One of the singular services of magazines like Commonweal are the book reviews, alerting us to worthwhile volumes we might otherwise miss. And when the reviewer is someone whom we have learned to trust, whose authority has impressed itself on us, then one pays particular heed. So, in the February 24th issue (subscribers only), I at once turned to Luke Timothy Johnson’s long review of the volumes that have already appeared of the Brazos Biblical Commentaries Series. Among the critical comments made by Johnson, this favorable appraisal caught my eye:

By far the finest entry on the New Testament, and one of the Brazos commentaries I will gladly recommend to students, is Joseph Mangina’s reading of the Book of Revelation. Displaying both historical and linguistic competence, as well as a deep familiarity with critical scholarship on this difficult composition, he writes engagingly and well, invoking with substantial nuance a wide spectrum of literary, artistic, and liturgical readings of Revelation.

Taking Johnson at his word, I purchased the volume and found it makes for wonderful Lenten meditation. Here is a portion of  Mangina’s reflection on the Letter to the church at Ephesus from chapter two of Revelation:

what will save the church is Christ, whose self-giving cannot but call forth a similar response on the part of his people. Evidently, the church in Ephesus once manifested this love, but its passion has cooled, with the inevitable result that it has turned away from Christ toward other concerns. This is why it is urgent that they repent, turning back to “the love you had at first.”

The alternative to such repentance is stark: Christ threatens to remove this church’s lampstand from its place … the church’s calling is to be a shining lamp in the world, the light of Christ, and if it no longer loves him, how can it fulfill this mission?

The laudable goal of increasing recognition for  the right to religious freedom takes a strange twist in an editorial in the newspaper of the Diocese of Brooklyn, which links the issue  to taxes. The newspaper makes the argument that high taxes prevent people  from donating money to religious charities, including the annual bishop’s appeal. “Personal income is eroded through taxation, therefore freedom to practice one’s religion is also limited,” the editorial states.

I am aghast at this reasoning, especially since I am aware that the  publisher of  The Tablet, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, appointed a panel from outside the paper’s regular staff to weigh these editorial stances carefully. According to the editorial board:

When over 50% of federal spending goes to entitlements or social services and the total tax burden is rising to the highest level in history, we are confronted with a situation in which the role of the state reaches so deeply into the everyday lives of citizens that it is affecting our ability even to support our religious institutions.

The Tablet’s focus on spending for social services  contradicts the budget analysis the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued. It says: “The nation needs to substantially reduce future deficits, but not at the expense of hungry and poor people. Funding focused on reducing poverty should not be cut.” The Tablet blames such spending for taxation at “the highest level in history” – which is  factually wrong – to say nothing of whether it is wrong for the church to stoke resentment against those who rely on social services the government provides.

Rather than recommend the bishops’ conference as a source of information, The Tablet refers readers to the Web site of the Heritage Foundation, which has nothing to say about the poor in its briefing on tax policy.

It is unfortunate – I’ll leave it at that -  that the diocese, launching  its annual appeal this week, is complaining that  government spending on social services is depriving its parishioners of the freedom to donate money to the church.  Aren’t my donations tax-exempt?

The Lord will grant that my weak voice will be strong enough today to keep your attention. Please help me by your silence, for my mind is ready but the flesh weak. Having conceived joyous things from God’s Scriptures, that mind is now in labor, and desires to give birth to them in your ears and minds. Provide a nest for the word in yourselves. The Scriptures praise the turtle dove that seeks a nest where she may lay her little ones (Ps 83[84]:4). (Sermon 37, 1; PL 38, 221)

“I will divide Sichem” (Ps 59(60):8. How does the Church divide Sichem? Sichem means “shoulders”. Shoulders are divided when their sins weigh down some while others bear Christ’s burden. He was looking for devout shoulders when he said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Mt 11:30). Other burdens press and weigh you down; Christ’s burden lifts you. Other burdens have weight; Christ’s burden has wings. If you remove the wings of a bird, it might seem as if you are removing a burden, but the more of the burden you take away, the more the bird will be earth-bound. The bird you wanted to unburden just lies there; it can’t fly because you took away its burden. When the burden returns, the bird flies. That is what Christ’s burden is like. Don’t be slow to take it on you; forget about the ones who don’t want to carry it. Let them bear it who wish to, and they will find how light it is, how sweet, how pleasant, how it snatches you away from the earth and takes you up into the sky. (Augustine, EnPs 59(60), 8; PL 36, 719)

The leaking, counter-leaking, information and disinfo continue with the story in today’s (Wed.) NYTimes offering armchair calculations about how Iran would respond to an Israeli attack.

“While a missile retaliation against Israel would be virtually certain, according to these assessments, Iran would also be likely to try to calibrate its response against American targets so as not to give the United States a rationale for taking military action that could permanently cripple Tehran’s nuclear program.” Here.

Does this invite U.S. acquiescence in an Israeli attack?  Or does it show how brave (or foolhardy) Israel is, and how prudent (or cowardly) the U.S. is?

In the article, an Israeli official offers this calculation: “’If Iran is struck surgically, it will react — no doubt,’” said the former Israeli official, echoing Mr. Barak’s comments last year. “’But that reaction will be calculated and in proportion to its capabilities. Iran will not set the Middle East on fire.’

“”Is 40 missiles on Tel Aviv nice?’” the official asked, summing up the Israeli calculus. “’No. But it’s better than a nuclear Iran.’”

Really? If  I lived in Tel Aviv this conjecture would not reassure me…. but I live in New York where there have been real terrorists attacks….

And here’s an eye-opener in Ha’aretz: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to publicly harden his line against Iran during a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on March 5, according to a senior Israeli official.

“Israel wants Obama to make further-reaching declarations than the vague assertion that “all options are on the table,” the official said. In particular, Netanyahu wants Obama to state unequivocally that the United States is preparing for a military operation in the event that Iran crosses certain “red lines,” said the official; Israel feels this will increase pressure on Iran by making clear that there exists a real U.S. threat.”

And read on about various Netanyahu efforts at lobbying the U.S. Congress.

M.J.Rosenberg has these observations at Media Matters.

The first graduate course I taught when I went to Catholic University in 1977 was on the Second Vatican Council. As a way of getting students to reflect on what had changed during and after the Council, I gave them the paragraphs that Garry Wills wrote for the editors of Commonweal in response to their questions: Is there such a thing any more as Catholic culture? Would we be better off with it or without it? [Garry Wills on Catholic culture] (It says something already that the questions could have been posed already in 1967, only two years after the close of the Council.) At first, most of the Catholic students knew about the practices that Wills evoked in stream-of-consciousness fashion, but as the years passed, I had to explain more and more of them even to the Catholic students. The problem was even greater when I began to teach the course also to undergraduates. For them I hit upon the idea of having them conduct an interview with one or two Catholics who were old enough to remember the Church as it was before Vatican II, and for the task I prepared a set of questions that I wanted them to pose. Interview about Vatican II

The exercise was pedagogically very effective, and many students wrote that it had made the Council and its aftermath something very alive and personal, and even familial–more than one told me it was the first conversation about their religion that they had had with a parent. Some also, having received some indication of what it was like to be a Catholic before the Council, wondered what markers of identity they might point to today.

If any reader is inclined to answer the questions, please note that I wanted those being interviewed to have to answer not only about their dislikes then and now, but also about what they liked then and like now. (Why is it that we seem always readier to complain than to appreciate?)

Last week, 47 of John Carroll University’s roughly 215 faculty members signed a letter to school president Robert L. Niehoff, SJ, asking him to accept the contraception “accommodation” and include such coverage in employee health plans. The faculty members express their concern that “the bishops have chosen a path of continued confrontation.” Given that the bishops “have rejected the accommodation offered by the administration,” they continue, “leads us to wonder what motivates their continued resistance.” Rejecting the bishops’ claim that the contraception-coverage mandate constitutes an attack on religious freedom, the faculty argue that mandate “is driven by a concern for women’s health.” The signatories include the co-founders of the university’s new public-health minor program, and members of the following departments: Biology, Classical and Modern Languages and Cultures, Communication and Theater Arts, Education, English, History, the Library, Math and Computer Science, Philosophy, Political Science, Physics, Psychology, Sociology and Criminology, and Theology and Religious Studies.

“Access to contraception is central to the health and well-being of women and children,” according to these faculty members. Therefore, they urge Niehoff to “stand up to those who would play politics with women’s health,” and “endorse a policy of insurance coverage of contraception that respects the religious liberties and health of all who teach and work at Catholic colleges and universities.” (You can view the entire letter here.)

Not sure if this is the first letter of its kind, but I doubt it will be the last.

Hope in him, all you assembly of the people. Pour your hearts out before him (Ps 61[62]: 9). Don’t give in to those who are asking you, Where is your God? My tears, the Psalmist says elsewhere, have become my bread day and night while they say to me everyday: “where is your God?”And what does the Psalmist say there? These things I considered, and I poured out my soul above me (Ps 41[42]: 4-5). I remembered what I hear, “Where is your God?” Seeking my God, I poured out my soul above me so that I might reach him; I didn’t remain in myself. Hope in him, all you assembly of the people. Pour your hearts out before him, praying, confessing, hoping. Don’t restrain your hearts inside your hearts: Pour out your hearts before him. What you pour out is not lost. For he is my protector. Cast your care upon the Lord (Ps 54[55]:23), and hope in him. Pour out your hearts before him, God our helper. (Augustine, EnPs 61[62], 14; PL 36. 740)

Armchair Generals Lindsay Graham and John McCain have introduced a resolution in the Senate that reads very much like a proto-declaration of war. Items 6 and 7 say that Iran has no right to nuclear fuel development and that even if no weapons are created and  that the U.S. should not tolerate a policy that would allow containment. The whole resolution is here. Sounds like a run up to war.

Resolved, That the Senate–…

(6) rejects any United States policy that would rely on efforts to contain a nuclear weapons-capable Iran; and

(7) urges the President to reaffirm the unacceptability of an Iran with nuclear-weapons capability and oppose any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.

Did I mention that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is in Washington to meet with officials, followed soon thereafter by PM Netanyahu who will meet with the president. And, oh yes….. AIPAC will begin its annual Washington policy meeting and lobbying efforts on March 4.  Any connections here, I wonder?

Nathan Guttman has a rundown at The Jewish Daily Forward.   The Economist weighs in: hawkish but realpolitik.

For you have become my protector and my refuge on the day of my trouble. O my helper, I will sing to you because you, God, are my protector (Ps 58[59] 17-18). What would I have been had you not come to my aid? How hopeless would I have been if you did not heal me! Where would I now be lying unless you had come to meet me? I was in danger from a massive wound, a wound that required an almighty doctor, a doctor for whom nothing is incurable, who never refuses anyone. You have only to desire to be healed and not refuse his touch. But even if you refuse to be healed, your wound will urge you to be cured; he calls you back when you are unwilling, and when you flee him, somehow he allures you and makes you come back to him. In all these ways he fulfils what was said: “His mercy will go before me” (Ps 58[59]: 10). Read the rest of this entry »

That champion of religious liberty, Rick Santorum, is castigating President Obama for apologizing over what U.S. officials say was the inadvertent burning of books of the Qur’an in Afghanistan. Santorum’s reasoning is that since the destruction of the Qur’an was done in error, there was no reason to apologize.

So one only need apologize for intentional transgressions? This accidental destruction of what a people hold sacred should be shrugged off as “unfortunate,” Santorum argues, contending that an apology shows weakness.

Obviously, there is a double standard at work here. If the U.S. bishops’ campaign for religious liberty is to have any meaning at all, it will have to apply to all religions. Otherwise, what should be a noble idea becomes no more than a lobbying position and, for many who have picked up the theme, a political wedge issue.

For the bishops to be silent while those who herald their position simultaneously encourage contempt for the practice of Islam to gain votes makes a sham of the call for religious liberty.

It is written, “The Lord your God is testing you in order to know if you love him” (Dt 13:3). The phrase “in order to know” means “in order to enable you to know,” because how strong one’s love is is hidden from oneself unless it becomes known even to one’s own self by God’s testing it. (QQ in Heptateuchum, 57; PL 34, 563)

Nam et alibi scriptum est, Tentat vos Dominus Deus vester, ut sciat si diligitis eum (Deut. XIII, 3): etiam hoc genere locutionis, ut sciat, dictum est, ac si diceretur, ut scire vos faciat; quoniam vires dilectionis suae hominem latent, nisi divino experimento etiam eidem innotescant.

[JAK: This explanation is found in many other places in Augustine, as also in Aquinas, and I think the idea goes back at least to Aristotle: that one's spontaneous reaction in a sudden and urgent situation is the test of one's character and virtue.  "Experimentum" has its original meaning of "test" and not "experience."]

When I was in grammar school with the Brothers of the Christian Schools, there was the spiritual practice of pausing on the hour to the injunction:

Let us remember that we are in the holy presence of God

For sixth graders it was a welcome relief from the intricacies of English grammar or mental arithmetic. But it also inculcated a habit that perdures — dotting the day with brief moments of recollection and remembering communion.

The “Prayer over the People” that concludes the Liturgy for the First Sunday of Lent struck me as I prayed it last evening. It could well serve as a prayer we repeat at odd moments of the day: the pause that re-integrates and refreshes:

O Lord, may bountiful blessings come down upon your people,

that hope may grow in tribulation

virtue be strengthened in temptation

and eternal redemption be assured.

Through Christ our Lord.

What’s happening at Catholic News Service? A few weeks ago, I took note of a CNS article that looked like a news story but smelled like an opinion piece. On Wednesday CNS published a piece that purports to bust myths about the contraception-coverage mandate but reads more like a USCCB press release.

Look at the lead:

Exaggerations and outright misrepresentations about the Department of Health and Human Services’ contraceptive mandate have been appearing in White House “fact sheets” and mainstream media. Here are some of the more frequently cited claims and the facts to counter them.

The piece does not pin myth to mythmaker. Did the White House claim that self-funded health plans are “seldom used”? Or was that someone in the big bad MSM? Hard to say. Who floated the theory that because twenty-eight states already have contraception mandates the situation in those states won’t change after the mandate takes effect? The article doesn’t say.

To be sure, the piece does correct a couple of common confusions: The claim that 98 percent of Catholic women use or have used contraception is inaccurate; a study [.pdf] showed that 98 percent of self-identified Catholic women had used contraception (edit: other than natural family planning) at some point during childbearing years. And it’s important to keep in mind that even though twenty-eight states require insurance companies to include contraception in their prescription-drug coverage, organizations that self-fund their health plans could avoid providing contraception coverage because such plans are federally regulated. That won’t be an option under the HHS ruling.

But some of the article’s “facts” dodge important questions. Take, for example, its facts about self-funded employee health plans. Read the rest of this entry »

Keep watch in good works. Play the psaltery by obeying the commandments; play the harp by enduring your sufferings. “Break your bread with the hungry,” you have heard from Isaiah (58:7). Don’t think that fasting is enough. Fasting chastises you but does not renew anyone else. Depriving yourself will be fruitful if by it you bring comfort to others. OK, you’ve deprived yourself: to whom are you going to give what you took away? Where will you put what you denied yourself? How many poor people can feast on the meal we gave up! Fast in such a way that your joy is that your meal is that someone else is eating.

And do it for the sake of your prayers, that they may be heard. For he says there: “While you are still speaking, I shall say, ‘Here I am,’ if you break your bread from the heart” (Is 58:7, 9, 10). For quite often this giving is done by sad and grumbling people, just to get away from an annoying beggar and not in order to restore a needy person. “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9:7). If you give your bread reluctantly, you’ve lost both your bread and your merit. So do it from the heart so that the one who sees what is within you will say, even while you’re still speaking, “Here I am”–how swiftly are received the prayers of those who do good! This is our righteousness in this life: fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. Do you wish your prayers to fly to God? Give them two wings: fasting and almsgiving. May God’s light and God’s truth find us to be such persons, find us without fear when he comes to free us from death who has already come to undergo death on our behalf. Amen. (Augustine, EnPs 42[43] ;  PL 36, 482)

According to the Washington Post, the late-night satirists were heavily influential in the decision of Virginia Republicans to back down from enacting a legal requirement mandating that women obtain an invasive ultrasound before obtaining an abortion.

Never underestimate the power of satire to deflate prophetic rhetoric. Satire brings its own problems for moral analysis, too, as you will see. But as a rhetorical tool, it is extremely effective. I expect we will see much more of this in light of the most recent flare-up in the culture wars.

What are the basic problems? Prophetic rhetoric tends to obscure necessary moral distinctions by exaggeration and by suggesting that EVERYTHING is of UTMOST moral importance. If you call Obama a totalitarian, what word do you have to capture Kim Jong-Il or Stalin? Satirizing rhetoric tends to obscure necessary moral distinctions by leveling. Nothing in the end matters, because everything is mock-able.

Here’s the Saturday Night Live skit that the article talks about: (Warning, crude at points).

Here is a fascinating interview with a Catholic priest, Father David Neuhaus, who is the vicar for Hebrew-speaking Catholics. He is a convert from Judaism who first encountered Jesus through the witness of a bed-ridden eighty-nine year old Russian Orthodox nun.

The first part of the interview ends with this exchange:

Q: What would you say is the sacrament with which you have the greatest affinity?

Father Neuhaus: It was very clear right from the very beginning of my Christian life that I was very much drawn to the Eucharist; to be in contact with the Body of Christ in the Eucharist. And of course, I repeat again for 10 years I attended the Eucharist regularly without being able to participate.

Q: So the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist was never a question for you.

Father Neuhaus: Absolutely no question and not only that but I was regularly going to adoration long before I could even take Communion.

Q: What was it that drew you?

Father Neuhaus: The realization that Christ is keeping His promise in the Sacrament; the promise that He would be with us always, that we are not alone, that He is there until the end of time. I think that I was only really interiorly touched by the Sacrament of Confession when I studied here in Rome and took the classes to prepare future priests to hear Confession and then realizing that the presence of Christ in this Sacrament of Reconciliation; in this Sacrament of pardon, is a very, very powerful way to make God present in the world. I would say that all the Sacraments, of course are very, very strongly felt in the life of a priest but for me personally the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation are where I have a very strong personal sense of Jesus’ real presence in the world.

The rest is here.

The Associated Press has continued to expose the broad sweep of the New York Police Department’s spying on Muslims – not only in New York City but, as The AP now reports, elsewhere in the Northeast. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly have said police are just following leads. “We don’t stop to think about the religion,” Bloomberg said in August. ” We stop to think about the threats and focus our efforts there.” But, as the excellent investigative news Web site ProPublica notes, newly disclosed documents show that’s not the case.

One can understand why the NYPD sees a need to go beyond the surveillance local police typically do; federal authorities shamefully failed to protect the city against terrorism in the past, so Kelly has tried to fill the void. Before you draw a conclusion one way or the other, I suggest that you  peruse a 60-page internal NYPD report that the AP uncovered. In it,  intelligence officers catalog  just about anything remotely Muslim in the city of Newark, N.J.

Are you comfortable with this? There has been much discussion on dotCommonweal and elsewhere about freedom of religion for Catholics. Is religious liberty  an issue here?  Or should we say this is to be expected and focus solely on our own liberties?

Just asking.

“They shall be drunk with the abundance of your house, and you shall make them drink of the torrent of your pleasure” (Ps 35[36]:9)

Spiritual refreshment consists of two things: the gifts of God and his sweetness. With reference to the first, it says: “they shall be drunk with the abundance of your house.” The house is the Church (1 Tim 3:15: “so you may know how to behave in the house of God that is the church of the living God”). And this house, which is now on the earth, one day will be transferred to the heavens (Ps 121[122]:1: “Rejoicing we shall go into the house of the Lord”). In both houses there is an abundance of God’s gifts, but in this Church it is imperfect, while in the other there is an utterly perfect abundance of all good things, and by it spiritual people are filled (Ps 64[65]:5: “We shall be filled with the good things of your house”). And even more: “they shall be drunk” insofar as desires are fulfilled beyond all measure of merit, for drunkenness is a kind of excess (Is 64:4: “Eye has not seen, O God, what things you have prepared for those who wait for you”; Cant 5:1: “Eat, o friends, and drink, and get drunk, my dearly beloved”). People who are drunk are not inside but outside themselves. Thus those filled with spiritual gifts have all their attention on God (Ph 3:20: “Our conversation is in heaven”).

And they are refreshed not only by these gifts but also by love of God Read the rest of this entry »

Each year Pope Benedict meets with the seminarians of the Diocese of Rome and engages with them in “lectio divina:” an in-depth meditation on a passage of Scripture. His text this year was Romans 12:1&2. Here is a part of his reflection:

What is Paul appealing for in this regard? “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (v. 1). “Present your bodies”: he speaks of the liturgy, he speaks of God, of the priority of God but he does not speak of the liturgy as a ceremony, he speaks of the liturgy as life. We ourselves, our body; we in our body and as a body must be liturgy. This is the newness of the New Testament, and we shall see it again later: Christ offers himself and thereby replaces all the other sacrifices. And he wants “to draw” us into the communion of his Body. Our body, with his, becomes God’s glory, becomes liturgy. Hence this term “present” — in Greek parastesai — is not only an allegory; allegorically our life would also be a liturgy but, on the contrary, the true liturgy is that of our body, of our being in the Body of Christ, just as Christ himself made the liturgy of the world, the cosmic liturgy, which strives to draw all people to itself.

“In your body, present your body”: these words indicate man in his totality, indivisible — in the end — between soul and body, spirit and body; in the body we are ourselves and the body enlivened by the soul, the body itself, must be the realization of our worship. And we think — perhaps, I would say, each one of us should then reflect on these words — that our daily life in our body, in the small things, must be inspired, profuse, immersed in the divine reality, it must become action together with God. This does not mean that we must always be thinking of God, but that we must really be penetrated by the reality of God so that our whole life — and not only a few thoughts — may be a liturgy, may be adoration.

The rest is here.

Let us love God purely and chastely. A heart is not chaste if it worships God for the sake of reward. What, then, are we to have no reward for worshiping God? Indeed, we shall, but the reward is the very God whom we worship. He himself will be our reward because we shall see him as he is (I Jn 3:2). Consider what reward you will attain. What did our Lord Jesus Christ say to those who love him? “Anyone who loves me will keep my commandments, and whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I shall love him” (Jn 14:23). This may seem a small thing to someone who doesn’t love. But if you love, if you sigh for, if you freely [gratis] worship him by whom you were freely [gratis] bought–you had not merited it that he redeemed you–, if you sigh for him as you consider his blessings to you, and if your heart is restless with desire for him, then don’t seek something apart from him: he is enough for you. No matter how greedy you are, he is enough. …
Let me give an example from human marriages of what a chaste heart is in relation to God. In human marriages, a man does not love his wife if he loves her because of her dowry; a woman does not love her husband if she loves him because he gave her something, not even if he gave her something great…. If, then, a husband is freely [gratis] loved if he is chastely loved, and a wife is freely [gratis] loved if she is chastely loved, how is God to be loved, the soul’s true and faithful husband?… Let us love him, then, in such a way that nothing apart from him is loved, and then happens in us what we have said, what we have sung, because here is our voice too: “On whatever day I called on you, behold I came to know that you are my God” [Ps 55[56]:10). This is what it is to invoke God: to invoke him freely [gratis]. (Augustine, EnPs 55, 17; PL 36, 658)
[JAK: God’s love for us is gratis, gracious, generous, not given because we earned it. Our love for God is supposed to be gratis [Gratis amandus Deus, he writes elsewhere], because it is not love for the sake of reward. It is hard with a single word to convey these meanings in English.]

There is much ado lately about the few times in the past three years when President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the phrase “freedom of worship” rather than “freedom of religion.”  The term was good enough for FDR to include in his Four Freedoms in a speech before Congress on January 6, 1941 – “the freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – anywhere in the world,” as he wrote it himself. The same term is now Exhibit A for those prosecuting the charge that the Obama administration is set on subverting the freedom of religion.

The case was made in 2010 at First Things:

Recently, both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been caught using the phrase “freedom of worship” in prominent speeches, rather than the “freedom of religion” the President called for in Cairo.

If the swap-out occurred only once or twice, one might appropriately conclude it was merely a rhetorical accident. However, both the President and his Secretary of State have now replaced “freedom of religion” with “freedom of worship” too many times to seem inadvertent.

Rick Santorum is in on it, too:

“When you have the president of the United States referring to the freedom of religion, and you have the secretary of State referring to the freedom of religion, not as the freedom of religion but the freedom of worship, you should get very nervous, very nervous,” he told students at Hope College, a Reformed Church school.

“Because there’s a lot of tyrants around the world who will talk about freedom of worship, but they won’t talk about freedom of religion. Freedom of worship is what you do within the four walls of the church. Freedom of religion is what you do outside the four walls of the church. What the president is now seeming to mold, in the image of other elitists who think that they know best, is to limit the role of faith in the public square and your role to live that faith out in your public and private lives.”

But a  quick check of government Web sites finds that, in fact, the Obama administration continually uses the phrase “freedom of religion.” For example, Clinton started off her remarks at a conference last December by speaking of the need to protect “two fundamental freedoms – the right to practice one’s religion freely and the right to express one’s opinion without fear.” That would seem to cover the territory, twice over. Read the rest of this entry »

In a season of alms giving, some news about the rich and U.S. politics. In my CWL column, I tried to get at the absurdity of our laws, Super Pacs, and the 2012 presidential candidates: Here: February 24 Commonweal.

Trying to out-absurd the absurd is well, pretty daunting–even absurd. From Ash Wednesday’s NYTimes: one man’s $14 million absurdity.

This week’s TLS has a review by Andrew Scull of Simon Baron Cohen’s book Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty, which argues that cruelty results from a lack of empathy (one is tempted to say, “Duh!”). The six degrees of empathy can be measured by questionnaires and by the use of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging which can register the presence or absence in the brain of “empathy circuits.” Scull is not convinced and opposes himself to

a spread in popular culture of reductionistic accounts of human behaviour supposedly rooted in hard scientific findings.

But much of this faith is misplaced. Correlation is not cause, so finding (rather crude) patterns of activity in the brain is far from demonstrating how we think–not to mention that the same regions of the brain “light up” under very different circumstances. Human brains are interconnected to an almost unfathomable degree, and complex human actions are infinitely removed from the simple stimuli presented in Baron-Cohen’s and other laboratory experiments, which by their very nature cannot capture how our brains work under these circumstances. Moreover, it is unclear that the extremely indirect and temporally compromised signals that are used to construct fMRI images provide more than the most simplistic look at what is taking place. Since millions of neurons must be active to register on the scan, for example, much is necessarily not being recorded by the instrument.  …

The difficulty, as always, is the vast gap between the simple simulated experiments using functional MRI machines and crude stimuli (such as showing pictures of someone being pricked with a pin) and the world of soldiers committing heinous war crimes, of Josef Mengele conducting “experiments” on children in concentration camps, of Turks disposing of more than a million Armenians. We are quite incapable of translating heightened activity in certain regions of the brain into the contents of people’s thoughts, let alone their behaviours. Even framing things in this fashion is to assume, of course, something potentially of greater significance still, and something that Baron-Cohen never bothers to argue for: that our thoughts are the simple product of neural activity in the brain. Might it not be the other way around? What scientific finding, rather than a priori metaphysical assumption, allows us to conclude that human decision-making is a mechanical process, wholly determined by previous mechanical processes? And were we indeed to be mechanical inhabitants of such a universe, why would someone like Simon Baron-Cohen attempt to influence us by rational argument? Surely such an enterprise would be intellectually incoherent, not to mention redundant.

The last two sentences offer an example of what philosophers call “retorsion”–the contradiction between one’s theory of rationality and the exercise of reason that constructed the theory. The theory of reason, often enough, takes no account of the exercise of reason. If a theory of knowledge makes a claim to be knowledge, must it not account for its own genesis?

The second reading for Ash Wednesday invites us to apply to the season of Lent the words, first, of the prophet and, second, of the apostle: “‘In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you’ (Is 49:8). Behold, now is the acceptable time! Behold, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Cor 6:2).  Here are two passages in which St. Augustine echoed the theme. In the first, he has been urging his people not to put off their conversion.

What’s that you say?

“God promised me forgiveness; he’ll give it when I turn back to him.”

Of course he’ll give it when you turn back to him, but why are you not turning back to him?

“Because whenever I turn back, he will give it.”

Yes, indeed, when you turn back, he will give it, but when is that “when” of yours? Why is it not today? Why not as you listen to me? Why not when you cry out? Why not when you praise? Let my shouting be a helper on your behalf; let your cry be a witness against you. Why not today? Why not now? (Augustine, Sermon 20, 4; PL 38, 140-41) Read the rest of this entry »

Larry Cunningham (whose stipends from “Commonweal” I believe are funding the new Notre Dame Journal on evangelization) has a fine Lenten reflection [subscribers only] in the current issue. He writes:

The Bible tells us two things about the desert: that it is dangerous (Mark’s Gospel says Jesus was surrounded by wild animals) and that it’s a place where we can hear the voice of God. The Gospel of Mark describes the prophetic voice as “crying out in the wilderness.” Of course, the wilderness does not have to be a place; it can also be a time. Lent is the season when we are invited to a more austere way of living, and the purpose of this austerity is to make us more alert to the presence of God.In the desert we wait and we listen.

Lent is not a time for talking. We should be obedient to the opening line of the Rule of Benedict: Listen! In the Byzantine liturgy, the deacon cries out before the reading from Scripture: “Wisdom! Let us be attentive!” In our Lenten desert one good form of asceticism might be to do less texting and web surfing, to become less distracted and more attentive to what matters most. In that silence, we find the deepest form of prayer. “Be still and know that I am God,” says the psalmist.

So, in keeping with Larry’s sage counsel …

Fifty years ago tomorrow, February 22, 1962, there gathered in St. Peter’s Basilica several thousand priests, seminarians (among them your humble servant), and religious, forty-one Cardinals, around a hundred bishops, members of the Roman Curia, the members of the Central Preparatory Commission, and many lay people. Pope John XXIII’s chief purpose in gathering such an imposing audience was to give the clergy an exhortation to prepare themselves and their people for the celebration of the Second Vatican Council whose opening had been announced for October 11, 1962. But this intention was overshadowed by what preceded it when Pope John signed the Apostolic Constitution Veterum sapientia, on the study and use of Latin in the education of priests. (The Latin text can be found  here, an English translation  here.) Read the rest of this entry »

Really?  It’s simply stunning.  How did this happen?  Qur’ans and a large number of Islamic religious materials were burned (incompletely) and taken out with the trash at Bagram. They were discovered and, of course, salvaged by the local laborers dealing with the trash.

As I wrote in these pages in 2008 and 2009, the desecration of the Qur’an — although sporadic — has been one of the gravest mistakes on the part of U.S. personnel in recent years. It is utterly shocking that anyone working at Bagram, which was the initial hotbed of religious tension in 2002 (before Guantanamo), would permit or participate in these activities. (Note: the nationality of the offenders is not yet clear, from reports that I’ve read.)

The man in charge of the International Security Assistance Force, General John R. Allen, has issued a swift apology on behalf of NATO forces, just as the U.S. Army offered a swift apology after the disastrously iconic “Qu’ran as target practice” incident in Fallujah (May 2008). (That was the incident that catalyzed the radicalization of Muntathar Al-Zaydi, the Iraqi journalist who became famous later as the “shoe thrower” at President Bush.)

Here’s why this matters:  One of the biggest — perhaps the biggest — long-term threat to our national security is the (false) perception that we are at war with Islam. President Bush knew this well. He repeatedly made clear that the U.S. has never been and is not at war with Islam. President Obama’s speech in Cairo seemed, for a time, like it would chart a new path. And I am still hopeful because elected officials at the highest levels have thus far drawn clear distinctions between our military actions in predominantly Muslim countries and other counter-narratives that falsely generate a sense of holy war.

But incidents of religious desecration keep happening, and their iconicity works against any larger narrative about democratic religious pluralism that the U.S. is trying to craft.

To repeat myself, Really?  Sure, accidents happen, but how does this particular accident happen in 2012?

The U.S. military, Pentagon division, is warning against an attack on Iran. General Martin Dempsey, Chair of the Joint Chiefs, said as much on  Sunday in a CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria.  Strong exception is being taken by Israeli PM Netanyahu and DS Ehud Barack to an American general, in effect, warning the American people that we shouldn’t go there. Dempsey favors more diplomacy and allowing the sanctions to work; also the position of the President of the United States. Netanyahu thinks this serves the interests of Iran; he doesn’t really care about the interests of the U.S. or the American people.   Haaretz has the report.

Report of the CNN interview with Dempsey. Juan Cole comments. So does Pat Lang.

The New York Times catches up.

More 2/23/12: J.J. Goldberg at the Jewish Daily Forward has a sober account not only of the Israel-U.S. disagreement on Iran but of the deep level of mistrust Obama has toward Netanyahu and vice versa. Read here.

I am amazed at the degree to which the “New Evangelization,” about which Cardinal Dolan preached in Rome, continues on a parallel track to the now-inflamed culture wars–as if the two endeavors are heremetically sealed from one another

Of course, as we all know now, the two are not heremetically sealed. A key theme of Robert Putnam and David Campbell’s American Grace is that the association of relgiion with politics, and particularly with conservative politics, is one reason why young people are leaving the church in such troubling numbers.

So with that in mind, watch this (warning: very crude) piece form Jon Stewart, and ask yourselves the questions: 1) Does it matter that this is what so many young people are coming to think encapsulates the concerns of the Catholic faith; and 2) What is to be done about it?

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-13-2012/the-vagina-ideologues

Father Barron is positioning himself as a twenty-first-century apologist. Is what he says likely to counter Stewart’s take among young people–and if so, which young people?

http://www.wordonfire.org/WOF-TV/Commentaries-New/Fr-Barron-comments-on-the-HHS-Contraception.aspx

I think that almost anything one says can be “good news” to someone–the question is to whom?

The number leading today’s New York Times – that most births to American women under 30 occur  outside marriage – is a startling one, although it follows on a trend that has been developing for many years. Here are some details:

Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data. Read the rest of this entry »