Best Day Ever! Spring!

Yesterday we were promised a 20 degree day. It might have gotten to 13 or 14 and was overcast.

Today we are promised 20 degrees again, and, as I write this at about 11 am, it is already 15 and sunny!

I did what I have been longing to do for so long: open the windows and let the sick out. Although I am still not feeling well - thought I had pneumonia, but I don't - weather like this sure bouys the spirit; the body, I'm sure, is soon to follow.

I grew up in Nova Scotia, where winter averages around -5, with rain not an infrequent winter event - oh, those rainy Christmases of yore! Talking to mom on the phone and contrasting our -20 with her about -2 temperature sort of reinforced how dissimilar our winters are. But the funniest thing, within a mere two week span of time, we in the Ottawa Valley here went from much colder than N.S. to much warmer. Yes, in just two weeks! Now I will no doubt here about my mother's 7 degree and drizzly, as we bask in our 20 degrees of sunshine.

Now, 20 is just about as hot as I like it to be. The fact that The Weather Network is currently calling for 25 degrees on Wednesday means to me that summer has arrived. In the Maritimes we have this season called Spring. Not here, apparently.

I have in mind the metaphor of boiling the frog. You'd never boil him here.

And to top it all off, given this weather, a poor guy like me loves that a wealthier friend of his who is going south this week on vacation... O irony! My poor wealthy friend!

A current event. Stevo returns to the sandbox.

A Higher Level of Apologetics

People get comfortable with what they know, but to promote the Faith this works against us.

I have seen it so many times that I would almost call it a law of human behaviour: what was, you believe always is.

 I fear that in about twenty years it'll make the JP II Generation look just as silly as the Spirit of V II Generation does right now.

So, what's the problem and how do we combat it?

The problem I am trying to address is who is the audience we need to target in evangelization? The 'defensive posture' of evangelization is apologetics.

 But there is a question even prior to this one. It is who ought to be the audience?

 What I mean by this is part of the whole problem with getting caught up in past realities. Apologetics from the first half of the 20th century, for instance, was focused on Protestantism. This is almost a silly waste of time now, since the least of our problems is with traditionally-leaning Protestants. And yet so much of the stuff I see coming out of 'Catholic Answers' and EWTN is targeted at this group. Why? Because that was the context of Mother Angelica's youth, and the youth of the heroes of the 'Catholic Answers' people, heroes such as Fr. Sheen, Msgr. Knox, etc. Gosh, we date ourselves! - like when Alice von Hildebrand quotes her late husband all the time - a man who died in 1977...

Who are the enemies of the Church, who are the people causing the most grievous harm to the world today? - this is the first question that we must ask.

It's easy to come up with a list, a little harder to do the second part, that is, to ask the 'whys': why are they this way?

To know these people we have to keep examining and re-examining. We can't get hung up in our conclusions. Things are constantly changing.

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Let's give an example of the process involved:

If we were to try to address the teachers who have caused and will continue to cause so much trouble regarding the 'gay-straight alliance' nonsense, how would we go about this?

 First, we have to find an answer to the question, why are they doing this, which is really the question, what values are involved here, how did they arrive at them, why do they hold them? Ultimately we want to know this so that we can figure out what they need to hear that might make them question their positions.

 Much of their reasoning is rather straight-forward, those parts that are reasoned, anyway. A great deal is emotional, and we have to know how to respond to that too. They reason that unless homosexuality is endorsed violence against homosexuals can only result since such negative views encourage others' violence. This is akin to saying that unless one thinks that wealthy people are good, one encourages violence against them. But to think is all people do by nature. I like and dislike another person for a million conflicting reasons. Because they are black, tall, fat, have an English accent, wear white jeans, like scarves, baseball, humming, whistling, cherry pie, etc. Some things bug me so much. Some of these things are quite pervasive: like smoking. I dislike smoking very much. Do I crave to do violence against smokers? Whether I do or not (I do not) is irrelevant; it is way too per accidens: that one person somewhere would do violence against another for smoking doesn't mean that hatred of smokers should be punished by law, because hatred of smokers leads to violence against smokers.

So, let's treat the naive on the OECTA (Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association), for instance, in light of their caring concerns for little homosexual children. Sure, they fail to understand much about the origins, development and health of homosexuals, but regardless, they care; they believe they care. We would, then, need to emphasize, not at first the far more complex metaphysical points about 'the ultimate good,' nor even talk to them about the long-term good (liberals are intrinsically unable to think long-term). Rather, we should simply reinforce to them that of all people in the world, caring, active, family-oriented Catholics are the least likely to do violence. Look around you: where is it that family people do violence at all? Young, single people do the vast majority of violent acts. In fact, the family, the Christian view of the family is the best surety against violence there is.

You need to begin to create a mental space for them outside of what the mainstream media has forced them to believe. One specific problem is the villainization of Christians as bigoted, uneducated people. Get them to confront these lies. If one watched too much news one would end up with the impression that tornadoes are especially drawn to trailer parks: they're not, but tornadoes can make a real mess of them, that's why they are always featured in stories about tornadoes. Similarly, this is why a recent survey showed that people who watch a lot of TV think that homosexuality is much more prevalent than it really is. It's not truth, they need to know this.

Getting to the heart of the OECTA people. They are do-gooders. They have to see that it is not homosexuals who are the disenfranchised, it is Christians. Christians are the hated, the persecuted, the minority. Christians are tax-paying, hard-working, family people. Homosexualists are far more affluent, and thus have a great deal of political clout. Liberals are all about victimization: they need to see who are the real victims in all this.

 But of course, you need to know you specific audience. Some of these OECTA people care about the family, some don't; some care about religious freedom and freedom of speech, some don't; some care about the Church, some don't. Some of these 'Catholic' school teachers honestly believe that they can and should change the Catholic Church / school from within - that is their honourable goal. How to deal with extreme arrogance is different from dealing with someone who just simply thinks 'we can all get along - Catholics and homosexualists, because all they are asking for is acceptance, and it's no big deal if you change the Church's teaching ever so slightly, right? Things change all the time in the Church, right?'

The arrogant person needs to be taken down a peg. Easy enough to do to someone who spends their days with children.

The person who thinks 'we can all just get along' needs to recognize that we have our separate Catholic school because we have certain beliefs that we have a right to live out. Why are they attacking these beliefs? We didn't go into their school to tell them they must pray the rosary under threat of law; they came into our school and told us that we can no longer believe our Catholic Faith.

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Now that I have in so many words said abandon history in apologetics - a strange thing for a man to say who devotes his professional life to studying the 5th century! - I would like to point out one use of 'the past' for evangelization (not for apologetics, which is just one small part of evangelization). This is that we need to study the lives of the great Christians of the past to remind ourselves how far we might have to go in defence of the Faith. We could go all the way back to the first martyrs, but we don't have to: we can just go to the Sudan today (thanks, Clooney!), or to China, or to the Soviet Union of thirty years ago. Nor is any of this to undermine what Christians are currently undergoing in this country in defense of life, in defense of marriage, etc. I am only saying it because our situation is such that it is getting more hazardous every day to be a Christian. But don't give up hope. As I have said and will continue to say, for as insidious as the homosexualists are, they are light-weights compared to Stalin.

All I Wanna Do...

...is read the Fathers of the Church, every day, all day.

They are the ones, the only ones, through whom God speaks to me. Now, I must make an account of this, of why that can and is so.

Why would I not be better reached by a more modern writer, like say, Newman, or De Lubac or Wojtyla? Is there any way to really answer this other than to say, I was born this way?

Yes, there is more to say. That's just the beginning of an answer.

The Fathers seemed to provide a perfect synthesis between theoria and praxis, between contemplation of truth as an intellectual matter and contemplation of truth as an affective matter, between polemic and prayer. Need I say more? But I will.

Whereas St. Thomas deals with things superficially (his writings are schematic, not usually more), the Fathers customarily drew out matters much more broadly. I have heard many people complain about Augustine's verbosity- and it is true, especially relative to St. Thomas, who insisted that you do the rest of the work that he merely intended to sketch out. Try distilling the kernels even of the tersest polemical tracts of Sts. Cyril, Athanasius, Origen, Nyssa, etc. You can do it, if you don't mind altering and omitted much of what they present.

In addition to their style of presentation (which is both the result of a style of spirituality and the ancient schools of rhetoric that cannot be found elsewhere), we could add that the Fathers are to be highly recommended because:

1) They lived in a world more like our pluralistic culture than did the Medieval Doctors. Theirs is the literature of struggle, not of triumph.

2) There is a certain exotic charm to be found in their ancient context.

3) Variety of genres which cannot find so equal a balance elsewhere.

So where would I suggest one begin in reading the Fathers? Anywhere really. A personal favourite series of mind is that put out by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press (SVSP). That series focuses on the Eastern Fathers. For the Western Fathers (and Eastern too), a good start is what is offered in the Ancient Christian Writers (ACW) series (cheaper and easier to get than the Fathers of the Church series put out by CUA Press).

I'm not worried that in beginning this journey one will go off in the wrong direction. It's all valuable. Of course, you do have to occasionally be guided by secondary literature - stuff like Chadwick's short history, "The Early Church" (Penguin Books). No Father is the Church, but all are important members of the Church, and you can grow in your faith and understanding with them.

More specifically, I could recommend:

1. Augustine's Confessions - very approachable today. (Various Publishers)

2. Many other of his writings, such as On the Trinity, his commentaries on Genesis, his Homilies. (New City Press)

3. Writings of the Apostolic Fathers (students of the Apostles) (Various publishers)

4. Writings of the Desert Fathers. (Various publishers)

5. Athanasius' On the Incarnation (SVSP)

6. St. Cyril of Alexandria's 'On the Unity of Christ' (SVSP)

7. Writings of St. Maximus the Confessor (SVSP)

8. Origen's Exhortation to Martyrdom. (ACW)

9. St. John Damascene's On the Divine Images (SVSP)

10. St. John Climacus' Ladder of Divine Ascent. (Classics of Western Spirituality)

11. Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (ACW, Cistercian Studies)

Just a few suggestions. I hope you enjoy!





St. Jerome, a classic motif. Why Renaissance painters never thought he wore a shirt boggles me.

Some Contemporary Myths Debunked

The catalyst of this post is a discussion I have been having with someone in the comments of one of my posts over at the SCCB. But it's handy apologetics any time of the year!

1. Christianity makes one worse, or at least hasn't made the world better.

2. It doesn't matter whether you are religious or not. You can be a perfectly good person without 'God.'

3. All religions are the same.

4. The Church is about power and money.

5. The Church's teaching on sex is (a) harmful (b) motivated by the psychological dysfunctions of its leaders.

6. The Church has corrupted Jesus' teaching.

7. Faith is irrational and thus misanthropic.

I could go on and on, but these are some of the big contemporary criticisms. Let's examin each briefly.

General Point

What all of these assertions have in common is that they are not based on data, but are conclusions drawn from thin air. The intellectual daring (timerity!) by which these are maintained by people who have no background in history, theology, sociology, etc., is truly astonishing.

Particulars


1. How does one measure worse and better? This was one of the essential problems with Dawkin's famous book, The God Delusion, he was trying to play both sides simultaneously: there is no objective right and wrong, there is an objective right and wrong. So, how can he say that the Church / Bible is wrong about x, y, and z? He appeals to emotional reaction of people biased by their own presuppositions. Does he accept the possibility, for instance, that homosexuality is unhealthy? He does not. When contemplating the question - has Christianity made the world better? - if we do not know what better looks like, we are incapable of answering it. I say that a world with saints is better than one without. I say that a world personified by St. Francis better than that personified by Pliny the Elder, Plotinus, or Aristotle.

2. Logically you can be, but statistically you won't be. Religion is the only real assurance that people will do things non-categorically, i.e. without some selfish motive. Secular people often start out altruistically, but perseverence is another matter. Let's contrast here Doctors without Boarders and missionaries. A missionary will never move on to another career, one purchased from ones gnawing conscience by a few years of good, selfless work.

3. No, they are not. In what sense are they supposed to be the same?

Same morality?

Christianity's turn the other cheek somehow matches up with its polar-opposite, eye-for-an-eye?

Same epistemology?

Luther left the Church is no small part because of its committment to reason (against faith, he said). Buddhism does not have a place for faith in God or in creeds.

4. Some of what has happened in the history of the Church can be explained this way, an important element cannot. Thus, as a descriptive statement it is pretty shallow. If what is meant is that there is sin in the Church, no one would argue that. That's the whole point: we are sinners in need of a Saviour.

5. How is it harmful? Usually it is said because it fosters guilt. Ever meet a non-Christian suffering from guilt associated with sex? Of course. Sex is by nature a difficult and delicate thing, as it focused on the good of the very fragile heart. Thus, guilt that is oriented to healing the heart is good. Of course, as in (4) above, error and sin does creep in and ruins the good that the Church's teaching is meant to secure. We need better catechesis, certainly, and human formation. The answer is not to call that which is bad for people good. The harm of objectively destructive practices is far worse than the unpleasant effects of healthy guilt. If we called these things good we would only be fooling ourselves for a short while, as the APA is currently fooling itself.

Our leaders can have sexual dysfunctions: they are free, fallen beings just as in need of salvation as the rest of us. There is nothing about church leadership and celibacy that foster dysfunction. Ever meet a healthy, loving spinster? A Roman Collar does not intrinsically corrupt; a piece of plastic is incapable of such an effect.

6. If so it is doing a very poor job of it. There have always been notions of this ilk circulating. A funny thing is, secular religion critics don't realize that they have actually entered into the Protestant polemic against Catholicism with this one. Nice job at getting sucked in you victim of others' thinking! If the Church is attempting to hide Jesus' teaching, is this a formally stated plan? If so, I have not been informed. Is it an intrinsic tendency - we just do and say what is better for us, and this has led to the abandonment of His teaching, again, this might explain certain elements of the Church's history, but leaves great explanatory gaps: martyrs, ancient, modern, 16th century, 18th century, and especially 20th century. And how does the Church's extremely unpopular stance on contraception help it politically?

7. A logical failure here. In fact, I would assert that reason alone is extremely misanthropic. How does one derive morality from reason? If you can answer that, there's a professorship at Oxford waiting for you. How does one conduct family life, civic life, marital life on the principles of reason alone? Good luck with that. Love, mercy, kindness, trust - these are greater when not calculated. It is just as true that reason is misanthropic as it is to say faith is.

In conclusion, this is a dispute with partially educated critics of the Church. They have bought into the current myths of our secular culture. It's time they assess the data for themselves. I know they will be surprised by what they will see.

A Wedding Invite

Yes, we got our first wedding invitation of the season today.

Sounds like a nice segue to what I would have likely blogged about anyway.

Yes, wedding season is upon us. The good folks of the Church - dear friends of ours here in this deanery in the Pembroke Diocese - have been doing their thing with 'marriage prep' this winter, telling people all about marital chastity and all that. Are their disciples ready?

A quick observation: less than 1% of married life with be spent in the 'martital act.' How much of your 'discernment' of marriage was focused on it, though? I bet more than 1%. If I can give thetheologyofdad one sentence long version of marriage prep it is this: What about that other 99+ % ? Sure, he/she is beautiful, but is he/she someone you want to spend countless hundreds of thousands of hours with outside of the bedroom?

What am I suggesting by this? Hardly any married person will tell you that if they had it to do over again they would have paid more attention to their spouses sexual attributes and focused less on their moral life, their ability to do hard work, say a kind word, hold their tongue, communicate more effectively, about how much they drink, what kind of a parent they are / will be, etc., etc.

Yes, sex is important in a marriage. In fact, it is more than less than 1% important. Why? Simply because we believe it is. There is no use saying it shouldn't be this way. Augustine tells us that before the Fall it was exactly 1% important.Well, what he actually says is that is was in its right place. Now, of course, it is not; it is disproportionately important. That's fine. We have to deal with that. All that I would like to say to those contemplating marriage is: don't set yourself up for a fall by marrying a body that you love, but a person you don't really know. But alas, young hormones won't listen... ;-)


"Honey, the baby's poopy and I'm totally hung over! You might want to take that dress off first..."

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BTW, when I entered 'working woman' into Google's Image Search to look for a competing image with the girl above and ninety percent of the images that appeared were of woman sitting in front of laptop computers. What would an alien life form conclude from that? Would do young women conclude from that?

Every Single Human Life is Precious

I am so busy today with no extra energy on account of the fact that I am not feeling well, so I cannot even believe I am blogging. But inspiration is inspiration.

Spend just five minutes with my precious six-month old, Lauren, and you will believe what I say: every single human life is precious.

I told my Thomistic Thought class yesterday, on the subject of our 'imaging' of God, that every mental act terminates in love. Now that is too much to explain right now, but the point is when we truly know something we know it as God knows it, and we know it in light of the great delight God took in making that truth. Every human being is a part of the high truth of God. He planned every single one. Why, because He loves them thoroughly. Thus, when we come to know people truly as God does, we come to love them as God does.

Spend five minutes with Lauren. Hold her in your arms, see how precious she is. God feels the same way about every person He has made.

Thus the barbarity of abortion, of poverty, any kind of exploitation, pornography, slander...

If we don't feel the barbarity of it it is because we do not know like God knows and we do not love as God loves.

I think that today is the summer of the Church's pacifism.

I'll explain that one some other time, when I'm not ill and not under the gun to deliver a spectacular lecture on the Cappadocians, Sts. Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzus, to just the most wonderful class of young people you could ever ask for!

Until next time, enjoy my daughter. I know I do. Thanks, God!

Be on the Right Side of History

This inane phrase nicely sums up the logic of liberalism, especially in its most radical form, homosexualism. I have heard it employed several times recently. I can't remember the precise context, but Hillary Clinton said it recently in relation to the American exportation of the homosexualist agenda to Africa, I believe.

Be on the right side of history.

Why? Because your vanity requires others to think well of you. And it provides you with the rush of self-adulation which is like a drug to these people.

Other movements that have employed the 'be on the right side of history' reasoning:

1) Romans, who believed that their empire and way would last until the end of time, because it was the height of human achievement.

2) The Enlightenment Philosophes of the 18th Century. They believed that superstition (i.e. Christianity) was a thing of the past, ever since they had 'discovered' reason. They believed this until the greatest philosopher of the time, Kant, said, poppycock! (rather, the German equivalent).

3) Marxists of the 19th and early 20th centuries. 'Nough said?

4) Feminists, who, basically believe that we can and ought to transcend our gender differences. Good luck with that!

The only movement of recent times (the one to which the homosexualist especially look to establish their own credibility) who do not believe that historical progression is their saviour is the Black Civil Right Movement. Because - unlike the above-mentioned 4 - the Civil Rights movement was thoroughly Christian in inspiration, and no Christian would care whether or not the force of history was on his side. 'History', aka, 'the world' in Christian parlance, is precisely that which inhibits the coming of the Kingdom of God. Further, the Civil Rights Movement was based on the Christian principles of (a) original sin - recognizing that people would always want to treat 'the other' poorly, (b) love of neighbour - would not cynically resort to force to make its goals come about by any means necessary.

Clinton's departure from these two principles means that her 'advice' actually constitutes a bonafide threat, along the lines of the Romans, the Marxists and the Enlightenment Philosopher-Kings, Catherine of Russia and Frederick of Prussia.

The coming of the Kingdom of God with which Martin Luther King rightly aligned the Civil Rights Movement was understood to be a thing which God and not man would bring about. If the hearts of men were to change, it would be God alone who would change them. His pacifism was based upon this conviction. Secular movements cannot be pacifistic because they do not look to the mighty and eminently wise hand of God as the vindicator of men but, rather, to the unscrupulous hand of man, though force and through 'conscientizing.'

Hillary the Great Catherine the Great, Enlightened Despot.

Clinton is telling us that if we are to be 'with it,' and not like those who wanted to put that poor black woman in the back of the bus, we better do what she says, because falsifying the Christian Faith and biological science in the name of homosexual liberation is to be with the times.

Why do people care whether they are 'with the times'? It is because they have no hope for real immortality in the presence of God, so they cling to the paltry ambition that is getting a statue erected to themselves in some 'Hall of Humanitarians' somewhere, alongside King, Gandhi and Obama.

But Obama and Clinton are not like King and Gandhi or any real humanitarian. They fit into the category of cynical social engineers, right next to all the worst figures from human history. The difference is great: the humanitarian respects people's freedom (the freedom to disagree, to oppose); the social engineer does not.

And so, to Hillary, to Obama, Lenin, Nero, Diocletian, Bismarck, and Catharine, I say, as all Christians before me have said,

BRING IT ON!