This from one of St. Augustine’s sermons on the birth of Christ: 

 What praise must we not utter, what thanks, to the love of God! Who loved us so much that for our sakes he would be made in time through whom time was made, so that in the world he might be younger in age than many of his servants, he who in his eternity is older than the world itself, that the one who created man might become a man, that he might be created from a mother he created, that he might be carried in arms he formed, might suck at breasts he filled; that the Word without whom human eloquence is dumb might in dumb infancy wail in a crib.

See what God became for you; recognize what such great lowliness teaches, even in a teacher who cannot yet speak. Once in paradise you were so full of words that you gave names to all living things; but for your sake your Creator lay as an infant and could not even call his mother by her name. When you failed to obey, you lost yourself in a broad garden of fruitful trees; in his obedience he came into the narrowest of dwellings so that he might search for the dead by dying. Although you were a man, you wished to be God, and were lost; he, although he was God, wished to be a man so that he might find what had been lost. Human pride pressed you down so much that only divine lowliness could raise you.

Inspired by William Safire’s annual column of predictions, I have come up with my own exercise in prophetic futility, only in a deluxe Catholic version, “The 2009 Catholic Pool.” Some seriousness, some piffle, the column may do neither well, but it is well-intentioned–and safely posted over here at “Pontifications” on Beliefnet.

A sampling:

NINE: The biggest name to become Roman Catholic in 2009 will be:

a) George W. Bush;
b) Philip Seymour Hoffman;
c) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad;
d) Mel Gibson;
e) David Gibson.

TEN: The biggest name to be canonized in 2009 will be:

a) Pope John Paul II;
b) Pope Pius XII;
c) Pope John XXIII;
d) Pope Pius IX;
e) NCR’s John Allen, after he is credited with a miracle of bilocation.

I updated my post below about the NYT series on “international priests” to link to the second and third installments (today’s third and final article is here). I found all three articles fascinating — it’s a topic that can be considered from any number of angles, and it only gets more complicated as you go. Check out the multimedia components too — some great photography and audio there. (I think you need to hear the Kenyan priest’s voice to get the most out of his story!)

Today’s Times also has a city-section article about a parish in Brooklyn that has closed, and some efforts being launched to save the building from destruction. It seems there are many people with justifiable emotional attachments to Our Lady of Loreto, but not many of them still live in the neighborhood or worship regularly at the church. I’ve never seen the church in person, but the pictures suggest a stately, beautiful building, one of those labor-of-love immigrant parishes that sprouted in the city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (You can see some photos of the church and the neighborhood here.) The neighborhood has changed since then, and low-income housing — the reported plan for the ground where the church stands — would very likely be of greater service to its residents. But you can’t blame people for feeling sentimental about this piece of their history.

By the way, New Yorkers, tomorrow is the final day of the “Catholics in New York” exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. Do treat yourself to a visit if you possibly can — it’s a wonderful way to gain an appreciation for the culture, the era and the people that parishes like Our Lady of Loreto represent.

Today’s New York Times has a sobering op-ed by the sober-minded Benny Morris. It should be required reading for team Obama. Here’s the ending:

Between 1948 and 1982 Israel coped relatively well with the threat from conventional Arab armies. Indeed, it repeatedly trounced them. But Iran’s nuclear threat, the rise of organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah that operate from across international borders and from the midst of dense civilian populations, and Israeli Arabs’ growing disaffection with the state and their identification with its enemies, offer a completely different set of challenges. And they are challenges that Israel’s leaders and public, bound by Western democratic and liberal norms of behavior, appear to find particularly difficult to counter.

Israel’s sense of the walls closing in on it has this past week led to one violent reaction. Given the new realities, it would not be surprising if more powerful explosions were to follow.

I suspect there are some who find it especially tragic that violence has broken out in the land of Christ’s birth during the Christmas season.  Despite the fact that neither of the two parties follows the Christian liturgical calendar, many of us still cling to a vague sense that Christmas should be a time when all combatants-Christian or otherwise-lay down their arms, if only briefly.

It’s tempting to see such sentiments as a relatively harmless form of nostalgia, a recollection of a more self-confident age when, thanks to the Jesuits and the British Empire, we could think of Christianity as an enterprise on which the sun never set.  Such nostalgia, though, sits uneasily in a culture where store clerks are now so aware of the diversity of our holiday traditions that they no longer seem to know what to say after they hand us our change.

More to the point, the idea that Christmas is a “season of peace” is a form of sentimentalism that robs the Incarnation of its eschatological force.  On Sunday, we heard Simeon prophesy that the Christ child was “destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be contradicted” (Lk 2:34).  Soon we will hear that He and his parents are forced to flee their home while others are slaughtered in His place (Mt 2:16).  The feast days immediately following Christmas are the feasts of martyrs: St. Stephen, the Holy Innocents, and St. Thomas Becket.

It should not surprise us that the Octave of Christmas is soaked in blood.  As Frederick Douglas once observed, “power concedes nothing without a demand.”  We who believe that the Incarnation marks a turning point in the struggle to redeem the world also know that the present ruler of this world is not about to go quietly.  Like the French living under Nazi occupation who witnessed D-Day, we know that something fundamental and decisive has happened and that our situation is transformed, but we also know that there is much fighting and, yes, dying left to do before the end.

Our weapons in this fight will not be the weapons of the world.  Against hatred, we bring love.  Against missiles, guns, and improvised explosives we will bring prayer, fasting, and witness.   Against historical grievance and the burden of memory, we bring forgiveness and reconciliation.  Against division and polarization, we bring the worship that makes us One Body, which we offer for the life of the world.

Christmas, rightly understood, is not meant to be a brief period of refuge from the evils of the world.  It is a summons to take up the struggle against those evils.  It is a call to gird our loins and offer prayers to the One who “trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle” (Ps 144:1).  The Messiah has come! Nothing will ever be the same again.

The escalating warfare in the birthplace of the Prince of Peace may claim an unexpected casualty: Benedict’s visit to Israel this May. According to CNS, Vatican sources have said a worsening of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict could alter the pope’s travel plans.

Such a visit could provide the impetus for a cessation or lessening of hostilities, but the pope has to get there first, and he is undoubtedly (well, hopefully) weighing his words carefully. From the CNS coverage of Benedict’s noontime blessing address yesterday:

“I am deeply saddened for the dead, the wounded, the material damage, and the sufferings and tears of the people who are the victims of this tragic sequence of attacks and reprisals,” the pope said.

“The earthly homeland of Jesus cannot continue to be a witness to such bloodshed, which is repeated without end! I implore the end of this violence, which must be condemned in all its forms, and a restoration of the truce in the Gaza Strip,” he said.

The pope called for a fresh demonstration of “humanity and wisdom in everyone who has responsibility in the situation.”

[snip]

The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, told Vatican Radio Dec. 27 that the latest escalation of violence was a provocation by both sides, and showed that both Hamas and Israel were caught up in a mentality of conflict.

“Hamas is a prisoner of a logic of hatred, Israel of a logic of trusting in force as the best response to hatred. They need to keep looking for a different way out, even if it seems impossible,” Father Lombardi said.

The spokesman said Israel’s attack on Gaza was notable for its intensity and the number of victims.

“Certainly it will be a very hard blow for Hamas. At the same time, it’s quite probable that there will be innocent victims, in fact many of them; hatred will increase and the hopes for peace will once again fade,” he said.

The Vatican has often been seen as tilting toward the Palestinians in terms of sympathies, and these comments seem to strike the kind of balance that will not be welcome by either side–and thus a potential complicating factor for the Vatican.

One reason Rome is seen as pro-Palestinian is that the dwindling Christian community is largely made up of Palestinian Arabs. In a sense, as in Iraq, they are caught in the middle, squeezed by both sides. This is often lost on Westerners as we sing sweet Christmas carols about that faraway manger.

That vise was exemplified by a story by Austen Ivereigh in Our Sunday Visitor of Dec. 21. The story is available online only to subscribers, but in it… Read the rest of this entry »

I thought the old saw that suicides increase during the holidays–the result, it was assumed, of isolation and despair deepened by the camaraderie ostensibly being enjoyed by everyone else–was an Urban Legend that I was the last to catch on to.

Apparently not. This story by Jim Nichols of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer is a good myth-buster, with some explanations as to how the legend got going, why it remains so durable, and why it’s not true. Nichols quotes Pat Lyden, executive director of the Suicide Prevention Education Alliance of Northeast Ohio, who says the misconception is rooted in a pervasive public misunderstanding of what triggers suicides–and, more importantly, what does not.

“Untreated mental illness, such as depression, bipolar disorder [commonly called manic depression] and anxiety disorder, are the main causes of suicide,” said Lyden, whose nonprofit organization teaches youths about warning signals.

“People, I think, expect more suicides at Christmas because they see people who have the blues, or who have loneliness,” she speculated. “But the blues and loneliness are not the same as major illness. This particular illness affects the brain, in the same way other diseases affect the heart or the pancreas or other organs.”

What remains unexplained, however, is why, according to statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics, December has the lowest suicide rate of any month of the year. Are the holidays in some way an antidote to despair? Is there a lesson there? Or just another myth waiting to be born?

Kicked out of my office (we’re moving), I spent more time working –and procrastinating –at home.  I updated my ITunes program on my home computer (which controls the loading of ipods, for those who don’t know).  And ITunes invited me to add the “genius bar” to the program, and I did.

The genius bar is basically an interior decorator for your music.  It tells you what songs you have go well together, and it suggests new songs –which you can purchase at the ITunes store– to make your collection more aesthetically complete.  (Well, not quite–it doesn’t tell you to junk your music collection altogether and develop some better taste.  If you like the musical equivalent of orange and purple plaid, it will give you more orange and purple–and maybe add a dash of pink.)

In order to access the genius bar, you need to let Apple rummage around in your ITunes folder.  I don’t care that Apple knows that I have two songs by Five for Fighting  on my ipod. At the same time, the whole thing makes me vaguely uneasy–not only the privacy thing, but the idea that they know what I like before I do.  It’s individually targeted advertising.

Anybody else have the same reaction?

The Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenuda III, that is. “Phoning it in” is, of course, slang for doing something halfway. According to an AFP news-service dispatch, the pope decided the faithful shouldn’t be phoning it in when it comes to penance. His objection was based on privacy grounds:

CAIRO (AFP) – Egypt’s Coptic pope has banned the faithful from confessing their sins to priests over the telephone because intelligence agents might be listening in, a newspaper reported on Friday.

“Confessions over the telephone are forbidden, because there is a chance the telephones are monitored and the confessions will reach state security,” the independent Al-Masri Al-Yom quoted Pope Shenuda III as saying.

The leader of the Coptic minority also said confessions over the Internet were invalid because they might be read by websurfers.

Interesting–even a question or two about why he thinks he is such a lighting rod.  He seems to have particularly gotten under the skin of somenone named John Zuhlsdorf.

Today’s New York Times has an article by Laurie Goodstein about the phenomenon of foreign priests being recruited to work in U.S. dioceses. It’s a colorful look at the ups and downs of this increasingly common arrangement, as observed in the diocese of Owensberg, Kentucky.

[Diocesan Vicar for Clergy] Father Venters has seen lows. Some foreign priests had to be sent home. One became romantically entangled with a female co-worker. One isolated himself in the rectory. Still another would not learn to drive. A priest from the Philippines left after two weeks because he could not stand the cold. A Peruvian priest was hostile toward Hispanics who were not from Peru.

“From a strictly personnel perspective,” Father Venters said one day over a lunch of potato soup with American cheese and a glass of sweet tea, “the international priests are easier to work with than the local priests. If they mess up, you just say, ‘See you.’ You withdraw your permission for them to stay.”

As Goodstein points out, missionary priests serving U.S. Catholics is not a new phenomenon. But in the old days you used to find them serving their own ethnic groups and immigrant communities. Now an “international priest” is likely to have very little in common with the community he serves. That can lead to humorous mixups and more serious clashes. But it can also be broadening — for me, praying the Mass with Catholics whose culture is different from my own is a profound, humbling encounter with the universal nature of the Church. It’s not always comfortable, but it is usually rewarding.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” was first performed in Leipzig during the Christmas season of 1734-35. Or at least that’s when the magnificent final version was heard. But much of the music had been heard before in other guises.

Scholars tell us that much of the music was “parodied:” Bach employing music he had already written, much of it for secular purposes, and transmuting it to the new sacred text. In many ways Bach’s art exemplifies the notion of “recapitulation,” so central to the theology of St. Irenaeus: in Christ all the good of creation is brought to fulfillment. Pointedly, Bach only used parody from secular to sacred compositions, never from sacred to secular.

The result, in the “Christmas Oratorio,” was so seamless that, as one critic writes, “the basic emotions of all the choruses and arias correspond so perfectly to the sacred text that there is no distance at all between text and music.”

The third cantata of the “Christmas Oratorio” is entitled “Herrscher des Himmels,” “Lord of Heaven.” Its narrative recounts the shepherds’ journey to Bethlehem in response to the angelic tidings. As in all the cantatas, the Gospel proclamation is punctuated rhetorically by affective application to the believer’s own spiritual quest, his or her hopes and fears.

In the third cantata, besides drawing upon some of his previous work, Bach composed a new aria specifically for the third day of Christmas, the feast of the Beloved disciple. Here are the words sung by one of the shepherds beholding the child and Mary pondering all these things in her heart:

Schliesse, mein Herze, dies selige Wunder//Fest in deinem Glauben ein.

Lasse dies Wunder der goettlichen Werke//Immer zu Staerke deines schwachen Glaubens sein!

My heart, enclose this blessed miracle firmly within your faith//Let the wonder of God’s work

Ever strengthen your weak faith!

Photo: Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

Among newspaper and television news reporters, the task of doing a story about how a religious holiday is celebrated ranks only a little above doing a stakeout outside the house of a murder victim’s mother. The editors’ main purpose sometimes seems to be to prove to religious readers that, yes, we do know what day it is.

But there are occasional gems, such as Sam Dillon’s “Chinantla Journal” in The New York Times on Christmas Day, “A Mexican Celebration of Christ and Community.” The cover of the paper and the most emailed list featured a piece catching up on the doings of the Von Trapp family, but to me, this was the more inspiring Christmas story:

The Christmas season joins people with their loved ones wherever it is celebrated, but in few places, perhaps, does it unite whole villages so thoroughly in communal rituals of music and merrymaking as in rural Mexico.

For nine consecutive nights, starting Dec. 16, villages all across Mexico have been re-enacting Joseph and Mary’s biblical search for lodging. Each night’s procession, called a posada, has led townspeople, marching to the strains of a brass band, to a different home, where humble heads of household like Ms. Vargas have fed and entertained the revelers.

Santa Claus did not figure in the festivities in Chinantla, and there was no gift-giving. (Most Mexicans exchange gifts on Jan. 6, El Día de Reyes, which celebrates the wise men who took gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Christ child.)

What was the most meaningful Christmas story you saw in a newspaper this week?

This week the New York Times offered a few different takes on how people answer God’s call to serve the poor in the city. On Christmas Eve there was a story about the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal who live and minister in the South Bronx. (You probably know the famous Fr. Benedict Groeschel, one of the order’s founders.)

An April 2007 article (part of the NYT’s flurry of local-Catholics coverage surrounding the pope’s visit) focused on the friars’ music ministry and prolife activism, and provoked a narrowly critical series of letters scolding them for “infringing on women’s reproductive freedom.” (A later letter calmly answered those complaints — say what you will about the CFRs, but no one can credibly claim they don’t practice what they preach.) This week’s story, however, focused on some of the order’s younger members and their radical decision to live a life of voluntary poverty and Christian witness in an anything-but-contemplative neighborhood.

One of the CFRs’ ministries is a shelter for homeless men (you can get a look at it in the video supplement to the article). Another story in the Times, this one published on Christmas day, examined the complicated issues small, religiously-oriented shelters are confronting as the city improves its outreach to the homeless. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve lived in South Bend, Indiana for over a decade now, and for most of that time, we stayed on eastern standard time all year round.  We never changed to daylight savings time.  We stayed the same.  But everyone changed around us.  In the winter time, we were on New York time.  But not in the summer.  New York sprung forward in daylight saving time–we did not.  In the summer, Chicago sprung forward to meet us.  The net effect:  In the winter, we were on New York time, in the summer, we were on Chicago time. 

Not changing meant changing a lot–all the time.  Our television schedules changed dramatically–in the summer, prime time was 7 p.m.-10 p.m, not 8 p.m. – 11 p.m.  Restaurant reservations in nearby Michigan had to be recalibrated –they were on eastern time, and sprang forward. Friends and family members got used to us being on “Chicago time,” we went back to “New York time.” 

The only way an institution, a community, or a person can not change is if everything around them doesn’t change.  If that’s not possible, then the question beomes, how to evaluate the change that comes from not changing versus the change that comes from changing.   

 I think this applies to the Church as well. Take Latin.   The Church made Latin  its official language in a situation where most people understood it–and had a reason to understand it, given the Roman  Empire. Jerome didn’t produce the Vulgate to make the scripture more esoteric–he did it in order to make it more accessible. 

Over centuries that changed.  Only highly educated people read Latin, and only real afficionados speak it.   The Church can could decide that it will would continue to use Latin exclusively, in every aspect of its life and existence. But unless it had a  way to ensure that Latin is the common language of the people –spoken by tax collectors and prostitutes, as my friend Reginald Foster is wont to say, it can’t  couldn’t keep its use of Latin from becoming esoteric and academic.  It can’t   couldn’t keep Latin, and keep things natural.

So you’re faced with the prospect of deciding which change is worse.  You keep the language the same, but lose the immediate connection of the people with the language.  Or you change the language, and , keep the connection –with living people, but not with the past.  Or you muddle through and compromise. 

In thinking about O’Malley’s book, one of the things that the first part impressed upon me was the change foisted upon the Church whether it wanted it or not.  Modernity–was here to stay whether or not the Church went along with it.  The loss of the papal states, the increasing commitment to democracy, the liberal values of freedom of the press, freedom of speech.  What a sea change in political culture during the “long nineteenth century” –as O’Malley calls it. And what a change for the context in which the Church proclaimed the Gosepl.

Finally, my part of Indiana changed.  We now go to daylight savings time.  In some ways, the change allows us to stay the same–at least in important things, like restaurant reservations and phone calls and television schedules.  

I hope everyone had a joyful Christmas celebration with loved ones.

In a post below I mentioned the wonderful CD, from Cambridge’s King’s College Choir, of Christmas music by Benjamin Britten. One offering on the recording that I did not mention was Britten’s setting of some poems of the 18th century English religious writer, Christopher Smart.

Smart was a Cambridge scholar who three times was confined for religious “madness” — which the Britannica defines as “a mild religious mania.” (Who, then,  of those who frequent dotCommonweal can be considered “sane?”).

Smart’s “madness” notwithstanding (or because of it), he counted as friends Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, and Oliver Goldsmith. I read the following excerpt from Smart-Britten as a sort of grace before yesterday’s Christmas dinner, since there were a number of cat-aficianados gathered around the table:

For I will consider my cat Geoffry: for he is the servant of the living God, duly and daily serving him.

For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East, he worships in his way.

For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.

For he knows that God is his Saviour, for God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.

For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.

For I am possessed of a cat, surpassing in beauty, for whom I take occasion to bless Almighty God.

Would that we all, like Francis of Assisi and Christopher Smart, were possessed of so mild a religious mania.

Happy feast of Stephen!

O Come O Come Emmanuel – Sufjan Stevens

I have several CDs which provide musical-spiritual accompaniment in preparing liturgies and homilies during this holy season.

Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” has pride of place, as it takes me from the first days of Christmas through New Year’s Day and culminates on the feast of Epiphany. But another favorite is the King’s College Choir’s rendition of Benjamin Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols.”

On this particular recording (Argo), a wonderful bonus is the young Britten’s lovely “A Boy Was Born” — a setting of mostly anonymous early English poems and hymns. Here is the text for the deeply simple “Jesu, as Thou art our Saviour:”

Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, Jesu: save us all through Thy virtue.

Jesu, as Thou art our Saviour, that Thou save us from dolour! Jesu is mine paramour: Blessed be Thy name, Jesu.

Jesu was born of a may, upon Christemas Day. She was may beforn and ay: Blessed be Thy name, Jesu.

Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, Jesu: save us all through Thy virtue.

Scandals galore, the Fall of Man, the Pope on Original Sin (as per Cathleen Kaveny’s post below)–how did it all happen? Answer: Evolution made us do it. From Natalie Angier’s science column in the NYT:

Deceitful behavior has a long and storied history in the evolution of social life, and the more sophisticated the animal, it seems, the more commonplace the con games, the more cunning their contours.

In a comparative survey of primate behavior, Richard Byrne and Nadia Corp of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland found a direct relationship between sneakiness and brain size. The larger the average volume of a primate species’ neocortex — the newest, “highest” region of the brain — the greater the chance that the monkey or ape would pull a stunt like this one described in The New Scientist: a young baboon being chased by an enraged mother intent on punishment suddenly stopped in midpursuit, stood up and began scanning the horizon intently, an act that conveniently distracted the entire baboon troop into preparing for nonexistent intruders.

Much evidence suggests that we humans, with our densely corrugated neocortex, lie to one another chronically and with aplomb.

So Bernie Madoff needs a natural lawyer. Maybe B16 could help him out?

Another good Christmas present. 

Continuity or change at V2?-Read the book!

Interesting linkage (or wild leap, to some) that Pope Benedict XVI made in his annual address to the Roman Curia earlier today.

The address is usually a look back at the highlights of the past year–or what the pontiff would like seen as the highlights–along with a meaty idea tor two that the pope tosses out to give the chattering classes something to do over the holiday break. In 2005 it was a brief for the “hermeneutic of reform” (which is his way of saying a “hermeneutic of continuity”) school of Vatican II interpretation–no surprise–and in 2006 it was a comment regarding Islam’s need to integrate lessons of the Enlightenment (as the church has, he said)–an important observation I think has received too little notice.

There will likely be no such oversight this year, as the pope talked about World Youth Day and also about the protection of the environment–and then linked that last topic to the importance of defending “traditional” marriage and, it seems, against gay rights, especially gay marriage. Over at America’s blog, where I first saw this, Jim Martin links to the Reuters story, which is provocatively headlined, “Pope likens ‘saving’ gays to saving the rainforest.” As Father Martin noted, what Benedict was actually saying is that “it is humanity…that requires ’saving’ from homosexuality.”

John Allen has the best tranlsation of the relevant passages that I’ve found:

Benedict clearly distinguished the church’s approach from secular environmental movements – insisting that concern for tropical rain forests and the church’s traditional pro-life commitments, including sexual morality, are indissolubly linked.

“[The church] must defend not only the earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to all,” he said. “It must also defend the human person against its own destruction. What’s needed is something like a ‘human ecology,’ understood in the right sense. It’s not simply an outdated metaphysics if the church speaks of the nature of the human person as man and woman, and asks that this order of creation be respected.”

“Here it’s a question of faith in creation, in listening to the language of creation, disregard of which would mean self-destruction of the human person and hence destruction of the very work of God,” the pope said. “That which is often expressed and understood by the term ‘gender’ in the end amounts to the self-emancipation of the human person from creation and from the Creator. Human beings want to do everything by themselves, and to control exclusively everything that regards them. But in this way, the human person lives against the truth, against the Creator Spirit.”

“Yes, the tropical forests merit our protection, but the human being as a creature merits no less protection – a creature in which a message is written which does not imply a contradiction of our liberty, but the condition for it,” the pope said.

On that basis, Benedict offered a defense of traditional marriage and Catholic sexual morality.

“Great Scholastic theologians defined marriage, meaning the lifetime bond between a man and a woman, as a sacrament of creation, which the Creator instituted and which Christ – without changing the message of creation – then welcomed into the story of his covenant with humanity,” the pope said. “This witness in favor of the Creator Spirit, present in the nature of this bond and in a special way in the nature of the human person, is also part of the proclamation which the church must offer. Starting from this perspective, it’s important to re-read the encyclical Humanae Vitae : the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against treating sexuality as a kind of consumption, the future against the exclusive demands of the present, and the nature of the human being against manipulation.”

In one respect, the Pope could simply be seen as putting the “nature” in natural law. He didn’t sing Cole Porter, but his theme seems to be along the lines of, “Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it…” The danger, of course, lies in examples like those flaming Central Park Zoo penguins, Roy & Silo, and those peace-loving bonobo monkeys, and such. Just look the other way, kids…

The pontiff’s comments, coming amid the hullaballo over the Vatican’s rejection of a new U.N. move against discrimination (like execution) against gays, or the elevation of gay rights, if you like, is likely not coincidental. The focus on the issue perplexes me, but that’s for another time.

All comments are welcome, but my central question (apart from why the Pope has to give talks like this right before Christmas–”Happy Holidays, Homosexuals!”) is what seems to be a problematic difference between human rights and natural law. The Vatican (among others) is a great champion of human rights, and rights like religious freedom, the right to life, etc. But it often seems that when it comes to rights they don’t like, natural law is suddenly invoked. What is the relationship between these two? Are human rights “limited” to those that conform to faith’s view of natural law? Or is natural law like a natural revelation, a natural theology understandable (supposedly) to all that is the true human rights “charter”?

Leon Wieseltier says Happy Chanukah to Mayor Bloomberg — and Merry Christmas to Caroline Kennedy. 

I can almost not imagine a more obvious mutilation of the meritocratic ideal than the appointment of Caroline Kennedy to the United State Senate. A Senate seat is a fucking valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing. But of course it will not be given away for nothing: the princess and her family will be delighted to pay for it. Ever since this democratic indignity was broached, the really smart talking point has been that she has the money for her eventual campaigns. In Michael Bloomberg’s city, this is all you need to know. After all, the next mayoralty of New York will have been decided over breakfast by two billionaires who have their respective uses for term limits and the strategic manipulation of them. Bloomberg appears to regard term limits as an unwarranted governmental interference in a free market: no sooner did he announce that he would prefer not to relinquish his rule than he let it be known that he will spend $80 million on his campaign. If his record in office is so sterling, why does he have to buy it back? More important, when will the authority in American life of the oligarchy of Manhattan finally come to an end? The wantonness of their capitalism was widespread and systematic, and it injured millions of lives. A society may be measured by whom it admires. No class of Americans has done more to damage America than the financial class. A generalization is an ugly thing, but every day’s newspaper refreshes my impression that the titans, the insiders, the big players, the boldfacers, the movers and the shakers — the hoshover menschen, as we say where I come from — have been, many of them, fools or thieves.

 Read the whole column here.

UPDATE: Over at his New Yorker blog, “Interesting Times,” George Packer makes his own case against appointing Caroline Kennedy to replace Hillary Clinton. He compares this to Sean Penn’s adventures as a journalist, most recently in Cuba.

Penn’s moonlighting shows a kind of contempt for journalism, which turns out to be rather difficult to do well. It also shows that he’s missed one of the main points of Obama’s election, which has Penn shedding tears at the end of his dispatch. Obama is the splendid fruit of a meritocracy. In a meritocracy, actors who act well get good roles. They don’t get to be journalists, too—a job that, in a meritocracy, should go to those who do journalism well. Nor should any journalist, however accomplished, expect to land a leading part in Penn’s next movie.

Nor should anyone expect to be appointed U.S. senator on the grounds of being the daughter of a revered President. We have at least learned that the offspring of Presidents don’t necessarily make good politicians themselves. Politics demands certain skills honed by experience, just as journalism does, just as acting does. I’ll make a deal with Sean Penn and Caroline Kennedy: you two stick to what you do well, and I’ll stay off the big screen and withdraw from consideration by Governor Paterson.

That’s nice. He’s done so much. He and his conscience should rest easy. At least until the trials…But that’s off topic. Here’s the money quote from his “exit interview” (not to be confused with an “exit strategy”) on “Fox News Sunday”:

“Eventually you wear out your welcome in this business, but I’m very comfortable with where we are and what we’ve achieved substantively.”

Actually, there are lots of gold nuggets. Here’s the WaPo version:

Vice President Cheney offered an unabashed defense of the Bush administration’s claims of broad executive powers today, mocking criticism from Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and saying the president “doesn’t have to check with anybody” before launching a nuclear attack.

In an interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday,” Cheney fired back at Biden’s contention that he was probably “the most dangerous vice president” in U.S. history. He also ridiculed Biden for mistakenly citing Article I of the U.S. Constitution, rather than Article II, in talking about executive branch powers during an October debate.

“If he wants to diminish the office of the vice president, that’s obviously his call,” Cheney said of Biden. “President-elect Obama will decide what he wants in a vice president and apparently, from the way they’re talking about it, he does not expect him to have as consequential a role as I have had during my time.”

Cheney, speaking less than a month before he and President Bush leave the White House, was blunt and unapologetic about his central role in some of the most controversial issues of the past eight years, including the invasion of Iraq, warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens, and harsh interrogation tactics. Cheney also said he disagreed with Bush’s decision to remove embattled Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in 2006, saying that “the president doesn’t always take my advice.”

“I was a Rumsfeld man,” Cheney said. “I’d helped recruit him and I thought he did a good job for us.”

The Pope is calling for people to think more about original sin.  So how do you connect that ancient doctrine about human nature to contemporary frameworks–to make it real–a mysterious truth about everyone, not merely card-carrying bad people?

 If I were teaching about original sin to contemporary college students, I’d start by having the students read about the Milgram experiments.

A survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has some interesting numbers on how Catholics view other religions. A substantial majority (62 percent) of white Catholics answered “yes” to the question of whether Islam can lead to eternal life, a figure well above the national average of 52 percent.

The poll shows that just 11 percent of white Catholics consider their faith the only path to salvation – and the numbers are pretty much the same for weekly Mass-goers and other Catholics.

What are Catholics expected to believe?

This is how the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith addressed the issue when it critiqued the Rev. Jacques Dupuis’ theology of religious pluralism:

It is consistent with Catholic doctrine to hold that the seeds of truth and goodness that exist in other religions are a certain participation in truths contained in the revelation of or in Jesus Christ. However, it is erroneous to hold that such elements of truth and goodness, or some of them, do not derive ultimately from the source-mediation of Jesus Christ.

Aside from the wonderful “O” antiphons that enhance Vespers during this last week of Advent, the prayer of the Church is replete with antiphons that provide orientation and lead us deeper into the mystery that the liturgy celebrates.

One practice we have restored in the parish where I reside is to begin the Sunday Eucharist by having the cantor chant the entrance antiphon proper to the Sunday. This has proved to create an atmosphere of silence prior to the full congregation singing the opening hymn. The communion antiphon is also chanted prior to the distribution of the Lord’s body and blood. Again this provides a precious moment of silent recollection.

Many of those who will read this post are slowly extricating cars and driveways from yesterday’s snow fall; so the antiphon for one of the psalms at this morning’s Lauds may offer solace and hope:

May the Holy One from heaven come down like gentle rain; may the earth burst into blossom and bear the tender Savior!

Others who may have attended or concelebrated at the funeral yesterday for Avery Dulles, SJ, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral may have better accounts, but this photo from The New York Times story is as evocative as any of the wonderul words spoken and written about the “dean of American theologians.”

America magazine’s blog has had the best coverage I’ve seen, including this one from Jim Martin:

Cardinal Egan’s warm homily took as its central image an ancient crucifix he had seen some 50 years ago in Umbria; from one side the face of Christ appeared contorted in pain; from the other illumined by joy. This image, suggested Egan, could be said to characterize Avery’s life, one of triumph and, towards the end, of pain. Of the triumph: “In the life of our lamented cardinal, there was triumph of the most authentic sense,” he said. “You have the example of a triumphant life story, never matched, to my knowledge, by any other American Catholic.”

As a young man in the Navy, Avery contracted polio, and was told that, because of the paralysis is his arm, he would never write again. “He proved them monumentally wrong,” said Egan, referring to the over 800 articles and 23 books written by the Jesuit cardinal.

Cardinal Egan remembered visiting Avery on his 90th birthday at Fordham–when Avery was bedridden, crippled by the recurrence of his polio–for a Mass in his honor. The cardinal wheeled Avery’s bed up the aisle of the Fordham chapel, but only with difficulty, as a result of Egan’s childhood polio. “I’m afraid it’s a case of the lame pushing the lame,” said Egan to Dulles.

With that Avery broke into broad smile, and Egan was put in mind of that crucifix.

And in a moving culmination, the crowd erupted in applause as the casket was borne out of the cathedral and onto Fifth Avenue, where even the mass of holiday shoppers had to pause.

Super-evangelist Rick Warren in as, expected, taking flak from his base for accepting Obama’s invitation to give the invocation at the inaugural–the most high-profile slot for a religious leader that day. Steve Waldman has the round up at Beliefnet, including Nicole Russell of American Spectator complaining that “this is a spineless move on Warren’s part.”

In his own statement, Warren says:

“I commend President-elect Obama for his courage to willingly take enormous heat from his base by inviting someone like me, with whom he doesn’t agree on every issue, to offer the Invocation at his historic Inaugural ceremony.Hopefully individuals passionately expressing opinions from the left and the right will recognize that both of us have shown a commitment to model civility in America.

The Bible admonishes us to pray for our leaders. I am honored by this opportunity to pray God’s blessing on the office of the President and its current and future inhabitant, asking the Lord to provide wisdom to America’s leaders during this critical time in our nation’s history.”

And Obama himself responds, as per YouTube:

“I am fierce advocate for equality for gay and — well, let me start by talking about my own views. I think it is no secret that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans. It is something I have been consistent on and something I intend to continue to be consistent on during my presidency.What I’ve also said is that it is important for America to come together even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues.

And I would note that a couple of years ago I was invited to Rick Warren’s church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion.

Nevertheless, I had an opportunity to speak, and that dialog, I think, is a part of what my campaign’s been all about, that we’re never going to agree on every single issue. What we have to do is create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable, and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans. So Rick Warren has been invited to speak, Dr. Joseph Lowery — who has deeply contrasting views to Rick Warren about a whole host of issues — is also speaking.”

Like all of you, I thrill in this Advent season to the Isaiah who promises, to those who walk in darkness, a child who will be called “Wonder-Counselor, Prince of Peace” (9:5). And, like all of you, I rejoice in the Isaiah who proclaims “Comfort, give comfort to my people” (40:1).

But then I read the story in today’s New York Times:

For Wall Street, much of this decade represented a new Gilded Age. Salaries were merely play money — a pittance compared to bonuses. Bonus season became an annual celebration of the riches to be had in the markets. That was especially so in the New York area, where nearly $1 out of every $4 that companies paid employees last year went to someone in the financial industry. Bankers celebrated with five-figure dinners, vied to outspend each other at charity auctions and spent their new found fortunes on new homes, cars and art.

The bonanza redefined success for an entire generation. Graduates of top universities sought their fortunes in banking, rather than in careers like medicine, engineering or teaching. Wall Street worked its rookies hard, but it held out the promise of rich rewards. In college dorms, tales of 30-year-olds pulling down $5 million a year were legion.

While top executives received the biggest bonuses, what is striking is how many employees throughout the ranks took home large paychecks. On Wall Street, the first goal was to make “a buck” — a million dollars. More than 100 people in Merrill’s bond unit alone broke the million-dollar mark in 2006. Goldman Sachs paid more than $20 million apiece to more than 50 people that year, according to a person familiar with the matter. Goldman declined to comment.

And I remember the other Isaiah (actually the same one, but hardly invoked lest he disturb holiday cheer):

Woe to you who join house to house, who connect field with field, till no room remains and you are left to dwell alone in the midst of the land. In my hearing the Lord of hosts has sworn: Many houses shall be in ruins, large ones and fine, with no one to live in them…Woe to those who demand strong drink as soon as they rise in the morning, and linger into the night while wine inflames them. With harp and lyre, timbrel and flute, they feast on wine. But what the Lord does, they regard not, the work of his hands they see not (5:8-12).

Thank God for the prophets who don’t decline to comment.

Update:

This just in from Isaiah Krugman on Mount Princeton:

But the costs of America’s Ponzi era surely went beyond the direct waste of dollars and cents.

At the crudest level, Wall Street’s ill-gotten gains corrupted and continue to corrupt politics, in a nicely bipartisan way. From Bush administration officials like Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who looked the other way as evidence of financial fraud mounted, to Democrats who still haven’t closed the outrageous tax loophole that benefits executives at hedge funds and private equity firms (hello, Senator Schumer), politicians have walked when money talked.

Meanwhile, how much has our nation’s future been damaged by the magnetic pull of quick personal wealth, which for years has drawn many of our best and brightest young people into investment banking, at the expense of science, public service and just about everything else?

Most of all, the vast riches being earned — or maybe that should be “earned” — in our bloated financial industry undermined our sense of reality and degraded our judgment.

The rest is here.

“undermined our sense of reality? degraded our judgment?”

Perhaps that’s why many of the fathers of the Church drew a connection between the prophets and Plato, especially Plato’s “Myth of the Cave” in his Republic. Or why Pope Benedict insists that faith in the Logos does not annul but fulfills the human logos. However, that bringing to fulfillment, as both the prophets and Plato maintained, requires conversion: a turning from idolatry or illusion to reality.

Even Isaiah Obama seems to be suggesting as much: the pressing question, he comments, is not: “will it boost my bonus: but: is it right?”

In another sign that Barack Obama is more forgiving than I am–or more politcally savvy–or likely both, he has drafted megachurch pastor and mega-selling motivational author Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation on Jan. 20. Warren was a strong supporter of John McCain and was viewed by many as having sandbagged Obama at the forum Warren held at his Saddleback SoCal church during the campaign. But Warren is also the leading evangelical personality these days, and this could officially mark the passing away of the Billy Graham era, as son Franklin is not likely to be getting many such gigs–though don’t count out a White House invite to the son of America’s pastor, in light of Obama’s clear effort to reach out to evangelicals, who have not returned the love. But all is in flux, and while I’d love to have seen a rabbi or–God forbid–a Catholic priest, give the invocation, Obama is truly smart and showing a genuine determination to govern and lead from the center. (As to when Obama will reveal himself as the anti-Christ, his critics here will likely have better intel.) 

In any case, Damon Linker thinks it was a smart move, Andrew Sullivan is disgusted, and Steve Waldman has the best case on behalf of Rick.

For me, I’m just happy we’ll have Aretha Franklin, Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, and a benediction from the Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery, dean of the civil rights movement and co-founder with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Not a bad mix.