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Church and Society: Avery Cardinal Dulles The Laurence J. McGinley Lectures 1988-2007
Introduction by Rev. Robert P. Imbelli
Fordham University Press. New York. 2008. Pp. 534
An Excerpt from the Jacket:
One of the leading theologians of our time, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. has written and lectured on a wide range of topics across his distinguished career, and for a wide range of audiences. Integrating faith and scholarship, he has created a rich body of work that, in the words of one observer, is “both faithful to Catholic tradition and fresh in its engagement with the contemporary world.”
Here, brought together for the first time in one volume, are the talks Cardinal Dulles has given twice each year since the Laurence J. McGinley Lectures were initiated in 1988, conceived broadly as a forum on Church and society. The result is a diverse collection that reflects the breath of his thinking and engages with many of the most important — and difficult — religious issues of our day.
Organized chronologically, the lectures are often responses to timely issues, such as the relationship between religion and politics, a topic he treated in the last weeks of the presidential campaign of 1992. Other lectures take up questions surrounding human rights, faith and evolution, forgiveness, the death penalty, the doctrine of religious freedom, the population of hell, and a whole array of theological subjects, many of which intersect with culture and politics.
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Author: Cardinal Basil Hume
Liturgical Press. Collegeville, MN. 2007. Pp. 95
An Excerpt from the Jacket:
Cardinal Basil Hume carried about within himself a still centre that was almost tangible. He possessed an inner something that spoke of a dedication to “life’s pilgrimage with God.” It gave him the tranquillity to face every difficulty and crisis with equanimity. This compilation by Patricia Hardcastle Kelly opens up for us something of the prayerful insights of Basil Hume. These insights were influenced by an ever-growing understanding of how God was continually drawing close to him and, indeed, to all of us if only we gave time to notice. This book is for everyone who wishes to step out on that journey of discovery which, in turning to God, leads to a deeper understanding of how close God is to us and how it is only in him that we, too, can find that still centre that brings with it a peace that permeates life.
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Author: Thomas P. Rausch
Liturgical Press. Collegeville, MN. 2008. Pp. 168
An Excerpt from the Introduction:
What do we believe as Christians, and where can we find an authoritative summary of our faith? When I ask my students to name three or four basic Christian beliefs, their replies tend to be all over the field, many of them very subjective. Very few of them ever turn to the Creed.
Most religious communities express their faith in confessional statements or creeds (from the Latin credo, “I entrust,” “I believe”). The great Jewish confession of faith, the Shema (the word means “to hear”), said on rising and retiring, proclaims, “Hear O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Deut 6:4). The Shahaada, the Muslim confession of faith, is recited numerous times throughout the day by devout Muslims in their prayer. It confesses, “I bear witness that there is no God but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”
The faith of the Christian community is also summarized in creeds, most notably in what has been called since the fifth century the “Apostles Creed” (Symbolum Apostolicum), as well as in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. The Apostles’ Creed originated in the West, The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed developed from the great councils in the East. The Greek term symbolum, symbol or sign, means in this context a confession of faith. By the third century, it was being used for the baptismal interrogatories, the questions asked those to be baptized, and then for declaratory creeds.
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An Excerpt from the Jacket:
“Ite missa est.” “Go, we are sent forth.” At turns entertaining, profound, and practical, The Mass Is Never Ended will renew appreciation for the beauty and wisdom of the Mass for Catholics everywhere. Examining the Mass through the lens of the dismissal, Greg Pierce reveals how our Christian mission has not changed since Jesus gave it to the original disciples and that our daily work aims toward building the kingdom of God.
An Excerpt from the Book:
We finish the opening hymn, the presider welcomes us and reads a short prayer, and then we get our first reminder that we are going to be sent forth again. The priest suggests that we have all failed in some way, and we all agree. There is no show of hands for those who have sinned and those who have not. We each admit that we have failed in many ways, “in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.” Through the lens of the Dismissal, the main thing we have “failed to do” is to bring about that kingdom of God we were sent forth to help inaugurate. Oh, we may have tried. We may even have succeeded in some (usually small) ways. But overall and corporately, we have failed on the mission on which we were sent just a few days earlier.
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An Excerpt from the Flyer:
In Spoils of the Kingdom, Anson Shupe investigates clergy misconduct as it has recently unfolded across five faith-based groups. Looking at episodes of abuse in the Roman Catholic, Mormon, African American Protestant, white Evangelical Protestant, and First Nations communities, Spoils of the Kingdom tackles hard questions about the sexual abuse of women and children, but also about economic frauds perpetrated by church leaders (including embezzlement, misrepresented missions, and outright theft) as well as cases of excessively authoritarian control of members’ health, lifestyles, employment, and politics.
Drawing on case evidence, Shupe employs classical and modern social exchange theories to explain the institutional dynamics of clergy misconduct. He argues that there is an implicit contract of reciprocity and compliance between congregations and religious leaders, which, when amplified by the charismatic awe often associated with religious authorities, can lead to misconduct.
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General Editor: Leo Zanchettin
The Word Among Us Press. Ijamsville, MD. 2007. Pp. 184
An Excerpt from the Jacket:
What do you do when your church is rocked by scandal, or when some members of your parish are stirring up strife? Where do you turn when "the way things used to be" seems upended and you’re left wondering how you should live as a Christian now?
While these situations may seem unique to our time, they are the very conditions faced by the second-generation Christians to whom the seven letters in this commentary were addressed. And the advice that the Letters of James, Peter, John, and Jude gave these early Christians is as relevant to us today, as it was to them. In fact, their letters are called the "Catholic epistles" because they deal with "universal" issues that concern the church in every age.
Each letter gives us insights into how the early church dealt with changes as it "moved out" of the comfortable familiarity of its founding years and into the larger world a generation later. As we face our own challenges, there is much that we can learn from their experience.
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An Excerpt from the Introduction:
“From the earliest days of the Church when St. Athanasius wrote the life of St. Anthony of the Desert, it was clear that telling stories about saints and holy people encourages others to want to be like them and is an effective way of teaching Catholic doctrine.:
United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, xx
In this Reader’s Journal for the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, the starting point is your personal response to the teaching of the Catholic faith revealed to us in and through Christ Jesus, the Lord. As in the stories of faith that begin each chapter of the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults (USCCA), the connection between Catholic teaching and Catholic living lies in the unfolding story of each one of our lives.
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An Excerpt from the Jacket:
In many places around the world the reality of the sacrificial nature of the Mass has been seriously down-played to the detriment of the spiritual life of the faithful. Pope John Paul II lamented this in his encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistica where he addressed his concern at the current state of affairs, saying, “at times one encounters as extremely reductive understanding of the Eucharistic mystery. Stripped of its sacrificial meaning, it is celebrated as if it were simply a fraternal banquet.” Speaking about th impact on the ordained priesthood he went on to say, “Furthermore, the necessity of the ministerial priesthood, grounded in apostolic succession, is at times obscured and the sacramental nature of the Eucharist is reduced to its mere effectiveness as a form of proclamation.” The present work examines this whole question in depth, showing how, especially in the Roman Canon, the sacrificial nature of the Mass is emphasized and expressed as it always ought to be.
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By Karen Osborne
Catholic News Service
On the last day of an unprecedented summit, Catholic ministry leaders detailed lifelong learning, collaborative ministry, solid formation and a greater need to encourage diverse leadership as crucial to the further growth of a healthy church.
"Emerging models require an emerging vision of leadership," said Robert McCarty of the National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministry April 23, near the close of the National Ministry Summit, which attracted about 1,200 lay ministers, religious and clergy.
McCarty served as a panelist on the morning's plenary session, which examined responses to recommendations for the future of pastoral leadership made earlier in the April 20-23 summit.
Present were members of a coalition of six Catholic national organizations -- the National Association for Lay Ministry, Conference for Pastoral Planning and Council Development, National Association of Church Personnel Administrators, National Association of Diaconate Directors, National Catholic Young Adult Ministry Association and National Federation of Priests' Councils -- that received a $2 million grant in 2002 from the Lilly Endowment for a four-year study in response to changes in the church.
These changes include an increase in the number of Catholics, a more
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By Chaz Muth
Catholic News Service
With at least 42 different nations represented in the congregation at St. Matthew, Baltimore Auxiliary Bishop Denis J. Madden wants the pastor of the Baltimore parish to share how he cultivated his multicultural ministry.
"I want people to be aware of the unique qualities in this parish and the acceptance that people from so many different countries feel there," Bishop Madden said. "There is an instant quality of welcoming at St. Matthew's which goes beyond the liturgy. The parish reaches out to those in need of health care, employment and help with immigration matters."
The parish's multicultural ministry evolution began with the 1990 appointment of Father Joseph L. Muth Jr. as pastor of St. Matthew.
Soon after his appointment, Father Muth noticed a small group of Africans from various nations in the congregation, but he quickly discovered they did not take part in the parish's social functions.
After making inquiries, the Baltimore-born priest learned the newly arrived Africans didn't understand that a picnic or bull roast equaled a social gathering. Nor did they understand they were invited.
"It dawned on me that there was a communication problem because we didn't fully understand
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All Things Catholic by John L. Allen, Jr.
Prior to Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United States, some handlers worried that the American media would impose the sexual abuse crisis as the trip's dominant storyline. As it turns out, those fears were misplaced -- the media didn't impose the crisis upon the pope, he imposed it on us.
During a papal trip, the Vatican press corps gathers early each day, usually around 5 a.m., to receive advance copies of that day's speeches. Saturday morning in New York, waiting outside the room where the speeches would be handed out, I bumped into a prominent Italian vaticanista who actually grumbled that it would have been better if the pope had given one substantial speech on the crisis, rather than scattering his references across several days. This journalist said he had come prepared to write about several topics, but as it was, four of his five stories so far had led with the sexual abuse crisis -- because, he said, the pope himself kept bringing it up.
Certainly Benedict's five public references to the crisis, beginning with his lengthy answer to my question aboard the papal plane on April 15, were destined to keep the story in the headlines. Yet his most dramatic gesture actually came off-camera, in a private encounter with five survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests.
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Michael Novak on Pope's U.S. Visit (Part 2)
By Carrie Gress
With the election of Benedict XVI on the heels of Pope John Paul II's papacy, we have the best of both worlds, says Michael Novak.
Novak is a theologian, former ambassador to the UN Commission on Human Rights, and author of nearly 30 books, including the forthcoming "No One Sees God."
Q: What was your reaction to the Pope's address to the United Nations?
Novak: Part of his statement was standard, and repetitive of past statements, but part was very original and penetrating. The Pope emphasized that what is crucial for the United Nations and the world of the future is the protection of religious liberty. Religious liberty is the most basic of all liberties because it protects the precious conscience of every person. He spoke of the need to protect religious minorities. Implicitly, he defended the concept of equality before the law, and his comments relied on the establishment of the rule of law -- and probably also, of pluralistic democracies, of the sort that respect human rights.
But he did not stop at religious liberty. The United Nations, he said, must work to create room for religious people to speak of their faith and to argue from their faith in the public square. The public square does not belong only to secular people.
These passages brought to mind his exchange of letters with then president of the Italian Senate, Marcello Pera, in a volume called in English "Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam." There, the Pope pointed out that in America the separation of church and state is not negative, but positive. For example, the state does not try to control the public square, but it allows room for religious people to fully express themselves in the religious sphere. While church and state are separate in their functions, in actual life there can be no separation of religion and the political dimension of life. Each human person is at the same time a religious and a political being.
In those essays, he also distinguished the American idea of the separation of church and state from the European idea, which is very negative. What the Europeans do is give the state all the power and try to drive religion out, limiting it to the domain of private conscience.
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By Father Eugene Hemrick
Catholic News Service
"Gene, what is the latest in your studies on promoting vocations? Do you have recent research that would be beneficial to a priests' convocation we are about to hold?"
The request came from a fellow diocesan priest who was about to attend such a convocation and needed some background information in order to contribute to the meeting.
My first response was that programs such as "Called by Name" and "Andrew" are very effective. One caveat, however, is needed. To succeed, these programs require a full-time vocation director blessed with exceptional organizational skills and energy. Detailed planning and constant follow up are absolutely required.
Once a person indicates interest in the priesthood, a vocation director must pursue the reasons and motives behind it. Background checks are required due to a more cautionary atmosphere. One candidate alone may require numerous hours of a vocation director's time.
As my fellow priest and I discussed these programs, it occurred to me that I had just given a priests' retreat. It was one of the best ever because the retreatants were a happy, joyful group of men. They laughed often and were very open with and respectful of each other.
In one of our retreat conferences, priests recalled their journey to the priesthood and their memorable experiences. Their support of brother priests stood out.
One spoke about finding his pastor dead in his room not long after coming to the parish. "Priests called me," he said, "inviting me to dinner. Many asked in what ways they could help. They surrounded me with concern and support."
Another priest recalled that his spiritual director was there repeatedly for him when he was considering the priesthood.
As we listened to one story after another, the word "camaraderie" came to mind -- priests bonding with priests.
Suddenly it struck me that priests openly sharing their stories, troubles and joys with each other is at the heart of a happy priesthood. Who better understands a priest than a fellow priest?
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(Donna Kelley, IHM, Psy.D., is a psychologist in the Talitha Life women’s program at SLI)
From St. Luke’s Institute
Sr. Helen, is a 38-year old woman religious with a long-standing problem managing anger. When she feels hurt and rejected by the words or behaviors of others, she reacts by becoming argumentative. At other times, she withdraws from the community and either stays in her room or ignores sisters for several days.
When Sr. Helen is having a good day, she is energetic and seems to enjoy life. At these times, she generously shares with her community, is attentive to the needs of others, and her colleagues describe her as joyful, hardworking and fun-filled. These pleasant times can easily turn ugly, when individuals disagree with her, or when Sr. Helen feels put down by others, or freezes in fear when someone raises her voice.
Because Sr. Helen did not understand or like her behavior, she agreed to an evaluation and subsequently to residential treatment at SLI.
During the initial stages of therapy, Sr. Helen realized that she had grown up in a family filled with tension and conflict. Her father traveled frequently and her mother, with limited resources, cared alone for the children. Her mother frequently took out her frustrations on Sr. Helen, often with physical threats and verbal humiliations. At times, her life was threatened, and frequently she was deprived of the basic necessities of life. In order to survive the mistreatment, Sr. Helen developed a pattern of behaviors and distinct coping mechanisms. Hurt, lonely and frightened, she would retreat to her room and cry.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Sr. Helen is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of repeated traumatic events in her past. It is clear that if victims of a trauma do not address the impact at the time it occurs, they are at a high risk for developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Prior to coming to SLI, Sr. Helen did not receive the help necessary to deal with her trauma. The memories of her physical and emotional abuse remained from childhood and affected her ability to function as an adult. In particular, the emotional scars from her abuse prevented her from accepting and loving herself and others. Internally, Sr. Helen felt small and weak while at the same time
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All Things Catholic
by John L. Allen, Jr.
As Pope Benedict XVI's arrival in the United States approaches, the media is chock full of pieces outlining the challenges the pope faces in America, and trying to anticipate what he might do or say to address them. Perhaps it's fitting that the last word before the curtain goes up, however, should belong to Benedict himself.
By that, I'm not referring to the brief video message to the American people from the pope released by the Vatican this week. Instead, I have in mind the various reflections on the United States offered by Joseph Ratzinger over the years, much of which dates from the period before his election to the papacy.
Despite protesting in 1996 that he has "little knowledge of America," in truth Benedict XVI probably came into office with more direct insight into the United States than any other pope in history. For one thing, he is the first pope ever to have been an American prisoner of war. After deserting from the German army in May 1945, Ratzinger was sent to an American POW camp in Ulm, Germany, until his release on June 15, 1945. (By the way, the future pope filled his days by penning Greek hexameters in a notebook.)
In his role as the Vatican's top doctrinal official, Ratzinger visited the United States five times. Over the course of more than 20 years in Rome, he also met the a wide cross section of American bishops, clergy and religious, theologians, politicians, social activists, and ordinary people. Predictably, the pope has also read widely about America, developing a special fondness for Alexis de Tocqueville.
As a footnote, from 2001 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has had canonical responsibility for reviewing allegations of sexual abuse against priests, which means that over four years Ratzinger became deeply familiar with the contours of the American crisis.
Among the best sources for gaining a sense of Benedict XVI's attitudes towards the United States:
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An Excerpt from the Introduction
St. Anselm famously described theology as fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding), a definition on which there has been little improvement over the past millennium. The theological essays collected here are “Anselmian” in the sense that they’re attempts to show how Catholic understandings of the human person and human society, human origins and human destiny — all of which derive from the basic Christian confession of faith —
can shed light on controverted and urgent questions of public life. The goal of these explorations, then, is understanding: understanding ordered to action in the spheres of culture, economics, and politics.
An Excerpt from the Book:
In Book Three of Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace, the hero, Pierre Bezukhov, arrives at the battlefield of Borodino to find that the fog of war has descended, obscuring everything he had expected to be clear. There is no order; there are no familiar patterns of action; all is contingency. He could not, Count Bezukhov admits, “even distinguish our troops from the enemy’s.” And the worst is yet to come, for once the fighting begins, chaos is master of all.
From the Illiad to Tolstoy to Evelyn Waugh and beyond, that familiar trope, “the fog of war,” has been used to evoke the millennia-old experience of the radical uncertainty and contingency of combat. The gut-wrenching opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan, and the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, brought this ancient truth home to a new generation of Americans; in even the most brilliantly planned
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A generation ago, Karl Rahner made the statement that there would soon come a time when each of us will either be a mystic or a non-believer.
What’s implied here?
At one level it means that anyone who wants to have faith today will need to be much more inner-directed than in previous generations. Why? Because up until our present generation in the secularized world, by and large, the culture helped carry the faith. We lived in cultures (often immigrant and ethnic subcultures) within which faith and religion were part of the very fabric of life. Faith and church were embedded in the sociology. It took a strong, deviant action not to go to church on Sunday. Today, as we know, the opposite if more true, it takes a strong, inner-anchored act to go to church on Sunday. We live in a moral and ecclesial diaspora and experience a special loneliness that comes with that. We have few outside supports for our faith.
The culture no longer carries the faith and the church. Simply put, we knew how to be believers and church-goers when we were inside communities that helped carry that for us, communities within which most everyone seemed to believe, most everyone went to church, and most everyone had the same set of moral values. Not incidentally, these communities were often immigrant, poor, under-educated, and culturally marginalized. In that type of setting, faith and church work more easily. Why? Because, among other reasons, as Jesus said, it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.
To be committed believers today, to have faith truly inform our lives, requires finding an inner anchor beyond the support and security we find in being part of the cognitive majority wherein we have the comfort of knowing that, since everyone else is doing this, it probably makes sense. Many of us now live in situations where to believe in God and church is to find ourselves without the support of the majority and at times without the support even of those closest to us, spouse, family, friends, colleagues. That’s one of the things that Rahner is referring
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Greets Jews for Feast of Passover
WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 18, 2008 .- Benedict XVI says that interreligious dialogue has a purpose beyond establishing a peaceful society: The point of this dialogue is to find the truth.
The Pope affirmed this Thursday in a meeting at the U.S. capital with interreligious leaders. The theme of the meeting was “Peace Our Hope,” and it was held at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center.
The Holy Father spoke to the religious leaders about religious freedom, lauding the United States for the way in which people of many religions co-exist there.
"May others take heart from your experience, realizing that a united society can indeed arise from a plurality of peoples -- 'E pluribus unum': 'out of many, one' -- provided that all recognize religious liberty as a basic civil right," he said.
The Pontiff also emphasized the value of faith-based education: "These institutions enrich children both intellectually and spiritually," he affirmed.
Benedict XVI then noted, "There is a further point I wish to touch upon here."
He expressed his approval for a "growing interest among governments to sponsor programs intended to promote interreligious and intercultural dialogue. These are praiseworthy initiatives. At the same time, religious freedom, interreligious dialogue and faith-based education aim at something more than a consensus regarding ways to implement practical strategies for advancing peace."
He continued: "The broader purpose of dialogue is to discover the truth."
And the Pope went on to mention the questions interreligious dialogue should engage: "What is the origin and destiny of mankind? What are good and evil? What awaits us at the end of our earthly existence?"
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Father Lombardi Comments on Pope's Visit With Abuse Victims
WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 18, 2008- Benedict XVI's meeting with victims of sexual abuse by priests can help the Church in the United States move toward hope, purification and reconciliation, says a Vatican spokesman.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi affirmed this when he gave details about Thursday's meeting between the Pope and five or six abuse victims from the Archdiocese of Boston, accompanied by their archbishop, Cardinal Sean O'Malley. The meeting was held at the apostolic nunciature in Washington.
"It was a very simple meeting, lived with great discretion," Father Lombardi said. It was not part of the official program and was not announced to the press. There were no members of the press in attendance.
"The meeting took place in the chapel of the nunciature and was essentially a prayer meeting that proceeded in an environment of great emotion," Father Lombardi added. "First the archbishop said some words of introduction and then the Holy Father addressed some very sincere and moving words. Words that were very consistent with what he had already said in the discourses, but directed to these particular people, who were in front of him."
Since the beginning of the trip to the United States, the Pontiff has given attention to the sexual abuse scandal. He has addressed the issue three times, saying on the plane en route to the United States: "It is a great suffering for the Church in the United States and for the Church in general, for me personally."
Father Lombardi went on to explain, "Each one of those present passed before the Pope, placed their hands in his, and the Pope squeezed them. Each of them could express, if they had the strength to overcome their
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Addresses Representatives of Catholic Education
WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 17, 2008 - The modern "crisis of truth" is rooted in a "crisis of faith," Benedict XVI told a group of leaders and representatives of Catholic education.
The Pope affirmed this today at the Catholic University of America in the U.S. capital. He was welcomed to the campus by the university's president, Father David O'Connell, and warmly received by cheering students chanting "CUA loves the Pope."
"Education is integral to the mission of the Church to proclaim the Good News," the Holy Father affirmed.
But he acknowledged that some question the Church's involvement in education. "It is timely, then," the Pontiff said "to reflect on what is particular to our Catholic institutions. How do they contribute to the good of society through the Church's primary mission of evangelization?"
"All the Church's activities stem from her awareness that she is the bearer of a message which has its origin in God himself," the Holy Father explained. And he went on to say that "the one who seeks the truth becomes the one who lives by faith."
Thus, the Pontiff said, a school's Catholic identity is "a question of conviction -- do we really believe that only in the mystery of the Word made flesh does the mystery of man truly become clear? Are we ready to commit our entire self -- intellect and will, mind and heart -- to God? Do we accept the truth Christ reveals? Is the faith tangible in our universities and schools? Is it given fervent expression liturgically, sacramentally, through prayer, acts of charity, a concern for justice, and respect for God's creation? Only in this way do we really bear witness to the meaning of who we are and what we uphold."
"From this perspective one can recognize that the contemporary
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By Nancy Frazier O'Brien
Catholic News Service
Although three-quarters of U.S. Catholic respondents in a new survey have noticed a decline in the number of priests serving in parishes, few of the men said they have considered becoming a priest and less than a third of all respondents said they would encourage their own child to pursue a religious vocation.
Those were among the results of a survey of 1,007 self-identified adult Catholics conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University in Washington.
The margin of error for the survey was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
The 178-page CARA report, titled "Sacraments Today: Belief and Practice Among U.S. Catholics," was made public April 13. It summarized responses to a wide range of questions about Catholics' attitudes toward and participation in the Mass and the sacraments, their knowledge of the Catholic faith, their views on church leadership and teachings, and their experience with vocations to the priesthood and religious life.
The survey also found that
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Author: Robert Waldron
Paulist Press. New York. 2008. Pp. 101
An Excerpt from the Jacket:
When The Seven Storey Mountain was first published, Merton was hailed as a new, contemporary spiritual voice and became one of the most popular and successful writers and commentators on modern religion and spirituality. But although Merton wrote over forty book on the importance of reflection and prayer in our inner lives, until now we have known very little about Merton’s own way of prayer. The distinguished Merton scholar Robert Waldron’s new book is the first to fully explore the inner life of perhaps the best-known writer on prayer of the twentieth century.
Robert Waldron skillfully explores the connections between the development of Merton’s life of prayer and Simone Weil’s emphasis on attention and grace in a way that opens the subject to all who seek to practice contemplation. In this inspiring book we are gently but wisely
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Author: Pope Benedict XVI
Our Sunday Visitor. Huntington, IN. 2008. Pp. 175
An Excerpt from the Jacket:
Live audiences of children, clergy, young adults, and others gain unprecedented access to ask the Pope about everything from divorce and remarriage to the Mass, consumerism, Scripture, music, vocations, and more!
An Excerpt from the Book:
I am Fr. Mauro, Your Holiness. In exercising our pastoral ministry, we are increasingly burdened by many duties. Our tasks in the management and administration of parishes, pastoral organization and assistance to people in difficulty are piling up. I ask you, what are the priorities we should aim for in our ministry as priests and parish priests t avoid fragmentation on the one hand and on the other, dispersion? Thanks you.
That is a very realistic question, is it not? I am also somewhat familiar with this problem, with all the daily procedures,
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All Things Catholic by John L. Allen, Jr.
I was in Washington, D.C., this week for a Tuesday luncheon sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. George Weigel and I had been invited by Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum, to brief reporters on Pope Benedict XVI's April 15-20 visit to the United States. As Weigel put it, he was there to offer an "op/ed" perspective, with emphasis on the pope and Islam, while I tried to fill the "news hole" with a broad overview.
A transcript of that session can be found on the Pew Forum Web site at www.pewforum.org
Later Tuesday afternoon, I ventured a couple miles down Massachusetts Avenue to visit the Apostolic Nunciature, the embassy of the Holy See to the United States, for an interview with the pope's top man in America: Italian archbishop and veteran papal diplomat Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the papal nuncio (ambassador).
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Author: Alexander J. Burke, Jr.
St. Anthony Messenger Press. Cincinnati, OH. 2008. Pp.232
An Excerpt from the Jacket:
Why did each of the four evangelists make John the gateway to the Gospel, the first preacher of Good News? What were the reasons for the early church’s intense interest in a desert hermit whose public ministry lasted two years or less? Why in early Christian tradition was John the Baptist accorded an exalted religious stature, almost equal to that of Mary? The irony is that most modern scholarship on John has missed the true sources of his religious significance. . .in his links to Christ and to the very earliest beginnings of the Christian religion.
Alexander Burke pieces together the mystery of this well-known disciple of Jesus
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Authors: Jozef D. Zalot and Benedict Guevin, OSB
Saint Mary’s Press. Winona. MN. 2008. Pp. 277
An Excerpt from the Jacket:
In Catholic Ethics in Today’s World, Dr. Jozef Zalot and Rev. Benedict Guevin, OSB, address what they describe as “a sense of confusion” expressed by many about what the Catholic Church really teaches on a range of ethical topics, as well as why it teaches what it does. In an accessible and engaging presentation, the authors demonstrate how the Catholic Church approaches many of the social, sexual, and medical challenges that face today’s world communities, and they discuss the moral principles the Church provides for the formation of our consciences with respect to these challenges.
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National Catholic Reporter
Over a six-day stretch from last Wednesday through this Tuesday, I gave five presentations in four cities. The series kicked off last week when I served as the closing act at the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington, D.C. (I was publicly blessed at the end by Msgr. Ray East of St. Teresa of Avila Parish -- and when you're blessed by the dynamic Msgr. East, let me tell you, you feel it.)
Over the weekend, I delivered two presentations at the annual Religious Education Congress in Anaheim, Calif., a beehive of some 40,000 catechists, educators and Catholic activists that always feels like a mad adrenaline rush. I then spoke Monday night in Thousand Oaks, California, as part of a remarkable 10-parish Lenten faith formation program called "The University." My mini-barnstorming tour ended Tuesday night in Denver, where I spoke at the John Paul II Center at the invitation of Archbishop Charles Chaput.
In one way or another, these presentations focused on my "Mega-Trends in Catholicism" project, attempting to identify the most important forces shaping the Catholic future, and/or Pope Benedict XVI's looming April 15-20 visit to the United States.
The experience was exhilarating - in part because I was blessed with gracious hosts and engaged audiences, but mostly because it gave me an opportunity to reconnect with Catholics "in the trenches" in various parts of the country, discovering anew what's on their minds, what their concerns are, and what questions they have as we ponder together the future of the church. As usual, the audiences seemed to represent a fairly wide cross-section of ages, life experiences, and theological and political views.
This week I'll present eight questions that cropped up repeatedly during Q&A sessions. The exercise offers an unscientific sense of what at least some American Catholics are thinking about a month ahead of the pope's visit.
Isn't the rise of fanatical Muslim fundamentalism the most dangerous force facing the church?
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Although many young adult Catholics are interested in church ministry they find it difficult to connect their career plans or talents with available ministries, according to a survey released this year.
The survey, "Young Adult Catholics and Their Future in Ministry," was commissioned by the Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership Project, a joint project involving six national Catholic organizations and funded by the Lilly Endowment Inc.
A preliminary report on the survey of young adult Catholics will be the topic of an upcoming National Ministry Summit April 20-23 in Orlando, Fla. The summit, initially planned for 1,000 participants, recently was expanded to accommodate all who wish to attend.
"The waiting list kept growing," said Christopher Atkins, executive director for the National Association for Lay Ministry, one of the sponsoring groups of the project. He said the interest in discussing the survey's results shows that it "struck a chord with the people who minister and those who plan for future ministry in the Catholic Church."
The nationwide online survey of young adult Catholics was conducted by sociologist Dean Hoge of The Catholic University of America's Life Cycle Institute and Marti Jewell, director of the Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership Project. Approximately 1,300 survey respondents were either involved in campus ministry programs or parish young adult ministries. The full survey will be published by Loyola Press later this year.
Most of the respondents said they view lay ministry as a call from God. More than a third of college students expressed interest in such service, and more than half of active young adults in the workforce expressed the same interest. Nearly half of the young men surveyed and more than a third of the women said they have at one time seriously considered ministry as a priest or religious.
"It's time for us to engage
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Only if we adore something beyond ourselves will we stop adoring ourselves.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said as much when he wrote that we reach moral maturity on the day that we realize that we really only have one choice in life: Genuflect before something higher or begin to self-destruct.
Simone Weil agreed: Despite being a fierce defendant of independence and private conscience, she makes it clear that the deepest need within the human soul is the need to be obedient to something beyond ourselves. Without this, she states, we inflate and grow silly, even to ourselves.
We know the truth of this through experience. We feel within ourselves a constant, congenital press towards a healthy self-abnegation and the adoration of something higher than ourselves. We only feel good about ourselves when we don’t put ourselves at the centre of the world and we only feel right about what we are doing when we are giving our lives away, when, as Richard Rohr says, our lives are not about ourselves.
From this, we see that we are built for altruism and, ultimately, for martyrdom. Within the secret of life lies a great paradox: We only experience the true meaning of life when we are dying to ourselves and giving life away.
We understand this, for instance, in the truth of the axiom: I defy you to show me a selfish person who is really happy! But there is more to this. In the spirituality of the early Christians, it wasn’t just a question of being unselfish; it was also a question of dying, really dying. They believed that we are intended for martyrdom, that dying as a martyr was the normal way that a Christian was intended to end his or her life. To live out discipleship fully was to die physically as a martyr. That is one of the reasons why the early apostolic community had some problems with the Apostle John, who, unlike the other apostles, did not die a martyr’s death. For some, the fact that he died a natural death made them suspicious of his discipleship.
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Dana Dowd , M.S.P.T.
Vol. XII
January/February, 2008
As a physical therapist and fitness professional, I dread January. After a month of celebrating and socializing over appetizers, mashed potatoes, and cookies in cold weather and crowded malls, our bodies are overfed, under-exercised and in desperate need of a little break and re-direction. So, what do we do? We sit down and write out our goals for the new year. These goals usually include some pretty big ticket items: lose weight, quit smoking, get in shape, tone up, eat better, or maybe even run a marathon. By the end of January, half of our resolvers are back on the couch with the popcorn and the other half are filling up physical therapy clinics with their wonderful intentions and over-zealous pursuits. Resulting injuries are more than nuisances. They can mistakenly give the message that we are “too old” to exercise, that when I try to get in shape, “I hurt myself.” There is a better way. Actually, an easier and more comfortable way! You may think that I am the only trainer shouting “Take it easy!” Actually, the new fitness mantra is “De-stress.” I would like to suggest some resolutions for the over-exerciser and under-exerciser alike.
First, take a deep breath, close your eyes and say to yourself “I am a tortoise, slow and steady.” Fitness is much more than just exercise or diet. Fitness encompasses all the ways we do or do not take care of our bodies, including the clothing/shoes we wear, the amount of sleep we get, the food we eat as well as when and how much we eat, the way we sit at our desk to work, the hours we put in without a break, how we maintain relationships with people or activities that sap our energy and feed into our bad habits, talking down to ourselves, or not giving ourselves proper credit for good health habits. If we examine the periphery of our fitness behaviors, we will find some very easy things to change. Take January to find and decrease your “loopholes.” Get 8 hours daily of sleep this month. Replace any exercise shoe that is more than one year old (yes, I mean it). Look at your personal fitness pyramid: cardiovascular, strength, endurance, flexibility, balance, and relaxation, and decide on two areas on which to focus.
Second, slow she goes. Now,
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God never overpowers, never twists arms, never pushes your face into something so as to take away your freedom. God respects our freedom and is never a coercive force.
And nowhere is this more true than in what is revealed in the resurrection of Jesus. The Gospels assure us that, like his birth, the resurrection was physical, real, not just some alteration inside the consciousness of believers. After the resurrection, we are assured, Jesus’ tomb was empty, people could touch him, he ate food with them, he was not a ghost.
But his rising from the dead was not a brute slap in the face to his critics, a non-negotiable fact that left sceptics with nothing to say. The resurrection didn’t make a big splash. It was not some spectacular event that exploded into the world as the highlight on the evening news. It had the same dynamics as the incarnation itself: After he rose from the dead, Jesus was seen by some, but not by others; understood by some, but not by others. Some got his meaning and it changed their lives, others were indifferent to him, and still others understood what had happened, hardened their hearts against it, and tried to destroy its truth.
Notice how this parallels, almost perfectly, what happened at the birth of Jesus: The baby was real, not a ghost, but he was seen by some, but not by others and the event was understood by some but not by others. Some got its meaning and it changed their lives, others were indifferent and their lives went on as before, while still others (like Herod) sensed its meaning but hardened their hearts against it and tried to destroy the child.
Why the difference? What makes some see the resurrection while others do not? What lets some understand the mystery and embrace it, while others are left in indifference or hatred?
Hugo of St. Victor used to say: Love is the eye! When we look at anything through the eyes of love, we see correctly, understand, and properly appropriate its mystery. The reverse is also true. When we look at anything through eyes that are jaded, cynical, jealous, or bitter, we will not see correctly, will not understand, and will not properly appropriate its mystery.
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An Excerpt from the Booklet:
Various Views of Dating
Dating is Wrong
While not a view held by many people, it is held by numerous critics of our culture as well as many Christians, Catholic and Protestant alike. It should be no surprise that the best selling book on Christianity and dating is titled Why I Kissed Dating Goodbye. The concerns these people have about dating are multiple. Since dating relationships break up, they cause suffering and suffering should be avoided. Since they end, they are also a practice for divorce and train people to give up when relationships get difficult. Dating, even if it does not involve premarital sex, tempts one toward it. For these reasons, it is argued that dating is wrong.
It might be easy to dismiss these individuals as curmudgeons, but they allude to a reality often glossed over in the more romantic notions of dating. Violence often accompanies dating. 65% of people experience emotional, verbal, or physical violence in dating relationships. More than a third of dating relationships in college have incidences of nonsexual dating violence.
This violence is overwhelmingly directed toward women, who make up 85% of the victims of dating violence. In colleges, 67% of all sexual assaults are cases of date rape, with 94% of the perpetrators being male. In fact, date rape is the most commonly reported crime on college campuses. Rape is more common at private colleges and major universities than in society at large. (Institutions with a religious affiliation, however, have rates lower than the national average.)
Such violence deserves the strongest condemnation, and the Catholic Church provides the foundation necessary to completely reject this destructive behavior. Given Catholicism’s devotion to the Blessed Mother, its upholding of the dignity and vocation of women, its insistence on the procreative and unitive value of sex, and its uncompromising pro-life stance that abhors violence directed at other people, the troubling reality
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