Wake up! For you God was made man! “Arise, you who sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ shall enlighten you” (Eph 5:14). For you, I say, God was made man!  You would have been dead for eternity if he had not been born in time. You would never have been freed from sinful flesh if he had not taken up the likeness of sinful flesh (see Rm 8:3). Endless misery [miseria] would have possessed you if this mercy [misericordia] had not been accomplished. You would not have come back to life if he had not taken on your death. You would have faded away if he had not healed you. You would have perished if he had not come. ….

What greater grace of God could shine upon us than this: that, having an only Son, God should make him a son of man and that in turn He should make a son of man the Son of God. Look for some merit; look for a reason; look for the justice: and see whether you find anything but grace.

(Sermon 185, 1 and 3; PL 38, 998, 999)

Fifteen years ago the prolific Harold Bloom published The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation. As I recall, Bloom identified that religion, whose avatars were Emerson and Whitman, with “gnosticism.”

Now another Avatar has appeared and Ross Douthat, in today’s New York Times, thinks “pantheism” is the proper name. He writes:

As usual, Alexis de Tocqueville saw it coming. The American belief in the essential unity of all mankind, Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s, leads us to collapse distinctions at every level of creation. “Not content with the discovery that there is nothing in the world but a creation and a Creator,” he suggested, democratic man “seeks to expand and simplify his conception by including God and the universe in one great whole.”

Today there are other forces that expand pantheism’s American appeal. We pine for what we’ve left behind, and divinizing the natural world is an obvious way to express unease about our hyper-technological society. The threat of global warming, meanwhile, has lent the cult of Nature qualities that every successful religion needs — a crusading spirit, a rigorous set of ‘thou shalt nots,” and a piping-hot apocalypse.

At the same time, pantheism opens a path to numinous experience for people uncomfortable with the literal-mindedness of the monotheistic religions — with their miracle-working deities and holy books, their virgin births and resurrected bodies. As the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski noted, attributing divinity to the natural world helps “bring God closer to human experience,” while “depriving him of recognizable personal traits.” For anyone who pines for transcendence but recoils at the idea of a demanding Almighty who interferes in human affairs, this is an ideal combination.

As they say: “I’m spiritual but not religious!”

Robert I. below notes James Martin’s ire at belief being used to label shopping bags and such. Lately, I’ve been struck by how many of the Christmas classics that aren’t explicitly religious contain a powerful call to belief. Not faith, exactly but belief. “Miracle on 34th St.” centers on a child’s belief, as does “The Polar Express.” A TV movie called “Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Claus” depends on an adult’s ability to believe that the tender-but-a-bit-goofy man she’s falling in love with is, in fact, Santa. Scrooge’s unbelief in Marley’s ghost yields to a belief in the ghosts that call him to love his neighbor and to keep Christmas—or else. Many adults can recall a moment when their belief in Santa awakened to doubts, and many parents mourn that turning point in their children. Our Christmas cultural landscape attests to the fact that belief itself is a powerful and precious thing, even if it is expressed in a young-consumerist’s desire for a particular toy to appear magically under the tree.

So…faith and belief. Allies, adversaries, different genres, objective vs subjective, gift vs effort? Whaddya think?

No one knows that better than the folks in New Orleans, and they knew it even before Saturday night’s “dispiriting” loss–to the Cowboys of all teams. Still, it’s tough to accept. I did think the Saints were looking less-than-inevitable for a couple weeks now, but since my Giants have no defense and no shot, I’d love to see the Saints march it in.

Still, a better bet would be on popes Pius XII and John Paul II, who have been cleared for the first of three steps to formal sainthood. The declaration of the heroic virtue of JP2 was no surprise, but that of P12 was, as John Thavis reports on the CNS blog.

The pairing of popes on the canonization track seems to be a trend–in 2000 it was Pius IX and John XXIII.

Alas, the NFL has no such provision…

The Word of the Father, through which time was made, became flesh and made his birthday in time, and willed a single day for his human birth, he without whose divine permission no day rolls round. With the Father he precedes all the spaces of ages; born this day of a mother, he inserted himself into the courses of the years.

The maker of man was made man [homo factus hominis factor]

so that

the ruler of the stars might suck at breasts,

bread might hunger,

the fountain might thirst,

light might sleep,

the way might be wearied by a journey,

truth might be accused by false witnesses,

the judge of the living and the dead might be judged by a mortal judge,

justice might be condemned by the unjust,

discipline might be beaten with whips,

the cluster of grapes might be crowned with thorns,

the foundation might be hung from a tree,

strength might be weakened,

health [salus] might be wounded,

life might die.

He suffered these and like indignities [indigna] for us so that he might free the unworthy [indignos]. He who did no evil suffered such great evils for our sakes, while we who deserved nothing good through him have received such great goods. For the sake of all this, he who was the Son of God before all the ages, without a beginning of days, deigned to be a son of man in the last days, and the One who was born, not made, of the Father was made in the mother whom he had made, so that he might exist here and now, made from the mother, from the woman who except for him would never ever herself have been able to exist.” (Sermon 191, 1; PL 38, 1010)

Usually, it’s the Baby Jesus who disappears from the manger scene, going on walkabout. But I know of a recent case (names suppressed to protect the innocent) where it was the virgin Mary. What happened? The explanatory converation went something like this:

Adult: ”I noticed that Mary’s not in the manger right now.  Do you know where she is?’”

Six-year-old girl: ‘Yes.  She’s left the baby with Joseph and is going shopping with the shepherds and the  Groovy Girls to buy Christmas presents for her family. What do you think the baby Jesus would like?”

Rather than an in-class final exam, I give my students a take-home final in an effort to allow them to bring together and appropriate the material of the semester. This year I gave them as a title for their paper: “”Exploring Catholicism: A Tapestry of the Journey.” I also reminded them of some of the overarching principles that structured our journey and that they might use as threads for their tapestry.

Reading their papers (some of them quite fine) prevented me until this morning from catching up with yesterday’s New York Times. There I found Peter Steinfels own account of the tapestry he has woven in the course of writing 486 “Beliefs” columns. He also identifies some of the “threads” that have distinguished his weaving.

He identifies six, and one will immediately recognize the nuanced Steinfels’ pattern. Each of us will appreciate one or more of the six in a particular way. Here is one that especially resonated with me (for obvious reasons):

Third, intelligence and critical reasoning are essential to adult approaches to faith. In short, theology matters. It is curious that so many otherwise thoughtful people imagine that what they learned about religion by age 13, or perhaps 18, will suffice for the rest of their lives. They would never make the same assumption about science, economics, art, sex or love.

The one downside to the column comes at the end:

The next Beliefs column will be the last.

Though Advent inclines toward Isaiah, Frank Rich clearly prefers Jeremiah with his morning coffee. His latest reads like an updating of Auden’s “low dishonest decade.”

If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy).

Though perhaps overwrought (as jeremiads are wont to be), Rich may offer something worth meditating upon in this last week of Advent:

As cons go, Woods’s fraudulent image as an immaculate exemplar of superhuman steeliness is benign. His fall will damage his family, closest friends, Accenture and the golf industry much more than the rest of us. But the syndrome it epitomizes is not harmless. We keep being fooled by leaders in all sectors of American life, over and over. A decade that began with the “reality” television craze exemplified by “American Idol” and “Survivor” — both blissfully devoid of any reality whatsoever — spiraled into a wholesale flight from truth.

Reality? truth? Beyond the hermeneutics of suspicion of the Pilates of this world: “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

This interesting article from Biblical Archeology Review disputes the oft-cited hypothesis (see this pair of letters from readers in today’s Washington Post, for instance) that the early Christians selected Dec. 25 as the date for Christmas as a way of appropriating and eclipsing mid-winter pagan celebrations like Saturnalia.

Alas, I cannot claim to read Biblical Archeology Review regularly; the always invaluable website Arts & Letters Daily linked to this piece.

It almost seems absurd to repost information that is available in dozens of other places on the Internet, but a few folks have asked my take on the current health care endgame. 

After legislative maneuvering last week that led to the excision of the so-called “public option,” the Senate Democrats have 59 of the 60 votes they need to pass a motion to end debate on the bill (known as “cloture”) and move to a vote.  Assuming the bill then passes, it gets sent to a joint House-Senate conference committee where it gets reconciled with the House reform bill.  The consolidated bill is then sent back to both chambers for up/down votes.  In the Senate, this vote can also be filibustered.

So where is the final vote in the Senate going to come from?  There are two plausible options at this point.  The first is Ben Nelson (D-NE), a relatively conservative Democrat who has raised concerns about the bill’s treatment of abortion (he supported the failed Senate version of the Stupak Amendment) and the fiscal burden it would place on states. 

The second is Olympia Snowe (R-ME) a relatively liberal Republican.  Snowe has been concerned about the financial impact of the individual mandate and was more open to a “triggered” public option than some conservative Democrats.  She has also stated that she is less inclined to support the bill if Reid tries to hold the Senate vote before Christmas.  Snowe is also pro-choice, so any changes that move the bill in a more pro-life direction are not going to be much help in getting her vote.

Which Senator is more likely to come on board?  Reid seems to be focusing on Nelson right now.  Yesterday, Nelson reportedly rejected a compromise on the abortion language drafted by Bob Casey (David Gibson has the details).  Today he spent the morning in a meeting with Harry Reid.  His comments after the meeting suggest that he is still negotiating seriously.  One key question is whether improvements to the abortion language would be enough to bring Nelson aboard, or whether he will use an impasse on abortion to justify a vote against a bill he clearly dislikes on other grounds as well.

Meanwhile, rage on the Left about the excision of the public option has reached a fever pitch, with Howard Dean and MoveOn.org now actively campaigning to defeat the Senate bill.  Rich Trumka of the AFL-CIO has strongly suggested that the labor federation may oppose the bill, but SEIU’s Andy Stern is (somewhat reluctantly) on board.  The split in labor reflects differences in their base.  SEIU, which left the AFL a few years back to form a rival federation known as Change to Win, represents health care workers and low wage service workers, both of which stand to gain from reform.  The AFL-CIO represents industrial and buildings trades workers who are unhappy about the tax on high-end health benefit plans.  

A lot of the criticism from the Left has focused on Obama’s leadership.  They think he could have done more to pressure senators and build support for a public option.  I think it’s true that the White House did not have the “fire in the belly” for the public option (nor do I, for the record).  I think the critics vastly overestimate, though, Obama’s ability to bring pressure on the senators who have created the most difficulty for him.  Obama is relatively unpopular in places like Arkansas and Nebraska.  I joked to one colleague today that the only way that Obama was going to be able to pressure Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) was by threatening to come to Arkansas and campaign for her.

What does seem clear is that Obama and the Congressional Democrats need to end this impasse soon.  Obama’s poll numbers, while relatively stable in recent weeks, have fallen markedly since early in the year.  Congressional Democrats have lost the generic ballot advantage they had over Republicans early in the year.  If this struggle carries over into 2010, there is an increasing risk of losing Democrats facing tough re-election fights.

If health care reform does not get done in this Congress, it is fair to ask whether it can ever be done.  The political parties have become more ideologically homogenous and the ideological divide between them seems to be increasing. There is now an effective 60 vote requirement in the Senate on many major pieces of legislation.  Historically, the United States is a center-right country that generally embraces solutions from the left only in times of economic crisis (and sometimes not even then).  The Democrats are almost certainly going to lose several seats in both the Senate and House next year, giving the Republicans an effective legislative veto.   Advocates for health care reform can quibble about the details, but in terms of passing major reform, the time may well be now or never. 

That’s James Martin, S.J., and in the WSJ yet, lamenting: “this year what’s been irking me are the slogans that companies are deploying in their December ad campaigns that hope to have it both ways: They’re using religious themes without actually being religious. Call it faith-based advertising.”

And he awards the “prize” ex aequo:

The winner of this year’s worst catch phrase is a tie: between Macy’s and Eddie Bauer. Macy’s shopping bags say, “A million reasons to believe!” In what? What does Macy’s want us to believe in? That Jesus is the Son of God? (Imagine that on a bag.)

Nearly as maddening was the cover of this year’s Eddie Bauer catalog, which proclaims “We believe.” As with Macy’s, I was eager to find out just what Eddie Bauer believed in. The Council of Chalcedon’s fifth-century declaration that Jesus was fully human and fully divine? Not exactly. Page three professed the retailer’s creed: “We believe in the world’s best down.”

Of course I know that this is the way marketing works. Retailers use anything to hawk a product. And I’m sorry to be a stickler, but it’s strange seeing the Christian faith being used and denied at the same time.

Chalcedon? Now that’s moving beyond the impasse!

John Allen has posted this at the end of this week’s column (December 18). Bravo!

“I don’t usually respond in public to criticism of my work, in part because writing about somebody else writing about me seems like the dictionary definition of “self-involved.” Recently, however, some important voices in Catholic affairs have lodged an objection, in terms serious enough that I owe them and my readers a reply.

“A bit of background is in order.

“On Dec. 4, I posted an item on the “NCR Today” blog about an exchange between Terrence Tilley, past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the new Avery Dulles professor of theology at Fordham, and Capuchin Fr. Thomas Weinandy, executive director of the Secretariat for Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Though I don’t have space to get into the substantive issues, Weinandy objected to an address Tilley gave last June about impasses in theology, which among other things touched upon the doctrine of the Incarnation.

“To be sure, the exchange itself is imminently newsworthy. These two figures help shape Catholic conversation in America, and their disagreements illustrate some of today’s defining tensions in Catholic theology.

“Yet in my report, I pushed too hard on Weinandy’s role as the doctrinal advisor to the U.S. bishops. (The lead compared Weinandy to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the Vatican’s doctrinal czar.) This was despite the fact that Weinandy’s essay indicated that he was not writing in an official capacity, and despite the fact that sources told me on background that the U.S. bishops have no plans to get involved. As a result, some readers actually suspected the whole point of my piece was to get Tilley into trouble.

“In response, Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, the veteran editor and columnist for Commonweal who co-directs Fordham’s Center for Religion and Culture, called what I had written “weasel journalism.” The three top officers of the CTSA released a letter saying that I had engaged in “speculation, punditry, maybe even gossip — but not journalism.”

“I respect those folks, and take their criticism seriously. I probably did “sex up” the story in a misguided effort to attract eyeballs, and for that, I owe everyone involved — Tilley, Weinandy, the CTSA and the USCCB — an apology.

“Here’s the point I was trying to get across: Scholarly disputes can be early warning signs of new storm fronts gathering in the church. When the top doctrinal advisor to the U.S. bishops invokes phrases such as “doctrinal ambiguities and errors” with respect to a well-known American theologian, it would be a children’s fantasy to believe that the theologian, and the views he or she represents, face no risk at all. That’s not speculation or gossip, it’s the voice of experience. I should have expressed that point more responsibly, but the piece would have been incomplete without it.

Regular readers know I sometimes pontificate about not stoking partisan divides in the church. I’ll try to take my own advice … without, of course, failing to tell the whole story.”

http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/health-jewish-catholic-relations

You may want to rethink things, if you like food and shelter.  Very, very grim report on how the recession is affecting hiring in the humanities.

“ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Parts of the Pakistani military and intelligence services are mounting what American officials here describe as a campaign to harass American diplomats, fraying relations at a critical moment when the Obama administration is demanding more help to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

“The problems affected military attachés, C.I.A. officers, development experts, junior level diplomats and others, a senior American diplomat said. As a result, some American aid programs to Pakistan, which President Obama has called a critical ally, are “grinding to a halt,” the diplomat said.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/world/asia/17visa.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=Pakistan&st=cse

So what’s this all about?

As the Copenhagen Climate Conference moves into its crucial final week, the Vatican has released Pope Benedict’s annual Message for the World Day of Peace. It is dedicated to environmental responsibility, and concludes:

If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation. The quest for peace by people of good will surely would become easier if all acknowledge the indivisible relationship between God, human beings and the whole of creation. In the light of divine Revelation and in fidelity to the Church’s Tradition, Christians have their own contribution to make. They contemplate the cosmos and its marvels in light of the creative work of the Father and the redemptive work of Christ, who by his death and resurrection has reconciled with God “all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (Col 1:20). Christ, crucified and risen, has bestowed his Spirit of holiness upon mankind, to guide the course of history in anticipation of that day when, with the glorious return of the Saviour, there will be “new heavens and a new earth” (2 Pet 3:13), in which justice and peace will dwell for ever. Protecting the natural environment in order to build a world of peace is thus a duty incumbent upon each and all. It is an urgent challenge, one to be faced with renewed and concerted commitment; it is also a providential opportunity to hand down to coming generations the prospect of a better future for all. May this be clear to world leaders and to those at every level who are concerned for the future of humanity: the protection of creation and peacemaking are profoundly linked! For this reason, I invite all believers to raise a fervent prayer to God, the all-powerful Creator and the Father of mercies, so that all men and women may take to heart the urgent appeal: If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation.

The new issue is now on the Web, making this the perfect time to acquaint yourself with our newly redesigned Web site. Here’s what everyone can read:

• Our editorial on the president’s plan for Afghanistan: “Obama’s Surge“
• A second editorial on the new “pastoral provision” for Anglicans: “Business as Usual?“
• Our newest columnist, Charles R. Morris, on the hopes for health-care reform: “A Modest Miracle“
• Film critic Richard Alleva’s review of A Christmas Carol and Precious: “Transformers“

Subscribers will find plenty more to keep them busy during the holidays, including “Misery Will Never End,” a short story by Jean Sulivan (translated from French by Joseph Cunneen) that’s more holiday-appropriate than the title suggests. William Pfaff’s column on what the financial industry owes the public, “The Buck Starts Here.” Tom Quigley’s assessment of the situation in Honduras, and the role of the Catholic church: “Democracy Undone.” Jerry Ryan’s roundup of French Catholic thinkers who influenced Vatican II: “Unlikely Prophets.” Celia Wren’s review of the new documentary Scenes from a Parish: “Feeding the Multitudes.” Lawrence Joseph’s review of Marie Ponsot’s new book of poems, Easy: “Between Silence & Sound.” Valerie Sayers’s review of Nicole d’Entremont’s novel City of Belief: “Displaced Souls.” Daniel Cere’s lengthy assessment of Ziad W. Munson’s The Making of Pro-Life Activists: “Converts to a Cause.” A delightful collection of letters, of course. And, finally, Alice Alech’s description of a traditional Christmas in the South of France: “Noël Provençal.”

Last-minute shoppers and loyal supporters, take note: gift subscriptions to Commonweal are available at a special $45 rate! Is there someone on your list — naughty or nice — who ought to be on ours?

The military spin- down from President Obama’s Afghan decision to give them what General McChrystal asked for is sobering to watch.

According to the NYTimes, “General Rodriguez did not back away from [Obama's] timeline, saying that all of the additional troops would be in Afghanistan within 9 to 11 months. But he spoke in some of the bluntest terms yet about the difficulties in achieving that goal. ‘There’s lots of risks in here, but we’re going to try to get them in as fast as we can,’ he said in an interview at his heavily fortified headquarters. ‘There’s a lot of things that have to line up perfectly.’

“A central tenet of Mr. Obama’s revised strategy for Afghanistan is to knock the Taliban on their heels with a wave of American forces, providing security and buying time for the Afghan Army and the national police to train and take over security duties.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/world/asia/15mullen.html?_r=1&ref=world

Add to that President Karzai’s announcement that Afghanistan will not have the financial resources to pay for its own security until 2024. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/world/asia/09gates.html?scp=2&sq=Karzai&st=cse

UPDATE: This story in the Washington Post underlines a point made in the comments here: It just isn’t the military who are going, but the contractors as well. “The surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan could be accompanied by a surge of up to 56,000 contractors, vastly expanding the presence of personnel from the U.S. private sector in a war zone, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

Recently, on this blog, David Gibson has suggested an interpretation of Obama’s Nobel Speech in light of Niebuhr’s Christian realism, which I pointed out is also a favorite trope of George Weigel.  In the NYTimes today, David Brooks also reads Obama in connection with Niebuhr and ties both to “Cold War Liberalism.”  Here’s the meat of Brooks’ article:

Cold war liberalism had a fine run in the middle third of the 20th century, and it has lingered here and there since. Scoop Jackson kept the flame alive in the 1970s. Peter Beinart wrote a book called “The Good Fight,” giving the tendency modern content.

But after Vietnam, most liberals moved on. It became unfashionable to talk about evil. Some liberals came to believe in the inherent goodness of man and the limitless possibilities of negotiation. Some blamed conflicts on weapons systems and pursued arms control. Some based their foreign-policy thinking on being against whatever George W. Bush was for. If Bush was an idealistic nation-builder, they became Nixonian realists.

Barack Obama never bought into these shifts. In the past few weeks, he has revived the Christian realism that undergirded cold war liberal thinking and tried to apply it to a different world.

Obama’s race probably played a role here. As a young thoughtful black man, he would have become familiar with prophetic Christianity and the human tendency toward corruption; familiar with the tragic sensibility of Lincoln’s second inaugural; familiar with the guarded pessimism of Niebuhr, who had such a profound influence on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In 2002, Obama spoke against the Iraq war, but from the vantage point of a cold war liberal. He said he was not against war per se, just this one, and he was booed by the crowd. In 2007, he spoke about the way Niebuhr formed his thinking: “I take away the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction.”

So, who’s side is this Niebuhr guy on?  ”Doves” like MLK?  ”Hawks” like Weigel?  And do we really need to be rolling back to the Cold War?  Finally, I’m sure troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would describe the situations there as anything but cold.  So, how “cold” is Obama’s “Cold War Liberalism”?

UPDATE:  I just wanted to link in the main body of this post the article David Gibson wrote over at Politics Daily on Obama and Niebuhr.  Definitely well worth a read!

Sandro Magister, on his Chiesa website, reports on a conference in Rome that brought together philosophers, theologians, scientists, and artists to discuss the topic: “God Today.” It was sponsored by the Italian Episcopal Conference and was the inspiration of its former President, Cardinal Ruini. Magister provides some excerpts here.

I was particularly struck by the remarks of Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Pariarch of Venice, and one of Italy’s foremost theologians, who critiques a one-sided appeal to kenosis when meditating on and speaking of God:

“It is only in the God who is Logos-Love that meaning is given to the decisive theme of the divine ‘kénosis’ as the way in which God-Truth-Goodness offers himself to men. The kenotic God is not a weak God, but a God who loves, and offers him as such to the liberty of man.”

Thirty years ago, a not yet thirty year old Rowan Williams wrote a remarkable book, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross.

To celebrate today’s feast of Saint John of the Cross, some reflections from that book:

John of the Cross sums up, in very many respects, classical themes of Christian spirituality, of the distinctively Christian understanding of spiritual maturation.

On the one hand: the Word is flesh and is communicated in the flesh — in historical tradition, in personal human encounter, in material sacrament. The Word re-forms the possibilities of human existence and calls us to the creation of new humanity in the public, the social and  historical world — to the transformation of behavior and relationship, knowing God in acting and making.

On the other hand: the Word made flesh is recognized as such in the great crisis and resolution of crucifixion and resurrection. The Word is crucified and rejected by the world; only when we see that there is no place for the Word in the world do we see that he is God’s Word, the Word of the hidden, transcendent creator. And then, only then, can we see, hear, experience the newness of that creative God, resurrection and grace, new life out of the ultimate negation and despair.

En una Noche oscura/ con ansias en amores inflamada/ Oh dichosa ventura!

As you light the third candle on the menorah tonight (as every good Commonweal reader would–no?) I’d direct your attention to this David Brooks column on the Hanukkah of history, which provides a more comprehensive take on the story of the Maccabees than we normally get:

Tonight Jewish kids will light the menorah, spin their dreidels and get their presents, but Hanukkah is the most adult of holidays. It commemorates an event in which the good guys did horrible things, the bad guys did good things and in which everybody is flummoxed by insoluble conflicts that remain with us today. It’s a holiday that accurately reflects how politics is, how history is, how life is.

[snip]

The Jewish civil war raised questions: Who is a Jew? Who gets to define the right level of observance? It also created a spiritual crisis. This was not a battle between tribes. It was a battle between theologies and threw up all sorts of issues about why bad things happen to faithful believers and what happens in the afterlife — issues that would reverberate in the region for centuries, to epic effect.

The Maccabees are best understood as moderate fanatics. They were not in total revolt against Greek culture. They used Greek constitutional language to explain themselves. They created a festival to commemorate their triumph (which is part of Greek, not Jewish, culture). Before long, they were electing their priests.

On the other hand, they were fighting heroically for their traditions and the survival of their faith. If they found uncircumcised Jews, they performed forced circumcisions. They had no interest in religious liberty within the Jewish community and believed religion was a collective regimen, not an individual choice.

They were not the last bunch of angry, bearded religious guys to win an insurgency campaign against a great power in the Middle East, but they may have been among the first. They retook Jerusalem in 164 B.C. and rededicated the temple. Their regime quickly became corrupt, brutal and reactionary. The concept of reform had been discredited by the Hellenizing extremists. Practice stagnated. Scholarship withered. The Maccabees became religious oppressors themselves, fatefully inviting the Romans into Jerusalem.

A very Niebuhrian take, which is characteristic of Brooks–and Obama in Oslo, and elsewhere, I’d argue. And yes, perhaps a lesson on the perils of assimilation, or accommodation, and retrenchment. Oh, and a great story. Whatever happened to Mel Gibson’s movie project on the Maccabees? A “Jewish western,” I believe he called it. Maybe the story line got a tad complex.

Good yontif!

The babies talked about here were brought about by five different people: the putative social parents (2), the donors of genetic material (egg/sperm) (2), the gestational surrogate (1).

And as the article says, this is a matter of state law–and state law is not at all consistent. And it’s been that way for a while–since the famous New Jersey Baby M case.  Here is a story about how she turned out.  And here’s the model law proposed by the American Bar Association to address the problem.  As I keep telling my students, states are more than convenient locations for tourist bureaus.  They have different frameworks for addressing issues–and those differences can matter greatly.

Chosen deliberately as a means of bringing a child into the world, these procedures would not be morally acceptable to official Church teaching. Artificial insemination (by donor or husband) isn’t allowed.  Neither is in vitro fertilization–for married couples as well as for anyone else. What’s interesting, however, is that some (but by no means all) conservative Catholic moralists are defending “embryo adoption” which is gestational surrogacy followed by adoption, no the grounds that it is a form of “prenatal adoption” — a way of rescuing frozen embryos from their state of suspended animation.  I haven’t studied the issue carefully, but I’m skeptical about the logical consistency of the arguments.
UPDATE:  HERE IS DIGNITATIS PERSONAE, the latest Vatican instruction on the topic–which, as David Gibson and Paul Lauritzen rightly point out, doesn’t green light embryo adoption either.

It’s rose, not pink!

Some may weary of the translation discussion but Joseph O’Leary brings further light to the matter:
“One of the most horrific statements of Card. George at the recent USCCB meeting was that the Vatican is also insisting that the French translation of the Missal be brought more into line with the original Latin. The current French translation is quite beautiful, thanks to the participation of poet Patrice de la Tour du Pin. Letting the philistines loose on it would be criminal.

“Ken writes:  ‘While it is a bit more formal, the new English translation does track closer to the current Spanish translation, and Latinos have been using the current Spanish translation for many years, without much wailing or knashing of teeth.’  ‘Gnashing’ is the word. This comment is unconscionable. That the Spanish is closer to a literal translation of the Latin says nothing about the horrific infelicities of the proposed new English text. Closeness to the Latin is less likely to create problems in Spanish, a Latin language, than in English. But in fact the alleged closeness is not closeness at all: ‘just’ for ‘justum’ is fake closeness, then kind of mistake you get from non-native speakers of English. Even if the English translation were as close to the Latin as it claims to be, this would not excuse its lack of rhythm, syntactical common sense, communicative diction, and prayerfulness.”

On the first anniversary of his death:

Who shall separate us from the love of  Christ? Shall tribulation or distress, persecution or famine, nakedness or peril or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerers through him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Fr. Vincent Twomey, a former professor of moral theology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ireland, did his doctoral dissertation under the guidance of the present Pope. He is one of the former students who gather with their former professor once a year for theological conversation. Perhaps this gives greater weight to the column he wrote for the Irish Times on the scandal now shaking the Church in Ireland.

Nope, not the policy frontlines, but where people try to navigate the current broken health care system and stay alive. We need to keep stories like this one from the St. Petersburg Times in mind as we watch the wrangling in Washington… Here’s a piece of the author’s conclusion. Common good, anyone?

I believe a nation is best defined by what I call “shared destiny”: the goals we collectively embrace, the burdens we collectively share. Is the cost of good health for every American a burden that should be shared by all Americans? Should it matter to all of us when any of us dies a preventable death?

HT: Don Lattin

In 1979, the great film director John Huston turned to the producer of his latest film and said: “I’ve been had!”

Brad Dourif as Hazel Motes

The context: Huston had just wrapped his film adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s novel, Wise Blood. Huston, an atheist who wasn’t shy about it, wanted to capture the violence, grotesquerie, and Southern gothicism of O’Connor’s story without the God bits.

But his collaborators on the film were Sally Fitzgerald and two of her sons, Benedict and Michael. The Fitzgeralds, as you may know, were close friends of O’Connor, devoutly Catholic, and eventually became her literary executors.

The Fitzgeralds managed to maneuver Huston perfectly: his directorial genius wedded to their terrific script.

The result is an improbable triumph — brilliantly cast (Brad Dourif as Hazel Motes), filmed on richly-suggestive locations in and around Macon, Georgia, this story of a prophet-in-the-making is dense with meaning, horror, and dark comedy.

Many of O’Connor’s great lines make it through unscathed, including the classic: “”No man with a good car needs to be justified.”

Unavailable for many years, it has just been released in the prestigious Criterion Collection, complete with interviews with Brad Dourif, Michael and Benedict Fitzgerald, and an audio recording of O’Connor reading “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

What do you think: the perfect stocking stuffer for that special someone enamored of the anagogical imagination?

Over at the Book Bench blog at The New Yorker, there is a posting about Cormac McCarthy’s typewriter, an Olivetti Lettera 32, being sold at auction for $254,500.  Apparently, McCarthy typed every book he has written on this typewriter.  I hope the fact that he sold the typewriter doesn’t mean that he plans to stop writing.  But it wouldn’t surprise me.  I was never attached to a typewriter in this way, but I wouldn’t give up my fountain pens for love or money.  Alas, I don’t use my pens as much as I would like, but I always pull one out if I am suffering writer’s block.  I also think my best writing has always been done with a fountain pen.  My current favorite is a relatively inexpensive Aurora that I bought in Rome a few years ago.  But if anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas, an old Parker 51 would be lovely.

Do you have a favorite pen or typewriter?  Has a particular pen changed your life?  I would love to hear your writing stories.