, which my adult experience has done little to dispel, delayed my conversion to Catholicism for years: I thought, effectively, that it was merely a religion for apathetic hypocrites. Similar things occur here in the States, but (in my experience) not on so wide a scale. Again, I could be wrong, but that was my distinct experience.

Chaput goes on,

But it seems to me that the current historical moment (that both American and European Catholics have in common) bears no resemblance to the social circumstances that the ancient Christian legislators had to face… These men had both faith and the necessary zeal, tempered by patience and intelligence, to incarnate the moral content of their faith in the culture. In other words, they built a civilization that was shaped by Christian belief. What we are witnessing today is quite different.

[Ma mi sembra che l’attuale momento storico (che accomuna cattolici americani e europei) non abbia alcuna rassomiglianza con le circostanze sociali che dovettero affrontare gli antichi legislatori cristiani citati dal cardinale. Questi uomini avevano fede e avevano anche lo zelo necessario (temperato dalla pazienza e dall’intelligenza) per incarnare nella cultura il contenuto morale della loro fede. In altre parole, hanno costruito una civiltà plasmata dalla credenza cristiana. Quello che sta accadendo oggi è una cosa completamente diversa.]

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"The God who doesn't make slaves, but becomes one"

One of my favorite seminary professors was Fr. Robert Barron. I had him for only one class, Modern Philosophy I believe, and it was a great class. Although to be honest I thought all my classes at Mundelein were great classes, philosophy and theology alike (with one exception which I won't describe). It was the pastoral aspect that challenged me.

Anyway, Fr. Barron has a website, Word on Fire. They've been posting videos on YouTube. Here is a nice one that ties together the film District 9 and the ethical philosopher Emmanuel Levinas:

In Jesus, God identifies as dramatically as possible with the underside of history: not with the Masters, but with the Slaves; not with the Insiders, but with the Outsiders. God looks out from the suffering face of Christ and compels us to the right ethical stance.

It's worth listening to the entire thing, and hearing for yourself what future priests hear.

Having said that, I think I will visit that website more often.

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Church and Marriage in the Middle Ages

A while back, someone claimed that the medieval Church really didn't care much about the rules of marriage one way or the other, since marriage was a matter for this world and the Church was concerned with the next world. I got involved in a little argument over this, inasmuch as (if I recall correctly) the argument being advanced was that the prohibition against homosexual marriage was at best a late medieval invention.

I may remember the argument wrong, and I regret the error if so, but it has stuck in my head a long while., because it came to mind immediately today while reading Humphrey's latest entry at James Hannam's Quodlibeta. Humphrey is writing a series of articles on the family in the Middle Ages, and whaddaya know, even the early medieval Church was deeply interested in the rules surrounding marriage.

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Who, not What, do you say that I am?

I thought my pastor made a good observation in his homily last weekend. With some context:

Like our ancestors we dally in our personal “Egypts” dancing with snakes, sick on too much manna, and mistaking our past for who we are. We keep looking back rather than letting the Eucharistic Lord love and save us in this moment of our journey to move us forward. We name Eucharist as a WHAT and forget Eucharist is a WHO. We all too often habitually receive wafered bread and forget we consume divine life and holy nourishment!

Eucharist is not magic. It is sacrament. It is Christ. …We don’t need a magician, a politician, or a traveling show; we need a Savior; the Bread of Life and a renewed reverence for that bread that is Christ for us and in us!

That's what I copied from the homily notes on the parish website, but I'm pretty sure I remember his paraphrasing St. Augustine's remark as well, that we take communion not so that we can receive Christ's Body and transform it into ours, but so that Christ's Body can take us and transform us into His likeness.

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Statistics, you two-faced lying sumb----!

Remember that story I cited on why people leave churches? Here are two different comments I found on it today.

From the Pew center's talking points, quoted at getreligion.org:

Catholicism has suffered the greatest net loss in the process of religious change.

From the bishops' website:

A Pew Forum poll on Americans and their religious affiliation finds Catholics have one of the highest retention rates, 68 percent, among Christian churches when it comes to carrying the Catholic faith into adulthood.

I refuse to make sense of this apparent contradiction. I just don't have the time.

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Okay, I lied. I visited the Pew Center's website and took a gander at what they had to say. The fuller quote is interesting:

While the ranks of the unaffiliated have grown the most due to changes in religious affiliation, the Catholic Church has lost the most members in the same process; this is the case even though Catholicism's retention rate of childhood members (68%) is far greater than the retention rate of the unaffiliated and is comparable with or better than the retention rates of other religious groups. Those who have left Catholicism outnumber those who have joined the Catholic Church by nearly a four-to-one margin. Overall, one-in-ten American adults (10.1%) have left the Catholic Church after having been raised Catholic, while only 2.6% of adults have become Catholic after having been raised something other than Catholic.

The apparent disparity in the word choice is, if I understand correctly, due to the statistic that although Catholics do tend to remain Catholic, more adults abandon Catholicism than embrace it.

Small logical disparities like this are what make computer programming and mathematics hard.

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Was Jesus' Resurrection an Urban Legend?

Jim S. is on the case at the (now) team blog, Quodlibeta (formerly James Hannam's Bede's Journal).

My personal favorite is the "evil twin" theory. Don't forget to read the comments, one of which elaborates on this somewhat!

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Denying the cat

I've not been as impressed with G. K. Chesterton as many Catholics whose opinions I respect. I once tried to read one of his books and I came away profoundly unimpressed. (I don't recall the title.)

I do respect these Catholics' opinions, though, so I'm willing to give the man another shake. I recently downloaded an electronic edition of Orthodoxy and I've been reading it occasionally, generally while waiting for the two year-old to fall asleep. So far it's a great deal better than what I've read of Chesterton before. This passage is dead on the mark: (emphasis added)

The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two conclusions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.

I wonder what Chesterton would think of our day, where many Christians do not deny the present union between God and man, but deny the cat. I am not exaggerating in the slightest: one of my seminary professors explicitly denied original sin to my face; and as far as parish priests go I've lost count, but: I deliberately avoid the parish that is geographically closest to me precisely because its pastor has, on every occasion that I have had the misfortune of hearing him preach, stated unequivocally that all religions are the same—that is a verbatim quote. I wonder why I should send my son to the expensive Catholic school whose education he likewise encourages, despite the fact that they do not give me "the Catholic discount"? I have never heard him explain this, perhaps because I've succeeded so well at avoiding his homilies.

Before I waste any more time making a fool of myself, I'll quote most of the paragraph that preceded the above quote, since I enjoyed it as well:

Whether or not man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders…, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street.

Like Chesterton, I've felt for a long time that if any aspect of Christianity can be empirically verified at all, it must be sin, in particular original sin. The evidence I have is my often-soiled life. Yet I am also aware how wonderful it is to be washed and to be medicated, as well as the joy of those occasions when I steer clear of the mud: which I would not do if my faith did not make plain to me that it is mud, and that I can be clean. It isn't easy, but it's worthwhile.

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St. Josemaría Escrivá is a genius

For the record, I'm not a member of Opus Dei, and I'm not looking to become one, but I did discover St. Josemaría Escrivá's The Way while I was in seminary, and I re-discovered it online recently. I started re-reading it last night, and immediately fell in love with its gems again. Consider #4,

Don't say, That's the way I'm made… it's my character. It's your lack of character. Be a man.

I showed it to my wife last night, and she agreed with me that it seems particularly apt to some messy going-on in my extended family.

Or #9:

Say what you have just said, but in a different tone, without anger, and your argument will gain in strength and, above all, you won't offend God.

If I'd used that as a sure guideline, I likely wouldn't have written a few of the entries on this weblog…

Finally, #20:

It is inevitable that you should feel the rub of other people's characters against your own. After all, you are not a gold coin that everyone likes.

Besides, without that friction produced by contact with others, how would you ever lose those corners, those edges and projections—the imperfections and defects—of your character, and acquire the smooth and regular finish, the firm flexibility of charity, of perfection?

If your character and the characters of those who live with you were soft and sweet like sponge-cake you would never become a saint.

The world seems to want sponge-cake, yet never seems happy when it finds it.

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What troubles me about this SSPX business

The pope has lifted the excommunications on the Society of Saint Pius X bishops. Good for him and them, if it brings us closer to unity.

That said, I doubt the sincerity of the SSPX. I've had too many encounters with them. For a long time I subscribed to a mailing list that, I learned in due course, was run by these guys. The SSPX claims to profess loyalty and respect to the pope, but they routinely mocked Paul VI and saw John XXIII as either a Mason (i.e., an evil infiltrator) or merely used by Masons. I left that mailing list round about the time that the list moderator began to pronounce Pope John Paul II a heretic.

He may have been an exception to the rule, but the more I read of their reactions, the less I believe it. Never mind Bishop Williamson, whose primary role appears to be distracting us from real issues. Read simply a few excerpts from the letter of Bishop Fellay to his faithful:

…the opprobrium which, beyond the persons of the bishops of the Society, rested upon all those who were more or less attached to Tradition. …Catholic Tradition is no longer excommunicated.

Oddly, that opprobrium and excommunication didn't rest on those persons "more or less attached to Tradition" who, objecting to Bishop Lefebvre's schismatic act, turned in humility to Rome to form the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter.

I expressed our attachment “to the Church of Our Lord Jesus-Christ which is the Catholic Church,” re-affirming there our acceptation of its two thousand year old teaching and our faith in the Primacy of Peter.

…unless, of course, the holy and courageous successor of Peter should dare to do something that the SSPX doesn't like, such as, say confirm, explore, or speak favorably of passages in the documents of Vatican II that they find bothersome, or conduct a much-needed reform of the Sacred Liturgy. Indeed,

We …accept and make our own all the councils up to the Second Vatican Council about which we express some reservations.

Since, after all, the SSPX freely state that the Second Vatican Council was the product of Masonic infiltration of the Church, as was the subsequent reform of the liturgy. The Catechism produced by Pope John Paul II they have described as "90% honey, 10% poison".

Such reactions trouble me, and make me doubt that this will not end in a worse situation than the one that existed last week. I pray to God that I am wrong.

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The brain and the soul

At the First Things weblog, R. R. Reno has an interesting discussion of Brain Science and the Soul. I enjoyed reading his argument, because he talks about the soul in the Aristotelian sense, which is the classical Catholic sense, and not in the Cartesian sense. If any of my readers don't know what that means, Reno explains that

St. Thomas drew on Aristotle’s philosophy to define the soul as the form of the body. The soul is the pattern or highway system that organizes our bodies, including, of course, our brains.

By contrast, the Cartesian view of the soul has been called the ghost in the machine. An excellent example of cultural bias, and the power of definitions, is that the Cartesian notion of a "soul" is what comes to most Americans' minds when they hear the word. It was a complete (and pleasant) surprise to me to learn the Thomist view in seminary, which like many things Thomist derives from the Aristotelian point of view.

The most interesting and plausible part of Reno's article is the review of the science. I worry that his speculative aspects carry him to far, but it's a weblog, so that's fair. I'll try to summarize the science, with my own added interpretations, trying not to be speculative.

We all know that the brain has to be trained to develop skills and behaviors. You can have all the inborn mathematical talent in the world, but if no one teaches you anything or trains you in the discipline, you won't find the proof to Goldbach's conjecture.* Scientists have now found concrete evidence the brain needs training even in the moral realm.

Past research has suggested that other primates, like chimpanzees, have an innate moral sense: when they see that one "worker" is rewarded more than the others, they refuse to work, as if they see the treatment as "unfair". Whether the chimpanzees really have a moral sense or are merely engaging in collective bargaining, the human moral sense develops by cutting off connections to a "primitive" part of the brain.

Subjects with a high degree of neural activity linking the brain stem to the frontal lobe tend to allow emotional responses to override rational assessments of moral dilemmas. Subjects make more rational decisions, he reports, when the neurological activity from the primitive part of the brain is blocked from interfering with the frontal lobe.

This sounds a lot as if people think more clearly about moral issues when they engage in repression of certain instincts. Whodathunk it? Lots of people, actually, which is probably why they call us "repressed". (At least, I've been called that a lot. A couple of girlfriends said I was so repressed that I qualified as "mentally ill.")

It gets better! The brain can be trained for a certain morality, but eventually appears to fix on a certain point of view:

Cohen then concludes that these patterns of open and blocked communication are not fixed by nature. They solidify over time. Our brain patterns are vulcanized, as he puts it, and this occurs by the constant repetition of these patterns. The river cuts its channel.

Put differently, parents who indulge, or at least ignore, a boy's penchant for filching candy, allow these channels between desire and release to strengthen, helping the boy grow into a thief. Parents who encourage, or at least refrain from refraining, a boy's penchant for hitting other children, help the boy grow into a violent man. The tendency to a particular vice may be genetically determined, but not its actualization.

Sexual mores can be harder to modify:

It turns out that sexual desires are closely associated with the primitive, pre-cognitive part of the brain that Cohen has shown can build durable pathways to the frontal lobe. These durable pathways threaten to flood our capacity to reason with lots of seething, unsettling neural activity more suited to instinctive life than rational reflection. (emphasis mine)

Anyone with the slightest acquaintance with human sexuality will nod in agreement. I always found the following quote from Sophocles in Plato's Republic amusing:

[M]ost gladly have I escaped [love]; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master.**

Reno isn't interested only in sex; he points out that vices are linked; that is,

neural patterns between the frontal lobe and the brain stem do not know nice distinctions between the private morality and public morality.

In other words, it is biologically difficult to maintain morals in one field while compromising them in another. People who indulge their financial appetites will likely indulge other appetites as well. Lorenzo Scupoli discusses this in The Spiritual Combat when he encourages the reader to focus on developing just one virtue; all the other virtues will follow.

The original article, which sadly lacks any images of the brain-scans to which the author refers, is available here. (Oddly, it's a paper on neuroscience, but published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Maybe if I read more of it, I'll understand why it's there.)

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*The fact that no one else has found the proof to Goldbach's conjecture is beside the point. For those not in the know, Goldbach's conjecture is the deceptively simple assertion that every even natural number larger than two is the sum of two primes: 4=2+2, 6=3+3, 8=3+5, 10=3+7, 12=5+7, 14=3+11, etc. Everyone believes it, and no one knows how to prove it. If you want instant fame and attention, prove this!

**Today's television advertisements illustrate that not everyone is so relieved by this escape. I recently had to explain to my son what is meant by Erectile Dysfunction. At least he was born after Bob Dole introduced the world to his "little blue friend."

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Lucinie and Mother Teresa

The Hattiesburg library recently held a used book sale. One of the discards I acquired is a translation of a 1958 French novel titled Lucinie, by Marie-Louise Pascal Dasque. Mme. Dasque was the wife of a French farmer in Algeria back when Algeria was still a French colony. She sets her tale in Algeria, and the story suggests strongly that the French who lived there dwelled in blissful ignorance that they would not be masters of the land much longer.*

This is all strange enough, but stranger still is how the book itself sparkles with pre-conciliar Catholic spirituality, in the best sense of the word. (All in my humble opinion, of course.) Lucinie serves as a member of an order of religious who nurse the sick and dying. She shows tendencies of contemplation and loves Jesus deeply. She appears not to struggle much with the order's rule. She is simple and innocent, yet intelligent. (Simplicity, innocence, and intelligence are not mutually exclusive, notwithstanding the demons' howls.)

Yet Lucinie is not a cardboard cutout. What I enjoy about the novel are passages such as the following:

[Lucinie] preferred to take her stand on the life of Christ, reliving it in her imagination. She discussed it mentally, going over the details again and again, describing to herself the physical characteristics of appearance and of scene, until at times, though very infrequently, a brief fleeting vision called forth her full concentration and made her ready to recapture with all the concentrated force of her emotions the image that had forever disappeared.

This practice she loved dearly, yet it did not achieve contact with God. Rather did He flee, the moment she tried to reach Him... How did she know that [He was present]? Who gave her such an assurance? In fact, she had no such assurance, but its absence did not change her belief. And now for some considerable time this sense of union had left her or at least had suffered a qualitative change, becoming less certain and lacking sweetness.

Sister Lucinie again addressed her companion. "I don't know whether or not I believe in God. ..."

Ordinarily I would find such a statement unremarkable, and move on. Not in this case.

Here, a devout Catholic grandmother, a farmer's wife raised on Catholic religious education before the Second Vatican Council, exhibits a profound awareness that deeply religious people often experience prolonged periods of anguish, uncertainty, and a sense of abandonment by God. Yet when Mother Teresa's letters are published more than half a century after Mme. Dasque's book, well-educated people express shock and amazement at the notion that a deeply religious Christian could feel abandoned by God—despite the fact that a casual perusal of Catholic spiritual literature makes it plain that Mother Teresa was not the first to experience emptiness, and will not be the last. Unless I have read too much into Catholic writers like St. John of the Cross, we should all hope to experience this at some point; it is a sign of spiritual maturation.

The book must have been quite popular in France, considering the fact that I am reading an English translation that came out shortly after. The jacket cover quotes positive reviews by Le Monde, La Croix, La Cité, and Etude. The quote from La Cité remarks,

[This novel] opens the door to a series of works of real value.

A half-hearted Google search reveals no further information on Mme. Dasque, no later novels. Only this one book appears, in antique bookstores. Given the subsequent turmoil in Algeria, there may indeed have been nothing further.

I'll write further on the novel itself once I finish it.

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*Throughout the first half of the book, not a single Algerian of non-French descent has appeared—not one. The only sign of unrest is a vague mention to some communists. The uninformed reader could easily conclude that Algeria is a province of southern France.

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What it takes to be a saint

I rarely read Whispers in the Loggia, but today Mr. Palmo quotes extensively from a worthy homily delivered by a Deacon. One can summarize its flavor by the following snip (slightly out of order):

You should want to be a saint. And to be one, all you need is to want to be one.

Of course, if you only want to be a run-of-the-mill, average Christian, that’s probably all you’ll ever be. Every one can do just enough to get by. It’s not hard.

But the message Christ sends to all of us is an invitation to be something more. Don’t you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if you will consent to let him do it? All you have to do is desire it. And God will do all the rest.

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What Cardinal Biffi said at the conclave

I thought these things weren't supposed to be revealed, but Cardinal Giacomo Biffi has recently published in Italy a book wherein he sets down excerpts from a speech he gave at the conclave that elected Benedict XVI. The story comes from Sandro Magister's weblog www.chiesa; you can find this article here, or here in English.

I thought the following passage was apt (my translation, possibly bad):

3. A few days ago I was watching an interview with an old, devout sister who gave this reply, "This pope who has died has been great above all because he taught us that all religions are equal." I am not so sure that John Paul II would have appreciated this eulogy.

4. In conclusion, I would like to point out to the new pope the incredible experience of Dominus Iesus: a document explicitly endorsed and approved by John Paul II; a document for which I am pleased to express my vibrant gratitude to Cardinal Ratzinger. That Jesus be the one necessary Savior of all is a truth that in twenty centuries—beginning with Peter's speech after Pentecost—it was never felt necessary to recall. This truth is, so to speak, the lowest step on the ladder of faith; it is the primordial certainty; among believers it is a simple fact that is absolutely essential. In two thousand years no [Christian] ever placed this in doubt, not even during the Arian crisis, not even on the occasion of the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation. That this fact had to be remembered provides us with some measurement of the seriousness of the situation.

Yet this document that recalls the simplest, most essential, primordial certainty, has been disputed. It has been disputed at all levels: at all levels of pastoral activity, of theological instruction, and of the hierarchy.

The Cardinal is not exaggerating. I have known a number of priests who have disputed this once fundamental teaching of faith; my time as a seminarian led me to meet a few more. At the time the document was published, I lived in the Raleigh diocese, and I recall how the diocesan priest in charge of ecumenism wrote an article for the News and Observer expressing to non-Catholics and non-Christians his dismay over this document, and apologizing for its grave mistakes.

Perhaps. Dominus Iesus was published with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's signature, as he was the prefect of the Congregation. Ratzinger was subsequently elected pope Benedict XVI.

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Dennis Miller on the Catholic "rulebook"

A couple of weeks ago I was driving in the DC area and had the opportunity to hear the Dennis Miller Show on the radio. The first few minutes constituted the most rational, sensible, conversation I've heard on the radio in years, where Miller faced head-on one of the victims of that now nationally-promulgated theory that Bush and Giuliani knew about the terrorist attacks of 9/11 before they happened. I've listened to the gamut from NPR to Rush Limbaugh to Michael Savage to Air America, and in all those hours, not one of them came close to the cool, calm, rationality of Dennis Miller—who made his name as a comedian on Saturday Night Live.

It didn't last long, of course, but it was enough to remind me that Dennis Miller was once one of the smartest, funniest comedians in the country.

So, I rented his HBO Special, "Dennis Miller: the Raw Feed." I regret that. Miller looked tired, certainly not up to par, and the vulgarity was excessive. It began well with Miller digging himself into a hole ("a bathosphere in the Marianas Trench," to be precise) but went downhill from there. The best part constitutes an observation on the absurdity of how the Catholic bishops handled the scandal of pedophile priests for several decades (not an exact quote):

Wait a minute. When I was a child, I was told that eating a hot dog on Friday would land me around a campfire with Hitler and Pol Pot, and suddenly we're a little murky on the rulebook?

This is a very angry statement that hits the nail on the head. Too many bishops saw themselves not as holy men but as managers of a big business and/or arbiters of a game where they could protect their friends from the rules. It's true that in a few cases the bishops were being deliberately misled by the diocesan chancery, but in most of them it was clear that they didn't care. Most notable of these, I think, was Rember Weakland, the "progressive" bishop who referred to complainants as "squealers" and threatened legal action against teachers who reported strange behavior by certain priests.

I wonder how many of them have got it through their heads even now. Either way, I'm still not a fan of Dennis Miller, even if he is both smart and funny sometimes.

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Some thoughts that bear repeating

A few thoughts that are not terribly obvious, but bear repeating.

First, check out Millinerd's 9.5 theses, especially #4 (but they're all good, even if I don't know the meaning of hermeneutics).

Second, an interesting event coming out of Poland. According to the news, a man woke from a 19-year coma, long after doctors had given up hope. Diagnosing him with brain cancer didn't help. The only person who hadn't given up hope was his wife. For her part, she took him home, fed him by a spoon, and turned him over to prevent bed sores.

I would fly into a rage every time someone would say that people like him should be euthanized, so they don't suffer.

That phenomenal hope and love received its due reward in this life, when her husband slowly began to show signs of revival some months ago.
There are so many comments that come to mind on this story, and every last one of them is superfluous, except this: it's a story we should share with our children. Nineteen years is a long time to hold on to hope.

Finally, this past Trinity Sunday, our priest made the following observation in his homily: (paraphrase)

A man wanted to understand the Japanese point of view. As he studied more and more, he realized more and more that he needed to go to Japan, live with Japanese people, and fall in love with Japan, before he could ever hope to understand the Japanese point of view.

In the same way, if we want to understand God's point of view, we must go to God, live with God, and fall in love with God, before we can ever hope to understand God's point of view.

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