Lasting Peace

Last Saturday, September 7, the Holy Father asked Catholics to fast and pray for peace in Syria.  While there appears to be a diplomatic solution in the offing, the outcome of the crisis is still in doubt, albeit less so than forty-eight hours ago.  In taking such a strong stand against military action Pope Francis has faced criticism from some people in the press.  He has been accused of taking sides against the United Stated in the conflict.  This is a misinterpretation of the Pope’s words and actions.  He is calling on all sides to slow down, use the diplomatic process and avoid a conflict that could grow into a wider, far more destructive war.  The Holy Father is calling upon us,  as disciples of Christ, to use our spiritual weapons, namely prayer and fasting, to aid in bringing healing to a world in conflict.

This striving for peace must not be confined to nice thoughts or abstract wishes.  We must make peace an everyday reality of our lives.  It is true that we as individuals can do little to influence the course of human events directly and immediately.  We are living our everyday lives; trying to make a living, or going to school.  Maybe we are retired.  Either way we have worries of our own right here.  We are not great and powerful people.  How can we make world peace a reality?

We help make world peace a reality by making peace right here and now with the people we live with and around.  When we forgive a brother or sister who has offended us, we are making a more peaceful world.  When we act with kindness toward a neighbor, especially one we may not get along with, we are making the world more peaceful.  When we reconcile with someone who has offended us, or we reach out a hand and seek forgiveness for our own sins, we are making the world more peaceful.  We shouldn’t think of the world as only places that are far away.  The world for us is the house and the block in.  It is the place we work and the school we attend.  If there is no peace in these places we should not be surprised when there is no peace in the wider world.  

As active and honest citizens should we vote, call our congressman and sign petitions?  Yes.  But all the political action will be useless if there is no conversion of heart.  There is a saying that all politics is local.  We can also say that the struggle for peace in the world begins locally.  Actually, we should say it begins inside of each and every one of us.  The Holy Father asked us for a day of fasting and prayer, and I would like to think that the quick turn of events is a result of our heeding of this call.  But we simply can’t return to old ways once the crisis is diverted and expect lasting change.  An attitude of simplicity, self-denial and openness to the Spirit of reconciliation is a key to forming a world of true peace; not for a day or an evening, but every day and at every moment, beginning with the people right around us.  May Christ our light open our hearts and minds so that we can be peacemakers right here and now in the place we live.  

Here is Pope Francis in his own words from last Saturday

Blue Jasmine // Movie Review

 

I slipped away for a few hours last week and saw the latest Woody Allen directed film Blue Jasmine.  I would not count this as a must see, except if you are a dedicated Allen fan.  This is not a comedy, though it does have plenty of comedic touches.  That it's a drama is not why I don't recommend it.  Allen can do serious material.  He is also under-appreciated as a visual director, I think, and his keen sense of composition and the taking in of majestic landscapes is on display here.  But it is the writing, the thing that he's best known for, that bogs the movie down. There is a certain out of touch quality to Blue Jasmine, derived I think from a combination of the writer-director's age and socio-economic class, that makes it feel like he's imagining what his working class characters must be like without actually having met any in real life.   They're sympathetic, but more than a little superficial in their rendering.

To put it in a nutshell; Cate Blanchett plays the title character; a woman married to a Bernie Madoff like swindler (Alec Baldwin).  She's living the high life in New York, willfully unaware of her husband's crooked business dealings and numerous marital infidelities.  Eventually he's found out, on both counts; needless to say they lose it all.   The husband goes to jail, eventually commits suicide, and the emotionally fragile Jasmine goes to live with her working class sister in San Francisco.  Both sisters were adopted, and there is this ongoing debate between them, which never seems to go anywhere, as to whether genes are responsible for the divergence in their social standings.  The story is told in flashbacks, and we see that Jasmine was emotionally brittle even before her fall from grace, and may be responsible, in part, for her predicament.

Allen makes about a movie a year and writes his own material.  This is a clear formula for plenty of hits and misses, and this is a miss.  I didn't catch last year's To Rome with Love, but did see Midnight in Paris, and liked it very much.  But even there, as with Blue Jasmine, I was aware the entire time that Woody Allen had written the dialogue.  He has this strange way of trying to sound natural that still comes off as mannered and contrived.  I find this less problematic with comedy, but with drama it seems to undercut the power of the performances.  And beyond the visuals, the strength of this film lies in the performances, especially by Blanchett and Baldwin.  Unfortunately they are made to deliver lines that I'm not sure real people would ever say, or at least not in the way they're formulated.  The big exception is one scene between Blanchett and Baldwin that I have a strange feeling is mirroring real life way more than the whole Madoff thing they have going on here. 

As I think I've said in other places, mediocre Woody Allen is still better than most film makers out there when they bring their "A Game."  So a reluctant pass on Blue Jasmine, but maybe wait for the DVD and catch it then.

One of the Proud 77%

Of the many things I began to write about over the last several months but never finished was something on a poll Rasmussen released around Easter Week reporting that 86 percent of respondents believe Jesus was an actual historical figure, with 77% believing he resurrected. One of the big claims that the new atheists try to push is the idea that Jesus never really lived; he was a myth created by the early Church, and possibly by St. Paul.  The numbers seem to indicate that they are not making great inroads, if we take into account that the non Christian population in the US is growing, a group that would be disinclined to believe in the Resurrection to begin with.

But what of this idea that Jesus never existed?  It is true that he never wrote anything that we know about, outside of those mysterious scribblings he made on the ground with his finger when he confronted those who accused the woman caught in adultery.  The very claim that he rose from the dead discounts skeletal remains.  There is no birth certificate or obituary we can look at, even if such things existed back in the first century.  We don't seem to have any contemporary accounts of Jesus' life, outside of the Jewish historian Flavious Josephus.  But the brief passages referring to Jesus are suspected of being a later incursion into to text, and are so unreliable (though there does seem to be scholars who take varying positions on the topic).

When it comes to the historical reality of Jesus we have are two things we can hang our hat on, as I see it.

One is that we do have the New Testament cannon that is unjustly discounted because of their standing as Sacred Scripture.  Yes, they tell stories of the miraculous, and so what?  Even if you don't believe Jesus was a worker of wonders, all it proves is that his followers liked to guild the rose a bit (a position I do not take, of course).  The Evangelists, especially Luke goes to great lengths to place Jesus' life in an historical context, unlike the ancient myths, and in John there is constant harping about how all that was described was being communicated by a witness to the events; a witness whose testimony is true.  The Evangelists name the names of people who were at the cross or on the road to Emmaus, as if to say, "if you don't believe me, go ask them. They're still alive (at the time of this writing), they can set you straight."

Beyond the four canonical Gospels, we have the letters of Paul, as well as the others.  They were written before the Gospel accounts and attest to Jesus' death and resurrection.  Along with "Jesus Birthers" there are those who question Jesus' divinity, or his self understanding of his divine nature.  They will go as far as to claim that the Evangelists made it up, or that the Gospels really don't say that he's God.  Well, if the Gospels don't convince you, then go to the letters, written twenty to thirty years before the Gospels.  Here we see a firm profession of the divinity of Jesus and the bodily resurrection.  These were what the early Christians believed going back to the first generation, attested to by witnesses (Peter) and by those who consulted with those who knew the Lord during his earthy ministry (Paul).

The second point is that so many, including ten of the surviving 12 Apostles died as martyrs.  Judas committed suicide and John died as an old man, but endured exiles and torture for the faith.  Unlike our own time and place, in the Mediterranean of the first century everybody was religious, and it was a very public thing.  Most people were polytheistic.  One of the popular God's was Sol Invictus - the Unconquered  Sun, and while he was very popular, as Pope Francis writes in his first Encyclical, quoting Justin Martyr, no one was know to be willing to die for his belief in the sun god.  Yet thousands gave their lives for their belief in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  It's possible for a few fanatics to give their lives for a myth maybe, but only if they were also insane; but thousands over centuries starting right from the beginning?  I doubt it.  Someone would have cracked.  Sure, some ran away to save their hides, but none said it was a scam.


And so yes, I believe in Jesus the historical person and Resurrected Savior.  I believe because it's reasonable to me, as well as being a matter of faith.  In the end, I wouldn't put my faith in something that didn't make sense. 

The Pope's Monthly Prayer Intention: For Persecuted Christians

The Passion of Saint John the Baptist

Back in June we celebrated the nativity of St. John the Baptist, the only birth we observe on the liturgical calendar, other than those of Jesus and Mary.  John is the last of the Old Testament prophets, and his life is intimately intertwined with our Lord's from the time of their respective conceptions.  John's, in Old Testament style, was miraculous in so far as God guided nature, taking one who was thought to be baron (St. Elizabeth) and allowing her to be her fertile, causing surprise and wonder in the people.  With Jesus, he shows that he is the master of nature, intervening in human affairs in such a way as to totally surpass people's expectations.   

In his death we see that John was a true prophet, suffering and dying for the Word he professed.  It is no accident that the first reading from today's Mass is from the book of Jeremiah.  This past Sunday we heard that he was thrown down a well by the officials of Jerusalem because he was preaching against war and foreign alliances that would lead to doom.  Tradition tells us that he left the city as it was falling to the enemy, only to be murdered in Egypt.  He accepted the call to preach as we heard today, but professing the Word of God came at a great personal cost.

John also was fearless in his preaching of the Word.  He preached justice, equity and personal repentance.  His words were strong, calling those who came out to him a "brood of vipers" who needed to repent and so avoid the great wrath that was to come.  It was not for these things that he was beheaded though.  John told Herod, the puppet ruler of Galilee, that it was not lawful for him to have Herodias, his sister-in-law, as his wife while his brother was still alive.  John was defending the sanctity of marriage, and touching upon something so personal to Herod's way of life that it excited his ire.  He had John arrested, and Herodias manipulated a situation to effect his execution.

Today the Church is called to be prophetic.  She is vocal on issues of economic justice, racial equality, immigration reform and other social issues as seen through the lens of the Gospel.  When we do we are sometimes criticized, sometimes lauded and mainly, it seems to me, ignored.  But when we get up and say that marriage is a union of one man and one woman, for the good of the couple and the raising of a family we are accused of every vile epitaph imaginable.  We are called bigots and homophobes.  The former Archbishop of Buenos Aires was heavily criticized by that country's president for preaching that core doctrine of the faith (for those who don't know who I'm referring to, the archbishop in question is now the much lauded Pope Francis).   When we preach these truths we are touching to core of the human person.  Economics and politics can seem distant to us, especially in this age when the news has been dumbed down to such a large extent.  But our sexuality is tied to our inner self and identity, and so if we are told that maybe we are misusing it we react, sometimes violently, to the messenger.  But preach the truth we must in season and out, no matter the cost.

We do not preach this out of hate, but out of love.  I don't want to see people persecuted or abused because of their sexual orientation.  I believe that what goes on in the privacy of people's homes is none of my business, unless lives are in danger or they want to make it my business by way of the confessional.  I believe who people choose to live with is none of my business, for that matter.  But I can't believe in same sex marriages because it can never be a marriage in the way the Christian community has always understood it.  And just so gays don't think that I'm singling them out, straight couples who purposely exclude the possibility of children from their lives are in relationships that fall short of Christian marriage as well.

I'm not judging if the partners love each other.  I'm not questioning their mutual devotion.  But marriage, at a certain level, transcends these things. It's a commitment made for life that must endure many hardships, including the possibility of falling out of love, and the dimming of the sexual appetite.  It has it's feet planted in the here and now, with eyes fixed on the future, all the way into eternity. 

John the Baptist was put to death for defending the truth of marriage, in his case it's exclusive and indissoluble nature.  We are called to preach the manifold truths of the Gospel, whose implications touch every aspect of our personal, social, cultural and political lives.  We must profess it even when it is hard;  Always with clarity, always with charity.  Ready to accept any consequence that may come. 

Fr. Barron Comments on Eucharist as Sacrifice: Second in a Series

Fr. Jose Carlos Contreras, SDB, Delared Innocent, Freed From Prison!

Fr. Jose Carlos Contreras, SDB has spent four years in prison in Mexico for the rape and murder of 16 year old Itzachel Shantal González López, crimes he did not commit.  Yesterday the Supreme Court of Mexico, in a 4-1 decision, declared Fr. Jose Carlos innocent of all charges. 

The court's decision stated that the priest was convicted without proof that he was the rapist, and called the evidence and accompanying narrative of the overall events presented by prosecutors illogical and beyond the boundaries of common sense.

Today, the feast of the Queenship of Mary, Fr. Jose Carlos will be celebrating a Mass of thanksgiving with his family.

To echo the words of the statement put out by the Salesian Provence of Guadalajara, we have gratitude to God for Father's freedom.  It is hard to imagine the hardships that he endured over these years.  By all accounts he continued to be a priest for the other prisoners of the jail, giving guidance and consolation at a time he himself was suffering so much.  We pray for him as he makes his adjustment back into his regular Salesian life.  We pray for all those unjustly convicted, as well as the victims of the drug violence in Mexico, of which this episode appears to be a part.

Most of all we must remember that there is a young girl who will never grow up to be a woman.  We continue to pray for Itzachel Shantal González López, for her family, and that justice may be done in her case.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus from the Apostleship of Prayer

A Serious Man // DVD Review

Larry Gopnik is having a bad day.  This quiet, more than slightly nebbish physics professor's ordinary life is disrupted in an afternoon by a student who tries to bribe him in a failed attempt to raise his midterm grade (later the student tries extortion), he gets into a property line dispute with his goy neighbor, and his wife Judith (Sari Lennik) reveals that she's been seeing a close friend on the sly and wants a divorce.   Plus, his tenure request is endangered by a series of anonymous letters besmirching his character that keep on arriving to members of the tenure board, and the Columbia Record Club is hounding him for payment on a subscription that his son secretly took out in his name.  More bad things happen in the following days, including several sudden deaths, but you get the point. In the midst of this Larry, an observant Jew, wonders where Hashem (the Hebrew word used to refer to God in informal conversation) is in all this madness and confusion. Does life have meaning, or is everything that happens to us the product of random chance?  The rabbis he consults don't seem to know the answer, and one even tells him that Hashem owes him no answer, even though he plants the curiosity within us from the start.  As Larry frustratingly muses, if he gives us the question, why won't he give us the answer?

This is the set up for the Coen Brothers 2009 offering A Serious Man. The film is set in an Upper Midwest, mostly Jewish suburb in 1967.  It's based on Joel and Ethan Coen's own childhood neighborhood in Minnesota, and while the late 60's setting is somewhat superfluous, except to make certain gags possible, it does add to the atmosphere.  Though the film asks serious questions about God and fate, taking a critical view on the existance of a providential God and the ability of religion to answer the deeper questions of life's meaning, it's an affectionate, and often funny look at what it was like to grow up Jewish (albeit in the Coen Brother's dark style).

A Serious Man is billed as a modern retelling of the Book of Job, but the only thing the main character, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), has in common with his Biblical counter part is that bad things start happening to him, seemingly out of nowhere, and he wonders where God is in all the suffering.  The difference is that Job was a serious man of property and wealth who lost it all, and got it all back, and then some, after his time of trial was over.  If we are honest in reading Job we are left with more questions than answers, even if the Divine author wraps everything up neatly at the end.  Here, Gopnik is an every-man who schleps his way through life, contently enough, to find himself suddenly confronted with calamities that thrown him for an existential loop, forcing him to questions the meaning of life and faith.  When things begin to turn around for the better real problems seem to be barreling down just as the film is ending.  We are left with the same questions as Job, only without the pretty bow and with a dose of palpable dread.

This isn't an easy movie to follow, especially since there really isn't a driving, clearly focused plot, and scenes are inserted that don't seem to be serving the story, such as there is.  This doesn't mean that these bits don't work, because they do; especially a bizarre Yiddish language prologue about a suspected ghost that takes place in another century and location.  Then there's the story of the dentist and goy's teeth; very funny but still leaves you scratching your head as to why we took the detour.  But the scenes themselves work, especially the one about the goy's teeth, in so far as they highlight the idea that life itself is a movie without a plot and the more you try to tease one out the more frustrated you will get. 

What I saw as a key to understanding the movie was an encounter at the end of the film between Larry's son Danny (Aaron Wolf) and the aged Rabbi Marshak (Alan Mandell).  It is the boy's Bar Mitzvah day and he goes into the old sages cluttered and slightly spooky office to be congratulated.  Featured prominently amid all sorts of strange scientific specimens in jars and random bric a brac is a copy of Caravaggio's Sacrifice of Issac, depicting another biblical story that makes one question what God's up to.  As he sits nervously, the grizzled and wizened wise man begins to slowly paraphrase the opening lines to a Jefferson Airplane song popular at the time:

     "When the truth is found to be lies,
     And all the hope within you dies,
     then what?"

This is the key question of the movie, even if Larry hasn't come to see the answers offered by faith to be lies yet.  The Rabbi Nachtner (perfectly played by George Wyner), who Larry consults after an unsatisfying sit down with the "junior" rabbi, can only tell him how God doesn't work as opposed to how he actually does (a later funeral scene shows that he doesn't have a grip on what the afterlife is about either).  He dismisses questions of ultimate meaning as annoying tooth aches that will go away with time.  For his part, Marshak, like the other rabbis, offers no answers, just the grandfatherly admonition to "be a good boy," as he returns the boy's transistor radio that had been confiscated by the Hebrew teacher at the beginning of the movie.  But where does one go when the basic assumptions that guide our life don't seem to be valid anymore?

In the end A Serious Man leaves us with questions, and no answers.  When what we were raised to believe doesn't seem to match up with the realities of life, what do we do?  Do we give in to hopelessness?  Obviously the Christian answer is no; life has a purpose and their is a plan even if we can't figure it out in our own time.  But I don't want to dismiss the questions, because, while God gives us more to work with than Rabbi Nachtner gives him credit for, he does leave plenty of room for mystery, wonder and questioning.  There isn't a person who hasn't had to grapple with these questions at one time or another, including great saints of strong faith.  The Coen Brothers make us grapple with them with humor, irony but also with a clear sense of appreciation for the religious and cultural tradition they were raised in, even if they are unsure how they view its deeper implications.

The Assumption of Mary from AOP

Fr. Robert Barron: The Sacrament of the Eucharist as a Sacred Meal

This is a part of what I'm assuming will be a three part installment from Fr. Barron on the Eucharist.  He speaks of it here as a sacred meal, tracing the origins of this concept through the Old Testament and into the ministry of Jesus.  From how he set this video up, I'm guessing he will explore the ideas of the Eucharist as a sacrifice and as True Presence in the future.

One of the struggles of the Post-Vatican II period has been over how the celebration of the Eucharist should be viewed.  In the Pre-Conciliar period the stress was placed on the sacrificial aspect of the Mass.  Over the last fifty years more of an emphasis has been placed on the Mass as a communal meal.  But rather than trying to show the complementary nature of these two qualities of the Mass they have too often placed in opposition, as if these things were mutually exclusive.  Here Fr. Barron is trying to demonstrate that what we have is a case of both-and, not either-or.

Mother from AOP

Chicago Bound

PLYMOUTH, MA - I've been and will continue to write a little less frequently over the next couple of weeks, not just because we're in what is the usual vacation-retreat time of year for most priests.  I have been given a new assignment that began on August 1, though I won't be actually moving in until the eighth (I'm squeezing in some time with my family between assignments).  I am no longer the pastor of St. Anthony's in Elizabeth, New Jersey and now hold the same position (in absentia) at St. John Bosco Parish on Chicago's North West Side.  It came as a surprise, especially since I had been green lighted for another term in Jersey, but things happen, as they say, and so I pack up and go in faith.

People are constantly asking how I feel about moving, and in truth I feel very much conflicted about it.  I spent five very happy years at St. John Bosco as parochial vicar before going on to be Coordinator of Youth Ministry (CYM) at Salesian High, New Rochelle.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited about going back.  But I was the  pastor at St. Anthony's, and the experience of leaving has not been the same as leaving other places that I've been.  A pastor is more than an administrator, he is called to be the spiritual father of the people in his care.  Don Bosco once said that he would never accept the position because of the grave responsibility that a shepherd of souls has for every person who lives within his parish boundaries. 

Some times we Salesians (and I'm guessing it's the same with most religious) view our assignments as jobs.  We do get attached, and many of us find moving difficult, especially as we get older and more settled in our ways.  But being a pastor is different from the other positions we hold because of its paternal nature.  A director, who is the superior of the religious community, also has this paternal quality.  But he is use to Salesians being transferred in and out, or students or club members graduating or aging out of the program.  A parish community is far more stable and we get to be a part of the lives of the families under our care and share in all the joys and sorrows of their lives.  If we are fulfilling our duties faithfully (or even not as well as we should, as I have observed) the people do become attached to us.  This filial or paternal relationship is real and parting becomes hard for "both sides," even, as in my case, the pastor has fond feelings for the place he's going. 

There is no easy answer.  The dwindling number of priests makes filling positions difficult and movement almost constant.  Staying too long in a place can bring complacency, stagnation and worse; a sense of entitlement and privilege on the part of the priest.  But constant change is unsettling for the people and makes establishing a consistent program, not to mention trusting relationships, almost impossible.

This last point, the importance of relationships, is what I believe the Holy Father is trying to stress to us.  Programs and strategic planning are important, but only if they facilitate a personal encounter with Christ.  Priests and religious, in a special way, are called to be the face, voice and hands of the Lord in the world now.  Do they have this role exclusively in the Church?  No, but they do have it in a unique way, and it's power can be undermined by the constant shifting of personnel.  The people will be respectful, but they will be slow to truly bond with their pastors and the pastor's associates if they have grown accustomed to them not being around for long. 

These are observations, not complaints.  I am looking forward to going back to St. John Bosco.  While leaving St. Anthony's is hard, I understand it and accept it in the spirit of obedience and bowing before the mystery that is God's will.  Pray for me as I begin this next phase as I pray for you all who read The Ax, and for all your loved ones.

Fr. Barron's Take on Pope Francis and World Youth Day

Parents and Teachers: A Lesson on Conscience From Pope Francis via the Apostleship of Prayer

Quick Reviews: "This is the End", "Man of Steel", "The Lone Ranger" and "Ken Burns: Prohibition"

I've seen a bunch of movies this summer, but have chosen not to review them up to now.  Consider this a catch up on some of the more recent films out right now.
 

This is the End

"R" rated comedies are not usually high on my list of must sees, but I took a chance on this one.  I rarely walk into the theater knowing nothing about the movie being screened, but there wasn't anything else out that week, so I figured I'd take the chance.

Bad move.

The premise and set up were actually intriguing.  The main actors, among Hollywood's Young Turk comedians and thespians, all play themselves, or at least play parodies of their public image.  They're self absorbed, stoner elitists living in their insulated pleasure domed ivory towers.  Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel go to a party at John Franco's new house, along with a host of other young stars like Emma Watson, Michael Cera and Rhianna, all engaging in the excesses associated with show business types on their time off, when, you guessed it, the Rapture/Apocalypse happens.  Actually, so far so good.  But then, after a completely over the top sequence in which most of Hollywood's young stars are not simply "left behind," but gruesomely swallowed into the fires of Hell (again, I'm not into gore, but the movie still had me) the film settles into what seemed like an interminable middle section where six survivors try to figure out what happened and how they are going to survive.  It never goes anywhere interesting, and begins to feel claustrophobic and self referential, like, as some other critics have observed, this was some big inside joke that only they a few other peeps in the biz are in on (in fairness, this was not the majority opinion; This is the End was very well received by critics).

I would chalk this up as a missed opportunity, because the beginning, as I said, sets things up nicely, and the end, which goes inexplicably feel good in some ways (though still a bit bloody), wasn't that bad.  But the entire middle was a muddle of hit and mainly miss gags that left me bored. There was an opportunity to comment of religion, race relations, the objectification of women and the various anxieties effecting twenty and thirty-something men, but it never really does, or does so in the most superficial ways imaginable.

I've read and seen reviews (after I saw this mess) trying to explain the deeper meaning that Rogen and Seth Goldberg (writers and first time directors) were trying to say about male friendships and fame versus reality, but I didn't see it.  I admit that this is at least in part a generational issue (I'm just too old for this kind of stuff), but I think that it's more than that.  Yes, there is gore (this is meant as a "horror-comedy"), plenty of profanity and humor of the sexual and scatological variety, but who cares?  Just because you repeat a "dirty" word or phrase a bunch of times doesn't make it funny.  You may not have always agreed with Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor or George Carlin (I certainly didn't), but the profanity that they used wasn't the point.  It was meant to get your attention so you would hear what they were really trying to say.  And no matter where you landed on the issues being explored, you couldn't deny that they were very funny men.  I know that this was meant as a bit of self parody and all, but maybe these guys really don't have as much to say as they think.  Maybe they are a bit more self absorbed than they want to admit.

Man of Steel

Now that Batman was been revamped for the screen it's time for the Superman legend to get it's day in the multiplexes.  The bottom line: this wasn't a terrible movie, but it simply wasn't all that compelling, either.  And all the Christ symbolism was laid on mighty thick.  I thought telling the story in a non linear style was good, and how they brought Clark Kent / Superman and Lois Lane together was inventive (though they sort of conflated the Lois and Jimmy Olson characters together, which seemed odd).  Superman is unbreakable, but not un-bendable, and he does have to exert great effort to accomplish some of his more spectacular feats, which was refreshing. Again, I didn't hate it, I just wasn't sure how necessary it was.

I'm having a hard time thinking of things to say about Man of Steel (I saw it about two weeks ago) not so much because of the time laps but because it was such a vanilla experience.  Fr. Barron gave an interesting commentary on it, so I'll leave him to say the rest.

The Lone Ranger

Back when I was a kid there was an attempt to bring the Lone Ranger legend to screen by way of a big budget spectacle, and it flopped epically.  From the reviews and box office receipts of this latest attempt, from the same people who brought us the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, this concept must be cursed to failure.  

In spite of the title, this time out the "Faithful Indian Guide" Tonto is actually the main character of the story (actor Johnny Depp gets top billing to drive the point home).  Borrowing heavily from the 1970 Dustin Hoffman film Little Big Man, the story is told in flashback by Tonto as an old man in 1933 San Francisco.   There are other thefts from that earlier film, including one of its most famous lines, but in the end it's irrelevant.  They could have taken the best ideas from every western of the last seventy years and it wouldn't have saved this thing.

In the spirit of the aforementioned This is the End, they started with a good idea but this time, instead of going no where with it, director Gore Verbinski moves things along briskly, though the wrong direction.  The angle here is that The Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) is an amiable dunce.  He's an earnest lawyer going west to bring law and order but is totally clueless.  He and Tonto form a reluctant partnership, which Tonto is constantly trying to wiggle out of after saving Kemosabe's skin time and time again.  The movie is full of humorous moments, which is great, but these are juxtaposed by truly gruesome scenarios. For me the two things just didn't mix.  I think if they had stuck with the Lone Ranger as well meaning dimwit motif, made this a smaller movie; more like a straight satire, it could have worked.  But, without a doubt, they want to make a series out of this, so that was never going to happen.  We get hearts getting torn out (and eaten), decapitations and terrorized children.  It's PG-13, so there is no gore to speak of, and the most extreme violence happens off screen, but it still makes for a very heavy experience that weighs down the whimsical movie trying to get out.    

Ken Burns: Prohibition

Ken Burns has reached a point in his career where I think that he is blissfully incapable of making a bad documentary.  2011's Prohibition, directed with Lynn Novick, is not ground breaking like The Civil War or Baseball, but it doesn't need to be.  His style is familiar, true, but he has a way penetrating a story and making distant history and the people who made it seem contemporary, giving us an empathy with the players, not just a knowledge of dates and events.  We come to understand better why things happened the way they did, not simply that they did.

In the case of Prohibition he uses the first of its three parts to trace the history of alcohol use and of the temperance movement in the United States, going back to colonial times.  While the clear conclusion of the series is that Prohibition was a great mistake, we understand that the problems of alcoholism and how drinking habits had evolved in the States over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries lead to real problems and legitimate concerns among the public.  Those in the temperance movement were not simply moralistic busy bodies, but were often victims of the ravages of alcoholism and saw the need to do something about it.

Where things go off the rails, for Burns, is when the temperance movement very early on changes from a movement seeking people's voluntary abstinence from strong drink to one pushing for the total ban on its manufacture and sale.  In the end the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that made the manufacture and sale of alcohol a crime, and the Volstead Act that detailed it's enforcement, were simply unenforceable.  Rather than alleviating the problems of alcoholism and crime both were exacerbated.

A theme that is repeated again and again throughout the series by the various interviewees as to why prohibition failed is that "you can't regulate morality."  There is something true to this, but something incredibly false as well.  All laws are somehow a reflection of the moral code of the people, if not of God.  It's not a question of if we regulate morality, but rather how we regulate it.  As was pointed out in the movie, it was harder to get a drink after the repeal of the 18th Amendment than it was during prohibition.  Milton Friedman (not featured in the film) once told the story that he went to a former speakeasy with a friend the day the law changed in 1933 for a drink and were informed that they couldn't serve alcohol because they hadn't been issued a liquor license yet.  With regulation, as opposed to an outright ban, governments can control and manipulate better the actions of the people.  And we should not kid ourselves, moral persuasion is a tool used by authorities to get their point across.

Smoking, for instance, has dramatically decreased in the last fifty years, yes because we know more about the heath risks involved, but also because of the heavy taxes levied on tobacco products.  There are also laws restricting where a person may smoke, with some municipalities mulling laws prohibiting smoking even in private residences.  The government has also used public service campaigns that present smoking as wrong.  Scientific and medical evidence may be used to make the case, but these are not cold appeals to logic, but very deliberate framing of the issue in moral terms.  A message is being sent; smokers are outside, literally and figuratively, the mainstream of social behavior and the practice must be stopped.

I have no love for cigarettes, and don't smoke, myself.  I'm all for ending smoking.  I'm just pointing out that by framing the issue in moral terms, conditioning the behavior and attitudes of the people and slowly regulating the industry out of existence, the government has been more successful in it's attempts to end smoking than it would have by an all out ban.  That is the real lesson of Prohibition.

Lumen Fidei: A Commentary by Fr. Robert Barron

I've got a couple of posts that I'm tinkering with right now, and could have an original piece put up before the end of business today.

Until then here's something from Fr. Robert Barron on the Pope's new Encyclical Lumen Fidei, on the theological virtue of faith. I've read it, am reading it again and I'll have my reflections on it, hopefully, next week.  Until then enjoy this.  Fr. Barron sees this letter on faith as an answer to the "new atheists'" claims the faith is a childish submission to irrational beliefs.

My own reflection on faith in general is that we only put our faith in things that we have a reason to.  If a boyfriend or girlfriend has always been honest and trust worthy then we can have faith in them when we take the next step and enter into marriage.  We would be a fool to entrust our hearts to someone who we knew was a liar and a cheat.  Faith comes in because, as they say in the investment game, past performance doesn't insure future results.  Humans are fallible and even the most noble is capable of infidelity under the right circumstances.  But we take the person's track record and have faith that together your virtues will only be strengthened by God's grace.

When it comes to God, I put my faith in Him, at least in part, because He has a track record.  I can see that there is still a Jewish people and still a Church.  God made promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and David to make their descendants as numerous as the sand of the sea shore, a kingdom that would endure.  While I believe that the promises made by God to Israel see their ultimate fulfillment in the Church, he has not forgotten his "remnant."  Through wars, exiles, occupations, and even genocides, the Jewish people endure and thrive.  Jesus promised Peter that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church.  And through persecutions, schisms, reformations and scandals the Church endures, and even thrives.  God doesn't promise peace and tranquility, but he does promise His abiding presence and ultimate victory.  He's got a track record I can trust, and so I put my faith in Him.

Matrimonial Chastity?

I took the feast of St. Maria Goretti as an opportunity to reflect on the current debate over the proper definition of marriage.  That may seem strange since this saint is so connected with chastity.  In truth it makes perfect sense because, contrary to popular belief, chastity and celibacy are not the same thing.  Married people are called to live chastely just as much as single people and vowed religious are.  How so?

Well, the virtue of chastity consists in the moderation and self control of our sexual appetite, and is related in general to the virtue of  temperance.  For a single person this means total abstinence from sexual relations before marriage.  For a vowed religious and most Catholic priests it means a life long commitment to the celibate life.  For a married person it means fidelity to his or her spouse.  But it also means more than that.  Here are a few qualities of matrimonial chastity that come to mind.

1. Married chastity involves a mutual respect between partners.  Bl. John Paul II, whose writings on marriage and sexuality alone should garner him the title of Doctor of the Church, stressed that marriage was not a license to "do what ever you want."  The needs and dispositions of both partners needs to be taken into account when engaging in the conjugal act.  For instance one should never force himself upon the other (an obvious point, I would think).  JPII caused a stir when he suggested that there was such a thing a marital rape (some accused him of being puritanical).   He also scandalized some when, as a bishop, he wrote that spouses need to be attentive to the sexual satisfaction of their partners lest the "slighted" partner begin to view sex as a wearisome burden (what's a bishop doing writing of such things, how indecent, some said). A couple that approaches sex in a spirit of mutual respect and regard for the needs of the other are living the ideal of loving self control the virtue of chastity calls for.

2. Married chastity is open to the transmission of new life.  Ah yes, the contraception issue.  If Social Security is the third rail of American politics, this is surly 1,500 volts of shock no priest wants to play hopscotch around in the pulpit or in the confessional.  For most married Catholics this is something they see as a settled matter, and do not want to discuss it.  In my recent experiences with preparing couples for the sacrament I sense a tolerant politeness when I talk about it, and in some cases I do pick up a genuine curiosity about Natural Family Planning (NFP), but I'm under no illusions about the odds of them taking this practice up in their married life.  I've written on this topic in other places, but I will just say that those who practice NFP faithfully school themselves in the very self control that fosters mutual respect and regard for the needs of the other.  Sex is less likely to be engaged in for purely selfish motives, but (hopefully) in a spirit of gratitude and appreciation for the other since a time of abstinence is required each month for those who do not want to have children at a given moment, or else with the joyful purpose of being co-creators with God in the generation of a new life.  Either way the virtue of married chastity involves the perfecting the ideal that sex is an act of mutual self giving open to the transmission of new life. 

3. Married chastity involves modesty and custody of the eyes.  Modesty and custody of the eyes are somewhat "old timey" terms that we don't hear much about today.  Modesty usually involves how we dress and speak.  Dressing provocatively or telling "off color" jokes would go against the virtue of modesty.  Custody of the eyes involves having self control over how we see people.  To see a person we might find attractive and acknowledging it to ourselves is not sinful.  On the other hand leering and allowing lustful thoughts to develop into fantasies that linger in our minds would be going against what Jesus talked about when he said that it is possible to commit adultery in our hearts.

I am sometime countered by the line that immodesty is in the eye of the beholder, so if someone finds a woman's neckline too revealing it's his problem not hers  (And I don't mean to pick on women, men can certainly dress immodestly as well).  First off, this takes for granted the virtue of the owner of the neckline in question.  Secondly, while having custody of the eyes means that we have learned to look upon others as complete human beings and not sex objects, if our hypothetical neckline was as virtuous as we assume then she would have patience with the scruples of those weaker than herself, as St. Paul would put it, and not dress in a way that could be misconstrued or lead others into sin.  Obviously we need to be sensible about things; one doesn't go to the beach in a tuxedo or a floor length gown.  At the same time one shouldn't attend Mass in speedos or a mini skirt.  I would say that these principles apply to both single and married alike.

But on a deeper level I would say that these dual ideas of modesty and custody of the eyes needs to apply as well to the rampant spread of pornography and "gentleman's clubs" in our society.  There are wives content to allow their husbands to indulge in these "diversions" under the false assumption that these aren't sins against married life.  But in both cases these involve a debasement and objectifying of other people for the sexual gratification of the "customer," and in the case of the married person, it is seeking that gratification in isolation, apart from the fruitful and nurturing relationship of husband and wife.

Pornography has been especially harmful to marriages, with some studies suggesting that upwards of 50% of divorces are caused by porn addiction.  In these voyeuristic and vicarious experiences we can fool ourselves into thinking that the performers are somehow "not real."  But they are very real people caught in a web us sin, and we participate in that sin by watching a paying for it.

I don't claim these three points to be exhaustive, but they are what come to my mind right away when I think of the virtue of chastity within the context of marriage.

Maria Goretti, Chastity and Christian Marriage

A photo believed to be of St. Maria Goretti

Brothers and sisters: "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food" -- and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.  1 Cor. 6:13c-15a, 17-20

I guess I don't so much want to reflect on the life of today's Saint, Maria Goretti, as the reading from St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians that is suggested for her Mass.  The virtue of Chastity, which Maria died for,  is central to the living of the Christian life.  Sadly the broader culture doesn't see it that way, and current attitudes toward marriage that are prevalent among many is proof of that.

Needless to say, the definition of marriage has been a hotly debated topic over the past several years, and is again at the forefront of people's attention with the recent Supreme Court decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act.  Many do not understand why the Catholic Church is uncompromising in Her opposition to the redefinition of marriage to include same sex couples.  Is the Church bigoted against gays?  Are we holding to some Victorian notion of sexual morality that society has long ago abandoned?  The answer lies in our understanding of marriage, not born of a lack of charity or of social convention but of Divine Revelation, and our notion of Christian Chastity in general, born of the same.

We are stubborn on this issue, because from the beginning God created them male and female, as Scripture tells us.  The first couple were given to each other by God to be partners and companions, true, but also to "be fruitful and multiply."  We don't know from Genesis how long Adam and Eve enjoyed the Original Blessing before the Fall, but sex and family would have been a part of that blessing, whether they partook of them or not.  They were joined in a marriage, the primordial Sacrament, as Bl. John Paul put it, central to God's plan for humanity.  Because of the intrinsic link in our understanding between sex and child rearing, love and responsibility, Christian marriage is never simply about romantic love.  Romance may be the spark that lights the fire, but if the flames of love are to be enduring they need to be rooted in something deeper than sexual attraction or even the need for companionship.

As Paul reminds us above, sex is not to be seen as a good in and of itself.  Any attachment to bodily pleasure, be it eating, drinking or whatever pleasure a person finds comfort in, should be ordered toward a greater good or we will become self centered, closed off from the blessings God wants to give to us.  The body has value.  We are not bodies with souls, but neither are we a soul who lugs around an animated corps.  Christ redeemed the whole human person, and the body is meant as the visible expression of the invisible reality "underneath" it.  It is how we love, serve and live out our vocation as Christians.  In baptism we are joined to Christ, body and soul, and this union is renewed and made more explicit in the reception of the Eucharist.  When we sin we bring Christ with us to a place he doesn't want to go.  He doesn't want to accompany us in sexual sin because it is a misusing of the body and the gift of sexuality that is is ordered to a particular good; the good of the couple, yes, but also family life, which prevents sex from becoming self centered and egotistical.

When gays feel that the Church, and others who stand against same sex marriage are singling them out for scrutiny unjustly, they have a point.  The wider Western Culture has long a go separated sex from family life, and reduced marriage to a romantic relationship or maybe, on a deeper level, sees it as a profound companionship that involves certain legal benefits.  Children and family can be, and usually are part of this arrangement, but is far from essential.  All that matters is the couple themselves independent of any reference to family and society at large.  If marriage is thus defined, than why not include couples of the same gender among those who can join in wedlock?

Yes, I am stubborn.  Whatever you might want to call such a union, it is not a marriage as I understand it as a disciple of Christ, and it doesn't make a bit of difference if the couple is gay or straight.  This is so not because "I" believe it, but because I have thrown my lot in with Christ who teaches me through Scripture and Tradition, which includes in this case a teaching reiterated by Pope Francis in his latest encyclical.  These are my guides; not opinion polls or changing social attitudes.  I judge social mores by the Gospel, not the other way around.

I guess I feel compelled to conclude by saying that Christ holds His disciples to a high standard, not easy to follow.  Sometimes people fail, and then we trust in God's mercy and His grace that makes conversion possible.  Jesus made it clear that the Kingdom is not for the unchaste, but also showed great compassion for those who fell into sexual sin.  Jesus will always take us back.  But in this issue we are not simply talking about sin and weakness but in the institutionalizing of a way which is simply contrary to the Gospel message.  My only fear is that by going down this path, it is not Christ who will withdraw his love and compassion from us, but we who are closing ourselves off from it. 

Santo Subito! John Paul II and John XXIII to be Canonized

Along with the release of the first encyclical of Pope Francis' pontificate this morning, it was announced that Blesseds John XXIII and John Paul II will be canonized, probably sometime before the new year.  I have only gotten the my hands on the new letter, entitled  Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith), but I'll get going on reading it and giving you my thoughts soon.    But for now, I just want to express joy at this announcement, and reflect on the early reports in the secular press.

As one might expect, John Paul Paul II is getting most of the headlines.  His was the more recent and longer pontificate.  As for "Good" Pope John, much is being made of the fact that Pope Francis dispensed with the usual requirement for a second miracle before the canonization can proceed.  First, the Church makes the rules, and the pope can dispense with these requirements as he sees fit, (like when Pope Benedict dispensed with the five year waiting period to begin the process almost immediately after JPII's death).  This time around it was done on the recommendation of the cardinals and bishops handling the case.  Before the 1600's there was no canonization process, the pope simply declared someone a saint based on his or her reputation, and sometimes the acclamation of the people from where the candidate was from.  And dispensing from this requirement is not unheard of.  St. Thomas More was canonized without any miracles attributed to his intercession; his martyrdom was seen as sufficient proof of heroic virtue. 

As for John Paul "the Great,"  most of the secular stories I read couldn't finish without mentioning the child sex abuse scandals that erupted in the final years of his pontificate, as if these should disqualify him from being raised to the altar.  A few observations:

1.  In the spirit of Pope Leo XIII, we should neither hide the truth nor lie about the past.  It is a historical fact that the scandals blew up during John Paul's pontificate.  Questions must be asked concerning how the Church, and the pope himself, handled the situation.  But we are declaring a person a saint, not divine.  All saints had faults, short comings, blind spots and failures.  All you need to do to figure this out is to read Gospels and observe the behavior of the Twelve.   The question is not if John Paul II was perfect, but was he faithful to his call to a heroic degree until he drew his last breath.

2.  The scandals themselves predate JPII's pontificate, with some cases reaching back to the 1940's and '50's.   This would mean that John XXIII should be receiving the same scrutiny, especially since the majority of cases are from roughly the '50's to the '70's (Pope John served from 1958 until 1963).

3.  Some see the dual canonization as a way of balancing out these concerns over John Paul's suitability, by placating both "progressives," who tend to idealize Pope John  and "conservatives," who are devoted to John Paul.  One article I read tried to paint it that Pope Francis is more in line with those progressives who see Vatican II as a clear break from the past as opposed to Pope Emeritus Benedict who had tried to stress the continuity of the Council with the development of the faith through the centuries; thus, again, pushing the placate scenario. In a word, rubbish.  You could make just as strong an argument that canonizing both men together is a way of reinforcing this notion of continuity (which I espouse):  the pope who called the council canonized with the pope who spent almost 30 years interpreting the reforms after their initial implementation by Pope Paul VI.

I have to get back to the work of the parish, at this point.  But I'll certainly have more to say of the great event, and Pope Francis' first encyclical.