That is an unattractive stark title about a two edged sword cutting across most camps.
Jason Byassee in 22 September issue of Christian Century reviews Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart’s Atheist’ Delusions. One of Hart’s arguments is summarized as “paganism, whether ancient or modern, has no grounds for such tongue clucking [about the failures of religious people] because it has no morality to betray.”
And so it seems. Part of the contemporary ethos is a belief that everything is relative, that right and wrong are just social constructs. Then along comes something like the sex abuse of children and that gets universal condemnation. But then there is this case: we are part of a 1000 person village, people of all ages rounded up by an evil dictator and forced into a huge pen with armed guards pointing guns at us. The ultimatum is that we sexually abuse three of the children and then we are all free, otherwise we all die. What do you think the vote would be?
Right now only 25% of the American public says that torture is always wrong. Americans used to be the good guys and we blanched when we went to the movies and our heros, men or women, fell into the hands of police who said, “vee haff vays uf maykingk you shpeek.”
In one Catholic blog, ostensibly pro-life, the blogger said he could not at that point comment on whether torture was always immoral. He said he had not read enough about the Catholic position. I recommended he look into the Universal Catholic Catechism from which he took his other positions. It is very hard to maintain a consistent sense of absolutes when it is our lives that are at stake.

Tags: absolutes, David Bentley Hart, Jason Byasse, torture

Edith Wharton looked the very essence of a high society grande dame of 1900. Willa Cather for all her western and midwestern novels dressed fashionably and spent her last years in New York City. Both wrote books that are still companions revealing to me with empathy and deep insight the place of suffering, the cruelty of mistaken choices, the desolation that any hospital chaplain sees every day and must confront with honesty and hope.
Wharton had great homes and was a great writer but never found the love of her life. When she died her friends saw that inside a gold ring she wore were the words “Ave crux, spes unica.” This is from the Catholic liturgy. Hail cross, our only hope.
Willa Cather’s book called Death Comes for the Archbishop is one of the best things on the interior life, the motivation, the obscure life of self sacrifice, of a priest. Both Cather and Wharton were writing about figures they had access to through empathy and imagination. They knew more with less experience than those who brush against suffering all the time but who have no imagination and no empathy.
I write about all this because September 14 is the feast of the Holy Cross. It is a huge day shared by the great Christian traditions East and West.
I found this from John Henry Newman. He proposes that resignation rather than sanquine hope best suits the human condition.
I call resignation a more blessed frame of mind than sanguine hope of present success, because it is the truer, and the more consistent with our fallen state of being, and the more improving to our hearts; and because it is that for which the most eminent servants of God have been conspicuous. To expect great effects from our exertions for religious objects is natural indeed, and innocent, but it arises from inexperience of the kind of work we have to do,—to change the heart and will of man. It is a far nobler frame of mind, to labour, not with the hope of seeing the fruit of our labour, but for conscience’ sake, as a matter of duty; and again, in faith, trusting good will be done, though we see it not. Look through the Bible, and you will find God’s servants, even though they began with success, end with disappointment; not that God’s purposes or His instruments fail, but that the time for reaping what we have sown is hereafter, not here; that here there is no great visible fruit in any one man’s lifetime. Moses, for instance, began with leading the Israelites out of Egypt in triumph; he ended at the age of an hundred and twenty years, before his journey was finished and Canaan gained, one among the offending multitudes who were overthrown in the wilderness [1 Cor. x. 5.]. Samuel’s reformations ended in the people’s wilfully choosing a king like the nations around them. Elijah, after his successes, fled from Jezebel into the wilderness to mourn over his disappointments. Isaiah, after Hezekiah’s religious reign, and the miraculous destruction of Sennacherib’s army, fell upon the evil days of his son Manasseh. Even in the successes of the first Christian teachers, the Apostles, the same rule is observed. After all the great works God enabled them to accomplish, they confessed before their death that what they experienced, and what they saw before them, was reverse and calamity, and that the fruit of their labour would not be seen, till Christ came to open the books and collect His saints from the four corners of the earth. “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived,” [2 Tim. iii. 13.] is the testimony of St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John, and St. Jude.

Tags: Cather, cross, Newman, Wharton

I was walking in a gallery with a Mandarin speaking student. He looked at the English label identifying a ink painting from ancient China. He got rather sad at the “translation.” “Three pines by a river” was an accurate word for word translation but he said it missed almost everything of the Chinese title. There were three trees and not two or one and that “three” meant something. They were pine trees and not, say, maples or bamboo. And that meant something. These trees were by a river, not a little stream or a pond. That meant something also. They were by the river and not far from the water. That also meant something. So the point I was making about translating the Bible is easily illustrated by the difficulty of trying to translate three simple words attached to a picture. “Snow Country” by the Japanese novelist Kawabata is one of my favorite novels. The opening scene of traveling north into snow country is incredibly delicate. When I saw a literal translation of the first chapter I got a good lesson in Japanese. There was practically nothing there. The translator had had to put in the details that I loved and which would be evident to a Japanese reader but were there as allusions but not literally. So the crossing over of cultures and languages is like crossing the red sea.
There was a Japanese Catholic priest who was raised a Buddhist and then converted. He said he nearly went crazy reading the Bible in translation. The Japanese translation was not based on the Hebrew and Greek texts but on an English one. So the Japanese was several layers away from the original. It was nearly impossible for him to make his way through those layers. He learned Greek and Hebrew and did the translations himself into Japanese and that saved him, enriched him. His Christianity did not have to have a layer of western thought on top of Greek and Hebrew and then into yet another mentality.
Later in a very austere plain house of prayer he gave retreats that were completely original. The retreatants would spend their time writing in old style Chinese like characters the opening of the Gospel of St John. They would do only one word a day. If they could only spare three or four days for the retreat they only got to meditate on three or four words. A thirty day retreat would get them into the text but it would still take more time to finish. One character at a time is a Chinese and Japanese discipline because to write the character properly takes great attention, concentration, so that the writer with a brush can enter into the reality of meaning.
We would think it very strange to spend a whole day writing one word and meditation on that word. Is this because we understand so clearly the English translation of John’s opening, “In the beginning was the Word” ??? I don’t know anyone who ever said that they understood “beginning” or understood “Word.”
A silent, respectful “chewing” on the text of the Bible might lead us closer to the Word that was with God from the beginning…

Tags: Bible, Japanese, Kawabata, Mandarin, translation

I was living in Hawaii 9/11/01. The attack was on a Tuesday. Thursday evening the secular Oratory met as usual. In that small group and in that parish so far from New York City we found that one couple had a son going to work at the World Trade Center at the time of the attack. The subway train kept going and did not stop until it reached 42nd Street. There was no explanation but he looked downtown and saw the horrible sight that he had just missed being a part of. Another woman’s God child was killed in the attack when she was caught in the lobby where she was to meet other people who were being rewarded by their company with a seminar at the World Trade Center. Another couple in Hawaii had a son working just a few blocks down the street and he could see everything and eventually had to flee the collapse and the debris. So in this small group so far away there were these three. I had a school mate who had just gotten promoted to a chef’s position and was in the restaurant. It cost her her life. Can any of us think that we live isolated lives?
Now again thanks to Congressman Wilson of South Carolina we have a country that thinks mistakenly that the health care package will allow illegal aliens to get access to a doctor. As I said in a previous post, we are facing disaster again if someone sick but illegal cannot get to a doctor and they have something like swine flu. I think we should bring back those medical disaster movies. We are all linked and if we do not know this now we will find out to our great sorrow later. It is really only a matter of time.

Tags: 9/11, health care, plague

It is very hard for modern people to read anything written even a little way back in time. Even the recent past fades fast so we do not understand who the people are in the text or what the event is that the text talks about. Worse, we bring our experiences to the text first and so often misinterpret what we are reading. Of course, past attitudes must be judged and reformed if necessary, but still we miss a lot and cannot get the picture even if it were helpful to us today.
Before we get to the Bible we know that we cannot read the poet Milton without footnotes and references and just a little while before Milton, there is Shakespeare whose huge vocabulary throws us. The King James Bible is beautiful but again the vocabulary is a problem. Of course “language changes” so that means we have to learn more than the language that is current for the day. As a senior citizen I know that I have to learn to expand my language in order to talk to undergraduates. Asked how many languages I speak, I say, “None.” My English is really bad and that is the one I was born into.
So when we read the Bible we have to adjust to the culture it comes out of. Let me say something that is true but so little thought of that it may shock you. Whether the world is flat or round or whether human beings evolved or were made directly out of earth in an instant is of no theological or religious significance at all. Some academics say that Galileo and Darwin shocked religious people and changed their consciousness. Well, perhaps, but it means their consciousness had to be shocked. The world of the Bible and the Word of God is not tied into science in any religiously signficant way. The Word of God is about wonder and awe in the face of life as we find it and the big items like God, our contingency, our suffering, the proclamation of Jesus, the identity of Jesus, the cross, the resurrection, the gift of the Holy Spirit remain central and call us into relationships that could cost us and certainly do risk all sense of our security.
And if science does anything for us besides make vaccines possible, electricity manageable (people still electrocute themselves with faulty wiring), and cars run, it provides us a weird and wonderful view of the world. The latest Hubble pictures is a happy case in point.

Tags: Bible, Darwin, Galileo, King James, Milton, Shakespeare

Some great literature begins with a sentence about getting lost…and how did we get here? Peggy Steinfels has a Commonweal article, about how her Catholic life in Chicago and some great teachers and great questions. One of her teachers was John L. McKenzie…a priest who knew so much about the Bible he did a huge biblical dictionary by himself. He probably dreamed in Ugaritic. It was from great scholars that we have had so much to think about as we go through our own journey. Those people with the dust on their eyeglasses and musty dictionaries bent over ancient books, ancient scrolls, and even clay tablets, have changed our lives in many pratical ways.

Tags: Bible, Chicago, journey, Peggy Steinfels

September 8 is a feast day common to the western and eastern churches. Of course, like the birth of Jesus, we have to pick a date ourselves to celebrate since such information was not considered important so long ago.
But we celebrate a lot when we celebrate anyone’s birthday and in our faith, Mary the richness and complexity of Mary’s role in the life of the Church…our lives!!!…means it is a lovely and loving thing to contemplate.
The picture chosen here shows Anne (again a name that is not historical) and many women around here delivering the baby Mary. They look like they know what they are doing and they are doing it as a team. Ann looks exhausted even if she is in a nice bed. She has brought new life into the world and her daughter Mary’s own flesh and blood would be taken on by God, the Word made flesh. We are not gnostics. We think that passing, aging, weak flesh, so frail, so beautiful makes human nature and the creator shine and shine.
So we have September 8, the birth of Mary. It is also traditional to celebrate initiation into religious communities on this day. In 1966, Fr Hal, after two years in the Oratorian apostolic school, took a big step this day and entered the Oratorian novitiate. If you know a member of a religious order ask them about this day or the day they went into the novitiate. (A novitiate is like boot camp but it lasts and lasts). So have a happy feast day, this September 8th. And pray with me, “Rejoice, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you!”

Tags: flesh, human nature, Mary, novitiate, St Anne

XXIII Sunday: Mark 7:31 ff. The restoration of speech!

Shy? Afraid to speak? Here is Jesus approached outside Jewish territory and the encounter enables someone who could not speak before.

In some ancient cultures the heart was thought to be a kind of thought producer, like our brain because people had experiences of words “getting stuck in the throat.” The words came up from somewhere…the heart?…but did not make it out.

There are certain words that get stuck in our throats…Do you remember trying to say “I love you…” to someone? Do you remember your reaction when someone said that to you?

Speech or some kind of communication makes us human because we can in some way say that we love someone. We can say in some way “I promise….” Our communication can prepare another person for our actions. John Henry Newman, the famous English convert to Catholicism, said of one of his “bosses”…Cardinal Manning… “His eminence’s words do not always prepare me for his eminence’s actions.”

Jesus is God’s Word to us. God’s word to us is “Yes” and it prepares us for the action of God, the gift of the Spirit, where trust and peace abound, a community grows despite many many limitations.

Tags: God's Yes!, Healing, speaking

There is an email erronesouly saying that the Obama care bill allows illegal aliens access to government health care. If you get sick in France or the UK you walk in and get medical attention. In France you pay a small amount without paper. In the UK they do not accept payment. You could make a case for illegal aliens getting health care because like it or not they are here and if they get sick it could be bad for all of us if they are not treated. I could write a novel called The Plague to prove this or refer you to all kinds of medical literature. Do we want illegal aliens who have swine flu staying away from the doctor. I don’t think so. This world is interconnected, you know.

Tags: health care, undocumented

The Kennedy family was and is still part of American history, world history. Ted Kennedy’s brother was the first and only Catholic president. We now have an African American president. We have never had a woman president.We have not had a Jewish president.  I do not think we are post anything yet.
The rise of the Kennedys is remarkable. They may look like white males and so part of the power structure of this country but Irish and Catholic lowered them considerably…I try to tell Catholics…as a former WASP myself…that Catholics are not “white” in the commonly accepted meaning of that term…which is really WASP. So the passing of this giant is a significant milestone for all kinds of reasons.
One editorial said that Ted Kennedy took the needs of his constituents as his program. It is tragic that this has to be pointed out as a special aspect. But we know that the political structures cater to money and not many constituents have money. You can vote for politicians but money is really power. We were all lucky that the Kennedys were rich and looked out for those who were not. Lots at Wesleyan would encourage the talented students here to use their talents on behalf of the people who need them but cannot afford to pay for them. It is a great place to be a chaplain.