THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY DEC. 13, 2010 $3.50 OF MANY THINGS

PUBLISHED BY JESUITS OF THE UNITED STATES mackerel sky weighed low over each of us needs to find and assess the Long Island Sound as the ways we can escape from letting the EDITOR IN CHIEF Drew Christiansen, S.J. Amtrak coach carried me home world lie too heavily on us or allowing Afor Thanksgiving. From the time when ourselves to brood over petty upsets. It is EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT as a boy I first noticed them, these time to practice patience, make apologies MANAGING EDITOR altocumulus clouds, parallel bands laid and take initiatives to ease relations. But Robert C. Collins, S.J. end to end like vertebrae, have been it is also an occasion to tap into those EDITORIAL DIRECTOR associated for me with late fall in the resources that enable us to be patient. Karen Sue Smith weeks after leaves have fallen and the Like Ishmael, when I find myself grow - ONLINE EDITOR grass has faded, but the hard cold is still ing short-tempered, I know it is time to Maurice Timothy Reidy to come. I find mackerel skies vaguely move on, to travel perhaps, take in a cou - CULTURE EDITOR threatening, perhaps because under ple of movies or visit friends. James Martin, S.J. them the weather seems to close in, or Once we have become conscious of LITERARY EDITOR perhaps because I remember them, in their effect on us, shorter days and Patricia A. Kossmann colder times, sometimes preceding early- cloudy skies can be an occasion for POETRY EDITOR season snowstorms in which the world neglected introspection as well. Rather James S. Torrens, S.J. became dimmed still further in shadow. than allow ourselves to fall into depres - ASSOCIATE EDITORS November gray skies prepare us for sion, we can attune ourselves to the George M. Anderson, S.J. winter. They make us introspective and greater quiet and solitude late autumn Kevin Clarke brooding. When Ishmael sets out, at brings. We can journal and pray. We can Kerry Weber the beginning of Moby-Dick , for his take up hobbies and crafts. In years past, Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. journey on the Pequod, he does so farmers and their families took up ART DIRECTOR because it is “damp, drizzly November woodcarving and quilting in winter. Stephanie Ratcliffe in [his] soul.” Ishmael went to sea “to Though doctors may fret, one reason we ASSISTANT EDITOR drive off the spleen,” escape thoughts of overeat in winter is that cooking, not to Francis W. Turnbull, S.J. death and contain his pugilistic impuls - mention eating, is simply a comforting ASSISTANT LITERARY EDITOR es. For others, however, November’s indoor pastime. It is an art that engages Regina Nigro dreariness brings them together. My all the senses, which even postmodern GUEST EDITOR elderly mother used to tell us how city-dwellers can enjoy. Spirituality, after Francis X. Hezel , S.J. much she enjoyed the long, dark all, includes reconnecting with the evenings when the family was together; dynamics of the natural world from BUSINESS DEPARTMENT and of course most people celebrate which urban life abstracts us. PUBLISHER Thanksgiving en famille . For some, seasonal affective disorder Jan Attridge Shorter daylight hours contribute to is a real hardship. Those who suffer CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER our November feelings. Walking with from it can be helped with trips to the Lisa Pope my grandnieces this past Thanksgiving, Sunbelt and light therapy, but some of ADVERTISING I was conscious of how very early the the hands-on, physical activities that Julia Sosa sun sets this time of year. I rushed to were once part of the annual cycle of 106 West 56th Street get them home before the fading light life may be of help to them as well. Our New York, NY 10019-3803 made us less visible to late afternoon urban alienation from the land, the Ph: 212-581-4640; Fax: 212-399-3596 drivers. Deep in the psyche there is cycle of seasons and the work of our something that tells us to gird ourselves hands may have as much to do with E-mail: [email protected]; up to move out into the evening dark - wintertime depression as underlying [email protected] Web site: www.americamagazine.org. ness or early morning gloom to face the biochemical changes in the brain. Customer Service: 1-800-627-9533 cold. By spring that deep-down defen - Finally, for myself, the liturgy of © 2010 America Press, Inc. siveness wears us down; the poverty of Advent, with its play of light and dark - light enervates us more than the cold ness, its plaintive, longing music and its and wind and snow. message of justice for the oppressed, November’s shadows hold within never fails to lead me out of Novem- Cover: A climber’s hand on sand - them lessons for the soul as well as the ber’s shadows. stone. Photo: Shutterstock/ psyche. Like Ishmael on his sea-journey, DREW CHRISTIANSEN, S.J. Pakhnyushcha CONTENTS www.americamagazine.org Vol. 203 No. 18, Whole No. 4916 December 13, 2010

ARTICLES 13 ON THE SLOPE WITH TEILHARD Lessons on spirit and matter Drew Christiansen

17 TEACHING OR COMMANDING? When bishops instruct the faithful Nicholas Lash

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS 13 4 Current Comment 5 Editorial Markets and Politics

6 Signs of the Times

10 Column Relish the Banquet John F. Kavanaugh

21 O Holy Night 2 More suggestions from readers for keeping Christmas sacred

28 Letters

30 The Word Obedience of Faith; Light in Darkness Barbara E. Reid 17

BOOKS & CULTURE 22 ART New images of Mary BOOKINGS Books for children

ON THE WEB ON THE WEB Drew Christiansen, S.J., right, discusses the spirituality of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. , and Harry Forbes reviews “The King’s Speech.” Plus, our series of video reflections for Advent continues. All at americamagazine.org. 22 CURRENT COMMENT

More irksome is the increasing number of stores that Don’t Assassinate use imagery specific to Christmas to flog their wares, while As a candidate, Barack Obama claimed the president had at the same time expunging any explicit mention of the no power to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy religious holiday they have hijacked. It makes for some combatants. Now, without announcing a policy, he in prac - bizarre marketing. “Believe” is once again Macy’s “holiday” tice claims presidential power to assassinate U. S. citizens slogan. Believe in what? Jewelry? Appliances? J. Crew’s without charges as unlawful enemy combatants. This poli - online store this year offers a “Very Merry Gift Guide.” cy of assassination includes a series of drone attacks or Merry what? The guide features evergreen trees, glass Joint Special Operations Command raids to kill a short list ornaments and plenty of red-and-green outfits to entice. of U.S. citizens in Yemen, the best known of whom is What holiday might they be referring to? If you click long Anwar al-Awlaki. enough, you will finally get an answer: Happy Shopping. Born in 1971 in New Mexico and educated at three One way to get around all of this, however, is the approach American universities, al-Awlaki moved to Yemen in 2004 taken by Loft, a division of Ann Taylor, the women’s cloth - as an Al Qaeda religious propagandist who hates America ing store. Their 2010 motto: “Create your own holiday.” and says that killing Americans is like fighting Satan. Not Pace Don Draper of “Mad Men,” God has done that an Al Qaeda boss, he is allegedly linked to the Fort Hood already. shooter, the would-be underwear bomber, the failed Times Square car bomber and the explosives shipped in laser printers on cargo planes from Yemen. Illegal Organ-Trading The Administration has offered no evidence that al- The recent breakup of an international organ-trafficking Awlaki is so extraordinary a threat that all the limitations ring in Kosovo sheds light on a dark human rights prob - of international and moral law can be brushed aside. Yet a lem. The ring was selling human kidneys and other body U.S. citizen is to be killed by order of his government. parts removed from poor people trafficked into Kosovo The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for from Russia, Moldova, Kazakhstan and Turkey with Constitutional Rights asked a federal court on Nov. 8 to promises of payments—though many received nothing. rule that the U.S. Constitution and international law for - The organs were then sold to wealthy patients—“trans - bid targeted killings outside of armed conflicts except as a plant tourists”—from Israel and Canada for up to last resort. To rule otherwise, says the A.C.L.U., gives the $200,000 per organ. The ring’s leader was a surgeon and president “unreviewable authority to order the assassina - professor at the Pristina University Hospital, Dr. Lufti tion of any U.S. citizen.” In short, to assume the power to Dervishi. His son performed the surgery in a local clinic. kill a citizen at will makes the United States no more An official in Kosovo’s health ministry was also implicated, moral than the average dictatorship or terrorist. The revealing upper-level government corruption. administration’s lawyers have not disowned the assassina - The ring was already suspected two years ago, when tion policy. police found a young Turkish man at the Pristina airport in a weakened state awaiting a return flight to Turkey. Visiting the clinic, they found an elderly Israeli who had O Holy Not received the man’s kidney. Police believe the Kosovo ring One does not have to be a curmudgeon to pine over the may itself be part of a larger Israel-based criminal syndi - loss of the Christmas season to Madison Avenue, a loss cate that exploited poor Romanians, whose kidneys were that is now more or less wholesale (pun intended). Set removed and sold to wealthy Israelis. aside the Black Friday insanity that follows Thanksgiving The World Health Organization estimates that a fifth Day, accompanied by now-annual reports of shopping- of kidney transplants worldwide come through the black related injuries of stressed-out consumers. Set aside the market. Some countries, like India, have laws banning the fact that this year many department stores tacked up their sale of organs, but an underground market persists. Christmas decorations the day after Halloween. Set aside Because of extreme poverty, desperate people in developing even the fact that attendance at Christmas Day Masses has nations remain at risk of exploitation. Police vigilance is fallen off sharply; one reason is that more Catholics want needed now to end the trafficking that continues. This to “get it over with” the night before so that on the 25th could be reduced if people in wealthy countries became they can concentrate on the main event: presents. more willing to donate organs at their death.

4 America December 13, 2010 EDITORIAL Markets and Politics

ot long ago a certain stream of pro-market philoso - fraud. But by and large the geniuses phers made a noisy public case for the creative syn - behind the Celtic Tiger’s unnatural Nergy between capitalism and democracy. The growth will not be held accountable, growth of free-market capitalism, they argued, would just as in the United States most of inevitably bring democracy. Then came the financial crisis of those responsible for the inflated hous - 2007 and the rescue of the financial markets by individual ing market, bundled mortgages and nations, the European Union and the International Monetary other infernal investment devices will not be held liable for Fund. Financial markets failed, and government came to the the irreparable harm they worked in tens of millions of lives. rescue. Of course, though it is hidden in the footnotes of eco - Indeed, once rescued by public largesse, financiers seem to nomics textbooks and ignored by free-market-oriented think flaunt their continued prosperity without exhibiting the tanks, that is what is supposed to happen in democratic cap - least sign of social responsibility. The people shouldering italism. But what are we to do when the financial markets the burden will be politicians, the taxpaying public and soci - saved by states threaten to bring down governments unless ety’s weakest and most vulnerable members. they do what the mercurial markets demand? The second lesson is that free-market capitalism and The Republic of Ireland faced that question last democracy are not always mutually re-enforcing. The success month, when after weeks of resistance it accepted an 85-bil - of China’s entrepreneurial government since Deng Xiaopeng lion euro line of credit from the European Central Bank. In took it down the capitalist road should be proof enough. But doing so, it effectively surrendered its sovereignty, yielding the events of the Great Recession have proved that once its national budget, national priorities and government ser - financial markets use governments to pay for market abuses, vices to the direction of outside auditors. The Irish govern - financial leaders can also turn on governments and demand ment’s big mistake was to bail out the country’s banks when the last drop of citizens’ blood. To be sure, neither govern - they failed in the Great Recession. Now it must accept gov - ments nor their publics lack responsibility in this tragedy. ernment by bankruptcy accountants. Has democracy been Governments (and regulators) established the business- undone by capitalism? For the most part. friendly environment that brought prosperity; prosperity The Irish government, led on by the conventional wis - brought them popularity; and the public enjoyed the appar - dom promoted by the banks, the building industry and the ent growth in household wealth and higher lifestyles. But business press, certainly had a role in the collapse by estab - ultimately the major responsibility lies with “the masters of lishing policies that inflated the speculative real estate bubble the universe,” the financial titans who with few exceptions before it burst. But unlike the banks and other business sec - created the conditions for this crisis by bending laws to their tors, the government accepted responsibility and took on the purposes. The powerful financial class that benefitted from debt of the failing banks. Then it adopted one of the most public rescues continues today to fight against re-regulation austere budgets in Europe to make good on its outstanding (at least in the United States), wallowing in renewed prof - obligations. Now, because of “the market’s” fear of the impact itability and bringing governments to their knees. of Irish indebtedness on the euro zone, the European How can free-market capitalism, especially financial Central Bank has forced Ireland to accept an outsized line of markets, be made less inimical to democracy? The future of credit at the price of even more draconian budget cuts. democratic government requires greater distance between Of the many object lessons to be drawn from this lat - finance and government, not an easy task given the modern est drama in the Great Recession, two in particular demand expectation that government manages the economy. It also consideration. First, the primary perpetrators in the collapse requires a rebirth of social responsibility and concern for the have not borne the burden of their offenses. Second, the common good on the part of corporations and their leaders, myth of the synergy between capitalism and democracy is and a renewed sense of moderation on the part of the public at shattered. They are lessons that apply to the United States large. But since government and the public continue to mea - no less than to Ireland. sure well-being almost solely in terms of economic growth, In Ireland prosecutors have yet to announce whether such moderation too may be out of reach—until the markets they will prosecute officers of the Anglo-Irish Bank for bring on a collapse too great for even a government rescue.

December 13, 2010 America 5 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

PEACEMAKING An unarmed LGM-30 Minuteman missile ascends in a test launch from Vandenberg U.S. Bishops Urge Support Air Force Base in California. For Nuclear Weapons Pact he new president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International TJustice and Peace called on U.S. senators to set aside politics and ratify the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The treaty, signed by President Obama and Russia’s President Dmitri Medvedev on April 8, would reduce the nuclear arsenals of both countries by 30 percent. Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany, New York, wrote in a letter to the Senate on Nov. 29: “Consistent with Catholic teaching, the Holy See and the U.S. bishops have long supported reducing the number of nucle - ar armaments, preventing their spread to other nations and securing nuclear materials from terrorists. For decades they have promoted the twin and interrelated policy goals of nuclear disarmament and non-pro - liferation. We understand this is an ideal that will take years to reach, but it is a task which our nation must take up with renewed energy.” Bishop Hubbard chairs the bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace. Archbishop Timothy Dolan, the recently elected president of the U.S.C.C.B., said, “I renew and re- emphasize the position taken by my supporter of strong and bipartisan Start a “modest step toward a world predecessor, Cardinal Francis George, action on the new Start Treaty.’” with greater respect for human life.” that the [conference] is ‘a steadfast Bishop Hubbard called the new He added: “The church’s concern for

CHINA Bishop Guo “finds himself in a most serious canonical condition,” facing Vatican: Bishop’s Ordination “severe sanctions,” including automatic excommunication, it said. Inflicts ‘Painful Wound’ “This ordination not only does not n episcopal ordination in on Father Guo, whose ordination was contribute to the good of the Catholics China inflicted a “painful illicit in the eyes of the church. Some of Chengde, but places them in a very Awound” on the Catholic of the ordaining bishops had been delicate and difficult condition, also Church, and government pressure on detained by government officials in the from the canonical point of view, and other bishops to participate in the cere - days before the ordination in an effort humiliates them, because the Chinese mony was a “grave violation of freedom to force them to participate. civil authorities wish to impose on of religion and conscience,” the Vatican The Vatican said Pope Benedict them a pastor who is not in full com - said on Nov. 24. Under close surveil - “received the news with deep regret.” munion either with the Holy Father or lance from local government officials on Because the new bishop did not have with the other bishops throughout the Nov. 20, the Rev. Joseph Guo Jincai was the mandate or blessing of the pope, world,” the Vatican statement said. ordained bishop of Chengde—the first the ordination “constitutes a painful The bishops participating in the bishop ordained in China without wound upon ecclesial communion and ordination face canonical penalties papal approval in four years. a grave violation of Catholic disci - unless it can be shown that they were Eight bishops in communion with pline,” the statement said. The ordina - forced by government security forces Pope Benedict XVI laid their hands tion was a violation of church law, and to attend the liturgy. John Liu Jinghe,

6 America December 13, 2010 ment of just war criteria, including the and President Obama has made ratifi - principles of discrimination and pro - cation of the pact a top priority. portionality. Nuclear weapons are a In his letter to Congress, Bishop grave threat to human life and dignity. Hubbard argued that the treaty would Nuclear war is rejected in church be a step toward further international teaching because the use of nuclear cooperation to limit the spread of weapons cannot ensure noncombatant nuclear weapons and nuclear material. immunity and their destructive poten - “Military experts and former national tial and lingering radiation cannot be leaders have come together across meaningfully proportionate. Pope party lines to support the new Start Benedict XVI said in a January 2006 treaty,” Bishop Hubbard wrote. statement, ‘In a nuclear war there “Leaders from both parties, diplomats would be no victors, only victims.’” and military experts argue that the New Start would commit the treaty does not constrain U.S. missile United States and Russia to reducing defense and that announced invest - their strategic arsenals to 1,550 war - ments in our nation’s nuclear weapons heads deployed on long-range missiles, infrastructure will keep our nuclear bombers and submarines. Under the deterrent safe and reliable. previous Start pact, which expires this “The U.S. bishops’ conference is month, both countries reduced their urging strong bipartisan support for arsenals to 2,200 weapons each. the new Start treaty because the treaty A threat on Dec. 1 by Senate makes our nation and world safer by Republicans to block all legislation reducing nuclear weapons in a verifi - nuclear weapons grows out of its com - until expiring tax cuts are extended able way. We urge the Senate to take mitment to the sanctity of human life. and a bill is passed to fund the federal up the new Start treaty without delay,” This commitment led to the develop - government does not apply to Start, he concluded. the retired bishop of Tangshan, In recent years, because of govern - kiun condemned “the kidnapping [of refused to attend the ordination. More ment requirements, the priests, nuns bishops], the cutting of all communi - than 100 Catholics and dozens of gov - and laypeople of Chinese dioceses cations, the huge show of police force ernment officials attended the ordina - have elected their new bishops. Most as if dealing with dangerous crimi - tion Mass at the church in the rural of those elected have applied to the nals.” “Are we not living well into the town of Pingquan. The village was Holy See for approval. If such 21st century?” he asked. surrounded by about 100 uniformed approval was given, it and plainclothes police. Cameras were often was announced at banned in the church, and mobile the episcopal ordination. phone signals were blocked in the area. Federico Lombardi, Bishop Guo became the first bishop S.J., the Vatican spokes- illegitimately ordained since Pope man, said the ordination Benedict issued his letter to Chinese would damage “the con - Catholics in 2007. The papal letter structive relations that strongly criticized the limits placed by have been developing in the Chinese government on the recent times between the church’s activities; but on several key People’s Republic of issues, including the appointment of China and the Holy See.” bishops, it invited civil authorities to a Hong Kong’s Car- A Chinese Catholic kneels in prayer at his home near new and serious dialogue. dinal Joseph Zen Ze- Taiyuan, Shanxi Province.

December 13, 2010 America 7 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Condom Remarks Offer Teachable Moment NEWS BRIEFS The public debate on church teaching about condoms triggered by Pope Pope Benedict XVI applauded on Nov. 29 the Benedict XVI’s comments in a new church’s role in abolishing the death penalty in the book provides an ideal opportunity for Philippines. • Auxiliary Bishop William Kenney of parish priests to clarify that teaching Birmingham, England, denounced the British policy for the faithful from the pulpit, said the of repatriating Iraqi Christians fleeing persecution on president of Caritas Internationalis. Nov. 26, saying he knows they endure the “constant Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga fear and tension of not knowing what will happen Iraqi Christians of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, said that next.” • The U.S. bishops commended a resolution in mourn after Oct 31 attack. many Catholics do not know what the the House of Representatives that condemns recent church teaches in this regard. “This attacks on religious minorities in Iraq and calls for the U.S. and Iraqi could be a good opportunity for us in governments to do more to protect them. • “God’s dream for us is to the parishes to clarify and to teach.” be a united people, and we must pursue it...and pledge together to do Cardinal Rodríguez dismissed claims this,” Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond of New Orleans said at the that the pope had changed the church’s 2010 Centennial Ecumenical Gathering of the National Council of teaching on the use of condoms. “It has Churches in Christ. • Israel’s measures to “ease” the illegal blockade of been the doctrine of the church all the Gaza have done little to change the plight of Gaza’s civilians , accord - time that when there are emergency ing to a new report. Kate Allen, Amnesty International’s U.K. director, cases the principle of double effect” said, “The only real easing has been the easing of pressure on the Israeli applies. The book, Light of the World: authorities to end this cruel and illegal practice.” The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times , is based on interviews Pope Benedict granted the German journal - ist Peter Seewald. In the book, the quake” on Jan. 12. The current outbreak Christian girl. Chaudhry Naeem was pope said that the use of condoms— of cholera has aggravated an already dif - found not guilty of raping and mur - for instance, to prevent the spread of ficult situation for Haitians, they said. dering Shazia Bashir, a 12-year-old H.I.V.—“can be a first step in the The generous outpouring of aid from Christian girl. Naeem’s wife and son, direction of a moralization, a first foreign governments and church orga - who were accused with him of having assumption of responsibility.” nizations would reach those in need forced Bashir to work as a maid in more effectively “if local agencies were their home and of physically mistreat - Bishops: ‘Alarming’ better able to organize” the use and dis - ing her, also were let off on all charges. tribution of the aid, they said. The Bashir died in January. Some charged Situation in Haiti council members also expressed con - that medical tests were manipulated to A cholera epidemic and poor infras - cern that in parts of the Americas, gov - show that Shazia died of a “skin dis - tructure and organization in Haiti have ernments were promoting legislation ease,” and testimonial evidence from created an “alarming” situation in the that is “contrary to ethical norms,” such her family was deemed insufficient by small Caribbean nation, said a group of as the legalization of abortion, euthana - the court. “It is not the first time that, bishops meeting at the Vatican. A spe - sia and same-sex marriage. in cases like this, the outcome of the cial council of bishops working on the process leaves influential Muslim citi - follow-up to the 1997 Synod of No Justice for zens unpunished, despite the atrocities Bishops for America and Pope John committed on poor and helpless Paul II’s 1999 post-synodal document, Christians in Pakistan Christians,” said Nasir Saeed, head of “The Church in America,” met at the The Christian community in Pakistan the Center for Legal Aid Assistance Vatican on Nov. 16 –17. They noted was outraged by the acquittal on Nov. and Settlement. “with concern” the “alarming social situ - 27 of a rich Muslim man accused of ation in Haiti in the wake of the earth - raping and murdering a young From CNS and other sources.

8 America December 13, 2010 Paid Advertisement --Special-SpeciSpecial Sale forfor AmericaAmerica MagazineMagazine Readers-Readerseaders- SAVESAAVEVE ooverver 555%5% - MMoraloralal TheologTheologyy PresentedPreesentsented byby Fr.Fr. KennethKeennethnneth R. Himes,Himmeses, O.F.M.O.F.M. 224-LECTURE4-LECTURE AUDIO COURSE including FREE STUDY GUIDE on CD oin oneone of America’sAmerica’s leading About Your Speaker theologianstheologians inin exploring one of J life’slife’s most important questions: KennethKenneth R.R. Himes, O.F.M.O.F.M..M. is past chair-chair- mmanan ofof thethe DepartmentDepartment ofof TheologyTheology at What doesdoes it meanit mean to liveto alive life? a life? Boston College. Prior to his move to BostonBoston College, Fr.Fr. Himes taught ThisThis trulytruly specialspecial course by Boston courses in moral theology for many CollegeCollege theologytheology departmentdepartment past chair years at the WashingtonWashington Theological Fr.Fr. Ken Himes will inform, intrigue, and Union. challengechallenge you. If you could return to ccollege,ollege, youyou would want toto taketake Fr.Fr. Fr.Fr. Himes is a past president of the HHime’sime’s course. Now,Now, we are happyhappy to CatholicCatholic Theological Society of bring his teaching to you. AmericaAmerica and has served as a visiting faculty member at the Divinity School What You Will Learn of Howard University (Washington,(WWashington,ashington,ashingt DDC)C) and the Graduate School of Arts From this course, you will learn: and SciencesSciences atat thethe University of VirginiaVVirirginiaginia in Charlottesville. He also held Fr.Frr.. Kenneth R. HHimes, O.FO.F.M.,F.M.,.M., Ph.D. ‡‡+RZWKH&DWKROLFWKHRORJLFDOWUDGLWLRQ+RZ WKH &DWKROLF WKHRORJLFDO WUDGLWLRQ  Past Chairman, Department of thethe PaulPaul McKeever ChairChair as a visiting eenablesnables us to interpret moral experiexperi-- TheologyTheology,, Boston College facultyfaculty membermember atat St.St. John’sJohn’s University ence assistassist the reflectivereflective person in the task in NewNew YorkY ork CityCity.. of understanding and articulating ‡‡:KDWLWPHDQVWREHDPRUDOSHUVRQLQ:KDW LW PHDQV WR EH D PRUDO SHUVRQ LQ moralmoral experience,experience, relating one’sone’s HeHe is the co-authorco-author ofof FullnessFullness of Faith, light of a theological understanding religiousreligious beliefs to one’sone’s values and andand wrote the popular Responses to 101 of the human situation actions. Questionstions on Catholic Social Teaching.Teachieaching. He was co-editor of AAnn IntroductionIntrroductionoduction to ‡‡:KDWUHVRXUFHVDUHDYDLODEOHWRWKH:KDW UHVRXUFHV DUH DDYYDLODDEEOH WR WKH ThisThis coursecourse usesuses the bestbest ideasideas of ChristianChristian Ethics and was chief editor of Catholic community for the formation CatholicCatholic moral theologytheology toto helphelp you ModernModern Catholic Social Teaching:Teachieeaching: of conscienceconscience andand wisewise discernment? discernment? exploreexplore thethe mostmost importantimportant choiceschoices of CommentariesCommentaries andand Interpretations. Fr.Fr. your life. YouYouou will become a more HimesHimes has published over 75 essays in ThisThis course is structured inin three parts. reflectivereflective personperson and be better able to journalsjournals and books, and was an editor of InIn the first part, explore the meaning of assistassist others in moralmoral discernment. NewNew Theology Review for a decade. moralmoral theologytheology generallygenerally and Catholic moralmoral theology specifically.specifically. Through SAVESAAVEVE $90.00$90 ORDER BBYY JANUJANUARYARY 13,, 20201010 partpart two, understand how moral theol-theol- Now YouYou KnowKno Media 7203 Delfield Street Chevy Chase, MD 20815 ogyogy views the person. YouYouou willw explore freedom,freedom, character,character, conscience, sin and OrderOrder byby pphone,hone, oonlinenline oror byby usingusing thisthis couponcoupon conversion in thisthis partpart of of the the program. program. www.NowYouKnowMedia.comwwwwwwww..NowwYYYoouKnoowwMedia.com 11-800-955-3904-800-955-3904 Moral Theology 9 CD Set Sale $69.95 (list price $159.95) + $10 S&H Finally,Finally, consider those resources within Pay with: VerificationVerification Code: thethe CatholicCatholic theologicaltheological traditiontradition thatthat are Account number Exp. Date: uusefulseful forfor moralmoral reflection. YouYou will explore how to use the Bible, reason, Moral Theology SALE Coupon Including WWrittenritten Guide on CD X $69.95 nnaturalatural law,law, ecclesial context,context, and the MD RResidents,esidenesidents, AddAdd 6% SalesSales TTax:ax: Code: cchurch’shurch’s teaching officeoffficefice to inform moral S & H: Signature ______A1524 theology.theology. Name (please print) ______

Mailing address ______

ThroughThrough these lectureslectures youyou will gaingain an City/State/Zip ______Phone understandingunderstanding of how theology can E-mail ______for order confirmation YYES!ES! I wwantant a FREE CCatalog!atalog! OOrderrder Risk Free:Free:ee: 90-day no questions rreturneturn policy NNoo PPurchaseurchase NecessaryNecessary

December 13, 2010 America 9 JOHN F. KAVANAUGH

Relish the Banquet ot so long ago, the day after the harbinger of her son’s “Into your ry, for whom you are grateful—one Thanksgiving was the big hands” on the cross. Perhaps this is person or group of persons per line. Nshopping day, a mad rush to why Jesus, in his lifetime, seems so Make the other column a list of things, trigger Christmas consumer con - grateful for gratitude. Ten lepers are places and events for which you give sciousness. Then some malls decided healed; one returns to give thanks. thanks. Each day write one entry in to start the spree at 12:01 Friday What happened to the other nine? each column. By the end of one month morning. Now, it seems, the day before Did they go on to their next crisis, you will have a litany of gifts, a cata - Thanksgiving has been turned into the their next craving need? What hap - logue of the ways God has come into day after. Maybe soon we can skip pened to giving thanks? your life. Then, with the mother of Thanksgiving entirely. If we ever have that question, the Jesus, you can ponder these things in After all, the spirit of giving thanks answer is this: Don’t let go of your heart. This is an exercise in is not very good for craving and buy - Thanksgiving. Instead of appreciation, being pre - ing. If you give thanks, you are focused lurching into the “30 shop - sent to what is. In this on what is, not what is not, on what ping days left till Let Advent anointing of the pre - you have rather than what you do not Christmas,” why not extend be a sent, we will find our - have. That is why Thanksgiving may thanksgiving all the way selves entering God’s well be the most subversive national through Christmas and savoring presence to our lives. holiday. It centers on the present even into the new year? Let of the ways We will also enter moment, on the ritual of families eat - Advent be not just a long - our humanity most ing together and especially on the ing for God, but a savoring God already deeply. And at the heart appreciation of life. of all the ways God already enters of our gratitude, we will Sometimes I think ingratitude was enters into our lives. find a communion even the original sin, the primal fall from This requires a strategy. our lives. with those men and grace. Adam and Eve, remember, really One that I have come upon women who, not know - had everything. They were already like and have found to actually work is ing God, have embraced our common gods—made in the image and likeness this: enter the days. Savor them. frailty with love and thanks. of God. They had everything in their Appreciate them. Then God can enter I am reminded of a short interview garden, including the tree of life itself. our days with us. All we need is a prac - with Oliver Sacks published a few And yet the great deceiver, that snake, tical discipline. Here it is. years ago, in which he mused on the seduced them into fretting over what When Thanksgiving has already paradox that he was filled with grati - they did not have: the fruit of the tree passed and December has begun, we tude even though he did not know of the knowledge of good and evil, the can prolong the great day of banquets. whom to thank. Later, in a journal of tree of limits. Like gods, they were not Instead of counting shopping days his own convalescence, A Leg to Stand God. And that fact ate away at them before Christmas or anticipating the On , he would write: “Who cared if just as surely as they would eat the days after it, when unwanted trinkets there was really any Being to pray to? apple. can still be returned, we should num - What mattered was the sense of giving The Incarnation, then, became the ber our own days, take hold of them thanks and praise, the feeling of a great reversal of our Fall, a yes to our and anoint them. humble and grateful heart.” humanness, not only in our limits, but A simple way to do this is to use an Well, I think it makes all the differ - even in our fallen, broken state. Mary’s 8-inch by 11-inch lined piece of paper. ence that there is Someone to thank. I “Let it be according to your word” was Draw a vertical line down the middle. suspect that Sacks, unable to repress Each horizontal line counts for a day, his quiet prayers to a You, might won - and each of the two columns will hold der as much. Thanksgiving is not just JOHN F. KAVANAUGH, S.J., is a professor of philosophy at St. Louis University in St. objects of gratitude. Make one column a day. It is a way to God, whether we Louis, Mo. a list of persons, now living or in histo - know it or not.

10 America December 13, 2010 photo: shuttErstoCk/pEDro alvarEz LESSONS ON SPIRIT AND MATTER On the Slope With Teilhard BY DREW CHRISTIANSEN

ymn to Matter” may be one of the oddest-seeming prayers ever penned by a priest. Christians pray to God, to the saints, to the angels perhaps, and sometimes to deceased loved ones. But a hymn to matter? To atoms and rocks, gases and plasma, minerals and stardust? It sounds like idolatry, and indeed as a ‘boH y the author of the hymn had such fascination with rocks that he referred to them as “my idols.” He explained, “as far as my childish experience went, nothing in the world was harder, heavier, tougher, more durable than this marvelous sub - stance....” Soon, as he saw iron rust, he learned the impermanence of the hardest substance he then knew, and a spiritual hunger was born within him. The prayer’s author, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), a renowned paleontologist and geologist during his lifetime, became better known after his death as a philosopher of evolution and a spiritual writer. But the Jesuit priest never left his rocks behind. Just as discovery of their flaws had initiated him on a mystic quest for a permanent and universal object worthy of his devotion, so Teilhard believed that without matter—without the resistance, disappointments and challenges matter offered humans—our intellectual and spiritual develop - ment as a species would be arrested.

Harsh Schoolmaster Teilhard’s “Hymn to Matter” praises the stuff of the universe as the harsh school - master of the human spirit. “Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us,” he wrote, “we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God.” “By constantly shattering our mental categories, you force us to go ever fur - ther and further in our pursuit of truth,” he wrote. “By overflowing and dissolv - ing our narrow standards of measurement [you] reveal to us the dimensions of God.” Matter, as Teilhard would write, is “‘the matrix of spirit’: that in which life

DREW CHRISTIANSEN, S. J., editor in chief of America , prepared earlier versions of this essay for the United Methodist-Catholic Dialogue on Creation, Eucharist and Ecology (2009) and the Star Island Conference of the Institute on Religion in an age of Science(2010).

December 13, 2010 America 13 emerges and is supported, not the active principle from awakens its particular excitement in the learner, the process which it takes its rise.” of inquiry holds the potential to whet our appetite for the Drawing on his personal, intellectual and spiritual infinite mystery of existence. itinerary as a natural scientist and priest, Teilhard regarded One problem that afflicts us today, as it did in Teilhard’s the recalcitrance of matter and the need for human effort to time, is that there is often too little intellectual discipline on uncover its secrets as the starting point for spiritual growth. the part of those regarded as authorities in the spiritual life. Whereas other Jesuit giants of the 20th century, like Pierre They mistake the whole of faith with its most elementary Rousselot, Joseph Maréchal and Karl Rahner, built their expressions and regard question-and-answer catechizing as philosophical theologies on the mind’s inherent dynamism the equal of serious theology. No doubt, as Alfred North toward God, Teilhard found the hard effort of learning to Whitehead wrote, religion takes place “at all temperatures” be a privileged opening to the divine. The attention the sci - along a scale of human potentialities. Nonetheless, a richer entist pays to the problem he or she studies is practice for intellectual life can often make for a richer spiritual experi - the attention the mystic pays to God. In this discovery, ence and a profounder theology. Teilhard teaches us not Pierre Teilhard was like another French philosopher, only that the findings of science can add to our religious Simone Weil, whose essay “On the Right Use of School wonderment, but also that the scientific way of knowing can Studies” argued that whether it was translating Homer or strengthen the mind’s ascent to God. solving a problem in Euclidean geometry, study fostered the attention essential to prayer. The poised, energetic openness An Eye for Rocks—and for God of the questioner possesses a kinship with the reverent, alert As a field scientist, Teilhard was reputed to have an excep - readiness of a person before God. tional eye for rocks, quickly noting features that escaped the observation of his colleagues and understanding their impli - The Asceticism of Attention cations. It is not surprising, then, that whereas the ancient In “Hymn to Matter,” Teilhard offered this blessing: masters of prayer taught about freeing the mind of preoccu - pation the better to open it to the divine, Teilhard believed You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who that the attention of science to the smallest detail of the resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you physical world made the mind even more capax dei, “radi - who shackle and liberate: it is you, matter, that I bless. cally open to God.” The secret to the spiritual life, as to sci - ence, he believed, lies in unremitting attention to details. As Unlike some who believe that once they enter the world of we come to appreciate the richness and complexity of the thought they can leave the physical world behind, Teilhard universe, so does our perception grow of the glory of God. proposed that the human spirit matures in its effort to Of course, other spiritual masters also emphasized pay - understand (master and respect) the natural world. That ing attention to details. St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s “little way,” understanding of the physical world, however, comes for example, is about doing with devotion the small things through a discipline the scientist must endure. Whether of daily life. Teilhard’s way differs from that of Thérèse or nature or human nature is the subject, applying one’s mind that of the desert fathers, however, in two ways. First, it is to a problem will involve hard effort (including, for a field about the active life, in which humans exercise their creativ - scientist like Teilhard, physical effort), disappointment and ity and inventiveness. The creativity of the artist, the prob - disillusionment. Only then will one find joy in discovery lem-solving of the scientist, the inventiveness of the com - and pleasure in the cumulative growth of understanding. puter engineer, the diagnosis of the physician—all give Insofar as the discipline of science helps us better appre - opportunity to grow in holiness as much as attention to the ciate God’s creation, Teilhard proposed, it is a kind of routines of the monastery or the sacristy. asceticism, a spiritual practice with potential to deepen the Second, the attention to details relates especially to intel - spiritual life. Traditional spirituality stressed control of the lectual activity and pre-eminently scientific research. body through simplicity, fasting, chastity and physical disci - Scholarship about the Bible and the classics had held a role pline. For his part, Teilhard pointed out the discipline in Benedictine spirituality and later in Christian humanism, inherent in the active life and especially in the application of but science involves active investigation and more than that, the mind to learning, a discipline he practiced in fieldwork revision of earlier ideas. As the mind meets the resistance of as well as in museum and laboratory research: identifying the material universe—rocks and atoms, genes and galax - and analyzing distinctive facts, classifying and relating find - ies—“our mental categories” dissolve and “our narrow stan - ings, posing hypotheses and verifying or disproving them. dards of measurement” are shattered. Research in the natu - As we Christians practice the mechanics of learning, our ral world weans us from preconceptions to which we would spirits can grow as well. As the élan of the learning mind otherwise cling; and as we discover the endless wonders of

14 America December 13, 2010 Something good is happening in the world … www.hopeforafamily.org … and we need priests to tell folks about it

rdinary people are making a real difference for families Our priests travel for weekend assignments only. Both full- and living in poverty around the world. They are joining part-time opportunities are available. Spanish-speaking priests are Owith Christian Foundation for Children and Aging, a especially needed. We offer competitive compensation. lay-Catholic organization, offering hope to families in developing countries and helping them create a path out of poverty. To apply, contact Tim Deveney at (800) 875-6564 or [email protected]. A message of hope CFCA is an international movement of people who support and We need priests with a passion for serving the poor and dynamic encourage children, youth and the aging in developing countries. preaching skills to share the CFCA message while celebrating Founded by lay Catholics acting on the Gospel call to serve the Eucharist in parishes across the country. In doing so, you will serve poor, CFCA works with people of all faiths. people living in poverty and the Catholic faithful by bringing them together in a true sharing of cultures, understanding and love. To learn more, visit www.hopeforafamily.org.

Bernardin RENEW ǐ REFLECT ǐ REST Scholarship MINISTRY TO MINISTERS at Catholic An international sabbatical program Theological Union for the seasoned minister Holistic program Preparing ministers and leaders • Theology: Updating and Sharing committed to building upon the • Integrative Spirituality work of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin • Personal Wellness Program Full tuition scholarship….toward an M.A. in Theology or an • Mixed community life and prayer Ecumenical Doctor of Ministry degree at CTU. Contemplative atmosphere • Personal Spiritual Direction More than a scholarship…learn from today’s Church leaders • Closeness to nature in the heart about Cardinal Bernardin’s signature issues, and through of bi-cultural San Antonio participation in apprenticeships and mentorships with CTU’s • Ample private rooms with bath and Internet world-renowned faculty, obtain invaluable practical experience. Spring 2011 Session Apply today…Download your application at www.ctu.edu. January 17 - May 14, 2011 For additional information call 773.371.5432 or email us at [email protected]. Fall 2011 Session August 15 - December 10, 2011 M.T.M SABBATICAL PROGRAM 109 Oblate Drive • San Antonio, TX 78216 OBLATE The Largest Roman Catholic Graduate School SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY Tel: 210-349-9928 • Fax: 210-349-0119 of Theology and Ministry in the U.S. 5401 S Cornell Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60615 [email protected] • www.ost.edu

December 13, 2010 America 15 the universe, the mind opens up to the unimagined dimen - The Divine Milieu he offered an illuminating analogy that is sions of God. the key to the spiritual appreciation of matter. “It is the Asceticism comes in applying ourselves to the learning, slope on which we can go up just as we can go down,” he letting go of prejudices and obsolete theories and acquiring wrote, “the medium that can uphold or give way, the wind new skills. At first the development of the students’ minds that can overthrow and lift up.” Matter’s proper role is to be involves rote learning, but the hope is that the atomic table the road of sanctification. “Created things are not exactly and DNA become so natural that students can apply them obstacles but rather footholds, intermediaries to be made in school exercises, design their own use of, nourishment to be taken, sap to be experiments, observe anomalies and ON THE WEB purified and elements to be associated finally verify their findings through repli - A conversation with Drew with us and borne along with us” on our Christiansen, S.J. cation. All stages—rote learning, applica - americamagazine.org/podcast journey into light. tion, experimentation, examining anoma - Matter is not a static thing. It is the lies, verification—entail discipline. For book just read, the hypothesis confirmed the self-aware scientist or student, the effort it takes to prove or falsified. It is landlines, fax machines, modems and the a simple fact offers a hint of the dedication that growth in Apple computer. It is Gandhi’s experiments with truth and the spirit also requires. Likewise, for the believer and spiri - the Tea Party movement. It is the past that has brought us tual searcher, the practice of science should suggest the forward and the past that has held us back. Matter is the gradual growth of skills, including intellectual ones, that are toehold of the spirit in history. That toehold defines two entailed in the human cooperation with divine grace. zones:

Moving Upward the zone already left behind or arrived at, to which we In time Teilhard came to see matter in broad terms, not just should not return, or at which we should not pause, as the object of physical science, but as everything in life that lest we fall back—this is the zone of matter in the by giving us resistance helps us to move ahead, whether in material and carnal sense ; and the zone offered to our knowledge, material progress or spiritual development. In renewed efforts toward progress, search, conquest and ‘divinization,’ the zone of matter taken in the spiritual sense ; and the frontier between the two is essentially relative and shifting.

We must lean on the things of this world to move us forward America or when they give way, we will tumble back. The spiritual appreciation of matter involves both counting on its resis - tance to hold us as we press ahead and expecting the exertion demanded of us to move upward. Both forces are necessary. en Español Like mountaineering, the spiritual life requires steady movement upward, Teilhard reflected. Unless the rock America is pleased to offer a selection climber poised on her toehold moves forward, she will slip and fall back. “That which is good, sanctifying and spiritual of its articles in Spanish. for my brother below or beside me on the mountainside, can be misleading or bad for me,” Teilhard advises. “What I The translations have been made rightly allowed myself yesterday, I must perhaps deny myself available by Mirada Global, a multilingual today.” Web site that brings together articles How matter functions depends on the route of each per - from Jesuit publications in North and son’s spiritual progress. What I make of the questions I face South America. Articles are also avail - in my work, what I do with the events in my life, the oppor - able in Portuguese. tunities I make of crises I encounter, all will determine how deeply I will participate (and the degree to which others share) in the divinization our world is undergoing in Christ. Available at Like mountaineering, advance in the spiritual life depends americamagazine.org/espanol on making upward progress, discovering, as Teilhard did, as we go that the matter of our life is “the sap of our souls, the hand of God, the flesh of Christ.” A

16 America December 13, 2010 Te ac hi ng or Comma nding? When bishops instruct the faithful BY NICHOLAS LASH hen the Second Vatican Council ended, the crisis of contemporary Catholicism lies in just such sub - several of the bishops who took part told ordination of education to governance, the effect of which me that the most important lesson they has too often been to substitute for teaching proclamation had learned through the conciliar process construed as command. As Yves Congar said, it is impossi - hWad been a renewed recognition that the church exists to be, ble to make the function of teaching an integral element of for all its members, a lifelong school of holiness and wis - jurisdiction because it is one thing to accept a teaching, quite dom, a lifelong school of friendship (a better rendering of another to obey an order: “ Autre chose est agréer une doctrine, caritas than “charity” would be). It follows that the most fun - autre chose obéir à un ordre .” damental truth about the structure of Christian teaching cannot lie in distinc - tions between teachers and pupils— although such distinctions are not unim - portant—but in the recognition that all Christians are called to lifelong learning in the Spirit, and all of us are called to embody, communicate and protect what we have learned. Much of what is said about the office of “teachership” or magisterium seems dangerously forgetful of this fact.

Aspects of Instruction The concept of instruction is ambiguous. If I am “instructing” someone, I may be teach - ing or I may be issuing a command. Someone who is “under instruction” is being educated, but “I instructed him to stop” reports a command. “Instructions for use,” however, provide information and hence would seem to be educational. There may be cases in which it is not easy to decide the sense. It is, however, important not to confuse the two senses and even more important not to subordinate instruction as education to instruction as command. g N i

I have long maintained that the heart of r a h

l u a p /

NICHOLAS LASH was for 20 years the Norris-Hulse o t o

Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University. This h p

S

article is adapted from his talk honoring the theolog - N c ical achievement of Michael Buckley, S.J., delivered : o t at Boston College in 2009. o h p

December 13, 2010 America 17 Dissent and Disagreement that if we abandoned the word ‘dissent’ altogether, we would I have said that Catholic Christianity is a lifelong school of lose little and gain much.” I agree. Yet, “All these arguments friendship, holiness and wisdom. Yet the tasks of those exer - notwithstanding,” Father Orsy concludes, “it appears that cising the pastoral teaching office seem not, in fact, primar - for the time being at least” we must “live with an unsuitable ily to be teaching, at least as this activity is understood in word.” For goodness’ sake, why? most schools. Here is a very simple model: The teacher looks for under - In 1975 a plenary session of the International standing, the commander for obedience. Where teaching in Theological Commission issued a series of theses on the most ordinary senses of the term is concerned, if a pupil’s relationship between the magisterium and theology. In response to a piece of teaching is yes, the student is saying 1966 Paul VI had addressed something like “I see” or “I an international congress on understand.” If the response is “The Theology of Vatican II” What we call ‘official teaching’ no, the pupil is saying “I don’t on the same topic, and the in the church is, see” or “I don’t understand.” commission introduced its When subordinates say yes to a theses with two brief quota - for the most part, not teaching command, they obey; when they tions from that address. The say no, they disobey. Dissent is commission defined ecclesias - but governance. disobedience. The entire discus - tical magisterium as “the office sion about the circumstances in of teaching which, by Christ’s institution, is proper to the which it may be permissible or appropriate to dissent from college of bishops or to individual bishops joined in hierar - magisterial utterances makes clear that what is at issue is chical communion with the Supreme Pontiff.” when and in what circumstances it may be virtuous, and not What terminology might be appropriate to describe sinful, to disobey. There could, in my opinion, be no clearer what someone is doing when, for whatever reason, he or she evidence that what we call “official teaching” in the church is, seeks to take issue with some particular instance of magis - for the most part, not teaching but governance. terial teaching? “Disagreeing” is the term that comes to I am not in the least denying that governance, the issuing mind. But because teaching is, in current ecclesiastical of instructions and commands, has its place in the life of the usage, usually construed as governance, as command, such church, as of any other society. That is not what is at issue. taking issue is described in the recent literature not as dis - The point at issue is that commands direct; they do not agreement but as “dissent.” educate. It is one thing to accept a doctrine, quite another to Francis A. Sullivan, S.J., reminded readers of his 1983 obey an order. book Magisterium that Pius XII, in “Humani Generis,” announced that “when a pope, in an encyclical, expresses his Manuals and Rule Books judgment on an issue that was previously controverted, this Commenting on Pope John Paul II’s encyclical “The can no longer be seen as a question for free discussion by Splendor of Truth” (1993), Herbert McCabe, O.P., con - theologians”; Father Sullivan goes on to point out, however, trasted manuals and rule books. A manual helps one to that “there is no such statement in any of the documents acquire some skill: as a football player or a piano-tuner or, if that were approved by the Council.” The silence of the we extend the range of skills to those habits we call the Second Vatican Council notwithstanding, John Paul II, virtues, as a just or generous person. A manual is an instru - addressing the American bishops in Los Angeles in 1987, ment of education. In addition to manuals there are rule said without qualification: “It is sometimes said that dissent books, which tell you what, in some particular context, you from the magisterium is totally compatible with being a are and are not allowed to do. Father McCabe writes: “The ‘good Catholic’ and poses no obstacle to the reception of the rule book does not tell you anything about acquiring skills sacraments. This is a grave error that challenges the teach - in football; it simply tells you the rules and the kinds of ing office of the bishops in the United States and elsewhere.” action that would break them.” The rule book is an instru - If Father Sullivan’s study seemed content to work with ment of governance. What worried Father McCabe about the terminology of “dissent,” Ladislas Orsy, S.J., is more “The Splendor of Truth” was that it is, he said, “in great troubled by the notion. “Dissent has become,” says Father part, an attack on those who want to read the rule book as a Orsy, “one of the dominant themes in Catholic theology in manual by those who want to read the manual as though it the United States,” but “is mentioned less in European writ - were a rule book.” ings.” Dissent, he says, “is an imperfect term under several Nowhere in “The Splendor of Truth” does John Paul II aspects”: It is purely negative; it implies “deep-lying internal discuss disagreement in the church or the duty of episcopal antagonism”; it is historically loaded; and so on. “It follows authority to monitor and guide it. Indeed, near the end of

18 America December 13, 2010 the encyclical, in a passage denouncing “dissent” and “oppo - nate because bishops seldom do much teaching in the ordi - sition to the teaching of the Church’s pastors,” the pope nary sense, being preoccupied with the cares of middle man - comes close to claiming that there is simply no place for dis - agement. As a result, the contraction of the range of refer - agreement on moral questions in the church: “While ence of magisterium to the episcopate alone served only to exchanges and conflicts of opinion may constitute normal deepen the subordination of education to governance that I expressions of public life in a representative democracy, have deplored. moral teaching certainly cannot depend simply upon respect There are, of course, exceptions to the claim that most for such a process.” It “cannot depend simply ” upon bishops seldom do much teaching in the ordinary sense. “exchanges and conflicts of opinion”—fair enough. But Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, when he was archbishop of might Catholics not have expected him to say something Milan, could fill his cathedral with people who came to hear about the part such “exchanges” should play? him interpret the Scriptures. And an encyclical like Pope Benedict XVI’s “Caritas in Veritate” (2009) is surely a quite ‘Teachership’ straightforward exercise in teaching. “It is for ecclesiology,” said Robert Murray, S.J., an English I have referred to the contraction of the range of “official Jesuit, “that [the term] magisterium till about the mid-nine - teachers” to the episcopate. In fact, during the 20th century teenth century referred to the activity of authorized teaching the magisterium contracted even further. John Paul II’s in the Church. The use with a capital ‘M’ to denote episco - encyclical “Veritatis Splendor” is addressed “to all the bish - pal and especially papal authority was developed mainly in ops of the Catholic Church.” Near the end of it, the pope the anti-Modernist documents.” says: “This is the first time, in fact, that the Magisterium of The 19th-century shift from the name of a function, that the Church has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of teaching, to the name of a group of officers or “func - of this teaching,” thereby contracting the range of reference tionaries” was for two reasons most unfortunate. First, it still further—to himself. was unfortunate because it created the impression that in According to the church historian Eamon Duffy, John the church only bishops bear responsibility for witnessing to Paul II, like Pius XII before him, “saw the pope as first and the Gospel. (We should never forget that most bishops were foremost a teacher, an oracle.” However accurate the image first catechized by their mothers.) Second, it was unfortu - of particular popes as “oracles” may be as a description, it

Small, vibrant, Vatican II parish in downtown Baltimore Seeks

Full-time, Professionally-trained, Vocationally-dedicated Pastoral Associate

effective July 1, 2011 as tenure-track position leading to appointment as Pastoral Life Director effective July 1, 2013

For job description, requirements, and a good look at our parish, visit www.StVChurch.org, email [email protected], call 410-962-5078, or write St. Vincent de Paul, 120 N. Front St., Baltimore MD 21202-4804.

Applications close Jan 31, 2011.

December 13, 2010 America 19 remains the case that any pope who behaves within the “Human community,” says Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., “is church as an oracle misunderstands his office. The image of sustained by conversation.” That he regards this axiom as an the oracle is of one who brings fresh messages from God. ecclesiological and not merely an anthropological principle This no pope can do, for the church he serves as its chief is clear from his later remark that “sharing our faith is always bishop has already heard the Word and lives by that faith, more than stating our convictions: it is finding our place in which is its God-given response. It is the duty of those who that conversation which has continued ever since Jesus hold teaching office in the church to articulate, to express, to began to talk with anyone whom he met in Galilee, and clarify the faith by which we live. which is the life of the Church.” Disagreement is an unavoidable feature of serious conversa - Reception ON THE WEB tion about the things that matter most. Hence the importance of the doctrine of From 1992, Nicholas Lash reports on David Woodard, a brilliantly effective “reception.” In one of St. Augustine’s ser - the state of theology in Europe. but somewhat eccentric parish priest americamagazine.org/pages mons (No. 272) he says: “When I hold up with whom I had the privilege of work - the host before communion, I say ‘Corpus ing in the early 1960s, came back one day Christi,’ and you reply ‘Amen,’ which means: ‘Yes, we are.’” after visiting a neighboring parish and exclaimed: “Those The response of the faithful to sound teaching in the church people are completely lacking in Christian charity; they can’t is to say, “Yes, that’s it.” Where this response is lacking, the even disagree with one another!” teaching is called into question. In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas Securus judicat orbis terrarum (“The judgment of the (“Unity in essentials, liberty in open questions, in all things whole world is secure”). In the months leading up to the charity”). Pope John XXIII quoted this 16th-century motto first Vatican Council, Cardinal John Henry Newman in his first encyclical. It seems to me that where the relation - insisted that he “put the validity of the Council upon its ships between governance and education and between the reception by the orbis terrarum ” (whole world). And when, episcopate and teachers of theology are concerned, there are after the council, he hesitated before accepting the defini - few more important tasks for the bishops to undertake than tion of papal infallibility, Lord Acton remarked, “He was to act as moderators of disagreement, educators in Christian waiting for the echo.” conversation. A

Graduate TO SUBSCRIBE OR RENEW K New subscription K Renewal Yearly rates are $56 for each subscription. Add Religious Education $30 for postage, handling and GST on Canadian orders. Add $54 for foreign subscriptions. Payment in U.S. funds only. K Payment enclosed K Bill me ONLINE On occasion America gives permission to other organizations to use our list for promotional pur- Master of Arts in Religious Education (33 credits) poses. If you do not want to receive these promo- tions, contact our List Manager at our New York Master’s Certi cate in Religious Education (18 credits) offices. 9 0

Post-Master’s Certi cate in Religious Education (18 credits) 9 0 A FOR E t
$PVSTFT
BEESFTT
SFDPNNFOEBUJPOT
GPVOE
JO
UIF
4UBOEBSE
5ISFF
o
CHANGE OF ADDRESS
$BUIPMJD
5IFPMPHZ
-BZ
&DDMFTJBM
.JOJTUSZ
$FSUJöDBUJPO
4UBOEBSET
BOE











AND
&MFNFOUT
PG
*OUFMMFDUVBM
'PSNBUJPO
$P8PSLFST
JO
UIF
7JOFZBSE
PG
UIF
-PSE









RENEWAL: t
"MM
DPVSTFT
BSF
POMJOF
BOE
SFTJEFODZ
JT
OPU
SFRVJSFE











Please attach the P I Z

mailing label from

t
"MM
GBDVMUZ
SFDFJWFE
UIF
.BOEBUVN
BOE
IPME
EPDUPSBUFT

the front cover when

e t

writing about service a t

NJOJTUFSJBM
EJTDPVOU
JT
BWBJMBCMF
UP
RVBMJöFE
QFSTPOT t S

or change of

address. Allow 3 to

STUDENTS FIRST







4 weeks for change

of address to take

s

s

effect. Thank you. l

i e e

r a

y m d m 201.559.6077 or [email protected] t a d i - N A C E 
4PVUI
.BJO
4USFFU
-PEJ
/+

t

XXXGFMJDJBOFEV Mail to: America P.O. Box 293159, Kettering, OH 45429-9159








or call 1-800-627-9533 or visit www.americamagazine.org

20 America December 13, 2010 O HOLY NIGHT 2 More suggestions from readers for keeping Christmas sacred

into the suburbs over the years had left his congregation The Walnut Doors much smaller and the church building rather neglected. The happiest memory of my childhood is of Christmas While we would be strangers at the city parish, we would Eve, as I stood with my cousins and knocked on the dou - also be guaranteed an open pew and could sit together as a ble walnut doors that led to the living room at the house of family. So off we went in our 12-passenger Dodge to find my Grandma and Grand Pap. Several weeks before St. Gregory the Great, its outside well lit with decorations. Christmas these huge doors had been closed and locked. Inside we found a pew and a congregation with a sprinkling No one was allowed in the Christmas room except my of young, vibrant Catholics of diverse backgrounds who grandparents. Grand Pap would drag in a tree from the welcomed us warmly to their parish. market. Grandma would assemble the family’s magnificent Thus our Christmas migration to different parishes in German nativity set. Presents galore were carefully laid urban Chicago. There’s always room in the pews at these around the huge tree, which seemed to stretch to the top of grand places, so we’ve often invited relatives to join us. Each their 11-foot-high ceiling. year we honor the Incarnation by visiting a parish that is On Christmas Eve the whole family would gather and not our own. Enveloped in familiar prayers and a tradition wait outside the walnut doors. We would sing carols and that makes us feel at home, we are surrounded by strangers dunk Grandma’s anise cookies in her eggnog, freshly made who remind us that we are not quite there yet. We always and specially spiced with nutmeg. As each family of aunts, return home richer for the experience. uncles and cousins arrived, we would loudly sing in greet - TED ROSEAN ing, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Wilmette, Ill. Grand Pap would slip unnoticed into the Christmas room and light the tree. We children would knock on the Making Links doors, “Is it time yet, Papap?” “No, not yet ! Santa’s still This year our parish has adopted the theme “Welcoming the working,” he would say playfully. Time and again, we would Stranger,” in an attempt to show the connections between knock and call, “Is it time yet, Papap?” We lined up before Mary and Joseph as refugees and those who are immigrants the doors from youngest to oldest waiting for the moment and refugees around the world today and our own spiritual when the Christmas room would be revealed. But not until journeys. As Advent begins we feature an evening of reflec - every family member was present and our excitement had tion for adults on the experience of immigrants. Later we built to bursting did those walnut doors swing open. Then, offer schoolchildren a “Journey to Bethlehem” breakfast and a before the first gift was opened, all the grandchildren knelt walk past tableaus by slightly older children depicting in front of the nativity to sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. Nativity scenes. In preparation for Christmas we set a table Grand Pap and Grandma are long home with Jesus now. in the church with one place-setting missing to remind us Their house with the walnut doors has been demolished, that we ourselves must provide the welcome and place-set - but the customs live on. We still sing “We Wish You a ting for the stranger in our midst. Merry Christmas” as each of my eight sisters and brothers (REV.) SAMUEL ESPOSITO and their children arrive at the house for Christmas. We still McMurray, Pa. line up, youngest to oldest, to march into the Christmas room. And we still sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. It Vigil Dinner wouldn’t be Christmas unless we did. During my first year in medical school, I called my family (REV.) LARRY W. DORSCH Weirton, W.Va. and asked them if they’d like to have dinner at a nearby restaurant before attending the Christmas Vigil Mass. The City Celebration dinner was so relaxed, so laugh-filled and such a good chance to rediscover one another that we have repeated it The Christmas vigil Mass in our suburban parish was each year for the past 20 years. always exciting, with the pews packed and the choir at the JIM HEDERMAN, S.J. top of its game. But some years ago, after a priest friend was Bronx, N.Y. made pastor of an old inner-city parish on Chicago’s North Side, my wife and I packed our seven kids into the van to For more O Holy Night stories and suggestions by America celebrate Christmas at his parish. The exodus of Catholics readers, visit www.americamagazine.org /holynight.

December 13, 2010 America 21 BOOKS &CULTURE

ART | JUDITH DUPRÉ HIGHLY FAVORED ONE New Images of Mary In her exquisite new book Full of Grace: Encountering Mary in Faith, Art and Gabriel, in street clothing Life , Judith Dupré meditates on a variety ruffled by a breeze, and look - of images of Mary throughout history. ing like a friendly salesman, The author considers, with the help of announces God’s offer of artists’ renderings of Mary, how the story redemption to humanity of the simple young woman of Nazareth through Mary. She is poised has influenced the Christian imagina - just beyond the portal of the tion. door of salvation, which had Here we present from her new book a been closed since the fall of meditation on the Virgin’s meeting with humanity, referred to in the the angel Gabriel in the Gospel of Luke upper panel by the withered and Dupré’s commentary on two contem - tree of the knowledge of porary portraits of Mary: one by Tanja good and evil. Now a ladder Butler and one by John Nava. stretches between heaven —The Editors and earth. Apple blossoms, spring crocuses and bursting on sider the space between pomegranates herald new Gabriel’s appearance and life. Byzantine and medieval C Mary’s eventual yes. We do theologians likened the not know if a moment, an hour or a Incarnation to the image of day elapsed. More abstractly, we won - the burning bush confronted der what shape such an opening by Moses: Like that miracu - between an ethereal and a human lous bush, Mary contained being took. There is no way to God in her physical body but describe the interaction between the was not consumed by the two, but it was elastic and porous divine flame. The contempo - enough to capture the imaginations rary Noguchi paper lamp, of royals, ordinaries and artists for nearly hidden behind Mary, 2,000 years. Being a practical yet also evokes light and fragility. remarkable girl, Mary had the com - Tanja Butler’s paintings posure to ask the angel, “How can are visual meditations on the this be?” A natural-enough question intimacy of God’s love. With for a virgin. But those four words do “Annunciation,” 2006, by Tanja Butler exuberance and disarming not convey what must have been an candor, her works combine extraordinary shock. The first shock This intimate diptych is constructed elements of Latino and Russian folk was simply the appearance of of two five-inch-square panels; the art with the prismatic geometries Gabriel—an otherworldly angel with bottom panel provides the explored in the Cubist and great beating wings appearing in an Annunciation’s historical narrative Suprematist movements. Her ecu - t S i menical approach weaves together t ordinary field on an ordinary day. As while the upper panel describes eter - r a

y b

Mary came from devout Jewish stock, nity, symbolized by the gold back - the diverse artistic traditions of o t

Western, Byzantine and Islamic art. o

she would have heard stories upon ground. In the lower panel, the angel h p

22 America December 13, 2010 stories about the miraculous appear - estly and nakedly—stirs up life’s force, When confronted by God, she ances of angels. But that was in the tenderizes the heart and clarifies and answered in the affirmative, allowing distant mythic past, not now, not in concentrates thoughts. Answered can - herself to become impregnated with Nazareth. Angels appeared to her didly, it can coax the spirit out of hid - spirit. Although she did not know mighty forefathers—Moses, Daniel, ing. There is much that will never be where she was about to go, in that Elijah, not to impoverished young known about Mary, yet we know the moment, full of grace, she said yes to girls, certainly not to her. most important thing about her: the journey. How must she have felt when the angel appeared? We can imagine the sudden voiceless chill that claimed her body, accompanied by a surface tingling, a sensation that was almost heat, as the urge to flee raced through her. The aftershocks were scored to Gabriel’s words, sounds that slowly gained vol - ume as she returned to the present moment: You, a virgin, living in the backwaters of Jerusalem, will become the Mother of God. Her body, before the penetration of these words: mind - less, shuddering, vulnerable, pliant. Then, in a few minutes, after checking the earth with her toe, touching a tree, a rock, something to confirm that her world was still there, her thoughts kicked in—bumping, fractious thoughts—shouldering up to one other, shoving other thoughts aside, all of them racing toward understanding what this heavenly being was saying. She was no longer spellbound. The words shame , risk , reproach and scandal were forming in her head. In time, this moment would t S i t raise Mary from a handmaiden’s lowli - r a

y b ness and would cause all ages to call her o t o blessed, but for now, it was a blind leap h p into the unknown. “Study for a Virgin,” 2001, by John Nava In the Book of Genesis, God asks Adam and Eve, “Where are you?” It’s a Artists through the centuries have strange question because God, who New World tradition of the soulful, tried to imagine how Mary received created those first beings and every dark-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe. the news of her astonishing preg - other living thing, has no need to make His model was a 16-year-old girl of nancy. Rather than portraying such an inquiry. The couple, beguiled mixed Irish and Chinese heritage. apprehension at the angel’s arrival, by the serpent, has found fig leaves to By portraying Mary with features John Nava paints her as a shy cover their nakedness and hide from that could be seen in any number of teenager with downcast eyes, yet their Creator’s question. “Where are places across the globe, the portrait aware of the implications of her you?” Life’s pilgrimage is a daily was intended to engage the spiritual consent. Nava wanted to paint a answering of that question, for our - imagination of a wide swath of non-European Madonna in the selves and for God. Discovering and viewers. naming where you are—the geograph - ic, emotional and spiritual place that JUDITH DUPRÉ, a student at Yale Divinity School, is the author of Full of Grace (Random you occupy, right here, right now, hon - House) and also wrote Churches and Monuments .

December 13, 2010 America 23 BOOKINGS | MARYANN CUSIMANO LOVE Honor medalist Jim Murphy. Integrating careful archival research, START THEM YOUNG eyewitness accounts, photos and maps, Murphy offers a clear, concise and moving account of both World War I and the Christmas truce of 1914. Makeshift chapels were hastily assem - bled for religious services. Soldiers met on the battlefield, buried their dead, exchanged handshakes and gifts, beer and plum pudding. The truce was informally organized by the soldiers themselves, against the orders of their commanding officers. Winston Churchill had an intuition it could happen. A month before the truce, he asked, “What would happen if the armies suddenly and simultaneously went on strike?” Corporal Adolf Hitler refused to take part. For chil - dren who may believe war is inevitable, whose entire lives have been lived in wartime during the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the long war on ter - ror, Truce provides a useful reminder that peace is possible, that soldiers long for peace, and that we all have opportunities and responsibilities to, as one German soldier wrote, “keep the command ‘Peace on Earth.’” Like Truce , all the books in this roundup offer an antimaterialist anti - dote to the consumer rush of the Christmas season. To readers of my children’s books, these themes will Christmas is the high holiday of the violin and sang the carol in German. I come as no surprise. Feeding the spir - child year. It was especially so for me grew up hearing about the Christmas its and minds of the young (and young growing up in Bethlehem, Pa., which truce, how soldiers during World War at heart) with inspiring and original was founded on Christmas Eve 1740. I disobeyed orders and refused to fight ideas, these books all follow the beat of Christmas loomed large in the and sang “Silent Night/Stille Nacht” a different drummer boy or girl. Christmas City. The giant star of across the trenches. I was just a little Claudette Colvin was only 15 years Bethlehem shining on South child, but the story stayed with me of old when she stood up against racism. Mountain even eclipsed the these young soldiers, inspired by the She was arrested in Montgomery, Ala., smokestacks of the Bethlehem Steel Prince of Peace, reaching out across e for refusing to give up her seat to a N i z a plants. But a high point for our family their fears in the dark of night to make white passenger a year before Rosa g a m

was always the exquisite music at our peace in the middle of a war zone. It a

Parks did the same. Rosa Parks was c i r pierced my heart. e parish church, Notre Dame of lauded by history and supported by m a

: t

Bethlehem, and the violin and trumpet Yet in all my school work to follow, the civil rights community; Claudette r a

o of our friends, the Bosch family. The I rarely read a word about the t Colvin was largely left to fend for her - o h p

Bosches were immigrants from Christmas truce. So I was delighted to self. Claudette Colvin (for grades 6 e t i S

read the new children’s book Truce o Germany. Every Christmas Mrs. and up) was the lead witness in the p m o

Bosch played “Silent Night” on her (for ages 9 to 12), by the Newberry court case that ended segregated bus - c

24 America December 13, 2010 ing. But she was darker skinned, of a The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI lower economic class than the leaders The Christocentric Shift of the civil rights movement and, later, Emery de Gaál an unwed teen mother who refused to 386 pp. / $95.00 cl. straighten her hair in the style of the Many refer to Pope Benedict XVI as “the Mozart of Theology.” This times. She was shunned by both the study attempts to shed light on the unifying melody of the policies black and the white communities. and positions of a pontificate charged with spiritual and theological Philip Hoose’s moving account weaves depth. Especially in the 1970s an anthropocentric shift had occurred. Emery de Gaál argues that, amid a general lack of .original, secular ideas interviews, photos and other primary stirring public opinion, Benedict XVI inaugurates an epochal Christocentric shift; by documents to rescue the history and rekindling the Patristic genius, he provides Christianity with both intellectual legitimacy recount the courage of this remarkable and the scholarship needed to propel it into the twenty first century. teen. “Father Emery de Gaal has beautifully and exhaustively clarified the fundamental interpretative Marching for Freedom by key to the Ratzinger texts and to the life of Pope Benedict XVI.” Elizabeth Partridge (ages 9 to 12) is —Francis Cardinal George, OMI, Archbishop of Chicago another excellent story of children and “de Gaál gives us the most comprehensive study of the pope’s theology now available: the teens in the civil rights movement. revolution that abandoned neoscholasticism and shifted its focus to Christology. That story is indeed a dramatic one, and here it is dramatically and comprehensively told. This book is a “‘Don’t worry about your children. ‘must purchase’ for every theological library – and for all admirers of that perhaps greatest Don’t hold them back if they want to of great theologians, Joseph Ratzinger.” —Fr Edward T. Oakes, S. J., Chester & Margaret Paluch Professor of go to jail.’ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Theology, University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary told parents. ‘They are carving a tun - “It is the deepest analysis of the topic currently available.” nel of hope through the great moun - —Tracey Rowland, Professor and Dean, John Paul II Institute tain of despair.’” Filling the jails with for Marriage and Family, Melbourne, Australia children was a deliberate part of the Palgrave Macmillan: http://us.macmillan.com/hetheologyofpopebenedictxvi strategic plan. Children were not the Save when you order online! www.palgrave-usa.com breadwinners, so they did not have to Phone: (888) 330-8477; Fax: (800) 672-2054 worry about losing their jobs. And jail - ing children was less socially accept - able, so it helped in the shaming and naming tactics of the campaign. The book’s focus on the Selma march is Focus important, but perhaps too narrow. It omits “The Children’s Campaign” in on your future Birmingham, familiar because of the Partners: John Reid, Tom Reid and Maureen Gallagher iconic photos of children fire-hosed Prophetic Do you need a dynamic organizational and beaten by the Birmingham police. Planning plan that will enable you to move into the future with confidence? Still, Partridge provides an important Do you need to find new resources of funding and staffing that will and empowering history of the Selma strengthen your organization? campaign. Fund Do you need to help your leaders and staff deal with change and The Caldecott Honor-winning Development manage conflicts for a more positive, productive environment? illustrator Rachel Isadora quite literal - We can help. ly brings us different drummer boys The Reid Group offers services uniquely tailored to the challenges and girls, as she sets The 12 Days of Leadership Search faced by Catholic dioceses, parishes, colleges and universities, Christmas carol in Africa (ages 4 to religious communities, and professional associations. 8). Isodora’s 12 drummers drumming play drums from Nigeria and Ghana Call us today Dispute and start transforming your challenges into opportunities. in bright cut-paper collages that come Resolution 800-916-3472 / [email protected] / www.TheReidGroup.biz alive against white space. The latest in The Reid Group, 12535 15th Ave. NE, Suite 211, Seattle WA 98125 her series of children’s classics recast in SAMPLE OF PAST CLIENTS: Africa ( The Night Before Christmas , Dioceses: Archdiocese of Newark / Diocese of Madison / Archdiocese of Anchorage / Diocese of Scranton | Diocese of San Bernardino Colleges & Universities: Spring Hill College / University of Notre Dame / Canisius College The Ugly Duckling and others), these National Organizations: National Association of Catholic Chaplains / National Association for Lay Ministry / Catholic Health Association Religious Communities: Sisters of St. Francis, Joliet, IL / Benedictine Sisters, Erie, PA / Maryknoll Fathers, Brothers & Lay Missioners / Benedictine Sisters of books reimagine familiar tales with Chicago / Sisters of St. Ann, Canada fresh eyes and serve as lush visual Parishes & Schools: Planning, Team Building & Spirituality sessions with parishes and schools in Washington, California, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona and Ohio

December 13, 2010 America 25 reminders of our common humanity like artwork and one-liners create young readers learn the power of orga - across richly varied cultures. laugh-out-loud favorites. nizing, non-violent resistance, com - Too Many Toys is a boisterous pic - What do you get when you cross promise and speaking out, all while ture book by David Shannon (ages 4 “Old McDonald Had a Farm” with a enjoying Betsy Lewin’s humorous, to 8) with intriguing, antimaterialist New York arbitration lawyer? Why Caldecott Honor-winning illustra - observations. In scenes that will res - Click, Clack, Moo and More , of course, tions, in pen with watercolor washes. onate with many families, Spencer and a newly released compilation of three In Giggle, Giggle, Quack, the second his mother engage in protracted and delightfully funny and subversive book in the compilation, Farmer hilarious negotiations over which of barnyard adventures by Doreen Brown leaves them to go on a tropical Spencer’s too many toys will be given Cronin and Betsy Lewin (ages 4 to 8). vacation, until Duck leads the animals away. Spencer uses pouty eyes, nostal - These stories turn Mother Goose ani - cleverly to get some at-home vacation gia, lawyer tactics and a willingness to mal stereotypes on their head, as the perks of their own through writing, turn in Dad’s toys to try to protect his animals creatively stand up to repres - social organizing and knowing the oversized collection, but in the end sive authority, Farmer Brown. importance of who sets the rules. In realizes that while many of the toys Children love the ways the “little guys” Dooby, Dooby, Moo, every living can go, the box must stay. In It’s prevail, while adults appreciate the fun creature has an irrepressible creativity. Christmas, David, Shannon’s rascal and subtle civic and human rights sub - Working together, they get their David returns for easily recognizable texts. In the title book, Click, Clack, chances to shine at the County Fair’s holiday mischief: sneaking Christmas Moo: Cows That Type, the animals version of “America’s Got Talent.” cookies, peeking at gifts, breaking want better working conditions, while Click, Clack, Moo and More is a great ornaments. David fears his behavior Farmer Brown believes the animals value, as three picture books are com - may bring him nothing but coal. But should do as they are told. With the bined here for essentially the price of repeating the formula familiar to read - aid of a typewriter to convey their con - one. Great primers on democracy, ers of the “No, David” series, David cerns and Duck as a neutral party to these books are smart and funny read- instead finds forgiveness and uncondi - intercede, the animals go on strike— alouds, also suitable for beginning tional love. Shannon’s engaging, child- no milk, no eggs. Farmer Brown and readers, that along the way invite chil -

Seek Wisdom in 2011 %JHJUBM
%JTDJQMFTIJQ
5SBOTGPSNJOH .JOJTUSZ
ĉSPVHI
5FDIOPMPHZ Praying the Hours with Merton, +BOVBSZ

m
'FCSVBSZ

 January 7-9 %PVCMFUSFF
3FTPSU
0SMBOEP
'-
Kathleen Deignan,CND Getting Off the Carousel, February 25-27 Rev. Barbara Headley Lady Wisdom in the World’s Religions, March. 11-13 Rabbi Rami Shapiro Approaches to the Cross of Christ, March 26 Leo O’Donovan, SJ WISDOM HOUSE 229 East Litchfield Rd. 
$&6T
GSPN
UIF
6OJWFSTJUZ
PG
%BZUPO
BSF
JO Litchfield, CT 06759 DMVEFE
JO
UIF
SFHJTUSBUJPO 860-567-3163 'PS
JOGPSNBUJPO
FNBJM
DDFSWFOZ!WFSJ[POOFU www.wisdomhouse.org 5P
SFHJTUFS
WJTJU
[email protected] XXXJOUDPOOFDUFWFOUCSJUFDPN

26 America December 13, 2010 dren to think about power relations, come to appreciate Grandma Dowdel’s of service. Bucking the popular kids at the value of all living creatures and the many gifts to the community, always school, Willa posts inspirational importance of speaking out for the deliberately disguised by her gruff quotes from literature on the commu - underdogs and underducks. appearance. When Bob comments that nity message board and organizes her Antoinette Portis’s delightful Not a Mrs. Dowdel doesn’t have any presents classmates to save a local library, help Box and Not a Stick picture books under her Christmas tree, so she must needy children and address homeless - celebrate the power of children’s imag - not give gifts, his father challenges Bob ness. Willa’s isolation and social out - inations, turning everyday objects into to reconsider the sider status will res - flights of fancy. With plain covers, line generous gifts of her - ON THE WEB onate with pre- illustrations and minimalist text suit - self she gives. “You Harry Forbes reviews teens and teens. But able for read-alouds and beginning don’t mean anything “The King's Speech.” Willa draws on readers (babies to kindergarten), sim - wrapped up with a americamagazine.org/culture community, faith plicity reigns, and children are encour - ribbon, right?” and books to mend aged to think and play outside the box. answers Bob. “No,” his father replies, the holes in her family. Parents and The Newberry medalist Richard “nothing that small.” Folk wisdom and teachers will appreciate “Willa’s Picks,” Peck invites us to take a new look at a keen sense of humor will please read - accessible book reviews in each book. cantankerous Grandma Dowdel in the ers young and old. Greg Mortenson offers two adapta - beautifully written A Season of Gifts Coleen Paratore offers an empow - tions of his adult blockbuster, Three (grades 5 and up, now in paperback). ering social justice twist for middle Cups of Tea, for younger readers: In a small Illinois town in the 1950s, grade and high school readers in The Listen to the Wind, a picture book for Grandma Dowdel encourages her rep - Wedding Planner’s Daughter series. preschool to grade 3, and a young read - utation as the town’s curmudgeon. After moving to beautiful Cape Cod, ers’ edition of Three Cups of Tea Bob, son of the new minister, meets Willa Haversham rises above her con - (grades 4 to 8). Mortenson’s real-life Grandma Dowdel when he is strung cerns for her single mom and her out - adventure began when he stumbled up naked in her outhouse by the town sider position as the perennial “new into a poor village in remote Pakistan bullies. Over time the new neighbors kid” through the transformative power after failing to scale K2. The people of

RXUIXWXUH LOOKING FOR depends on A JOB IN THE CATHOLIC SECTOR? \RX HIRING AT YOUR CHURCH OR SCHOOL? GET THE WORD OUT WITH please remember AMERICA! DPHULFD Job Listings are accepted for in publication in America's print and your web editions. will. For more information contact Julia Sosa at [email protected] Telephone: 212-515-0102 or visit:

WWW.AMERICAMAGAZINE.ORG our america press inc., legal 106 west 56th street title new york, ny America is: 10019

December 13, 2010 America 27 Korphe opened their homes and hearts LETTERS their names and past concerns from to Greg, nursing him back to health. prior gatherings. In him these stu - Moved by their kindness, Mortenson Death in a Jar dents saw a role model who centered vowed to return and help build a In response to your current comments his life in God, who loved his church school for the children. Mortenson dis - “Death in Connecticut,” followed by and who had the ability to make both covers his failure to summit K2 was a “How Graphic?” (11/29): Until we as God and the church relevant to their blessing, revealing his vocation of edu - a society demand that the death penal - lives. cating the most neglected peoples of ty be abolished, it will continue to be Ministering to the youth was an Pakistan and Afghanistan. The artist used as a method of revenge. Many obvious priority for Bishop Kicanas; Susan Roth’s vivid collages bring Listen murders are so heinous that viscerally so too was commitment to the poor to the Wind to life, including fabric we entertain the most savage retribu - and the marginalized. He challenged scraps and found objects that show the tions we can muster. But we have the students to go out into the com - people’s tendency to recycle whatever Christ’s words, the church’s teachings munity and become involved. materials they find. Each book benefits and secular law to stop us from taking Bishop Kicanas truly is an apostle from photographs and a more com - such action. We are one of the last of the youth, who makes the institu - pressed and focused re-telling than the democracies to use the barbaric tional church appealing in their eyes. original. method of state-legitimized murder, He sets the bar high for all cardinals, Almost Astronauts, by Tanya Lee and until the community recognizes it bishops and people who minister in Stone (grades 5 to 8), tells the stories for what it is we can attempt to use the our church with the genuineness of his of the 13 women pilots dubbed the force of law against it. message of unconditional love and Mercury 13, who fought to become ALINA SIERRA SEDLANDER compassion for all. New Orleans, La. part of the U.S. space program and MARY GRAMINS Deerfield, Ill. who paved the way for the women who Setting the Bar High would eventually become astronauts In response to the Signs of the Times 51 Citizens United vs. Citizens 20 years later. Told with photos, inter - report on “Archbishop Dolan While I agree with the main point of views with the remaining women and Surprise Victor in U.S.C.C.B. Vote” your editorial “Money and Media” news stories from the time, Stone’s (11/29): Whenever Bishop Gerald (11/29), it is not exactly news that account is a thought-provoking, acces - Kicanas, whom he defeated, arrived Fox News is not “fair and balanced.” sible story that may inspire young for liturgies at our high school in What is more alarming is MSNBC’s readers to reach for the stars. Illinois, the young women were ecstat - appropriation of the Fox News At the darkest time of the year, ic. He exuded warmth, his smile was model for a left-leaning cable news these books all spark a light of inspira - instantaneous, his brown eyes twin - channel, albeit not to the same tion. kled and he displayed a deep measure degree—yet. MARYANN CUSIMANO LOVE, a professor of of genuine interest in their concerns. The larger concern is the Supreme international relations at the Catholic He always came early and would Court’s decision in the Citizens University of America, in Washington, D.C., involve the lectors, eucharistic minis - United case, which directly decreases is author of several childrens books: You Are My Miracle; Sleep, Baby, Sleep; You Are ters and musicians in animated con - the influence of citizens on elections. My Wish; and You Are My I Love You . versations. He remembered each of Campaign finance reform is not a pop -

CLASSIFIED apply, send cover letter, résumé and salary require - New York, NY 10019. ments to [email protected]. America classified. Classified advertisements are accept - Retreats ed for publication in either the print version of America Parish Missions or on our Web site, www.americamagazine.org. Ten- INSPIRING, DYNAMIC PREACHING : parish BETHANY RETREAT HOUSE, East Chicago, Ind., word minimum. Rates are per word per issue. 1-5 times: missions, retreats, days of recollection; www offers private and individually directed silent $1.50; 6-11 times: $1.28; 12-23 times: $1.23; 24-41 .sabbathretreats.org. retreats, including Ignatian 30-days, year-round in a times: $1.17; 42 times or more: $1.12. For an addition - prayerful home setting. Contact Joyce Diltz, al $30, your print ad will be posted on America ’s Web P.H.J.C; Ph: (219) 398-5047; bethanyrh@sbcglob site for one week. Ads may be submitted by e-mail to: Positions al.net; bethanyretreathouse.org. DATABASE MANAGER . Jesuit Conference of the [email protected]; by fax to (928) 222-2107; United States seeks a Database Manager with 2- by postal mail to: Classified Department, America , 106 plus years of experience programming SQL Server Wills West 56th St., New York, NY 10019. We do not and developing .NET Web applications. Please remember America in your will. Our legal accept ad copy over the phone. MasterCard and Visa Comprehensive benefits package offered. To title is: America Press Inc., 106 West 56th Street, accepted. For more information call: (212) 515-0102.

28 America December 13, 2010 ular issue, but its annihilation by Let My People Go oners. Forty-three of the remaining 53 Citizens United underlies both the I was pleased to read your current com - (out of a total of 75) prisoners of con - money and the vitriol brought to the ment “Rights Prize for Cuban”(11/15) science arrested in the Black Spring midterm election. on the European Union awarding its crackdown of March 2003 had been EDWARD VISEL Sakharov Prize to the Cuban dissident arrested for collecting signatures as part Winnebago, Ill. Guillermo “Coco” Farinas. Nevertheless of the Varela Project. the comment erred in naming Orlando JAMES BENSON Newsweek’s Transformation Silver Spring, Md. Zapata Tamayo, who died following a What you describe in the current com - hunger strike in February, as a previous ment “Who Will Speak for Us” A Reader Who Acts prizewinner. (11/22) about Newsweek’s coverage of Professor Charles K. Wilber’s It is true that the prize has gone to those who make the “superlative lists” “Awakening the Giant” (10/18) gave Cubans three times in the past decade, is the transformation of journalism me at last some comprehension of the but the third recipient was Oswaldo into something as old as the Sears economic picture and possible ways to Paya, head of the Christian Liberation Roebuck mail-order publication. Print go! I ask that you convey my deepest Movement and the driving force behind media are becoming catalogs for their thanks to Professor Wilber for enlight - the Varela Project. This project advertisers. The list is a come-on ening a 76-year-old with the clarity of attempted to exercise Article 88 of the designed to attract an undiscriminat - his writing on a subject so gnarly. Cuban constitution to gather signatures ing audience. Unlike the writers to Letters who com - in support of holding a referendum Flash signs and billboards are not plain without doing anything, I sent that, if passed, would have reformed the bad in themselves. But one must ask copies to my sons and all the members government to permit democratic elec - about the purpose of these teaser of Congress from Vermont. tions, free speech, free enterprise, free covers. To get more readers and BONNIE JUENKER assembly and freedom for political pris - Burlington, Vt. advertisers? Fine. A move to less sub - stance and more fodder for advertis - ers? Not so fine. Journalism should WITHOUT GUILE mean discrimination, timeliness, investigations of matters the people should know. Is Newsweek emulat - ing People and becoming a catalog? Here is part of the last paragraph of the article about Rush Limbaugh by Zev Chafets:

Limbaugh told me that he might be willing, under the right condi - tions, to serve as a dollar-a-year adviser to the administration. It N O

would mean spending time in R D A W

the hated capitol, but a guy with H C S

a private jet can commute to Y E L R

Palm Beach. And the pay cut A H

Y

would be mitigated by a precipi - B

N

tous drop in his personal income I batted cleanup, I was the R.B.I. king, the go-to guy... O O T R

tax. then the boss said no more sports metaphors.” A C

The reader can decide whether this To send a letter to the editor we recommend using the link that appears below articles on Amer - belongs in People or in Newsweek. Is ica ’s Web site, www.americamagazine.org.Letters may also be sent to America ’s editorial office (address on page 2) or by e-mail to: [email protected]. this reporting? Does this belong in a respected magazine or in an advertis - America (ISSN 0002-7049) is published weekly (except for 13 combined issues: Jan. 4-11, 18-25, Feb. 1-8, April 12-19, June 7-14, 21-28, July 5-12, 19-26, Aug. 2-9, 16-23, Aug. 30-Sept. 6, Sept. 13-20, Dec. 20-27) by America Press, Inc., 106 West 56th Street, New York, NY er’s catalogue? 10019. Periodicals postage is paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. Business Manager: Lisa Pope; Circulation: Judith Palmer, NORMAN COSTA (212) 581-4640. Subscriptions: United States, $56 per year; add U.S. $30 postage and GST (#131870719) for Canada; or add U.S. $54 per year for international priority airmail. Postmaster: Send address changes to: America, 106 West 56th St. New York, NY 10019. Printed in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. the U.S.A.

December 13, 2010 America 29 THE WORD Obedience of Faith FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT (A), DEC. 19, 2010 Readings: Is 7:10-14; Ps 24:1-6; Rom 1:1-7; Mt 1:18-24 “When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him” (Mt 1:24) oday’s teens are significantly of the law would call for the death of son Jesus will later teach his follow - more tolerant than their the apparently adulterous Mary ers: one must go far beyond what Telders, according to a recent (Dt 22:23-27). But Joseph is the law requires in order to ful - Pew Research Center study. unwilling to denounce her fill it truly. Millennials—young people born publicly and searches for a This is what St. Paul calls between 1981 and 2000—think noth - way out. There cannot be a “the obedience of faith” in ing of dating members of other races. secret divorce; two wit - his letter to the Romans. One student summed it up: “People nesses are needed; and Obedience, as Paul elabo - are people, regardless of their skin Mary’s pregnancy cannot rates later in this letter, is color, religion or culture. We have no long be hidden. not blindly following com - reason to be fearful of anybody.” At the Joseph’s first solution mands but comes from hear - same time, studies of college students is to avoid a public trial ing, “and what is heard comes show that they are about 40 percent and divorce Mary quietly through the word of Christ” lower in empathy than students of the without declaring the rea - (Rom 10:17). In fact, the previous two or three decades (see the sons (see Dt 24:1). This solu - University of Michigan’s Institute for tion would preserve Joseph’s reputa - PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE Social Research). tion, but Mary would still be Researchers suggested that the exposed to public shame. The only • Pray for an increase in empathy. decrease in empathy is due to factors way to preserve Mary’s honor would such as the numbing effects of violent be for Joseph to complete his mar - • Ask God to lead you to the obedience of faith. video games, the impersonal nature of riage to her and adopt the child as e N

technology and the glib, harsh lan - his own. In order for Joseph to make • Give thanks for the ways in which you N u D experience God-with-us. guage that is standard on television this choice he has to shift focus away D a t

: t

and online. Schools find that they from concern about his own righ - r need to construct activities designed to teousness and reputation and turn a enhance understanding and empathy, empathetically toward Mary. Only word obedience ( hypakoe ) comes from which go far beyond tolerance. when he can make her the center of his the same Greek root as the verb “to Today’s Gospel brings to the fore attention, allowing himself to feel her hear” ( akouein ). In the Gospel, Joseph’s the situation of Joseph, whose culture distress, can he make the divinely ability to hear with his heart the cries had little tolerance for a formally directed choice that will uphold her of his beloved Mary as well as the voice betrothed woman who was found to honor at the price of his own. of our empathetic God leads to his be with child by someone other than In so doing, Joseph mirrors the faithful obedience. As Christmas her intended. Joseph is a righteous divine action of empathy with approaches, it can be difficult for us to man, faithful to all the demands of the humankind manifested in the hear God’s voice above the din of many Jewish law. The strictest interpretation Incarnation. Just as the Holy One rec - demands. When we pause each day to tifies the broken relationship with listen attentively, our faithful obedi - BARBARA E. REID, O.P., a member of the humanity by becoming one with us, so ence, like that of Joseph, can have Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids, Mich., is Joseph rescues a dishonorable and world-changing power as it creates the a professor of New Testament studies at potentially deadly situation by choos - space for the Holy One to be ever Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Ill., where she is vice president and academic ing to unite himself completely to birthed anew in our midst as God- dean. Mary. Joseph exemplifies what their with-us. BARBARA E. REID

30 America December 13, 2010 Light in Darkness THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD (A), DEC. 25, 2010 Readings: Is 52:7-10; Ps 98:1-6; Heb 1:1-6; Jn 1:1-18 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:5) early the whole world was world enlightens everyone. There is Third, no matter how deep the riveted by the rescue on Oct. nowhere it does not shine. It can darkness, it cannot overcome the light N 14 of the 33 miners trapped pierce the stoniest recesses of the (1:5). There is no individual or collec - for more than two months below the heart. It must, however, be conscious - tive sinfulness that is able to extin - surface of the earth in Chile. Among ly chosen. It does not force its way guish the divine light. The opening the many concerns about how they into any caves in which we may choose phrase of the Gospel recalls the open - would adjust to normal life again, was to retreat. All who choose to accept it ing line of the book of Genesis, which the effect on their eyes of their expo - share in the light and spread it. Some, introduces the first creation account. sure to light after such a long time however, prefer darkness to light. Most likely written in post-exilic underground. The miners were given Later in the Gospel, Jesus says to times, it asserts that although the dark glasses to shield their eyes from Nicodemus, “the light has come into nation has considered itself guilty and the sudden brightness. There had also the world, and people loved darkness punished in Babylon for its unfaithful - been concern about the effect on their rather than light because their deeds ness, God considers humankind, along spirits from extended light deprivation. were evil. For all who do evil hate the with all creation, very good (Gn 1:31). One of the miners, José Henríquez, light and do not come to the light, took on the role of pastor to the group, so that their deeds might not be PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE leading them in prayer twice a day so exposed” (3:19-20). This dualistic that they would not succumb to the contrast does not account, however, • Invite the Light of the World to shine darkness of despair. After their rescue, for the fact that no one walks total - more brightly in you. Henríquez spoke of what he considers ly in the light or completely in the his obligation to testify to how God darkness. There is always some - • How do you testify to that light? used him to help bring his companions thing more in us that needs to be • Ask Christ to illumine anything that keeps out of darkness into the light. brought to the light. you in darkness. Today’s Gospel speaks of the Word Second, while the light shines in becoming flesh as “light” that “shines in us, we ourselves are not the light the darkness” and of its radiant effects. itself. Like John, we are illumined by The Gospel assures us we are always In the fourth Gospel, darkness and light the true light and we testify to it, invit - capable of letting ourselves be brought are frequently contrasted, with dark - ing others into its brilliance, but we to the light. Like the rescued miners, ness serving as a metaphor to signify know we are not the source of the light. we are offered the way out of darkness everything that is opposed to God. It It is through God’s desire and divine and now must be willing to testify to should be noted that this literary con - initiative that we share in this life and the power of the light within us. vention is not intended to feed racism, light as children of God (vv. 12-13). BARBARA E. REID privileging light skin over dark. In fact, Jesus and the people of his land would not have been pale-skinned. The evan - Need tomorrow’s Word today? gelist often uses this dichotomy, light Visit americamagazine.org and versus darkness, to set before the reader the choice between belief and unbelief. click on “The Word” in the The prologue makes three impor - right-hand column under the tant assertions about the light. First, “Print” heading. the light that was coming into the

December 13, 2010 America 31 Hope Needs Your Help.

Please Give Today. www.CatholicCharitiesUSA.org 1-800-919-9338

© Photo: Steve Liss