Pazdziernik Archive

David P. McGinley on TDVC

[Archive May 24, 2006]

David P. McGinley of Regent University Law School, Dr. M. G. "Pat" Robertson's University in Virginia Beach, Virginia, wrote a crisp commentary this week on The Da Vinci Code phenomena in The Washington Times. In particuliar, he tries his stab at grasping why it is so popular.

Much has already been written about the historical and theological errors, misrepresentations and calumnies of The Da Vinci Code. Surely the Rodney King style-clubbing that Our Lord's purity and Divinity, the Catholic Church and it's personal prelature, Opus Dei, have taken are disconcerning to conscious Christians and to others. Those who are less-than-conscious may indeed find some "weird comfort" or "entertainment value" in it.

Mr. McGinley has this to say...

Why a novel becomes popular is never easy to determine but certain elements of "The Da Vinci Code" may help to explain its success. First, the book appeals to feminists and, therefore, the left, in that it claims a woman, Mary Magdalene, not Jesus, was the true leader of the early Christian Church. According to the story, Mary Magdalene was removed from her rightful seat as the feminine deity of Christianity by the church's "patriarchal hegemonic" structure. Thus, men, more specifically white men, are the bad guys.
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Secondly, Mr. Brown seems to take special pleasure in attacking and criticizing the Roman Catholic Church, always a popular target.

In fact, much like the rebuttals to Mr. Brown's novel, criticizing the Roman Catholic Church is its own cottage industry. And not just by non-Catholics. Many people who claim to be Catholic relish the opportunity to state what is wrong with "their" church. Though these "Catholics" do not believe in the teachings of that church, somehow claiming they are Catholic gives them the moral authority to criticize and jettison the very basis for their so-called beliefs. When asked why they don't just become Episcopalians, these "Catholics" are incensed you would have the audacity to suggest that.

"Extreme feminism" and anti-Catholicism are surely popular, perhaps the latter even more so. But I think that McGinley really get to the heart of the matter which actually has a guilty conscience at heart.

But the overarching theme of Mr. Brown's novel, that Jesus is not the Son of God, is probably what has made his book so successful. Nothing whets the appetites of the hordes of postmodern, moral relativists like the denial of Christ's divinity. Any theory of denial, whether from thin air or based on mythical "fact," as in Mr. Brown's novel, is readily embraced.

Most people have no problem with a belief in a god, as long as that god remains generic. However, when the name of Jesus is invoked, most people become uneasy. Why the discomfort?

Many justify their uneasiness by complaining Christianity is divisive and resort to the new secular creed of "inclusiveness." Their argument says "everyone must be included and since Christians think their religion is right they aren't inclusive because no one can be right and be inclusive unless everyone is right." Thus, "spirituality" is perfectly acceptable because, basically, it is meaningless. The "believer" gets to define God, everything is true (meaning nothing is true), and all roads lead to heaven.

David P. McGinley's full article "Forum: 'Code' word for cash flow" can be found here. Should we really be pleased that The Da Vinci Code has had a trickle-down effect on the American economy?

The Da Vinci Code

[Archive May 11, 2006]

A motion picture version of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (Sony Pictures) will hit theaters May 19th. (Mr. Brown is a resident of New Hampshire.) There is already a wealth of trustworthy information available on-line which counters the outrageous “claims” of Brown’s best-seller: The Catholic Communication Campaign’s site , Carl Olson’s The Da Vinci Hoax Blog , and Da Vinci Decoded , among others, are worth a look. I am not going to attempt to duplicate their efforts here.

Some unhealthy —and perhaps even disturbed — people categorize any defense of truth, historical, philosophical, theological or otherwise as a “rage”. Others, can’t seem to get past an “It’s just fiction … let’s have some fun ... lighten up” analysis of The Da Vinci Code phenomena. Others, who are equipped, look forward to it as an opportunity to speak about the actual facts of history, primary sources, theology, ecclesiology, doctrine, disciplines and the like. Still others, may respond with a blank stare (and respond with "well, it makes you think") and carry on with otherwise indifference.

Father Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M., Cap., in a Good Friday sermon this year in Rome said very plainly and with deep spiritual insight, "Christ has been sold again, this time not for 30 pieces of silver but to publishers and bookshops for millions."

Aside from debunking The Da Vinci Code and noting reactions to it some more fundamental questions to explore are: Why is The Da Vinci Code so popular?; Why is The Da Vinci Code so unhealthy?

Why is The Da Vinci Code so popular?

“Spirituality” in an authentic Christian sense refers primarily to attitudes and decisions. However, today “spirituality” is equated with “seeking.” In the minds of many the arrival of truth through this “search” is held to be unattainable. Instead, “the search” itself is the “virtue” today. Those who claim to have found the truth, e.g. Christians in the person of Christ Himself, are categorized as “religious”.

The character of Sophie is a “seeker” and is everyman or everywoman. No one wants to be duped. As such, she is an attractive character that everyone can identify with. Truth, as we know or should know, when found makes demands upon a person. To search and to search and to search without every arriving at truth is an easy way to avoid confronting truth and its demands. The Da Vinci Code is popular affirmation of this so-called principle of “the 'search' as a 'virtue' greater than the goal of seeking truth itself".

Why is The Da Vinci Code so unhealthy?

The fictional historical novel genre usually either places fictional characters who interact in the context of actual historical events or places fictional characters, who are modeled on historical figures who interact in the context of imaginary historical events. Brown does not follow this traditional line of historical fiction. Instead uses both actual historical events and figures, and re-writes, almost completely the opposite of these events. He also interweaves complete fabrications alongside these inversions. Who has the time or inclination to research fact from fiction especially if one approaches The Da Vinci Code as simply a traditional fictional historical novel?

Moreover, The Da Vinci Code's “Fact Sheet” implies that a reader should trust that this work is simply another fictional historical novel. It is not. This is a major problem. In my estimation it is the major problem. The Da Vinci Code would be more understandably digestible as simply another fictional historical novel without this “Fact Sheet.”

What makes this novel unhealthy —and outright dangerous— is that, in addition to inverting actual events and facts, Dan Brown’s (Lets’ mix-up the letters of “Dan Brown” and say “Own Brand”) “Own Brand” worldview and “Christianity” is promoted. For example, The Da Vinci Code's main character, Robert Langdon lectures the reader,

Every faith is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith–acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our mind process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors. … Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical (p. 341-2).

A “straw man” Christianity is certainly being presented and authentic Christianity is being attacked in The Da Vinci Code. And in its place a new “Own Brand” is being presented. Of course this “re-branding” is nothing new in the history of Christendom. Saint Paul early on (about 65 A.D.) warns Timothy against such “re-branding” of authentic Christianity by early Gnostic sects and can be applied today as well:

“O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the godless chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge (gnosis), for professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith.” (1Timothy 6:20)

Debunking, apologetics, and criticism are valuable and are needed but nevertheless, they will only get one so far. Faith as accepted Revelation has to have pride of place in all such efforts. Authenticity in all things will always be more compelling and attractive than any falsification.

Photo: “Roman Mintage” © Ulrike Hammerich
Tags: Dan Brown, DaVinci Code

Tearing of the Temple Veil

[Archive April 14, 2006]

Here is an excerpt from God is Near Us: The Eucharist, The Heart of Life by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI), p 98-101 (©2003) on the tearing of the temple veil on Good Friday. It is from a talk at the Chrism Mass April 2,1980 in Munich. I think that this is really good stuff!

Let us now turn to the second aspect, the sacred nature of the Eucharist. Our thinking over the past fifteen years has been influenced rather by the notion of “desacralization.” We had been struck by the saying in the Letter to the Hebrews that Christ suffered outside the gate (13:12). This, again, chimed in with the other saying, that at the death of the Lord the veil of the Temple was torn in two. Now the Temple is empty. The true holiness, the holy presence of God, is no longer dwelling there; it is outside the city gate. The cult has been transposed out of the holy building into the life, suffering, and death of Jesus Christ. That is where its true presence was already, in his lifetime. When the Temple veil was torn across, so we had thought, the boundary between the sacred and profane was torn apart. The cult is no longer something set apart from ordinary life, but holiness dwells in everyday things. What is holy is no longer a special, separate sphere but has chosen to be everywhere, has chosen to make itself felt even in worldly things. Entirely practical conclusions have been drawn from this, right down to some concerning priestly dress, concerning Christian worship and church buildings. This raising of the bastions should be carried out everywhere; nowhere should cult and life by any longer distinguishable one from the other. But thereby the message of the New Testament had ultimately been subject to substantial misunderstanding, albeit on the basis of an idea that was itself correct. For God is not withdrawing from the world so as to leave it to its worldliness, any more than he is affirming it in its worldliness, as if this were in itself holy. For as long as the world is imperfect, the distinction within it between sacred and profane will remain, for God is not withdrawing from it the presence of holiness, and yet holiness still does not comprehend the whole.

The suffering of Jesus outside the city wall and the tearing in two of the Temple veil does not mean that the Temple is now either everywhere or nowhere at all. That will not be the case until the New Jerusalem. Rather, these things mean that with the death of Jesus Christ the wall between Israel and the world of nations has been broken down. They mean that God’s promise has stepped out of the narrow framework of the Old Covenant and its Temple into the wide world of the nations. They mean that the place of the merely symbolic holiness of the Old Testament images has been taken by the true holiness, the holy Lord in his love become man. Finally, they mean that henceforth the holy tent of God and the cloud of his presence are found wherever the mystery of his Body and Blood is celebrated, wherever men leave off their own activity to enter into fellowship with him. That means that the holiness is more concentrated and powerful than it used to be in the Old Covenant, because it is more true; it also means that that has become more vulnerable and demands of us greater respect and reverence: not only ritual purity, but the comprehensive preparation of the heart. It demands that we lead lives directed toward the New Jerusalem, that we bring the world into the presence of Jesus Christ that we purify it for this; that we take the presence of Jesus Christ into everyday life and thereby transform it. Reverence has become, not superfluous, but more demanding. And because man is made up of body and soul and is, further, a social animal, that is why, now and for the future, we need a visible expression of reverence, the rules of play for its social form, for its visible sign in this sick and unholy world. People are not shaped merely from within outward; another line of influence runs from without inward, and to overlook this or to deny its existence is a kind of spiritualism that soon takes its toll. Holiness, the Holy One, is there in this world, and whenever the educative effect of his visible expression disappears, this leads both people and the world to become more superficial and more barbarous.

Photo: Western Wall, Jerusalem
Tags: Jerusalem, Benedict XVI, Good Friday

The Prudence of Abraham Lincoln

[Archive April 9, 2006]

The more I read and learn about President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and his actions in the context of his day, the more I admire him. The January 2006 issue of “First Things” magazine had a nice article on Lincoln by Professor Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College: The Prudence of Abraham Lincoln. Guelzo is the author of “Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America” (© 2004 Simon & Schuster). I enjoyed this book and as such posted about it in three parts last year. Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 .

Certainly that prudence needs to be “re-discovered” should be self-evident given the shrill (at worst) or incoherent (at best) responses of many to vital issues, critical topics, and crises situations. Prudence along with justice, temperance and fortitude make up the cardinal virtues. It seems today that “justice” is unqualifiedly proclaimed from the rooftops, but unless it is reigned in by the other three virtues, it ceases to be a virtue at all! Although Guelzo focuses on the prudence of Lincoln, it would not be too much effort to write on the other three as applying to Lincoln as well.

Say the word prudence to the ancients, and you would have named a virtue. Say it to the faculties of American colleges in the nineteenth century, and you would have described part of the philosophy curriculum. Say it today, and you’ve made a joke. Through much of American history, prudence was considered a desirable trait in public leaders—and the decay we have experienced in the word makes it difficult to understand the prime American example of prudence in political life: Abraham Lincoln.
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Prudence carries with it today the connotation of “prude”—a person of over-exaggerated caution, bland temperance, hesitation, a lack of imagination and will, a person who walks with mincing steps. This would have surprised the classical philosophers, who thought of prudence as one of the four cardinal virtues, and who linked it to shrewdness, exceptionally good judgment, and the gift of coup d’oeil—the “coup of the eye”—which could take in the whole of a situation at once and know almost automatically how to proceed. Aristotle called it “practical wisdom” in the Nicomachean Ethics, and contrasted it with “intuitive reason,” the natural endowment Aristotle thought some people had for understanding what was ultimately right and what was ultimately wrong. Intuitive reason marked out “the ultimates in both directions,” while prudence “makes us take the right means.”

On the emancipation of slaves…

[I]mmediate abolition was not the only avenue to emancipation. The federal government might have no direct power to interfere in state matters, but it did have considerable fiscal powers with which it could tempt slave states to abandon slavery by legislative action and embrace a federally funded buy-out. And within six months of his inauguration, Lincoln had initiated a campaign for legislative emancipation, beginning with Delaware, the weakest of the four slave states that remained loyal to the Union. This legislative option was based “upon these conditions: First, that the abolition should be gradual. Second, that it should be on a vote of the majority of the qualified voters of the District; and third that compensation should be made to unwilling owners.” Handled this way, emancipation would set up what he expected would be a domino-effect among the slave states for emancipation.
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Unhappily for Lincoln, the loyal slave states threw his offer back in his face. So, in the summer of 1862, he turned instead to a military order that freed the Confederacy’s slaves—what we now know as the Emancipation Proclamation. But because the proclamation was only a military order, prudence dictated that he limit its application to those slave states in actual rebellion against the Union. And since little (if any) legal precedent existed for the use of presidential “war powers” in this way, he continued to back a legislative strategy, parallel to his war-powers proclamation, and in the end, it was that legislative strategy that produced black freedom in the Thirteenth Amendment. Between these two strategies, legislative and military, Lincoln saw no conflict. He told federal judge Thomas Duval that “he saw nothing inconsistent with the gradual emancipation of slavery and his proclamation.” Lincoln’s procedure was at every step a model of prudence.

You can read Guelzo’s article from "First Things" in full here.

Image: "First Things" Magazine April 2006 cover
Tags:Abraham Lincoln,Allen Guelzo

Our Lord’s Human Will

[Archive March 11, 2006]

The season of Lent has already begun and as such I have some spiritual readings selected for meditation. Hopefully, they will be fruitful. Once such reading is The Devil And How to Resist Him (©1957) by Gerald Vann, O.P. and P.K. Meagher, O.P.. It’s topic is on the three temptations Our Lord encountered in the desert as recorded in Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, and Luke 4:1-13. This is a highly readable work in a popular style like that of Fulton Sheen.

In Vann and Meagher’s book I encountered the text that “Christ could will something other than the will of God”. As with all theology of worth, the words of the whole text have to be carefully parsed and nuances properly understood. In other words, a reader has to pay attention and focus.

Our Faith tells us that Jesus of Nazareth was a divine person and as such he could not sin. In other words, he could not choose evil over good. Moreover, our Faith also tells us that he had a perfect human nature. I have long understood that not-being-able-to-sin is fully in accord with having a true human nature. This not-being-able-to-sin is not the topic of this post. Rather, it is ”could Christ have willed something other than the will of God?”

Our Lord’s senses and feelings, then, were not outside the control of His reason and will when He was tempted; but there certainly was a contradiction, a real struggle, and it is in this that the essential tension of temptation lies. This is made clear by St. Thomas when he asks whether the human will of Christ was in complete conformity with the will of God and answers no. He distinguishes, first of all, between our Lord’s sense-appetites, on the one hand, and His will on the other; and then he goes on to make a further distinction between the will in its natural instinctive workings and the will as a reasoned, deliberate choosing. “The Son of God,” he tells us, “before His Passion, allowed his flesh to do and suffer all the things proper to it, and similarly with all the powers of His soul. Now, it is clear that the sense-appetites naturally shrink from bodily pain and hurt, and that the will in its natural instinctive workings recoils from what is contrary to nature and in itself an evil, such as death; nevertheless the deliberate will may sometimes choose such things because of some ulterior end.” Hence, he concludes, as far as his sense-appetites and natural instinctive will were concerned, Christ “could will something other than the will of God”; and he quotes the words of Our Lord himself in His agony: “Not what I will, but what Thou wilt” (Summa Theologica, III, Q. 18, art 5; Matthew 26:39)

With St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) we are on safe ground, although his works are not equivalent to the Magisterium. His reply that Vann and Meagher quote can be surprising if it is read out-of context as something other than referring to “his sense-appetites and natural instinctive will.” Nevertheless, I was interested in researching what Magisterial documents had to say on this topic.

The heresy of monothelitism proposed that there are indeed two natures in Christ, human and divine, but only one will, a divine will. The two natures of Christ in one person, a divine person, and of two wills in Christ, divine and human, are De fide.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 475 , presents how these two wills relate to one another but does not address St. Thomas’ speculation directly:

At the sixth ecumenical council, Constantinople III in 681, the Church confesses that Christ possesses two wills and two natural operations, divine and human, They are not opposed to each other, but cooperation such a way that the Word made flesh willed humanly in obedience to his Father all that he had decided divinely with the father and the Holy Spirit for our salvation. Christ’s human will “does not resist or oppose but rather submits to his divine and almighty will.”

Father and Doctor, St. Athanasius (296-373) has this to say on Matthew 26:39:

“He announces two wills here, the human, which is an affair of the flesh, and the Divine which is the affair of God. The human will, on account of the weakness of the flesh, prays for the aversion of suffering, but the Divine Will welcomes it.” ( On the Incarnation of the Word )

Being able to will something other than the will of God as far as Christ’s human will is concerned is indeed in harmony with the Magisterium.

Image: Giotto’s “Christ in Judgement” (Scrovegni Chapel, Pauda)
Tags: Gerald Vann, P.K. Meagher, devil

Kaddish for a Child Not Born

[Archive February 26, 2006]

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990) is the third part of a Holocaust trilogy by Budapest-born concentration camp survivor Imre Kertész (b. 1929). The first part is Fatelessness (1975). The second part, Fiasco (1988), from what I can tell, is not yet in English.

A Kaddish is a Jewish prayer for the dead. Kaddish for a Child Not Born shows that Kertész understands his Jewishness. Just as the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) of the Bible is a chronicle of the failure of Israel before God again and again, so he views his life as a Jew — and for no other reason— as a chronicle of failure before the world in the light of both his life and most especially, but not exclusively, his recent experiences and that of his fellow Jews. (Others suffered in the same way as the Jews at the hands of the German National Socialists during WWII. However, the Jewish people were selected out in particular contempt for the “crime of existing”.)

Different people approach the problem of evil and of misery and of unhappiness from different angles. Just as in mathematics some answers have a single solution, so he also seeks a single solution for his life that includes his experiences both of Totalitarianism and of the human condition —the condition of being a Jew, in particular. His singular approach to an answer is insightful and deserving of a hearing.

Kaddish is an introspective first-person monologue. The original protagonist of Fatelesness, György Köves appears. After his incarceration experience of World War II, he is now a writer and literary translator. “What constitutes my existence? Why am I? What is my essence?” are questions that consume the narrative. These are anchored by the “no” that he gives his wife to the question of whether he wanted a child by her and this also serves as a point of departure for his reflections.

His parents divorced because “they didn’t understand each other”. As a five year-old he knew that they both spoke Hungarian, so how can this be? Now he will separate from his wife for the same reason, perhaps. As a writer he shares his literary proposals with her. Writers write from what they know about (usually). His proposals are based on his “search for meaning” and his own experiences. As such, he shares his deepest thoughts with her on his works in progress—his life story. It is a risk because some things should not be shared quite openly or at least frequently and intimately on delicate topics, as experience attests to.

Looking back, of course it was all a mistake, no doubt, a mistake to allow my wife to encroach upon this most sensitive, most secret, most unprotected sanctum of my life, my existence, which in a word is my work, a sanctum that, quite to the contrary, I have to protect and defend, as I had done before and have done ever since, so to say surrounding it with a barbed-wire fence against all unauthorized intruders, against the very possibility of intrusion, any sort of intrusion, by anybody; just as it is an indisputable fact that I did indeed sense the danger in the intense interest on my wife’s part, embracing and reaching into my whole life, fierce and yet at the same time achingly tender, while on the other hand, I did not in all honesty wish to forgo that interest either, just as one does not wish to forgo the warming sunshine that suddenly bursts upon one after the long dark days of winter.

Kertész attempts to approach evil and its explanation from purely from a rational point of view.

”There is no explanation for Auschwitz” itself is an explanation, being used by its hapless author to explain that it would be better for us to remain silent about Auschwitz, that Auschwitz does not (or did not) exist, because, you see, the only thing for which there is no explanation is something that does not or did not exist.

What is truly irrational and genuinely inexplicable is not evil but, on the contrary good. That is precisely why I have long since had no interest in leaders, chancellors and other titled usurpers, however much you may be able to recount about their inner worlds; no, instead of the lives of dictators, for a long time now I have been interested solely in the lives of the saints, because they are what I find interesting and incomprehensible, they are what I am unable to find merely rational explanations for.

György Köves’ “No” to his wife’s question of children is answered in a chilling way and in a way that is all too-common today:

”No!” I could never be another person’s father, destiny, god.

“No!” what happened to me, my childhood, must never happen to another child…

In short, György Köves’ “no” stems more from his fractured father-son relationships (Father: totalitarian state, God who allows suffering, and paternal kin) than from any “altruistic” effort to “spare” his offspring of his self-same “fate.” He sees the "no" to children as part of his self-liquidation that he believes is his fate.

Tags: Imre Kertész, Kaddish

Domestic Tranquility No. 2

[Archive February 8, 2006]

I indicated before that I would post from F. Carolyn Graglia’s Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism (©1998 Spence Publishing Company) from time to time. With the death of Betty Friedan (1921-2006) last week, I thought that it would be good to share some of Graglia’s writings on Friedan and her (Friedan’s) ideas on “a housewife as a pariah.” Graglia's book is interesting because it not only refutes the silly notions and destructive ideas of "radical feminism" but also presents a positive vision of women, motherhood, and domestic work throughout. (Before any readers of this post go into a froth, I fully understand that women are not limited to domestic spheres of life. F. Carolyn Graglia herself does not hold the position that women are limited to domestic tasks. She defends women, housewives in particular, from the "radical feminist" denunciation of other women.)

Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique [1963] is an impassioned expression of overwhelming antipathy for the life of a suburban housewife. Although her own discontent pervades the unsparing criticism — I cannot recall one favorable comment about the housewife’s lot — Friedan does not simply recount her own reaction to the experience, but like [Simone] de Beauvoir, rejects domesticity as unsuitable for anyone. While the impetus for her attack is her own acute dissatisfaction, its object is the housewife’s role per se. Painting with a wide brush, her stroke never touches herself. Her denigration of her fellow housewives apparently sets her apart from the women with whom at one time she regrettably shared suburbia — whom she terms childlike underachievers whose daily lives call for the exercise of adult capabilities.
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Having left the practice of law and become a suburban wife and mother of three children, I first read Friedan’s book in 1965. I was stunned both by her egregious disparagement of everything I was and by her inability, even though a graduate of Smith College, to see the great possibilities for exercising imagination and initiative in a life that I found afforded me virtually unlimited freedom — the greatest freedom I had ever known — to create a design for living for myself and family and direct its performance. In All Things Considered, G.K. Chesterton captured my perception of this freedom when he contrasted the true savage — a slave who is always talking about what he must do — with the true civilized man — who is always talking about what he may do. “The average woman,” said Chesterton in 1908, “is at the head of something with which she can do as she likes; the average man has to obey orders and do nothing else.” I felt that I had indeed exchanged the life of a savage for that of a true civilized woman. Compared to life in the marketplace — quintessentially, a life bounded by “must do” when others demand — a housewife’s life, I always thought, has few musts (breakfast, dinner, and sex as her husband desires); for the rest, she can choose to do what she wishes, when she wishes.
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In her most outrageous falsification of reality, Friedan argues that being a housewife “can create a sense of emptiness, non-existence, nothingness, in women,” making it “almost impossible for a woman of adult intelligence to retain a sense of human identity”; those women who “adjust” as housewives “are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in concentration camps.” This concentration is not as “far-fetched as it sounds,” Friedan admonishes the reader, because, “the conditions which destroyed the human identity of so many prisoners were not the torture and the brutality, but conditions similar to those which destroy the identity of the American housewife.” Concentration camp victims and housewives are alike, she claims, in being “forced to adopt childlike behavior, forced to give up their individuality and merge themselves into an amorphous mass,” and in suffering destruction of their “capacity for self-determination, their ability to predict the future and to prepare for it.”
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It is profoundly sad that one who bore children could think the experience of raising them was so valueless. For the sake of market production, Friedan would have women abandon what many of us believe is the single greatest opportunity for human growth. When a woman embarks on the conception, birth, and rearing of a child, I suggest that she undertakes the quintessential exploration of the unknown and exercise of creativity. None of what Friedan calls the serious commitments and truly creative goals in the marketplace can, in the eyes of women like me, provide nearly as great an opportunity to transcend the present and shape the future as the domestic commitments entailed in bearing and raising children. Our children are society’s future. Compared to raising them, it is Friedan’s goals in the outside world that are trivial.
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Hitler writes of “peoples who can sneak their way into the rest of mankind like drones, to make other men work for them” and “under whose parasitism the whole of honest humanity is suffering, today more than ever: the Jews.” The “Jewish people,” he said, “despite all apparent intellectual qualities, is without any true culture”; the Jew is “always a parasite in the body of other peoples” and is “forced to deny his inner nature.” Both Mein Kampf and The Feminine Mystique employ similar rhetoric to isolate and vilify the group each work condemns; both have succeeded, although only one author continues to receive acclaim. That acclaim, however, should spare neither her writing not contemporary feminism the obloquy merited by such scornful denunciation of other women.

Domestic Tranquility is published by Spence Publishing Company

Photo: Domestic Tranquility by F. Carolyn Graglia
Tags: Carolyn Graglia, Domestic Tranquility

Dating December 25th

[Archive December 26, 2005]

Advent is over and the Christmas Season is upon us. The Christmas season this year in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church will last until January 9th (The Baptism of the Lord). I’m not sure about the Eastern Rites. They may celebrate the Christmas Season until Candlemas (February 2nd: The Presentation of the Lord) or until Epiphany (traditionally January 6th) or another date depending on their calendar.

Regardless, most Christians worldwide celebrate Christmas on December 25th. The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on January 6th, for example. Sacred Scripture does not record the exact date of Jesus’ birth. However, around this time it is often said that Christians chose December 25th to replace a pagan holiday that fell on this date.

Carl E. Olson and Sandra Miesel tackled this question in their book The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the errors in The Da Vinci Code (© 2004 Ignatius Press):

Did Christians take December 25, the “birthday of Osiris, Adonis, and Dionysus” (232), and use it for their celebration of the birth of Jesus? Most Christian scholars have essentially agreed with this statement and have argued that Christians appropriated this important pagan holy day as a way of showing the superiority of the true God-man, Jesus. And if that is the case it simply tells us that early Christians saw a chance to make a statement about Jesus and his divinity by taking and important day from the pagan calendar and using it to celebrate his birth.

However, some have argued that December 25 was not taken from pagans by Christians, but vice versa. In an article in Touchstone magazine titled “Calculating Christmas”, William J. Tighe, associate professor of history at Muhlenberg College, argues that the belief that December 25 was taken from pagans goes back to two scholars living in the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth centuries, Paul Ernst Jablonski and Dom Jean Hardouin. Jablonski was a German Protestant who “wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25 was one of the many ‘paganizations’ of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many ‘degenerations’ that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism.” Hardouin was a Benedictine monk who sought to demonstrate that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals without paganizing the gospel. Tighe points out that none of the Roman cults had major celebrations on December 25. It was Emperor Aurelian (A.D. 270-275) who “appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the ‘Birth of the Unconquered Sun’ as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual ‘rebirth’ of the sun.” By creating the new feast, Aurelian hoped that “the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for ‘rebirth,’ or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule.”

Once Christianity had separated from Judaism (especially after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70) and emerged as a unique religion, it sought to calculate the exact day of Jesus’ death. There was much confusion due to different calendars; after much debate and difficulty, the Eastern Christians chose April 6 and the Western Christians chose March 25 as the date of Jesus’ crucifixion. At this point the ancient and obscure notion of an “integral age” comes into play; this was the belief that the Old Testament prophets died on the same date of either their birth or conception. Most Christians accepted April 6 or March 25 as the date of Jesus’ conception, thus arriving at January 6 (in the East) and December 25 (in the West) as the date of his birth. Although these dates would not be made “official” until the late fourth century, they were held long before both Aurelian and Constantine.

Tighe argues that the pagan feast instituted by Emperor Aurelian on December 25, 274, was and attempt to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, “but also most certainly and attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan ‘Birth of the Unconquored Sun’ to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the ‘Sun of Salvation’ or the ‘Sun of Justice.’” Although Tighe’s thesis is still relatively new, it offers more compelling evidence that the early Christians were not nearly as reliant upon pagan feast days as has often been assumed. (pp. 161-163, emphasis added)

I really like the idea of the “integral age”. The December 25th dating also has arguments that are based on Zachary's temple service as well as other arguments that we won’t present here. Regardless of these other arguments, Christians shouldn’t be so ready to concede that we have always “borrowed” from others, especially from the “pagan mystery religions” in particuliar.

Rather than Christians borrowing from pagan mystery religions, there is evidence that some pagan mystery religions may have taken and incorporated elements of Christian belief in the second and third centuries, especially as the strength and appeal of Christianity became steadily apparent. “It must not be uncritically assumed”, states historian Bruce Metzger, “that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite direction.” Unfortunately, many works written on a popular level do make that uncritical assumption and do not consider the possibility that the influence may have traveled from Christianity, not to it. (p. 146)

What others don’t often consider is that December 25th has never been defined as the day of Christ’s birth. It is simply the day that most Christians celebrate his birth. There is no serious reason that December 25th should be eliminated as a plausible candidate. Also, the radical secularists and others continue to appropriate Christmas and strip it of its original meaning. In the future will historians conclude that Christians took a "commercial winter break" and then tried to "force" a religious meaning onto it?

Photo: © Susan Harrison

Modern-day Hernando De Soto

[Archive November 29, 2005]

Hernando De Soto (b.1941) is a Peruvian economist, not be confused with the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto (1496-1542). He and the Institute for Liberty and Democracy are credited in part for modernizing Peru’s economic system between 1988 and 1995.

I started to read his book, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (©2000 Basic Books), but put it down a while ago. I’m going to pick it up again. It was really an interesting read because, unlike other books on economics it was anything but dry, made sense, and gave me some hope for the economically poor of the world.

His basic thesis is that the poor of the world possess dead capital. The obstacles to legality are a major impediment. For example, for his research team to open a small and legal garment shop on the outskirts of Peru, it took 289 days and $1231 (31 times the monthly wage). For housing it was much worse:

To obtain legal authorization to build a house on state-owned land took six years and eleven months, requiring 207 administrative steps in fifty-two government offices. To obtain a legal title for that piece of land took 728 steps.

De Soto found the same bureaucracy in Haiti, Brazil, The Philippines, Egypt and elsewhere. He also claims that poor of the “Third World” and former communist nations hold, but do not legally own, $9.3 trillion in real estate. This is about twice the circulating U.S. money supply.

In the West we take our legal systems for granted with standardized accounting, personal accountability, enforceable contracts, transactions that are protected, and so forth. For much of the world these things do not exist. Instead they “get by” and “make due” extra-legally through the black markets, graft, personal contacts, informal investments and so forth. Without a formal and trustworthy legal system, capitalism or a “free market economy” geared toward growth simply does not work.

I “googled” De Soto’s name and found many Spanish language and Chinese language blogs commenting on him. Hmmm….

More to follow…

Photo: Elaborate balconies in a central square in Lima, Peru ©David Owens
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Mother Angelica

[Archive November 27, 2005]

Mother Angelica is perhaps the most well-known woman religious of recent times, second to Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910- 1997). I recently finished reading a biography of her life Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles by Raymond Arroyo (©2005 Doubleday) and present some of it here.

She was born Rita Antoinette Rizzo in Canton, Ohio in 1923. Her parents divorced in 1929 and her father abandoned them both. On August 15, 1944 she joined the Franciscan Nuns of the Most Blessed Sacrament, a cloistered contemplative order, in Cleveland, Ohio. In February 1961, she started a foundation of sisters in Birmingham, Alabama and became Abbess. They would found Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in May of 1962. They would change their name to Poor Clare Nuns of Perpetual Adoration but keep their Franciscan spirituality. Her own mother would later join her community as Sister Mary David. It seems that she was a real pain in the neck for all the sisters.

She began writing, traveling and recording talks in a garage studio and had them broadcast on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcast Network, Jim Bakker’s PTL and some local commercial television stations. Her no nonsense and humorous presentations of the spiritual life appealed to both Catholics and non-Catholics. Many also related to her pain, sufferings and disappointments which she shared freely.

Without too much detail here (this posting), she helped to found the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), an independent network dedicated to Catholic programming. Its mission was “to the advancement of truth as defined by the Magisteruim of the Roman Catholic Church… to serve the orthodox belief and teaching of the Church as proclaimed by the Supreme Pontiff and his predecessors.”

She also founded two religious orders: Franciscan Friars of the Eternal Word for priests and brothers, and Sister Servants of the Eternal Word as an active extension of her contemplative and cloistered order. The Sister Servants have since disassociated from EWTN.

In August 1981, EWTN began independent satellite broadcasting and two years later would have its first live television programs. In the fall of 1998 she began WEWN, an independent shortwave radio network. On August 15,1996 EWTN went global; June 1996 added a Spanish language channel; and 1996 entered the World Wide Web.

Ben Armstrong of the National Religious Broadcasters Association said “She’s the Bishop Fulton Sheen of this generation” (p 194).

Overall the book was well-written, although it was somewhat disjointed at times. In addition, Arroyo annoyingly peppered the text with well though out literary hyperboles which quickly fell back to a flatter and more normal text. For example,

She chased inspirations the way lesser mortals pursue fame, titles, and riches. Inspiration was Mother Angelica’s lifeblood, the fleeting elixir that fed her vision and fueled her actions. Her rational mind intruded only once momentum had been firmly established. (p 217)

Raymond, give it a break. Although Arroyo is a colleague and friend of Mother Angelica, this book is certainly not a gloss of her life.

The first two parts read like a timeline of events in her life. The third part was a really in depth presentation of her problems, especially financial, in the early years of EWTN. She would have no money and would pray and the money would “miraculously” come. I was edified to understand further the “theology of risk” that Mother Angelica, her sisters, and those others associated with EWTN lived out. The last third of this biography also dealt with her problems with various Catholic bishops. This is understandable since the author is also the news anchor at EWTN and had first hand familiarity with the details of these events.

She had suspicions that some in the Church wanted to either take control of EWTN from her or to destroy EWTN altogether. Although as Abbess she had full veto over all decisions at EWTN, a civil corporation, the network was not an apostolate of her order. Her order was a pontifical order and answered only to Rome. As such, the Bishops of the United States had little authority over her community and the content of EWTN’s programming. In order to protect both EWTN and her community of sisters, all ties were formally and legally separated between the Abbess and EWTN on March 17,2000. EWTN is currently a civil corporation and fully lay controlled.

Mother Angelica with the help of $50 million from 5 donors (no EWTN monies), built the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, a Romanesque-Gothic temple built to last a thousand years in Hanceville, Alabama. It was consecrated on December 19,1999. Many people criticized her for the gold, silver and marble of this new shrine for the Glory of God. Well, her response was, in short, “What bothers me is we’re satisfied with the very least for God, but only the best for us.”

At a time when the cult of perfection dominated the airwaves, when youth and beauty were television’s most venerated values, here was a striking countercultural statement: a disfigured old woman shamelessly and without vanity proclaiming what she believed to be the truth. (p 316)

Although Mother Angelica has had her ecclesial critics in the United States, she has had support from the Vatican, especially Pope John Paul II:

“Mother Angelica, weak in body, strong in spirit. Charismatic woman, charismatic woman.” (Pope John Paul II to Mother Angelica at the Vatican on May 1, 1996; p 254)

I was surprised to learn that she did not have ecclesial permissions for many of the projects that she undertook, was not elected Abbess as required (these were both later senated) and had no budget for her projects. She "winged it" and trusted in Providence. I was already familiar with many of her physical sufferings, via EWTN telecasts, that Arroyo presented in this biography. This book was definitely an inspirational read. In the future I'm going to consider seriously a pilgrimage to her foundations in Alabama.

Photo: Mother Angelica in her post-1993 World Youth Day (Denver, CO) habit
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