The Fact of Christ's Birth Organizes the Universe Around a New Axis

...Christianity is not something  verbal, something that belongs to the sphere of words. Neither is it a doctrine or,...a message. It presents itself...as a fact...as something that happened, as much more than a verbal message that was written down and that would count as a doctrine, or even a system. Msgr. Giussani does not speak of Christianity but of what he calls the Christian fact. ... what we are dealing with in Christianity is not a doctrine, but a person who must be taken as such and for whom one must make space in one's life.  To convey this idea Giussani uses a splendid metaphor describing how the birth of a child forces the entire universe of a family to reorganize: "When a child is born into a family, it is clear to the parents, to the grandparents, to the whole family and to friends that this is a fact. There is nothing to dispute: a new bed is needed. Perhaps another bedroom; we have to give thought to how to take care of the new arrival; we are concerned about feeding, clothing, and protecting him or her; we get up at night if he or she needs us. The shape of daily life is transformed by virtue of this fact...Christianity is a fact in the very same way. It entered history just as a child enters the house of a husband and wife. Christianity is an irreducible event, an objective presence that desires to reach man; until the very end it means to be a provocation to him and to offer a judgment of him." 

 A Generative Thought, edited by Elisa Buzzi, Chapter Two: Christianity: a Fact in History,  p.35

Giusani: Psalm 8 - The Meaning of Man

     Within this psalm lies the meaning of the definition of man's life - his relationship with the one who creates him. The whole cosmos reaches for a certain point of evolution, at which it becomes self-awareness: that point is called "I". The "I" is self-awareness of the world, of the cosmos, and of oneself. The cosmos is the context in which the relationship with God, with the Mystery, lives. 

     The Psalmist asks, "Lord, what is man that you keep him in mind, that you remember him?" Among all the beasts and little creatures of the cosmos, man is one-hundredth, one thousandth, one then thousandth. But the greatness of man, the honor and glory of man, lies in the fact that man, the individual man, is in relationship with the Infinite. To live what man is, to realize his person, man must grasp everything God has done. Happiness is the final end of this process, the process of penetrating the eternal.  

The Psalms,  Luigi Giussani, pp. 18-19

Giussani: Christ, fount of living water

If to clean a course of water full of debris, we decide to isolate the debris, piece by piece, extracting one twig at a time, we will get a stiff neck and a good case of lumbago, and will never manage to get he job done. We should instead allow the river to flow to its mouth. If we aim for the mouth, the debris will gradually be deposited along the banks. The apostles followed Christ for who He was. They were attracted to Him. They did not rid themselves of their faults before following Him. They went after Him just as they were, and as they did so, their debris gradually settled along the banks. 

Luigi Giussani

The Suffering of the Son Confesses Our Sin

      When the Son is scourged naked and nailed naked to the cross, when the thorns and nails bite into his flesh, he has re-assumed the nakedness of the first man - not however, because of innocence, but rather because of sin, for his arms embrace all that is, was and will be. Everything, completely exposed, and in all its truth, is thrust upon the Naked One. For him, the one stripped of all power, the sum of that burden is no longer totally surveyable. It is not the result of an accumulation and summation during the years of his life; on the Cross the totality of the burden can no longer be subdivided in order to be dealt with in this fashion. What he has shouldered in a certain orderly manner now suddenly turns against him in all its weight like an alien external power, and it seems to him he does not have the slightest thing in common with all that he has taken upon himself. A neutral, anonymous power with no owner breaks upon him. Yet every spearhead of every sin is pointed towards him and wounds him.  His confession is now like the cry"Everything!" Here and there something specific appears and acquires contours, and then his cry becomes "That too!" 

When he cries out "Father, why have you forsaken me?" and "I am thirsty!" these cries are also an immense confession. The are an expression and answer to the enormous power of sin, which is the resonating response "For this reason" to his own question "Why?"....

For the Lord this encounter is particularly difficult, since it is the encounter of the totally pure with sin itself. When he as a man absolved someone from sin, as he did for example, with Mary Magdalene, he saw in the absolved person the results of his absolution. He suffered under the sin but rejoiced in the purification. Suffering and joy generated one another. Here, however, all subjective feeling is at an end, and there remains only a kind of objectivized experience of the terrible, a kind of suffocation and burial under the fatal burden of world guilt. 

 Confession, Adrienne von Speyr, pp. 51-52, 56

  

Giussani: On Friendship

...love creates reciprocity, generates reciprocity. This, in the Mystery, is nature. The nature of Being revealed itself in Jesus of Nazareth as love in friendship, that is as love acknowledged. Thus the mirror of the Father is the Son, the infinite Word, and in the infinite mysterious perfection of this acknowledgement - in which vibrates for us the infinite mysterious beauty of the Origin of Being, of the Father (Splendor Patris) - proceeds the mysterious creative power of the Holy Spirit. Now, the "I", the human "I", made in the image and likeness of God, reflects originally the Mystery of the one and triune Being, proper to the dynamism of freedom, whose law will therefore be love, and the dynamism in which this love is lived can be nothing else but friendship. 

You or about Friendship, pp. 17-18  Luigi Giussani

Astounding. To think that friendship in its perfect from is the Trinity, and that our human friendships are a participation in the triune love!

Zaccheus encounters Christ

          In our second reading today, St. Paul talks about people who are overly concerned about the Second Coming of Christ as well as the end of the world. Both events certainly will happen someday but, as the second reading says, there are always people always think the end is just around the corner. Paul tells them (and us) not to believe every exciting tidbit that they hear. Paul tells them not to over-react to everything that is allegedly from him and other authorities of the faith. Be careful of what you get second  or third hand.

          To me, this seems incredibly appropriate for our own day. People hear something that allegedly our Pope has said, but it has been twisted like a pretzel by whomever they are hearing it from. Yet people are likely to take it as gospel more than the actual Gospel. In our culture, we are often getting a second or third hand account from some organization whose purpose it is to constantly attack our Church. The organization claims to be conveying a brand new message from our pope, and this misinformation is believed more readily than the truth the pope said, because his whole message in context is not accurately quoted. People get excited over misinformation all the time.

          This is what happens to me practically after every news report about the pope: I get a phone call or an email saying, “Hey I heard the pope is changing what the Church teaches on A, B, or C. As soon as I hear someone say that phrase, “changing the Church’s teaching” without giving an explanation how the change fits with everything that came before, I know something got mis-communicated. When you read (or hear somewhere) just a few sentences without context claiming to be some new church teaching or policy, and your inner alarm system goes off, because this new message is completely out of character with the Church, what do you do, what should I do, - check it out!

          This is exactly what Zaccheus does in the gospel today. Zaccheus had heard of Jesus. We don’t know exactly what he had heard about Christ, but whatever it was, Zaccheus know he had to check it out for himself, and not believe the interesting but contradictory stories. To his joy and surprise, Zaccheus discovered that Jesus was new and different. Jesus saw through him at a glance! Not only that, Jesus did not turn away from him in disgust, but looked on him with love! Incredible! That had never happened to Zaccheus before!

       Everyone in town who knew Zaccheus looked at him with hate, because he was gouging their money out of them, sending the legislated tribute to Rome, and living most comfortably off the surplus he, Zaccheus, had milked them out of. People would spit on the ground and turn away in scorn rather than exchange cordial greetings and engage him in small talk, never mind visit him or invite him to their homes! As a tax collector Zaccheus was a pariah, and he knew it.

      What was it that moved him to make a fool of himself in front of everyone by climbing a tree to see Jesus?  Maybe it was curiosity, or perhaps Grace stirring his soul, but experienced by him as curiosity? Whatever moved him, what Zaccheus did was surprising and inexplicable to the rest of the crowd around him. He sought a personal encounter with Christ, He wanted to see the face of this Jesus, see him as close up as he could. He had no idea what the results would be.

      He didn’t know beforehand that Christ’s glance would penetrate him, make him feel naked, yet not naked and ashamed,  but not just naked and exposed in all his sinfulness, but loved and forgiven, called and pardoned! It was unbelievable, but it was real. This was a look of love that cleansed him and accepted him even as it exposed him to himself. Christ also put that cleansing look of love into words and called him by name: “Zaccheus, come down! I must stay at your house tonight. I want to pay you a visit. Will you put me up? Will you let me in? Can I come and dwell with you?”

The crowd was stunned. So much so that they voiced their shock: “Birds of a feather flock together. If he is going to the house of that scumbag, well, just what does that tell you about him?!" They didn’t know what had taken place in the encounter between Christ and Zaccheus. But Zaccheus knew. He had been made new. That’s why he unashamedly speaks with a changed heart and promises to give his ill gotten gains away. He has to witness to the merciful love he has just received.

So do I; so do you. So do all of us who call ourselves followers of Christ. We need to take a page from the book of Pope Francis, and speak out of the love Christ has poured into us. Perhaps it would be a good thing for us to take the necessary step to have an in-your-face, personal encounter first?

Memory, Identity, and Eucharist

Memory is the faculty which models the identity of human beings at both a personal and collective level. In fact it is through memory that our sense of identity forms and defines itself in the personal psyche.... Christ was acquainted with this law of memory and he invoked it at the key moment of his mission. When he was instituting the Eucharist at the Last Supper, he said: "Do this in memory of me" (Hoc facite in mean commemorationem: Luke 22:19). Memory evokes recollections. The Church is, in a certain sense, the "living memory" of Christ: of the mystery of Christ, of his Passion, death, and resurrection, of his Body and Blood. This "memory' is accomplished through the Eucharist. It follows that Christians, as they celebrate the Eucharist in memory of their Master, continually discover their own identity. The Eucharist highlights something more profound and at the same time more universal - it highlights the divinization of man and the new creation in Christ...It allows man to understand himself deeply, within the definitive perspective of his humanity...it allows him to understand the history of language and culture, the history of all that is true, good and beautiful".

Memory and Identity, Pope John Paul II, pp. 144, 145

John Paul II: priest, poet, philosopher and *prophet*

How may ways can you see the following prophetic statements by John Paul II coming true in the USA, never mind globally? The first part is from an address made in 1976 at the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia. The second part was said in answer to a question about the Third Secret of Fatima in Fulda Germany in 1980.

1.We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think the wide circle of American Society, nor the wide circle of the Christian Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-Gospel, between Christ and the antichrist. This confrontation lies within the the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God's Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up and face courageously....

2.We must prepare ourselves to suffer great trials before long, such as will demand of us a disposition to give up even life, and a total dedication to Christ and for Christ. With your prayers and my prayers, it is possible to mitigate the coming tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because only thus can the Church be effectually renewed. How many times has the Church sprung from the shedding of blood? This time too, it will not be otherwise....

Blessed John Paul  II, Magnificat Magazine,  pp 308, 9

Liberal State (professed) neutrality on Religion ends up as State-imposed Secularism.

.....At the core of Dignitatis Humanae, translated as "The Dignity of Man", is the crucial observation that "the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person" (DH 2). In other words, man's ultimate search for meaning belongs to his very nature. Religious freedom is not a right that is given, or one right among many, but one that is essential to his humanity. Fr. Antonio Lopez...defined culture as "embodied religion". Fr. Lopez explained that  "the horizon of meaning that gives form to social life is rooted in that search for the ultimate, unifying meaning of existence whose full expression we call religion." Referring to Fr. Luigi Giussani, Fr. Lopez emphasized that religion, or man's innnate "religiosity", is not simply "one activity among many, [but] a permanent dimension through which man full expresses his own nature."

     For the Christian, the constitutive experience of religiosity is even more radical because "the event of Christ incarnates the ultimate truth that man's religiosity constantly seeks, Fr. Lopez continued, and demands a free relationship with Christ who is the answer to his ultimate meeting. The Christian belongs to Christ, and understands himself only in relation to Him. Without Christ, the Christian loses himself. To be free, for the Christian, is to be in relationship with Christ. ......As pointed out by Cardinal Scola...through a pre- recorded video, this is the very dimension of man which the modern democratic liberal State is now determined to suppress, even in America.  

TRACES Magazine pp 42, 43 Free to be Ourselves

The Christ Witness of the Priest

......What is the first condition for bringing Christ to others? Bringing a real man or a real woman. Bringing Christ to others implies bearing witness to them that, in my experience, he responds to my humanity: Christ is the response to the needs of our humanity.

     For the priest, a lived belonging to Christ as the one Sent by the Father (John 20:21) is the exhaustive definition of his own personality (Galatians 2:20). "[The priest's ] life and ministry" - I said in a communique of the 1995 international symposium of the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome - "are thus a response to a real, historical, and existential Event: he is consumed  by the love of Christ, crucified and risen (2 Cor 5:41 ff.)." This consuming love makes us participate in the mission for which he came, died and rose again: that everyone who lives no longer lives for himself, but for him who died and was raised for them. This urgency of Christ's love, that ensures the memory of God's love for human persons, is the goal toward which all our desire and all our activity tend. 

   quoted from the "Afterword", by Luigi Giussani, in Together on the Road, by Massimo Camisasca,  pp. 118,9

Odd Man Out!

A personal note to the reader: I reproduce this text as originally written, including the British way of spelling. After reading the text several times, I can scarcely believe it was written in 1969, by an author whose name most people under fifty have never heard of. How can a statement so prophetic, and so proven by time to be absolutely true today, have been intuited so precisely and accurately over forty years ago by a man no longer read by anyone?  Voila:

"It is the illusion of our time that the non-conformist is in the ascendant, that the heretic is the hero and the revolutionary is the new redeemer.  

     In fact, the odd man out has never been so much at risk or so completely menaced by that conspiracy of power which we are pleased to call government.

     The mechanics of social control are more sophisticated than they have ever been in history, more sophisticated in those countries where the legal and judicial odds seem loaded in favor of the individual. 

     The Marxist position is at least clear: deviate and you are dammed - to expulsion from the Party, to breadline subsistence, to the limbo of non-persons, to brutal confinement, to death without honour. The democratic method is more subtle, but hardly less effective. The taxing authority may invade your most private transactions, and what it cannot [prove it may presume, in default of contrary evidence. An employer may solicit, file and transmit details of your private life - and your refusal to communicate them may provide a presumption of hidden delinquencies. The social spy, the wiretapper, the pedlar of devices to violate privacy have become stock personages in our society. The growth of large monopolies in communication has forced the protestor into the streets and the parks, where his protest may easily be construed or manipulated into a public disorder. A whole industry has been built around the art of affirmation, but the dignity of dissent is daily denigrated, the doubter is in disgrace because he demands time to reflect before he commits himself to an act of faith, and the liberty most laborious to maintain is the liberty to be mistaken.

 But the threat to the odd man out is not merely an external one. It is internal as well. So much diverse information, so many divergent opinions, are poured into his eyes and ears that the effort to rationalise them all threatens, at times his very sanity..."

I can think of current examples that witness to the truth of each sentence and paragraph, both here in the USA, and abroad as well. Where did such prescience come from? Any idea as to the writer?  (Morris L. West.)Or what he is writing? (It is the preface to a three act play, The Heretic,  about Giordano Bruno during  1592 -1600,  the time of his trial by the Inquisition in Venice and Rome.) I haven't read the play yet. Don't know that I ever will.  I keep pondering the message of the  Preface. 

Silence

"......Manage to go a few days, a couple of weeks, talking as little as possible. Work silently at the bank, study in silence, an economize on words as much as possible. You will see the effects. Almost immediately you will feel a greater serenity. You will find that you pay attention and see things much more clearly. Words distract a great deal, you can't imagine. You come across men who, to hear them talk, you would say were enemies. And basically they are in agreement without knowing it. Others, on the contrary, talk, thinking they understand one another, and basically they continue poles apart."

The Cypresses Believe in God, p. 416, Jose Maria Gironella

....

Massimo Camisasca

On Clericalism:

 "All of the major crises in the history of the Church were essentially bound up with the decadence of the clergy, which no longer experienced their relationship to the Sacred as something thrilling and dangerous, as a searing nearness to the all-holy One, but as an easy way to make a living."  

The Challenge of Fatherhood,  p. 37

Body and Soul

Disciple: Master, is it true that the soul is in the body, like a center is in a circle? And, is it true that from this center deep within us we are able to speak to God?

Master: Yes, but there is more. This also is true: That the body is in the soul. The soul is like a spiritual skin that holds the body within.

 

Disciple: Do you mean that the soul contains the body, just as I can carry different things in a sack? Do you mean that my soul carries and moves me, every part of me?

 

Master: Yes. The soul is also what opens you to reality, to all that is, all of you , your entire being, to all that is, including God.

 

Disciple: Master: If that is true. why am I so stuck inside myself? Why do I feel isolated and alone, as if only I were here? Why do I have a hard time connecting with others, and God?

Master: The pores of your spiritual skin are clogged, my son.

 

Disciple: How do I unclog them? What do I do? Tell me, please!

 

Master: The answer will take a lifetime, but now is always the time to begin. Begin by taking the time to wonder,  at Beauty,  at Goodness,  at Truth as they enter your soul from all that surrounds you. Let your soul be stirred,  let your mind and heart be moved. Listen to the promptings your soul receives. This will unclog your spirit and start to move you outside of yourself, and you will begin to grow.

Silence

"....If I don't let the world enter my silence, I can make my silence enter the world...I can look at my own life and that of others, with more hope and more truth, more sympathy and more depth...[Silence] generates in us a new capacity to accept, to love, to offer ourselves for others...silence is: an action of God in our lives: it is our action indwelt by Another. An Other indwells our time, giving it form. Silence is not an absence of affection. Rather, it is the presence of Love. It gradually causes a passage from a false reality that I have imagined, to the true, definitive reality in which the colors, tastes and loves are authentic and known for what they truly are."

Massimo Camisasca  Father,  pp. 22, 23

       

    " Faith is certainty of a 'great Presence' that allows the building of my relationship with reality, of my work, and of my involvement in society, that allows my work to become something useful and beautiful before my eyes. Beautiful because if it doesn't become a work of art, man's accomplishments are not human. The touch of art introduces an ideal reverberation into the mechanical manipulation of the real: 'art that is the grandchild of God'  Dante said, since true beauty is derived only from the One who saves beauty, the one who doesn't fear time, death and pain."

Luigi Giussani: Is It Possible to Live This Way? Vol.2, p.98

      "A theologian who does not love art, poetry, beauty music, and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they necessarily are reflected in his theology."

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger: The Ratzinger Report, p.130 

      

"Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man." 

Dostoevsky

Pope Francis on Gay Priests

What's your opinion of Pope Francis' infamous statement about gay priests? Actually that is not a fair question for me to ask, because most people have not read his statement, but what the Media has said about his statement. Everyone and his brother has sounded off on this topic,  so I feel no obligation to restrain myself. After so much ink has already been spilled, on paper and on-line, my remarks may be seem like overkill. In fact,  at this late date, I doubt there is any great interest about what the pope actually said. Even so, since the secular press has widely distorted and  misinterpreted his message,  I believe my attempt to add  a pinch of honesty and accuracy is justified.  

To begin with, here is a piece of advice that I followed and found helpful: watch a partial video of the pope's news conference (available at romereports.com.). The pope is speaking in Italian, but he is not that difficult to understand, especially if you have a little familiarity with Spanish, French, or Latin. And even if you do not, the nuances, his tone of voice, and his gestures add a great deal of meaning to his message. The video is much better than only reading the typed manuscript to get a proper sense of what he said. If you have to settle for a typed translation of the the interview, however,  the most accurate one I have found is at Zenit.org. , in two parts. The transcript covers the whole one hour twenty-two minutes session.

 Here's a sentence of the pope that went around the world: "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" His next statement got less attention: " The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says one must not marginalize these persons; they must be integrated into society". His third received as much attention as the first, but also out of proper context: "The problem isn't this [homosexual] orientation - we must be like brothers and sisters. The problem is something else - the problem is lobbying, either for this orientation or a political lobby or a Masonic lobby."

All in all, the Media made it sound like the Pope didn't have much problem if a priest was into a gay life style, so long as he was trying to behave himself most of the time. The Media's misinterpretation of the first statement was meant to create the assumption: Sure, any  gay priest might have lapses now and then, and engage in homosexual sex, but so what? Gays are only human after all, and as long as they are trying to be good, God understands. However, the second statement of the pope with its reference to the Catechism develops and clarifies the meaning of the first. It is possible for a priest to experience sexual attraction to the same sex, not submit to the temptations, summon all the good will he can muster, bring the temptation to the Lord in prayer, and work successfully to remain faithful to his calling. In such a case, who indeed would the pope be, or anyone else, to judge such a man? Judging or condemning people who have same sex attraction for the fact of attraction is unjust and makes matters worse. The real answer is to help them address the issue, give them help and support they need in order to deal with the attraction,  and integrate them into the communal life of the Church and society.  Isolating and attacking people of good will  only alienate them and sour their good will. It makes no sense for the Church to presume bad will and insincerity on their part, especially when they are seeking to live as her sons and daughters.

I believe that is what the pope was trying to say, but he did not have the linguistic tools to say it. He spoke Italian in the video I saw, and so far as I know, neither Italian nor Spanish makes a distinction between homosexual and gay the way English does. Homosexual in English generally means someone who has same sex attraction, while gay means someone who actively embraces and lives the lifestyle. But many men who consider themselves homosexual because of same sex attraction do not want to have anything to do with the gay life style. The one does not equate with the other automatically, no matter what the gay lobby says. However, in his interview with the press, Pope Francis uses the terms homosexual and gay interchangeably, because he is speaking Italian and Spanish. Given all the other observations he made in the interview, and the faith context of all his remarks, I believe the media's superficial reporting will result in much misunderstanding for all who assume their news reports to be accurate and honest.

Acceptance of  same sex attraction does not imply approval of a gay life style Acceptance is simply the human and Christian basis for dialogue and ongoing support. In this country, given the confusion and lobbying in our culture,  people who have gender identity conflict as a result of same sex attraction need assistance to deal with the issue. Such assistance is precisely what the Courage organization is designed to offer. Their website (www.couragerc.net) is a treasure trove of Pastoral wisdom drawn from the rich Tradition and Spirituality of the Catholic Church. Since the Church has to speak out clearly out against the gay lifestyle, it also has to offer its ongoing support to its sons and daughters who have same sex attraction and help them to lead a chaste Christian life. Many instructive talks, conferences, books, CD'sand DVD's are available on the Courage website. (The Director of Courage, Rev. Paul Check, was recently interviewed online by Catholic World Report). Catholics, especially deacons and priests, need to be made aware and informed of the resources the Church has to offer. The problem isn't this homosexual orientation, the pope said, because he "must be as brother ans sisters" in Christ's Church.

The problem is the lobbying. That remark certainly got the Media's attention. Like a hound dog sniffing for the scent of the rabbit it is after, the reporters had a possible whiff of something scandalous. A scandal in the Curia!  A homosexual lobby there!? They must have been disappointed when the pope didn't wash any dirty  laundry in public for them. Very few reporters picked up on the positive remarks the pope went on to make about all the dedicated, even saintly, men and women who work quietly and unobtrusively in the Curia for the good of the Church. Nothing newsworthy in that! No scoops or Pulitzer Prizes!

The problem is lobbying of any sort, the pope said. Lobbying cannot be ignored because it can become a concerted effort to promote error as truth, evil as good, and wrong as right. Lobbying can take the special interest of a minority and pushes with all its resources to promote that interest of a segment over the common good of society as a whole. By lobbying, a small segment can gain power and influence out of proportion to what is rightfully theirs, and even go so far as to entrench its power by having its interest legislated into the law of the land. Of course the pope can not be so naive as to let the errors of the gay life style be confused with the splendor of Sacramental Marriage in the Church, the true nature of human sexuality in the plan of God,  and the beauty of the Catholic Theology of the Body, no matter what any lobby says to the contrary!

Pope Benedict on Homosexuality (continued) Part Two

This posting continues the reflections begun in the posting of 7/26/13.

Sewald  responds to Pope Benedict’s comments on homosexuality with the observation :"It is no secret that there are homosexuals even among priests and monks. Just recently there was a major scandal on account of the homosexual passions of priests in Rome.” Pope Pope, being honest and humble, admits the truth of Sewald’s statement, but surprises me, because he does not say what I expected. I was anticipating something along the lines of the need for active homosexual priests to repent, just as priests who were heterosexual would have to repent of being unfaithful if they had sexual relations with women. Instead, the pope spoke out forcefully against homosexuals in the priesthood. This is what he said: “Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation. Otherwise celibacy itself would lose its meaning as a renunciation”.

 I had been thinking, Well, just as a heterosexual has to renounce marriage with a woman, a homosexual would have to renounce sexual activity with men.  He would have to be celibate in his own way.  But the pope is not considering two kinds of celibacy, one for homosexuals, and another for heterosexuals. He views celibacy in relation to marriage,  and marriage of course between a man and a woman. He continues: “It would be extremely dangerous if celibacy became a sort of pretext for bringing people into the priesthood who don’t want to get married anyway.”  That makes sense to me. Being a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom does mean giving up marriage to a woman, and more than that. It means more than being a bachelor who wears a clerical collar. It means being fruitful and multiplying the sons and daughters of God in the new family his Son has established, the Church.  I interpret the pope as meaning that the refusal of, or indifference to, spiritual fatherhood is the big problem. If a man is not interested in sacrificing being a father through marriage to a woman  for the sake spiritual fatherhood, he should not be a priest.  There are certainly bachelor heterosexual priests who are not interested in spiritual fatherhood, only in the priesthood as a career or a profession. But, ultimately, spiritual fatherhood is the natural responsibility of every male no matter what he labels himself, nor what his state in life. Without spiritual fatherhood, even if he is called to be single,  he is a “barren fig tree” or a “dead branch.”

How does a man usually mature as a man, or grow and develop into his potential as a male?   Usually by getting married to a woman, having a wife and children, by working hard to earn a living, by living for the family he has, giving himself for them, raising the children, and leaving sons and daughters behind him.  If all a man had to do was impregnate a woman and then disappear, fatherhood would be easily accomplished. But a male becomes more of a man by being a husband and father, or to say it more simply,  by fathering. Celibacy is a huge sacrifice since everything in a man is directed to finding fulfillment in and through a woman, the children, and the family he will establish with her. Fathering is his natural reason for being. The responsibility he accepts in marriage is what gets him out of bed in the morning and keeps him going. If a man has no desire for a woman and no desire to marry, and therefore becomes a priest, his renunciation of marriage is no renunciation at all. By becoming a priest he embraces fathering in a different form.

Pope Benedict continues:  “The Congregation of Education issued a decision a few years ago to the effect that homosexual candidates cannot become priests because their sexual orientation estranges them from the proper sense of paternity, from the intrinsic nature of priestly being. The selection of candidates to the priesthood must therefore be very careful. The greatest attention is needed here in order to prevent the intrusion of this kind of ambiguity and to head off a situation where the celibacy of priests would practically end up being identified with the tendency to homosexuality.”

Of course the “greatest attention is needed”, but I am afraid that no amount of care and attention that can completely eliminate the problem.  When it comes to psycho-sexual identity, there are as many possible scenarios as there are individuals, because every person’s psycho-sexual development has its own pace. Same sex attraction may be discovered during adolescence, before or after entry into the seminary, as well as before or after ordination to the priesthood. There are no absolutely perfect protocols, nor any foolproof procedures. The basic issue, I believe, is to face that same sex attraction is a disorder and to deal with it in a healthy way, instead of presuming, as our culture does, that homosexuality is normal and natural, and that the gay life style is as valid an option as marriage or the single life.

Here in the Northeast and East Coast, it may be already too late to head off the situation the pope speaks of,  “where celibacy would….end up being identified with homosexuality”. Maybe it is different in some parts of the South, and in the West, and Midwest, where I am told the Church is much stronger. I doubt the situation is different on the West Coast, however. It may even be worse out there, for all I know. Perhaps demographers and sociologists can explain how our culture and values vary according to geographical location here in the United states. Maybe the situation is to fluid for any national snapshot to be taken.

Some concluding thoughts on "same sex attraction" occur to me in light of Pope Benedict’s resignation and the election of Pope Francis, which I hope to use as the basis of the next posting on this topic. I do not see the term “same sex attraction” in the writing, nor in their conversations of either pope. As far as I can tell they both use the word “homosexual” and “gay" interchangeably.  Here in the United States a distinction between the two is made. A man who struggles with same sex attraction is said to be “homosexual” whereas only those who “come out” and embrace the gay life style with its culture, are classified as “gay”.  I think this is an important distinction to make. Doing so would contradict the popular assumption that “gays are born that way” and also help explain how  a good number of men who suffer from same sex attraction successfully deal with the disorder, and  go on to successfully  become fathers in the sacrament of marriage, or spiritual fathers the priesthood. Some, I daresay have even been canonized saints.

Cardinal Bergoglio (Pope Francis) on some Forms of Clericalism

          Here are some more sharp observations the pope made in on Heaven and Earth, the book he co-authored with Rabbi Skorka.

  "The risk that we must avoid is priest and bishops falling into clericalism, which is a distortion of religion. The Catholic Church is the entire People of God, including priests. When a priest preaches the Word of God, or when he reflects he feelings of he whole people of God, he is prophesying, exhorting, catechizing from the pulpit. Now when a priests leads a diocese or a parish, he has to listen to his community, to make mature decision and lead the community accordingly. In contrast when the priest imposes himself, when in some way he says "I am the boss here", he falls into clericalism. Unfortunately. we see in some priests ways of leading that do not correspond to the principles of seeking harmony in the name of God. There are priests with the tendency to clericalize with their public statements. The Church defends the autonomy of human events. A healthy autonomy is a healthy laity, where different competencies are respected.  The Church does not tell doctors how to perform an operation. What is not good is militant laicism, that takes an anti-transcendental position or demands that religion not leave the sacristy. The Church gives values and people do the rest. "  pp 138, 139

"...There are some [seminarians] that feel that by themselves they are not going to be successful in life and look to organizations that can protect them. One of these organizations is the clergy. ...we keep our eyes open, we try to know those who demonstrate interest, we give them in depth psychological tests before they enter the seminary. Later in the yer of community life before they enter, during weekend meetings, we an see and discern who has a vocation, and those who are only seeking a refuge or were mistaken in their discernment of a vocation. Assuming all who enter have a vocation, there can also be infidelity to that call...An example would be the case of worldliness. Throughout history there have been both worldly priests and bishops. one might think that having a woman on the side is being worldly, but that is only one of the double lives that are mentioned. There are those that seek to compromise their faith for political alliances or a worldly spirituality...the worst that can happen to those that are anointed and called to service is that they live with the criteria of the world instead of the criteria that the Lord commands...If this were to happen throughout the Church, the situation would be much worse than those embarrassing periods with libertine pastors. The worst that can happen in the priestly life is to be worldly, to be a 'lite' bishop or a 'lite' priest." pp. 44, 45

"Taking up he theme of religious ministers, humility is what gives assurance that the Lord is there. When someone is self sufficient, when he has all the answers to every question, it is proof that God is not with him. Self sufficiency is evident in every false prophet, in the misguided religious leaders that use religion for their own ego." p.33

Pope Francis on the Media

In the book on Heaven and Earth, I just just read a couple of remarks by Pope Francis in which he makes some astute observations about the Press, Media, Politics, and Clericalism, among other hot button issues. I admire how freely he speaks, speaks up and speaks out, uninhibited, not-one-bit-intimidated, open, friendly and humble, even though he is aware what he says is not going to be accurately represented in the morning paper. 

 Here's one gem: "The problem of the press, truthfully, is that sometimes they reduce what one says to whatever is opportune. Today, from two or three facts, the media spins something different: they misinform."

Here's another: "Today image is more important than what is proposed. Plato said in The Republic, rhetoric- which equates aesthetic- is to politics what cosmetics is to health. We have displaced the essential with the aesthetic; we have deified polling and marketing."

This third one is another favorite: "The media's way of putting things, in black and white, is a sinful tendency that always favors conflict over unity...Today there is misinformation because only part of the truth is said, only what interests them is taken for their convenience, and that does a lot of damage because it is a way of favoring conflict. If I read five newspapers comparing the same story, it is very often that each one will emphasize the part it is most interested in according to its inclination."

Pope Francis on Education

While living  in Argentina then Cardinal Bergoglio and Rabbi Abraham Skorka engaged in religious dialogue with one another. Their conversations on many current issues are recorded in a very relevant book, on Heaven and Earth. In these remarks on Education,  Pope Francis was speaking mainly from his experience of how schooling took place in Argentina. but it is fascinating to see how pertinent his remarks are when applied to schooling and education in the United States.

Bergoglio: In the Bible, God shows himself as an educator: "I carried you over my shoulders, I taught you how to walk", he says. The obligation of the believer is to raise their young. each man and each woman has the right to educate their children in religious values. The effect of the State in taking away this right can lead to cases like Nazism, in which the children were indoctrinated with values different from those of their parents. Totalitarians tend to add water to their own mill.

Bergoglio: Schools educate toward the transcendent, just like religion. Not opening the doors to a religious worldview in the academic environment cripples the harmonious development of children, because this concerns their identity, the transmission of the same values their parents have, which are projected onto the child. They are deprived of a cultural and religious inheritance. If in education you take away  the tradition of the parents, only ideology remains.  Life is seen with biased eyes, there is no unbiased hermeneutic even in education. Words are full of history, of experiences of life. When someone leaves a void, it is filled with different ideas from the family tradition; that is how ideologies are born...

 Bergoglio: There is a difference between a professor and a teacher. The professor presents his material in a detached manner, while the teacher involves others; it is profoundly testimonial. There is also a coherence between his conduct and his life. He is not merely a transmitter of science, as is a professor. We need to help men and women to become teachers, so that  they can be witnesses; that is essential to education.

on Heaven and Earth, Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka  pp.128 - 132

Pope Benedict on Homosexuality: Part One

       The book Light of the World consists of a series of broad ranging conversations between  Pope Benedict XVI  and Peter Seewald. It's about various controversial issues affecting Church and World. In Chapter 14, titled "Overdue Reforms ?", Seewald  quotes two statements from the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding homosexuality, and then asks Pope Benedict if these two views in the Catechism are not contradictory. 

      Here is Seewald's first quotation:...the number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible...They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives.  The Catechism calls us to treat homosexuals with the respect and acceptance that is their due, simply because they (and we) are human beings. Then comes the second statement: Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as great depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.  Here the Catechism clearly says that homosexuality is not a "natural" or "normal" way for human beings to act, and in fact is a disorder, so much of a disorder ("intrinsically") that there is no way to justify homosexual acts or make them right. So Seewald asks: "Doesn't the second statement somewhat contradict the respect for homosexuals expressed in the first one"?

         Seewald seems to be asking how can you accept and respect a person (first quotation) if you think what he/she is doing is wrong, sinful, seriously disordered, and  in fact, a great depravity (second quotation). Worth asking, no? When I find a person's actions to be deeply repugnant,  my feeling of repugnance usually extends itself automatically to the person as well.  Seewald's question, however, is not  phrased in a way that is emotionally charged. He keeps the question theoretical: "Is not one perspective incompatible with the other? Here's Pope Benedict's answer to that question: "No." Well, that is both clear and blunt; no hedging or qualifying, just a straight out negative. He goes on to explain: "It is one thing to say that they are human beings with their problems and their joys, that as human beings they deserve respect, even though they have this inclination, and must not be discriminated against because of it. Respect for man is absolutely fundamental and decisive."

             I love that explanation. We human beings are concrete, specific individuals, not theoretical constructs, and the pope recognizes that fact.  He tells us that every human being deserves to be accepted and respected simply because he/she is, i.e. exists! The pope offers more than a theoretical answer, because both acceptance and respect involve our real feelings and actual emotions towards concrete people. He is pointing out that our value as  humans doesn't begin with our activity or productivity, but springs simply from being. We have no right to reject or despise any member of the human race since our very existence is good. That makes sense to me. A newborn baby doesn't just need love,  it has a right to love, and a right to demand it. What's the basis of that right? The newborn's very existence. If my, or our, worth depended on actual accomplishments, very few of us would be worth anything at all. An embryo, a fetus, an unborn baby, even a new-born,  would be worth nothing. Acceptance of  and respect for one another on the very basis of our common existence, is the decisive starting point for all of our interactions with one another. 

        The pope continues his train of thought: "At the same time though, sexuality has an intrinsic meaning and direction, which is not homosexual." This is the affirmative thrust his"No" leads to. Sexuality has a positive meaning and direction which we do not arbitrarily assign but has been built into the structure of sexuality. That is his second point, which he builds on the foundation block of his first statement. The reason why he can disagree with, and disapprove of, homosexual activity even though he has a very real acceptance of, and respect for, homosexuals as human beings is congruent with the meaning and direction he sees in sexuality. In fact, it is out of respect and acceptance for homosexuals that the pope affirms an obvious truth and says that homosexuality is a disorder. Since homosexuality is itself disordered,  both  the acceptance of, and respect for, anyone who calls himself homosexual require that this truth be made clear. Indeed, why would you lie to someone you accept and respect, no matter what the disorder? Presumably, the more serious the disorder, the greater the need to face the truth instead of colluding with an illusion or a deception. 

        Since the fall into original sin,  our human nature itself is in a state of disorder. The disorder in us begins when we do. The Creator made us male and female, as the Scriptures say. (True, God made us without any disorder originally, but a look in the mirror, and a look around us at the world we live in, both  provide objective proof that Adam and Eve have passed on to us the skewed human nature they acquired by sinning. This is not surprising, for how could they pass on anything else?)   Men are disordered, women are disordered, and so are our male-female relationships.  As individuals and as couples, we will never be  a complete whole, because both our individual wholeness, and the wholeness that comes from our  male/female relationships, does not start off in right relation to God. We carry that disorder into all we do, and all we develop into,  as we journey through life. 

 

    Our basic disorder cannot be overcome by our own efforts. Because of the Fall, we have no way to stand outside ourselves and evaluate ourselves objectively. The righting of our relation to God occurs by his grace and mercy working in us. But God does not work in us without us, i.e. without our asking him to, and asking freely and profoundly. This asking is not merely a matter of choosing Option A instead of equally valid Option B, but desperate begging. Our asking is "de profundis", a need born of the misery we find ourselves in. Only the Creator who mercifully sustains us even as he lets us experience our interior disorder can put us in right relation to himself. 

   

     Why not simply view homosexuality as one more disorder among the countless others, and let it go at that? Because sexuality is foundational. Sexuality affects the very ground of our being. Our sexuality with its male-female components, constitutes the core of who we are. Certainly  many disorders abound in us, and they are all interrelated,  but since our core being is disordered, so are our perceptions of our selves, and our perceptions of our relationships. Our disordered core-being is male/female, masculine and feminine, two halves of the whole each of us is,  even though one half predominates.   I am not equally half man and half woman, but a male with both masculine and feminine qualities, or a female with both masculine and feminine qualities. How the two halves become more or less integrated, or  or become more out of balance,  in any person male or female, is and remains mystery. 

      To call this process mysterious is not an attempt to escape its complexity, but to respect it. Science should study the phenomenon of attraction and sexual identity, and discover all it can about it: same sex attraction, other sex attraction, or attraction to both sexes. No matter how thoroughly science explores all the other related causes of homosexuality, I do not believe it will never be able to find one that is primary. Science will, I believe, learn more and more about the specific causes it studies. But the danger, I believe, in learning more and more about specific causes is that we also move further and further away from ever getting around to see how all the causes interrelate. The presence or absence of a certain gene, the help or harm from mother or father during early in childhood, or is the result of the psychic wound because of abuse,  the predisposition we have in us because of our genetic structure, the influence of our formation and schooling, society and culture,  etc., can all be studied ad nauseam.  An either-or explanation will never be sufficient, and no amount of studies will ever be complete or definitive. Even if all finite factors could be exhaustively studied and comprehensively understood,  science has no instruments to measure free will and grace. Both are impenetrable to the scientific eye. This does not prevent science from striving to learn all it can about the causes it can measure, but  should serve to increase science's appreciation of the mystery we are.

.

        Our Creator is a Father who loves us even when he does not approve of us.   So acceptance of others by us never means denial of any disorder, nor does it presume any who accept us think we are free from disorder!  Nor does acceptance mean approval of the activity that a disorder  provokes. Disorders are counter-productive, and end up being harmful to the self as well as to others. Acceptance and respect should be the starting point from which the person with any disorder is to be related to and dealt with, by family, friends and neighbors, doctors and lawyers, social workers and therapists, prison guards and or parole officers, etc. But the strange thing in our society and elsewhere is that homosexuality is no longer recognized as a disorder. Why is that? Why is gayness is mainstreamed, normalized, and legalized as an alternative life-style? I suppose one reason is that,  over time, we can be brainwashed and socially conditioned to see the abnormal as normal. Bombardment through the media, training in the schools, political lobbying, legislation, and cultural pressure has succeeded in making commonplace what was startlingly odd in society not so long ago.

       But Pope Benedict has not lost track of the true nature of sexuality He, Benedict, continues: "We could say, if we wanted to put it like this, that evolution has brought forth sexuality for the purpose of reproducing the species." By appealing to Evolution, which science sees as free from the taint of Religion,  he is able to point out what science has loss sight of, or refuses to respect: namely that sexuality is geared by its nature to reproduction. Any honest scientist who deals with plants,animals, humans, or genes and cell structure would have to agree with that observation.  Even an atheist who was a scientist has to admit this. Only then does he introduces Religion: "The same thing is true from a theological point of view as well. The meaning and direction of sexuality is to bring about the union of man and woman and in this way, to give humanity posterity, children, a future. This is the determination internal to the determination of sexuality. Everything else is against sexuality's intrinsic meaning and direction. This is a point we need to hold firm, even if it is not pleasing to our age."  Posterity, children, and future generations: it is so obvious that these are intrinsic to the meaning and direction  of sexuality, that it should not even have to be stated. How would our ancestors of long ago ever have gotten beyond  mere rutting, if that was all nature had designed them to do?  

Carron: Faith and Hope in Christ

                                         In His Name We Find Hope

 If the judgment called faith dominates life, you see it in the fact that this being seized is what comes forth in the way we face all the circumstances of life; it comes forth by default, as they say, as when one, no matter what experience she has, no matter what happens to her, is invaded by the memory of something she cares about, a presence she cares about. So then, you see that the relationship with this presence dominates because it reappears with evidence in every experience; I do not invent it when I need it. I do not create it when faced with the dramatic circumstances of living. It comes to mind, imposes itself on me, in front of all the circumstances, be they beautiful or ugly. At times they are more meaningful when they are beautiful because they are less at risk of "being invented"; when they are ugly, since there has to be some meaning, one can run the risk of inventing a meaning. When life is full, this risk lessens: that acknowledgement imposes itself and that memory arises, because I cannot watch the sunset, or an evening together, without the emergence of that urgent need, the strong pressure to say his name.

Fr. Julian Carron, Magnificat magazine,  July 2013, p. 284

Barron: The Christ Event

The title of Fr. Robert Barron's book 

                                                     b r i d g i n g 

                                             THE GREAT DIVIDE 

graphically states his aim.  The blurb on the cover explains what the book is meant to be: 

    MUSINGS OF A POST-LIBERAL, POST CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICAL CATHOLIC

The divide is the abyss that today's Catholics experience, an abyss that separates them from others in their own Church,  from Christians of other denominations, from modernity, and the world in general. Central to bridging the divide is Christ himself, and  Fr. Barron uses St. Thomas Aquinas to help us bring Christ's importance into proper focus. 

Here are two quotations that grabbed my mind and won't let go:

".....It is in light of the event of the Incarnation that Thomas interprets both God and the human, seeing the former as an uncanny, surprising, ever greater act of love, at the latter as, at its best, an act of sheer openness to the inrushing of God. To put it succinctly, he sees in Christ, the meeting of two ecstasies, and this coming-together is the lens through which he reads everything else...."p.88

"....the radically unworldly character of God's being is paradoxically enough revealed precisely in the act by which God enters the world. Were God a being in or alongside of the universe, one of the natures in the world, God could not become a creature without ceasing to be God or compromising the ontological integrity of the creature he becomes. In short, that God is totaliter aliter (totally other), and semper maior (always greater), that he is alluring yet totally ungraspable mystery, is given to us in the event of Christ....."p. 92

I don't know if Fr. Barron had read Giussani before writing this book, but the two men are on the same page, and speak the same language. Neither one reduces Christ to an abstraction, a theological or philosophical system, a rightest or leftist movement, a political stance, an ideology, or a sectarian doctrine. What makes me love them both is the awe they stand in before the Christ Event and the reverence with which they contemplate its implications.

Wit and Wisdom of Flannery O'Connor

For the fun of it, I began rereading "Mystery and Manners", by Flannery O'Connor, a book mostly about writing which is made up of different conferences, lectures and essays she wrote for different occasions, and which were collected and published by her estate after her death. I had read it back in the 1970's and underlined some statements she made because they jumped off the page at me at the time. They still do. Here are some of her observations for your enjoyment.

.....I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to a writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually it frees the story-teller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing by guaranteeing his respect for mystery....

.....Redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in the actual life we live, and for the last few centuries there has been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause....

{To write}...is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self knowledge is humility, and this is not a virtue conspicuous in any national character....

Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.....

...To call yourself a Georgia writer is certainly to declare a limitation, but one which, like all limitations, is a gateway to realty....

....Some people have the notion that you read the story and then climb out of it into the meaning but for the fiction writer himself, the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction....

....There may never be anything new to say, but there is always anew way to say it...

....People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them. They don't take long looks at anything because they lack the courage....

....I think it is usually some form of self-inflation that destroys the free use of a gift. This may be the pride of the reformer or of the theorist, or it may only be that simple-minded self-appreciation which uses its own sincerity as a standard of truth...

....St.Thomas called art 'reason in making'. This is a very cold and very beautiful definition, and if it is unpopular today, it is because reason has lost ground among us...

....nothing produces silence like experience...

...I have found, in short, from reading my own writing that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil, I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil...

Speyer: The Church

".....The Church does not function, after all, in the manner of a sieve,  which would sift the good from the bad, would effect a strict selection; but more like a melting pot into which everything is thrown together and makes an effort to live from God's grace. The Church is vested with grace. She lives from the grace of the living Lord, but no less from the grace of the Father, who gives her his sanction, and the grace of the Spirit, who blows through her. She is the locus of an encounter with eternity, indeed,  quite actually the locus of the beginning of life, the beginning of eternity in the midst of time. Man is drawn into this origin, shaken to the core in it and converted, enriched, and at the same time made poorer. Within it he gauges constantly anew what the Lord is, what distance separates him from sinners; he comes to feel his own powerlessness, sees also the consummate powerlessness of the Lord, which is the source of all grace, and understands that there can be no comparison between the two. And yet he knows that his existence in the Church is nothing but grace and love, and that even the feeling of his powerlessness is an instance of the Lord's grace, a gift in view of his poverty, and a sign by which the Father recognizes him."

The Countenance of the Father, Adrienne von Speyr, p.103 Ignatius Press

t

Maritain: Science and Einstein Witness to God

"The science of phenomena ....bear witness to the existence of God....it is not a question of what science itself tells us, but of the very existence and possibility of science....if nature were not intelligible, there would be no science. Nature is not perfectly and absolutely intelligible; and the sciences do not try to come to grips with nature's intelligibility taken in itself (that is the job of philosophy). They rather reach for it in a rather oblique fashion, dealing with it only insofar as it is steeped in, and masked by, the observable and measurable data of the world of experience, and yet can be translated into mathematical intelligibility. Yet the intelligibility of nature is the very ground of those relational constancies which are the 'laws' - including the category of laws which deal only with probabilities - to which science sees phenomena submitted; and it is the very ground, in particular, of the highest explanatory systems, with all the symbols, ideal entities, and code languages they employ, (and with all that is in them that is still incomplete, arbitrary, and puzzlingly lacking in harmony ) that science constructs on observation and measurement.

    Now how would things be intelligible if they did not proceed from an intelligence? In the last analysis, a Prime Intelligence must exist, which is itself Intellection and Intelligibility in pure act, and which is the first principle of the intelligibility and essences of things, and causes order to exist in them, as well as an infinitely complex network of regular relationships, whose fundamental mysterious unity our reason dreams of rediscovering in its own way.

      Such an approach to God's existence is a a variant of Thomas Aquinas' fifth way. Its impact was secretly present in Einstein's famous saying: 'God does not play dice,' which, no doubt. used the word God in a merely figurative sense, and meant only: 'nature does not result from the throw of the dice', yet the very fact implicitly postulated the existence of the divine Intellect."

On the Uses of Philosophy Jacques Maritain, pp.65, 66

published by Princeton University Press 1962

      

Fr. Robert Barron: Chesterton on Church

"...Recently I was perusing one of Chesterton's most popular books, Orthodoxy, and my attention was drawn to chapter 6, 'The Paradoxes of Christianity'. In this section of the book Chesterton recalls his puzzlement when he read the critiques of Christianity that came from so many different quarters. On the one hand, Christianity - especially Catholicism - was criticized for being too worldly, too caught up in wealth, property, pomp, and ceremony.Where, for instance was the spirit of the carpenter of Nazareth in the expensive theatrical display of the Vatican? On the other hand, Christianity was reviled for its excessive spiritualism, its indifference to the concrete concerns of the world, its tendency to pine after 'the things of heaven'. Similarly, some critics complained that Christianity, with its stress on sin, penance, and punishment, was excessively pessimistic, while others held that, given its emphasis on the love of God, the intervention of the saints, and the promise of eternal life, it was ridiculously optimistic. Finally, certain enemies of the faith maintained, probably with Joan of Arc, and the Crusades in mind, that Christianity was bloodthirsty and warlike, while others held, probably with Frances in mind, that Christianity was too pacific and nonviolent. What puzzled Chesterton, of course, was not that the Church had its critics, but that its critics were so varied, so at odds with one another, so mutually exclusive.Whatever, this Christianity was, he concluded, it must be something strangely shaped indeed, to inspire such a wildly divergent army of enemies. 

     Then it occurred to him that perhaps it was not Christianity that was misshapen, but rather its critics. Perhaps it was they who, from their various eccentric points of view, saw the rightly shaped Christianity as distorted: 'suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall, and some too short; some objected to his fatness, and some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark and some too fair. One explanation...would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape.' It could be the case, in short, that 'it is Christianity that is sane, and all its critics are mad - in various ways' It is the sheer depth and breadth of the Church, the complexity and multifacetedness of it, which narrow-minded enemies cannot grasp. Christianity, Chesterton surmised, was perhaps, too capacious to be easily comprehended.

     However - and here is Chesterton's main point - it does not seem that Christianity is merely 'sensible,' standing . as it were, in the middle, taking in both extremes. It does not seem to be the case that the Church is somewhat worldly and some what otherworldly, to some degree life affirming and to some degree life denying, a little optimistic and a little pessimistic. on the contrary, there seems to be, everywhere in the life of the Church, a quality of excess, frenzy, enthusiasm: Francis of Assisi was 'more a shouting optimist than Walt Whitman' and St Jerome, 'in denouncing all evil, could paint the world blacker than Schopenhauer.' One Christian saint could be more starkly ascetical than the severest Stoic, another Christian saint could celebrate life more ecstatically than a priest of Dionysus. In defending the celibacy of the clergy, the Church could be 'ferociously against having children',  and in upholding marriage and family, it could be at the same time, ferociously for having children.' The Church consistently and poetically placed opposites side by side, and allowed them to coexist in all the purity, power, and intensity; Christianity encouraged lamb and lion to lie down together, without ever forcing the lion to become lamblike or the lamb lionlike. Chesterton offers us a wonderful image: The Church 'has always had a healthy hatred of pink. It hates that combination of two colors which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers. It hates that evolution of black into white which is tantamount to a dirty grey.' "

Bridging the Great Divide, Robert Barron, Bowman & Littlefield, pp. 5, 6

What a beautiful exposition of Chesterton's vision of the Church! I can't help thinking that much of the cultural Catholicism of today is precisely the bland "pink", or the dirty "grey" that are foreign to the Church's nature. Also, no individual saint, no matter how great, could ever perfectly harmonize or contain the richness of the Church in his own personality, first of all because all of us are limited creatures very much affected by original sin, and secondly because the virtues of a saint would have most likely been developed as a result of his conversion, and served as a corrective to the abuses of his day and age. So every age challenges us to sanctity with its unique blend of circumstances.

Clergy Conference on Courage

We recently had a Clergy Conference in the Archdiocese, and Courage was the issue addressed. Courage is the Catholic Church's outreach to men or women who experience same-sex attraction and want to remain faithful to the Catholic Church's teaching on faith and morals. (They have a great website if you would like more information:  www.couragerc.net .)

There were three principal speakers, each approaching the subject of same sex attraction from a different angle. The layman explained his life story and gave personal witness to the ongoing help that the Courage network gave him.  I found his personal witness  indisputable and indispensable, so I was happy he went first. At least the priests who didn't stay and hear the afternoon sessions got a chance to hear him speak. The afternoon session was great too, but was concerned about the causes of homosexuality. I found the talk illuminating, but not as impressive as the layman's witness. I suppose that is because theory can always be argued about, but life experience is undeniable.

In the afternoon, the psychologist touched on various scientific studies regarding homosexuality and explained their findings, and also explored some of the personality dynamics. There were questions from the group which he answered completely and thoughtfully.The priest, Monsignor Paul Check, presented a brief history of Courage, and the spiritual principles under-girding, inspiring and sustaining the movement. 

The conference began at 10:30 am and ended around 3:00 pm, with a break for lunch and a time for questions and answers at the end of each session.There were about 35 priests present at the morning session, and, I think, under 30 for the afternoon conference. I was surprised to see so few of us priests there. Given the clarity as well as the unpopularity of the church's teaching on the subject, the general acceptance of homosexuality and the gay life style, the push for same-sex marriage by Obama and various states, plus the need to educate ourselves and our parishes on such a delicate and sensitive subject, the attendance should have been standing room only. Still, it was a positive beginning. It will be interesting to see where we go from here.

Giussani and Barron: Our Ongoing Need for the Creativity of Mercy

1."....the miracle of mercy is the desire to change. And this implies acceptance, because otherwise it would not be desire for change, but pretension and presumption, and it would never become entreaty to an Other, it would not be trust in an Other. This desire defines the present, the instant of the man who is a sinner. The miracle is accepting oneself and entrusting oneself to an Other present so as to be changed, standing before Him and begging.

Entreaty is the whole expression of a man now, in the instant...."

Generating Traces in the History of the World,  Giussani, pp137, 138

2."A central Christian teaching that has flowed from the doctrine of the simple God is that of creation, or more precisely, creation ex nihilo, from nothing. According to this dogma, God continually creates and grounds the world, pouring being into it as a free gift. The things of the world do not stand over and against God, as if they were fundamentally independent of him; rather at every moment, they stand as sheer receptivity, literally as "nothing", accepting the grace which is their existence. In both classical and modern theologies of creation, the creator God  does not stand simply 'at the beginning of time' as if he brought the world into being and then simply left it to its own devices. On the contrary the God who is Being itself creates and renews the world unceasingly, pouring it out of himself in a great act of superabundant love."

Bridging the Great Divide, Barron, pp 241, 242

The Christ Form

"....We are in a sense our own parents, and we give birth to our selves by our own free choice of what is good. Such a choice becomes possible for us when we have received God into ourselves and have become children of God, children of the Most High. On the other hand, if what the Apostle calls the form of Christ has not been produced in  us, we abort ourselves."

Homily on Ecclesiastes, by St. Gregory of Nyssa

Amazing Maisie Ward

 Out of curiosity more than anything else, I picked up a  slim paperback, a used book from a pile of  discards offered by the seminary library. What attracted my eye was the author, F.J. Sheed, a writer who had nourished me in my seminary years and early priesthood.  To my joy, I discovered I had a gem in my hands, a book of his I had not known about. In it, Sheed was writing about the human heart, based on his life experiences, and the wisdom he had gained from his wife and soul-mate, Maisie, who was quite an author in her own right.

What follows are statements by Maisie as quoted by Frank. (There are many more delightful observations in the little volume than the few quoted here.)   

I love her summation and critique of Modernism. Maisie defined Modernism as the belief that "dogmas are not the statement of truths revealed by God but expressions of the religious mind at the stage to which religious experience has brought it; the value of dogmas is measured not by the religious truth of what they tell us about God, but by the adequacy with which (for the time being and personally) they express our own religious consciousness." Neat way to reduce religion to psychological awareness, no? Thank you,  Modernism!

Writing about St. Catherine of Sienna and the scandal caused by high placed clerics, Maisie commented: "Too much awareness of the defects of Catholics (especially Catholics in high places) tends with most of us to dim our realization of Christ working mightily through his Church....But with Catherine, the appalling evils in the lives of so many ecclesiastics seemed only to highlight her vision of the glorious things they were profaning." Wow! Wish I could do that too! Focus on the glorious things that are profaned, and not get lost in the pure negativity of criticizing the profaners.

Maisie spent much time and effort into she preaching outdoors on a soapbox to the public in Hyde Park. She saw the outdoor work as a small part of "the Church's effort to get loose from the civilization that is passing away and to insert herself as a living ferment into that new civilization which is in danger of being swallowed up by paganism." Sounds like she understood what we today call the New Evangelization.

Here she explains why she prefers to do evangelizing, preaching, and teaching the Faith,  instead of engaging in defensive Apologetics: "Like Newman I feel that the presenting of Christianity, indeed of God himself, is far more vital than argument with one's fellow Christians." She believed we should: "offer the object of faith as a reality the mind can seize, not merely as the conclusion of a rational process." Let the Faith in all its glory challenge and measure us, instead of reducing it to nice sounding cliches and ideologies.

Here's how Maisie tackled the argument that the Resurrection is merely inventing a myth out of the cycle of the seasons wherein the death of winter is followed by the spring of life: "If God has indeed created the world through his Word, if the coming of the Word into the world is the central event of its history, what more likely than that the seasons are modeled after the pattern of his life." Open us to the Crucifixion and Resurrection instead of reducing Mystery to myth.

Maisie was well aware of the great contribution converts bring to a Church filled with semiconscious Catholics: "Most of us hear the answers before we have asked the questions. It is nearly impossible to see the answer to a question you have never formulated, and without the sense of urgency that an insistent question brings, most people do not even try." Maybe that's why a lot of us cradle Catholics are so unaware of the riches our Faith offers? We didn't wrestle with the questions Life forces people to ask themselves before they believe. We believed as a way of avoiding the questions, and the wrestling.

Explaining why she wrote the book Young Mr. Newman, a study of the Cardinal's life up to his conversion. she said: "No man knows the whole truth about himself- especially a man with a life long habit of self examination! He had been too busy counting the trees to get a clear idea of the wood." Introspection alone can produce only more self absorption. It's Grace  that got Newman beyond himself and into contemplation. The same is true of us too, of course.

I think her comments on GKC are marvels of insight: Her husband tells us she regarded Chesterton as a mystic who was not an an ascetic in the normal sense of the word, but whose writing performed the spiritual discipline that his physical life style lacked:

1. "But is there not for the thinker an asceticism of the mind, very searching, very purifying...that sense of the pressure of thought which Newman called 'getting rid of pain by pain';  the profound depression that often follows; the exhaustion that seems like a bottomless pit...Faith, thanksgiving, love, surely these far above bodily asceticism can so clear a man's eyesight that he may fittingly be called a mystic since he sees God everywhere." I think so. I think GKS saw everything so oddly and uniquely, because he saw it as it really was, in relation to God and not to himself. And that is the very thing that surprises me when I read him, because I am used to seeing everything in relation to myself. So naturally, I find his perspective refreshingly different when it really is normal.

 On the agony and ecstasy GKS found in writing:

2. "It was his lifelong beatitude to observe, wonder and conclude... and ""Intense vitality, joy in living, vigor of creative writing, bring to bear on their owners immense happiness and acute suffering...the reaching upward and upward of the mind is at once the keenest joy and the fiercest pain."...."The deepest pain in writing means thought struggling to break out. But it is better than numbness." I never came across anyone who said that before: asceticism through art: creative writing as purgative and painful, as well as contemplative and joyful. 

On GKS's ability to recognize the incongruency of the comical with the ugliness and horror that exists in evil:

3."There is in diabolical wickedness an element of the farcical."

She saw a paradox in CKS' just anger at the greedy rich, because he failed to recognize the small-mindedness of their greed. Maisie doubted that Chesterton... 4..."understood the degree of stupidity required to amass a fortune. He would have agreed that the love of money narrowed the mind: I doubt that he fully grasped that only a mind already narrow can love money so exclusively as to possess it exclusively." That's more Chestertonian than Chesterton!

Regarding God not as a distant Creator, but intimate Sustainer of even the smallest grain of sand: 

 a."There is no reality without God, who has put into creation whatever reality it possesses."

On God who calls us to co-create his kingdom: 

b. "...creation is at work everywhere on a large scale occasionally, but more significantly in small scale achievements by the hundred, by the thousand. I have found it in small groups who are building a new world".

The Instructed Heart, by F.J.Sheed,  pp. 20 - 33  published by  Our Sunday Visitor, 1979

Christopher Dawson: The Christ Event Is the Center Point of History

        "...the Christian view of history is not a secondary element derived by philosophical reflection from the study of history. It lies at the very heart of Christianity and forms an integral part of the Christian faith. Hence there is no Christian  "philosophy of history" in the strict sense of the word. There is, instead a Christian history and a Christian theology of history, and it is not too much to say that without them there would be no such thing as Christianity. For Christianity, together with the religion of Israel out of which it was born, is an historical religion in a sense to which none of thew other world religions can lay claim - not even Islam, though this comes nearest to it in this respect.

        Hence it is very difficult, perhaps even impossible, to explain the Christian view of history to a non-Christian, since it is necessary to accept the Christian faith in order to understand the Christian view of history, and those who reject the idea of divine revelation are necessarily obliged to reject the Christian view of history as well. And even those who are prepared to accept in theory the principle  of divine revelation- of the manifestation of a religious truth which surpasses human reason - may still find it hard to face the enormous paradoxes of Christianity......

.......For the Christian view of history is not merely a belief in the direction of history by divine providence, it is a belief in the intervention by God in the life of mankind by direct action at certain definite points in time and place. The doctrine of the Incarnation which is the central doctrine of the Christian faith is also the center of history, and thus it is natural and appropriate that our traditional Christian history is framed in a chronological system which takes the year of the Incarnation as its point of reference and reckons its annals backwards and forwards from this fixed centre."

Dynamics of World History  by Christopher Dawson, 

Sheed and Ward, pp.234,5

For the Fun of It: Discussing Friendship with C.S. Lewis (Part Two)

(Please read Part One, the previous posting,  to pick up the train of thought.)

M: Sorry to break off our dialogue so abruptly last week, but I ‘m grateful for the chance to continue the discussion.  We were talking about male friendship, and the theory that homosexuality is somehow the basis of every friendship among men.  As I recall, you definitely disagreed.

CSL: “The homosexual theory…seems to me not even plausible.”

M: Yet, historically, it is a fact that some soldiers, warriors, etc. were homosexuals and friends, or homosexual friends.

CSL:  “Certain cultures at certain periods seem to have tended to the contamination. In war-like societies, it was, I think, especially likely to creep into the relation between the relation of the mature Brave and his young armor-bearer or squire. The absence of the women while you were on the warpath had, no doubt, something to do with it.”

M:  So, you believe these instances of homosexual friendships are the exception and not the rule, even though the theory would hold otherwise? How can we be sure, either way?

CSL: “ In deciding, if we think we need or can decide, where it crept in and where it did not, we must surely be guided by the evidence (when there is any) and not by any a priori theory.”

M: I suppose it depends on what you consider to be evidence. What about physical gestures of affection? Are they sufficient evidence?

CSL: “Kisses, tears, and embraces are not in themselves evidence of homosexuality. The implications would be, if nothing else, too comic. Hrothgar embracing Beowulf, Johnson embracing Boswell  (a pretty flagrantly heterosexual couple) and all those hairy old toughs of centurions in Tacitus, clinging to one another and begging for last kisses when the legion was broken up…all pansies? If you can believe that, you can believe anything.”

M: Well, today, everything has become believable. Kisses, tears and embraces between men in America today are evidence of homosexuality. I know in some countries men can still hold hands or walk arm in arm, and no one would give it a thought.  But that’s not culturally acceptable between men in the USA, unless you want to be seen as gay. Times sure have changed!

CSL: “On a broad historical view it is, of course, not the demonstrative gestures of Friendship among our ancestors but the absence of such gestures in our own society that calls for some special explanation.  We, not they, are out of step.

M:   “We not they are out of step?!!   I am surprised to read that. Can’t friendship lead into erotic love? And isn't the converse true as well: can’t Eros lead to friendship?”

CSL:  “But this, far from obliterating the distinction between the two loves, puts it in a clearer light. If one who was first in the deep and full sense your friend, is then gradually or suddenly revealed as your lover, you will certainly not want to share the Beloved’s erotic love with any third. But you will have no jealousy at all about sharing the friendship. "

M:  Hmm, share friendship but keep the erotic love to yourself….What do you see as the difference between friends and erotic lovers?

CSL:” Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends, hardly ever about their friendship. Lovers are usually face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest…Friendship is the least biological of our loves…true friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth. “

M: That makes a great deal of sense to me, but how do you explain the case of the person who is the clingy, possessive, controlling, possessive friend, or a friend who doesn’t really care about anything, or any cause,  except to collect more and more and more friends? The first case seems to contradict your premise that friendship is side by side, or, directed outward and open; the second, that moving towards a common interest greater than the friends themselves is the unifying factor.

CSL:  “…those pathetic people who simply ‘want friends’ can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else beside Friends.  Where the truthful answer to the question Do you see the same truth? would be ‘I see nothing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a Friend’,  no Friendship can arise – though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers.”

M: I agree with your reasoning, although many people today would not. I’m not sure what kind of “Affection” would arise out of a Friendship that isn’t about anything but itself, however.

CSL: “Friendship is utterly free from Affection’s need to be needed. We are sorry that any gift or loan or night-watching should have been necessary, - and no, for heaven’s sake, let us forget all about it, and go back to the things we really want to do or talk of together. Even gratitude is no enrichment to this love. The stereotyped ‘Don’t mention it’ here perfectly expresses what we really feel.”

 

M: What about the old maxim which says, “A friend in need is a friend indeed?” how does that apply?

CSL: “The mark of a perfect friendship is not that help will be given when the pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all.“

M: I have to thank you for these insights. I don'think I ever came across anyone who explained what a beautiful and noble blessing true friendship is as clearly as you did. 

CSL: Don't mention it.

For the Fun of It: Discussing Friendship with C.S Lewis (Part One)

I have been reading  The Four Loves by C.S.Lewis, and conversing with the text as I go along. The topic is Friendship. M stands for me, and CSL for the great master himself. CSL's remarks are in quotation marks, because I am getting them directly from the text. I plead guilty for placing what he says in the context of my questions and comments, but I do not think I do violence to his meaning or intent.

M: I know friendship is downplayed today, and I was wondering, was it like that in the old days too? 

CSL: "To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it."

M: So, how did this seismic shift regarding friendship take place? If it was so esteemed in the old days, why is it so unappreciated today?

CSL: "The first and most obvious answer is that few value it because few experience it."

M: How can you say that? Today more and more people have tons and tons of friends. When I get online for example, I can get connected to friends all over the world by email and/or Facebook. And even off-line, I can be talking to or texting some friend or other all day long on my cell phone. Friendship seems to be more omnipresent and appreciated than ever before. Don't we have a natural hunger for friendship which, as human beings, moves us to connect to other human beings? It seems to me that friendship is a basic, natural instinct hardwired into our make-up. Isn't friendship as natural to us as breathing and loving?

CSL: "Friendship is...the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious, and necessary. It has least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale. It is essentially between individuals; the moment two men are friends they have to some degree drawn together from the herd. 

M:  That's astounding. Are you telling me that erotic love is more basic than friendship? That Eros is more elementary than friendship? That friendship is not erotic? What about affection? Isn't affection basic to our human nature? Isn't affection also part of friendship? Doesn't Eros always enter into affection? Aren't Eros and affection always mixed together, and aren't both always a part of friendship?

CSL: "Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and without affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship. The species, biologically speaking, has no need of it." 

M: I'm not used to thinking about Eros, affection, and friendship in a way that distinguishes them so clearly from one another. But I think I see what you mean. Eros used to be enough to ensure propagation of the species. Affection used to get us through the trials of raising children.  So friendship didn't necessarily have to enter the picture. Still, I don't understand why you think most people today are not eager for friendship or open to it. The way you talk about it, I'm tempted to believe you see us moderns as closed to friendship.

 

CSL: "The pack or herd - the community- may even dislike and distrust it. Its leaders very often do. Headmasters and Head mistresses and heads of religious communities, colonels and ships captains, can feel uneasy when close and strong friendships  rise between little knots of their subjects."

M: But why? Why do moderns object to friendship whereas the Ancients valued it? Why do we set more of a store on Eros and affection, whereas the Ancients thought friendship was higher or more noble?

CSL: The "(so to call it) 'non-natural' quality in Friendship goes far to explain why it was exalted in ancient and medieval times and has come to be made light of in our own. The deepest and most permanent thought of those ages was ascetic and world-renouncing. Nature and emotion and the body were feared as dangers to our souls, or despised as degradations of our human status. Inevitably that sort of life was most prized which seemed most independent, or even defiant of mere nature.  Affection and Eros were too obviously connected with our nerves, too obviously shared with the brutes. You could feel these tugging at your guts and fluttering in your diaphragm. But in Friendship - in that luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen- you got away from all that. This alone of all the loves, seemed to raise you to the level of gods or angels."

M: That's a marvelous way to put friendship into words: "the luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen." It makes me think of the knights of the round table discussing the best way to defend Camelot, or writers discussing their craft, or even a few research scientists planning how to develop a cure for a life threatening disease. They can be cool and collected, or aroused and passionate, in their discussion, but no matter how hot and heavy the discussion becomes, the group keeps it rational and level-headed searching for the answer that will illuminate their way to a good course of action.

 You know, just saying that makes me realize that I do think we are too self-absorbed to have many real friendships today, and to sense you may be right after all, when you say the old timers were more capable of friendship than we are.  What happened after the age of friendship to produce the age of sentiment, if I can put it that way?

CSL: "Then came Romanticism and "tearful comedy" and the "return to nature' and the exaltation of sentiment; and in their train all that great wallow of emotion which, although often criticized, has lasted ever since. Finally the exaltation of instinct, the dark gods in the blood; whose hierophants may be incapable of male friendship. Under this new dispensation all that had once commanded this love now began to work against it..."

M: Excuse me. I hate to interrupt, but I have to grab my dictionary and look up that word hierophant. As a modern, I am not as literate as your generation was... Okay , got it. Please, go ahead. You were explaining how we humans began to prize feelings and instinctual drives over and above reason and intelligence, how that tendency took over our culture and today predominates in most places.

CSL: "....that outlook which values the collective above the individual necessarily disparages Friendship; it is a relation between men at their highest level of  individuality. It withdraws men from collective togetherness as surely as solitude could do; and more dangerously, for it withdraws them by two's and three's. Some forms of democratic sentiment are naturally hostile to it because it is selective and an affair of a few. To say 'These are my friends' implies 'Those are not'. For all these reasons, if a man believes as I do, that the old estimate of friendship is the correct one, he can hardly write a chapter on it except as a rehabilitation. "

M: So friends don't necessarily adopt the party-line or engage in the group-think that the current ideology may seek to blanket society with? Friendship calls us to stand apart and speak the truth to each other, even when such an activity may be unpopular?Am I understanding you correctly? Is that why men seems to have less friends than women? Because women open up and communicate what they are thinking and feeling, but men today hesitate to do that with each other? Do you think I'm right when I say men have less friends than women?

CSL: "This imposes on me at the outset a very tiresome bit of demolition. It has actually become necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual."

 

M:  Do you think men in this era are afraid of friendship because they think it  has a trace of homosexuality in it?

CSL: "The dangerous word really is here important.To say that every friendship is consciously and explicitly homosexual would be too obviously false; the wise acres take refuge in the less palpable charge that it is really - unconsciously, cryptically, in some Pickwickian sense - homosexual. And this, though it cannot be proved, can never be refuted. The fact that no positive evidence of homosexuality can be discovered in the behavior of two Friends does not disconcert the wiseacres at all: 'That', they say gravely, 'is just what we should expect.' The very lack of evidence is thus treated as evidence; the absence of smoke proves that the fire is very carefully hidden. Yes,- if it exists at all. But we must first prove its existence. Otherwise we are arguing like a man who should say 'If there were an invisible cat in that chair, the chair would look empty; but the chair does look empty; therefore there is an invisible cat in it.' "

M: I can't wait to see where you are headed with this line of thinking.  I"m looking forward to picking up your book tomorrow. 

The Four Loves,  C.S.Lewis, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanich  pp.87-91