Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly

In Memoriam Msgr. William B. Smith articles 32 Is Obama Worth a Mass?...... Ralph McInerny Controversial Situations and the Catholic University...... Number 1 ...... Max Bonilla, SSL,STD Spring 2009 “Walker Percy the Philosopher,” Revisited....Robert A. O’Connor Is “Beauty” an Objective Reality or Only in the eye of the Beholder?...... Hamilton Reed Armstrong A Religion of Spirit and Flesh...... Jim Gontis Review Essays Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty...... William E. May The Pope, the Rabbi, and the Antichrist...... Edmund J. Mazza Report The Nassau Community College Center for Catholic Studies: History, Purpose, Activities, Future...... Joseph A. Varacalli Book Reviews The Person and the Polis: Faith and Values within the Secular State, and On Wings of Faith and Reason: The Christian Difference in Culture and Science, edited by Craig Steven Titus ...... Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. An Ethical Analysis of the Portrayal of Abortion in American Fiction by Jeff Koloze...... Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. Embryo: A Defense of Human Life by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen...... Greg F. Burke The Vision of Gabriel Marcel: Epistemology, Human Person, the Transcendent by Brendan Sweetman...... Tim Weldon The Blood-Red Crescent by Henry Garnett ...... Sister Mary Jeremiah, OP The Tripods Attack. The Young Chesterton Chronicles I by John McNichol...... John Gavin, S.J. ISSN 1084-3035 Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith Fellowship of Catholic Scholars by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn...... Thomas W. Woolley P.O. Box 495 Meet Mary: Getting to Know the Mother of God, Notre Dame, IN 46556 by Mark Miravalle...... Glenn Statile (574) 631-5825 www.catholicscholars.org J. Brian Benestad, Editor Books Received [email protected] Ex Cathedra...... J. Brian Benestad FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 officers and directors 1 In Me m o r i a m Msgr. William B. Smith, R.I.P.

hat’s new is usually not true, and what’s true is usually not new. This old adage is more germane for some Fellowship of fields than for others, but one of the fieldsW in which it has special relevance is the field in Catholic Scholars Scholarship Inspired by the Holy Spirit, which the late Msgr. William B. Smith practiced— in Service to the Church moral theology. It is not that this field lacks novelties—new Co n t e n t s topics emerge all the time, and a glance at the list In Memoriam–Msgr. William B. Smith...... 2 of Msgr. Smith’s publications over the years from articles his earliest articles in New York Catholic News, for Is Obama Worth a Mass?...... 9 which he wrote a weekly column from 1972 to 1981 Controversial Situations through the rest of his life, he dealt with countless and the Catholic University...... 10 novelties, especially in regard to the brave new world “Walker Percy the Philosopher,” of bioethics, a field that seems to churn out novelties Revisited...... 15 without stop. Is “Beauty” an Objective Reality or Only in the Eye of the Beholder?...... 17 Each of the new techniques and new issues that A Religion of Spirit and Flesh...... 20 come up in a field like bioethics needs a careful con- sideration. But more important than noting their Review Essays novelty is the steady application of the timeless prin- Same-Sex Marriage and Religious ciples of sound moral theology. Msgr. Smith’s articles Liberty...... 22 The Pope, the Rabbi, and and columns tirelessly worked to apply the tested the Antichrist...... 29 principles of Catholic ethics to this domain, with great benefit to the Church. Report Msgr. Smith replaced Fr. Joseph Farraher, S.J., an- The Nassau Community College Center other member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars for Catholic Studies...... 34 as the question-and-answer columnist for the Homi- Book Reviews letic & Pastoral Review. In a wonderful example of The Person and the Polis: Faith and Values ecumenism, that important post has been honorably within the Secular State, and filled since 2006 by Father Brian T. Mullady, O.P. In On Wings of Faith and Reason: The Christian Difference in Culture and Science...... 39 the twelve years of Msgr. Smith’s service he covered a An Ethical Analysis of the Portrayal of vast range of topics, from “Matter for the Eucharist” Abortion in American Fiction...... 40 in his inaugural column (October 1992) to “Without Embryo: A Defense of Human Life ...... 42 Parental Consent” (January 2006). The Vision of Gabriel Marcel: Epistemology, Human Person, the Transcendent...... 43 Besides his regular column, Msgr. Smith pub- The Blood-Red Crescent...... 44 lished some forty articles and book chapters in a va- The Tripods Attack. The Young riety of books, popular magazines, and such learned Chesterton Chronicles I...... 44 journals as Linacre Quarterly, Human Life Review, Social Meet Mary:...... 45 Justice Review, Issues in Law and Medicine, Catholic Dos- Books Received...... 46 sier, Catholic Lawyer, Dunwoodie Review, Crisis, and, of Ex Cathedra...... 47 course, the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly, not officers and directors...... 48 to mention a host of encyclopedia entries. Behind the scenes he labored long and vigilantly in support Reminder: Membership dues will be of the Bishops’ Conference, particularly by his service mailed out the first of the year and are in drafting and revising the “Ethical and Religious based on a calendar (not academic) year.

2 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.” Here as well as our gratitude. Frankly, I will say that I feel a the work included concern for the clear statement of terrible loss in his death, not least because it came so moral principles, thoughtful applications of principles suddenly. Last Sunday I was visiting him in the hospital to the situations that frequently arise in health care when a Filipino nurse entered the room who knew me institutions, and firm resistance to various forms of from the parish where I say Mass on Sunday. She said consequentialism and proportionalism in moral the- “Father, is this your father?” I looked at Bill and then I ology that would have compromised Catholic doc- said to her, “Yes, in a certain sense, he is.” Every priest trine for solutions more palatable to utilitarian forms here knows that another priest has been a father to his priesthood. He was mine. of practical reasoning. And I know for all who are here now in the Deadly serious in doctrine, Msgr. Smith also seminary as students, or as faculty or staff, it is a pain- possessed an acerbic wit and often displayed his sense ful hour. Dunwoodie will experience an absence that of humor as an after-dinner speaker for conven- will not lift any time soon. But the impact of this death tions of the Fellowship. Some of his barbs made for reaches far beyond these walls. The priests of the Arch- fine reading in the pages of the FCSQ, including his diocese of New York, young and old, have all lost one 1987 article entitled “Bishops as Teachers and Jesu- of our greatest ever, for so many a friend, for many of its as Listeners”—a colorful reminder of the proper us in the priesthood the finest teacher we ever had, a relation between the ordinary magisterium and the model of exemplary priestly life, a priest’s priest in ev- theologians of religious orders like the Society of ery way. And the wider Church, too, has suffered a great Jesus. In his articles for The Social Justice Review and loss with his death. for Crisis he also took up the question of theological On that latter note, let me share with you some dissent from the magisterium and the authentic un- comments received by his close friend and colleague derstanding of the relation between truth and free- here at the seminary, Sr. Sara Butler, and graciously dom in the area of moral theology. passed on to me. Whatever the venue, the writings of Msgr. Smith Jesuit Fr. Don Keefe, who taught dogmatic theol- always exhibited clarity of thought and complete ogy here in the 1990s until 2001 wrote: “Msgr. Smith has fidelity to the teachings of Christ and His Church. As long been identified with Dunwoodie in my mind and in the minds of many others; he is close to irreplace- we now remember his legacy and pray for his soul, able... a splendid moral theologian who trained two we do well also as fellow Catholic scholars to take his generations of archdiocesan priests, a founder of the example and aim for the came clarity and fidelity in Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and a perduring major our own work. Requiescat in pace. influence in it, a man who has given distinguished ser- vice to the Church for forty years.” Fr. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. Gerard Bradley from Notre Dame Law School President, Fellowship of Catholic Scholars wrote: “He was a strong, good and faith-filled man,

and so, very, very smart. Most of all (at least to me) ✠ Monsignor was a model of devotion to the intellectual apostolate of the Church. He surely could have obtained Homily at the Mass of the greater status and renown in the academic world and High Priest in honor of in the Church if he had wished. But he seemed to be genuinely and completely indifferent to such charms. Monsignor William B. Smith. Monsignor wanted only to do the work which Jesus had seen fit to put before him.” A wonderful tribute January 27, 2009 indeed. And from Kenneth Whitehead: “Msgr. Bill Smith, his is a stunning loss, the death on Saturday as most of us know, was a priest of great faith and utter of Msgr. Bill Smith, unexpected and shock- integrity. He was a tower of strength especially on the Ting, despite his recent illness. It was shocking life issues that we are confronting today. I well remem- and painful first of all to his family. We all extend our ber the help and advice he more than once gave to me prayers and condolences to the family of Msgr. Smith, when I still lived in New York. He was always accessible

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 3 In Me m o r i a m and available, and I always treasured the renewal of our Smith: “I count everything as loss for the sake of Christ, friendship—and his sharp mind—when seeing him at because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our annual conventions... It is hard and heart-breaking my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, to believe that he has now left us.” and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ.” Yes, hard for all of us, and heart breaking to real- The reputation of Monsignor Smith as a zealous defender ize he has now left us. One has a sense of a rupture, a of Catholic moral doctrine in the gritty arena of theo- tearing away of something precious, when a man like logical struggle, and especially in his efforts to uphold this goes to his eternal reward. For the seminary it is the protection of human life, has long been known. But the end of era; for the Archdiocese the departure of a we should not think this simply an intellectual stance. It uniquely respected priest; for the Church it is the death was most certainly a deep quality of soul that was evident of one of the great brave soldiers of our time, one who in these endeavors. His strong public witness to authentic now challenges us to embrace fortitude ourselves in Catholic moral doctrine was the fruit of an exalted love our love for Jesus Christ and the truth as taught by his for truth, one of his most distinguished traits. He held Church. steadily through all the years of his priesthood; he per- I believe this mass tonight with Msgr. Bill Smith severed in the struggle to defend Catholic truth, uncon- lying in a coffin in front of us offers an opportunity, cerned for human respect, undaunted by the wearying especially for priests and those in preparation for the demands of battle when truth was at stake. Sometimes, priesthood, to ponder the value of Catholic faithfulness. he certainly suffered for this stance. One is reminded in If there is one thing among many that marked this man this regard of Augustine’s description: “God gave me the as a priest, it was a very exalted commitment to being resolve not to prefer anything to the search for truth, not faithful—faithful first of all to everything pertaining to to desire, think, or love anything else.” the Church’s truth. He had an immense intelligence, One time in Rome during the pontificate of Paul but with that he combined always a quality of humble VI he met the pope, who asked him what he taught loyalty to the Church and its doctrine, a willingness al- in the seminary. Moral theology, he answered. “And ways to be led by the Church and so to put his mind at how do you go about teaching moral theology,” the the service of its doctrine. With his powerful mind, he pope asked. His quick response was a Latin phrase for was nonetheless humble intellectually, a man who enjoyed “thoroughly and completely, your Holiness,” quoting studying and learning, especially from the writings of in these words Paul VI’s own phrase in Humanae Vitae. John Paul or then Cardinal Ratzinger, from Aquinas, from Yes, many years of seminarians learned how thorough Augustine, from eminent contemporaries in moral theol- and complete his teaching was—as well as superbly en- ogy. His intellectual life was inseparable, I think, from his gaging—and how deeply it attracted one to a love for spiritual life. My first contact with him was to observe truth. Paul VI sent a signed copy of Humanae Vitae the him offering Mass at a Missionaries of Charity chapel next day to the residence where he was staying. in the Bronx, and in a sense my view never changed His repudiation of dissent in the Church was from that time. To me, in all the years I knew him, he likewise a matter of his care for truth; to some in the was first of all a spiritual man, a prayerful man whose Church it was acerbic, or too zealous, but it is not diffi- daily presence in prayers at the seminary or at mass cult for those who knew him to see that his manner was radiated a love for these actions, a man whose soul had simply an expression of his love for God. His was not the long been given to God. His thought, when dealing with approach of posturing or contrived sincerity, to believe serious matters involving theological controversy, devel- at all costs in the correctness of one’s own convictions. oped in a very spontaneous manner from this fidelity His convictions paralleled his sense of vocation. As a to his Lord. He was a man of God first, and then a priest he placed himself at the service of received truth, theologian and teacher. and this alone mattered, to represent the Church’s clear Sometimes, we might mistake being faithful with teaching, never to minimize it, never to allow distortion mere submission to the burden of obligations or of im- of it. Certainly in this regard there were vivid, memora- posed restraint. But of course faithfulness is not that at ble days in his classroom. There are priests, for example, all, except superficially. Faithfulness, as a man like this who can recall from many years past his rundown of the lived it, was an expression of love; it was the fruit of events leading up to the Majority Report of the Birth personal love for Jesus Christ. We heard St. Paul’s words Control Commission and its subsequent effect on the just now that strike me very much in regard to Bill reception of Humanae Vitae, as they might recall a favor-

4 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 ite movie. What Msgr. Smith really disliked in all these men who entered the priesthood from Dunwoodie. If he matters was dishonesty, and dissent in his view always saw a love in you for the Church and for prayer and for combined some chemistry of dishonesty and personal hard work, he simply liked you and before too long you pride. knew you were his friend as soon as you heard him say Yes, Bill was a servant of truth, and one could not one day in hallway, “How are you, champ?” spend time in his classroom without a profound impres- He was a man who loved the priestly fraternity; any sion of the truthfulness that he embodied. I remember gathering of priests, small or great, animated him. He my classmate Keith Outlaw once saying: “I admit that I loved to be with priests, and surely it would be amiss don’t always understand everything in Fr. Smith’s moral not to mention his wit and humor, well known in class- theology classes, but I am sure of one thing — every- rooms, in conferences, and at table. Only the weak and thing he says is true.” Precisely. For he was a man of truth. fragile could be offended. My own taste of his enjoy- One of his favorite gospel passages recited in the class- able humor went back to my first contact with him. I room was from John: “If you continue in my word, you was living as a volunteer at the Missionaries of Charity are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and men’s shelter in the Bronx. I decided after much urg- the truth will make you free.” As seminarians, we used to ing from their Superior finally to sit down for a talk joke sometimes that he was unable to give his oral true with the seemingly intimidating Father Smith while he and false quizzes properly. Anytime he read a false state- ate breakfast after his Wednesday morning mass. I spoke ment he managed to give it away with a cough or some of an interest in the priesthood and he asked about phi- stumbling over a syllable or word. losophy in college. I told him I had taken four courses, In each of our priestly lives there must be some ex- the last two in Buddhist philosophy and in Chinese perience of the grain of wheat falling into the earth and philosophy. The eyebrows arched. “Buddhist philoso- dying, of losing our lives in generosity for God and the phy? Chinese philosophy? Hmm, I see. The excesses Church. Bill Smith’s faithfulness extended beyond simply of youth. We will try to overlook yours.” Another time intellectual engagement in his many and diverse teach- entering my fourth year in the seminary, I asked him to ing commitments. He exhibited a steadiness in all his be my spiritual director. “Donald, you really can be very commitments over many years that mirrored the steadi- imprudent. You have a year yet to complete and you’d ness and regularity which he lived in his daily life of be wise not to cast away my faculty vote. You may prayer and study and teaching in the seminary. He not need every one you can get.” Yes, he was quick on the only taught 37 years of seminarian classes; for many years uptake, as they say, especially with priests. Msgr. John he taught in the Institute of Religious Studies, in the Farley returning to the seminary from the Missionar- Deaconate program, once a month for the pre-Cana ies of Charity one day said he met a sister named Sister program, at St. John’s University, at New York Medical Anawim. “What a lovely name,” John said, “I think I College, for the Sisters of Life and his beloved Mis- would name my daughter Anawim.” “Anawim?” said sionaries of Charity. He also responded generously to Bill. “John, for good reason God has called you to the many invitations over the years to speak to priest or celibate priesthood.” seminarian gatherings in other dioceses, at NCCB eth- One aspect of his life perhaps less well known that ics meetings, pro-life meetings all over the country, and ought also to be shared was his great love for Mother Te- parish talks. He served on Ethics committees and boards resa and the Missionaries of Charity. In 1981 he accepted at Calvary Hospital, St. Vincent’s, St. Clare’s, Our Lady their invitation to offer Wednesday morning Mass and of Mercy. And the list could go on. In all this work he then return on Friday to give a weekly conference and died to self, never avoiding a chance to teach. hear confessions. He was told the first week to speak These commitments also expressed how personal was for 15 minutes before the confessions; as he was leav- his faithfulness to people. He was very loyal once he saw ing he was asked to make it a half hour the following a kindred soul in another, and his kindred souls were week, and then, within short time, he received a further many and varied. This was true also in his life as a semi- request, “Father, please, we would like to have an hour nary faculty member. As a seminary colleague, I watched conference each week.” He was steady, faithful, commit- him over the years repeatedly value goodness and honesty ted in love for 27 years to his work with these Sisters. above all in the men studying for the priesthood—not He loved them dearly and they loved him. Between the cleverness or any kind of display of natural talent. As he two of us, our Missionary of Charity connection re- lived faithfully, he wanted above all to see fidelity in the mained always our closest bond, not moral theology or

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 5 In Me m o r i a m seminary life. if possible I may attain the resurrection of the dead; not And Mother Teresa loved him very much, consulted that I have already obtained this... but I press on to make him, always asked for him once she knew you were a it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” priest from New York. After he had been a year or so One time he told me that he was never hesi- with the Sisters, she had gotten to know him during her tant about choosing the priesthood or religious life. US visits, and she insisted, as only Mother Teresa could, “I never wanted anything, but to be a priest.” To be that he come to Calcutta for a retreat. When he finally “nothing but a priest”—tonight, tomorrow, and for- agreed after some reluctance, she prevailed upon him to ever. In these days ahead we have a chance to admire how give not one but two retreats in the brutally hot Calcutta profound are the possibilities in being nothing but a priest. summer. He told a story about this when he gave the Let us not forget him, this man of much more than sermon at the Holy Hour on the night before my class’s books—a man who prayed daily his rosary, who never ordination. One day at the end of an afternoon confer- missed, I expect, an hour of his divine office, who read ence in the middle of the first retreat, Mother Teresa every day a chapter of the gospel for prayerful reflection, walked from the back of the chapel up to him and said: who accepted with love and fervor the privilege of of- “Come, Father, I want to show you Jesus.” fering his daily mass, who gave and gave, and then gave They began walking briskly, Mother Teresa in the more. A man who found his joy and his suffering com- lead, along a walkway past buildings on the property plete in his union with Jesus Christ, a grain of precious where the sisters take care of some few hundred men- wheat fallen into the ground and whom we can expect tally ill adults, and run an orphanage. Bill said he thought will now bear much fruit. that Mother Teresa was about to show him a recently do- nated picture or statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. At Fr. Donald F. Haggerty any moment a sister would appear with holy water for St. Joseph’s Seminary the necessary blessing. Instead Mother Teresa walked him wordlessly out to the front gate of the compound which ✠ the gateman opened, and Bill found himself outside, under the blistering sun of a Calcutta afternoon. Mother have known Msgr. Bill Smith for more than 30 walked a few yards along the wall and then spoke, simply years. He was a great friend, a holy priest, a good a phrase, nothing more—“Father, here is Jesus”—and Imoral theologian, utterly faithful to the teaching then she walked away. Left alone, with one hand shad- of the Church. He also knew how to entertain his ing his eyes, squinting, Bill said he saw what at first the colleagues in the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars with blinding sun prevented him from seeing—an old man, his at times acerbic but always very humorous accounts a beggar, wretched looking, thin, dirty, lying near his of events in the Church. He was a splendid friend, feet. The man stared up into his eyes and for the mo- ready to give himself to others in need. I want here to ment nothing more was necessary. I spoke to him af- illustrate this. In 1981 when my son Tom was coming terward about this and he commented: “I realized later home from college for Christmas, he was involved in she may have invited me to Calcutta in part for that old a car accident not too far from St. Joseph’s Seminary, man to look me in the eye like that, that I should know known as Dunwoodie in Yonkers NY, and he was her and her Sisters in a deeper way, and to know Our taken to a nearby hospital. When I was informed of his Lord in a different way. And indeed like most things she accident and hospitalization, I called Father Smith, who does, she succeeded.” immediately went to visit Tom in the hospital. That is That, too, was Bill Smith, not just intellectual the kind of person he was: a true man of God. theologian, but the servant of Christ Jesus in his dis- Requiescat in pace! guises of poverty—answering countless phone calls sent from the Dunwoodie switchboard seeking his answers William E. May and advice, hearing confessions for hours and hours, John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family teaching over and over his faithful classes. For sure, he at The Catholic University of America knew a greater poverty and purification in his last years and this too was part of his priestly offering: “that ✠ I may know the power of his resurrection, and may share his suffering, becoming like him in his death, that

6 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 onsignor William Smith was, first and to. Whether that persuades them or not, that’s up last, a man of conviction, a priest who to them, but if you are to fulfill your ministry, then Mtook seriously the apostle Paul’s charge you do the truth in love.” to Timothy to “speak the truth in season and out of Monsignor Smith’s matchless ability to teach the season.” But the nearly forty years of his teaching truth with intelligence, wit and grace was a great gift and preaching was “out of season”, in the sense that to us—a gift that we will very, very sorely miss. the truth embodied in Scripture and Catholic moral “For Thou hast delivered my soul from death, my teaching was heavily obscured by what he sometimes eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling … Precious called a “gray moral mist.” That the source of this in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Ps gray mist was not only from the outside culture, but 116:8, 15). also arose from within the Church, from outright dissent and clouded theological opinions, was a real- Helen Hull Hitchcock ity that did not diminish either his conviction or his Founding director of Women for Faith & Family and courage. Throughout his life as a priest and as a moral editor of Voices and the Adoremus Bulletin theologian teaching seminarians he was a beacon in the mist. ✠ He was keenly aware of the power of words to shape ideas. “Smith’s Law,” as he sometimes called it, sgr. Smith published relatively little, which I described the way language is used to distort reality, Mthought was unfortunate, until I realized that seducing people into accepting intrinsically repug- he was continuously consulted by bishops and oth- nant acts by changing the words used to described ers and by that means probably had greater influence them: killing unborn children or the inconvenient than if he had written more. Whenever I heard him elderly became “the right to choose,” or “termination give a serious paper, I was highly impressed by the of pregnancy,” or the “right to die.” incisiveness of his mind and his absolute command of Among friends, including the Fellowship of his subject. (His was also the first name I would sug- Catholic Scholars, which he helped to found, he of- gest in answer to the frequent question, “Who ought ten used words of wit to describe our distorted moral to be a bishop?”). world. His commentaries on the contemporary scene But people who have attended the FCS were a highlight of many, many FCS conventions, conventions over many years also remember, like a and were funny and entertaining. But they went sinfully rich dessert, Msgr. Smith’s post-dinner sur- beyond amusement. Though never cynical, his wit veys of the state of the Church, in which one of our could cut through the curtain of cultural chaos and, most distinguished moral theologians exercised his like a sharp surgical instrument, was corrective, me- wit. One year, as he ticked off all the discouraging dicinal. Sometimes scalpels are required to get at the events of the previous twelve months, he famously source of the disease. added after each one, “And help is not on the way.” Transmitting the truth was always Monsignor It was salutary reminder, during discouraging times, Smith’s primary goal and his great witness. to cultivate the virtue of hope rather than optimism. Once when asked how a priest can teach the truth of (He lived long enough to see things improve). the Gospel, he responded: After each dinner I enjoyed nothing more than “Most of us can be funny every now and then … continuing the subject with him over drinks, some- but that’s not what we are ordained for. We are thing that in itself made attendance at the convention ordained to live the Gospel and to preach the Gos- worthwhile. He had unerringly accurate opinions pel, and it is up to each one of us in every setting, about men and events, and he had his fund of experi- every assignment, to find the right words and the ences, such as the gangster he met at a Communion right examples to take that message which is true breakfast (!) who told him, “Don’t worry, Father. We for all of us and put it into terms that the commu- aren’t going to let those abortion places keep stand- nity you’re preaching to, and living with, can say yes ing.” (It was only with difficulty that Msgr. Smith

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 7 In Me m o r i a m

persuaded this soldier of Christ that such was not the to have Monsignor William Smith provide a reliable appropriate tactic). summary of moral theology. He always specified that There were years when the after-dinner speech his field was Sacred Theology. This clearly meant was omitted, mainly because of reports that some that it was biblical in its sources, Thomistic in its bishops were discomfited. But one year, from my development and magisterial in its reliance on recent place at the head table, I could see in profile a bishop Church documents. There are teachers who, having who kept his hand in front of his mouth so the audi- taught much the same thing over the years, either ence would not see how much he was laughing. end up quoting themselves or winging it. Smith was If New York is indeed Babylon on the Hudson, always prepared with a fresh presentation. He spoke there were few places that offered serious Catholics to be understood; he had an ideal professorial man- a richer and more authentic Catholicism during the ner and delivery. Often one thanked God that future decades following Vatican II. At one time St. Joseph’s priests were trained in moral theology under this Seminary, Dunwoodie, where Msgr. Smith was dean, man. At first blush, he seemed formal, offish, aloof. I was one of the few seminaries that could be unre- never saw him in other than clerical clothes, but then servedly recommended. In time there were more, I never golfed with him, at Wingfoot or anywhere probably owing much to Dunwoodie’s example. else. The immaculate Roman collar, black suit, french Msgr. Smith’s passing really does mark the end of cuffs and, during breaks, the cigarette. He was the most popular lecturer in our program, year after year. an era, one of the last of a group of New York priests Participants came to him for spiritual advice; he was who were among the national leaders of orthodox with them at Mass in the morning, celebrant or post-conciliar Catholicism. Msgr. George Kelly, Msgr. concelebrant; in the evenings he was with them for Michael Wrenn, the saintly Bishop Austin Vaughan, pizza and beer. At the annual banquet of the FCS, the the bold Cardinal John O’Connor, Cardinal Avery acme of the evening came when Smith was called Dulles, Father Richard John Neuhaus, now Msgr. on. His was a ready and caustic, call it Irish wit; he Smith—all gone. had an unerring eye for nonsense. I will never forget his examination of the way in which ‘ministry’ has Jim Hitchcock, come to be used. In later times, some objected to St. Louis University these splendidly funny talks. Well, Smith could make you laugh but he could not give you a sense of hu- ✠ mor. Now he is gone. God bless him. Have you ever wondered why the most extraordinary people bear or many years the Jacques Maritain Center at the ordinary name of Smith? the University of Notre Dame put on a sum- Fmer program called Basics of Catholicism. In Ralph McInerny, every one of those years we had the good fortune University of Notre Dame •

8 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 A r t ic l e s Is Obama Worth a Mass?

Reprinted from The Catholic Thing, (c) 2009 Church if they thus celebrate the president, perhaps Sunday, March 22,2009 they will as publicly rescind their invitation as they have issued it? Don’t count on it. By Ralph McInerny For one whose fifty-four year career as a member of the Notre Dame faculty is coming to an end this ow that the abortion president will be June, it is a bitter thing to reflect on the 2009 com- honored and feted and listened to at mencement speaker. It is of course convenient to have Notre Dame’s commencement, the ques- an excuse to absent oneself from the festivities. Listen- tion becomes, who will say the com- ing to commencement addresses is the penalty that Nmencement Mass? graduates must pay to receive their diplomas. One can The University of Notre Dame has officially and count memorable commencement speeches on the with much self-satisfaction invited President Barack cuticle of one finger. They are ceremonial occasions Obama to address its 2009 graduates and to receive an that will be little remembered and less celebrated. One honorary law degree. Not to put too fine a point on it, has groaned at previous selections, but the invitation this is a deliberate thumbing of the collective nose at to Barack Obama is far from being the usual effort of the Roman Catholic Church to which Notre Dame the university to get into warm contact with the power purports to be faithful. Faithful? Tell it to Julian the figures of the day. It is an unequivocal abandonment of Apostate. any pretense at being a Catholic university. And it is in That someone who procures or advocates abor- sad continuity with decades of waffling that have led tion thereby excludes himself from communion with with seeming inevitability to it. the Church has been clear doctrine all along, and in- No event was more crucial for Catholic universi- creasingly bishops have found the courage to tell those ties than the infamous 1967 Land O’Lakes statement in Catholic politicians who are the great enablers of abor- which the assembled presidents of Catholic institutions tion legislation that they cannot receive Holy Com- declared their freedom from the supposedly baleful munion. Is it any worse to celebrate such a politician as influence of Catholic orthodoxy. They would con- Barack Obama? So where does that put ND President tinue to call themselves Catholic, but the definition of Father Jenkins? He can hardly say Mass without receiv- the term was constantly under construction. And this ing the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Our Lord Jesus by institutions whose task is decidedly not to define Christ, so doubtless he will recuse himself and have what Catholicism is. And now we have come to the someone else say the Mass. But to whom will he go? point where the University of Notre Dame is publicly All his cohorts must come under the same cloud as he. excluding itself from allegiance to and acceptance of Perhaps the pastor of the president’s erstwhile church one of the most fundamental of Christian moral truths, in Chicago will be invited to harangue the assembled mentioned explicitly in the Didache and again and graduates and parents and faculty—those who can again over the centuries. Abortion is an essentially evil bring themselves to attend commencement this year. act, both from the viewpoint of natural morality and Why not? from the explicit teaching the Church. There is no way Perhaps because, having been reminded of the ser- in which an individual, a politician or an institution can mons he heard over the years, Barack Obama distanced finesse that fact. himself, as they say, from the fiery orator at whose feet By inviting Barack Obama as commencement he sat for decades. In this, whatever his motives, he has speaker, Notre Dame is telling the nation that the perhaps pointed a way for the Notre Dame administra- teaching of the Catholic church on this fundamental tors to redeem themselves. Perhaps they are unaware matter can be ignored. Lip service may be paid to the of Obama’s record on abortion. Perhaps they have not teaching on abortion, but it is no impediment to up- been paying attention to what he has already done as ward mobility, to the truly vulgar lust to be welcomed president. On being reminded of all this, and mindful into secular society, whether on the part of individuals of the parlous position this puts them into vis-a-vis the or institutions.

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 9 A r t ic l e s

Some years ago, Archbishop Michael Miller in his a Catholic university. It invites an official rebuke. May it Vatican capacity as overseer of Catholic education, said come. in an address at Notre Dame that the Holy Father was considering prohibiting the use of the word “Catholic” (Ralph McInerny is a writer of philosophy, fiction, and by institutions whose behavior contradicts that use. By cultural criticism, who has taught at Notre Dame since inviting Barack Obama to be the 2009 commencement 1955.) speaker, Notre Dame has forfeited its right to call itself

Controversial Situations and the Catholic University Selecting Honorary Degrees Recipients and Others Invited to Speak

Max Bonilla, SSL, STD tunities to speak. These tenets—mission and freedom— Vice President for Academic Affairs, should also help guide all those who are entrusted with Franciscan University of Steubenville directing the work of Catholic universities because they do, in fact, emanate from the nature of the Catholic university as an institution committed to truth. Introduction The Nature and Mission of he recent and very public controversy that erupted when the University of Notre a Catholic University Dame invited President Obama to give the commencement address and to receive an n gatherings of fellow partners in Catholic Higher honoraryT doctorate in law makes our discussion about Education, I have often asked people about what “Honorary Degrees and Invitations to Speak” all the they believe is the primary mission of a Catho- more timely, yet, in my opinion, the issue underscores lic university. Most say it is the pursuit of social Ijustice issues or the upholding of the cultural heritage the need to understand who we are as Catholic in- stitutions of higher learning. So, while the invitation of universities’ various traditions (e.g., Franciscan, Je- is certainly a serious public relations problem for the suit, Dominican, etc.). Let me be clear, however, at the University, the concern should neither be political, nor outset, that this, however admirable, is not the primary limited to this particular event. The discussion should purpose that the Church holds for her institutions of encompass a deeper reflection about the purpose of higher learning. the university as an institution, and should be aimed at Pope Benedict in his address to presidents of Cath- helping all of us entrusted with running Catholic uni- olic universities had this to say, “Education is integral to versities, towards becoming more faithful guardians of the mission of the Church to proclaim the Good News. the patrimony with which we have been entrusted. First and foremost every Catholic educational institu- Two distinct, though interrelated, principles must tion is a place to encounter the living God who in Jesus frame the conversation. Those are the interplay be- Christ reveals his transforming love and truth.”1 The tween, on the one hand, the nature and mission of the emphasis not to be lost on those of us entrusted with Catholic university and, on the other hand, the concept running Catholic universities is that, “first and foremost of academic freedom as understood from a Catholic every Catholic educational institution is a place to en- point of view. These principles govern the deeper ques- counter the living God.” tions about the search for truth, the role of a university This statement serves as the proper interpretative in the intellectual arena, and its responsibility towards key to Ex Corde Ecclesiae’s declaration that, “the objec- society. They are the principles which, for example, at tive of a Catholic University is to assure in an institu- Franciscan University of Steubenville, govern how we tional manner a Christian presence in the university decide who should receive honors or be given oppor- world.”2 This “Christian presence” cannot simply be a

10 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 proclamation of social justice, for example (an ethically- extent, at least, it comes into conflict with the current minded atheist could do that!), or some other worthy, secular understanding of academic freedom and how though lesser, goal. The Christian presence that is en- we promote dialogue within the university. visioned in Ex Corde Ecclesiae is one that is oriented towards the proclamation of the Gospel, or, as Pope Academic Freedom Benedict puts it, to be a place “to encounter the living God.” This, then, provides the context for Ex Corde’s he current secular understanding of free- four essential characteristics of a Catholic university: dom sees academic freedom as an avenue to offer, and even celebrate, anything that can 1. A Christian inspiration not only of individuals but challenge the intellect. The traditional Cath- of the university community as such; olicT understanding of freedom, as we will see shortly, is 2. A continuing reflection in the light of the Catholic faith more carefully nuanced to direct the individual to seek upon the growing treasury of human knowledge, to truth in what brings fulfillment. which it seeks to contribute by its own research; Let’s take a moment, then, to look at the right 3. Fidelity to the Christian message as it comes to us application of one of the fundamental aspects of uni- through the Church; versity life: academic freedom. Both Pope Benedict in 4. An institutional commitment to the service of his address to presidents of Catholic universities and the people of God and of the human family in their Pope John Paul II in Ex Corde Ecclesiae have affirmed pilgrimage to the transcendent goal which gives meaning to the Church’s support for academic freedom. Yet, they life.3 have not done so in an unqualified manner. They have offered limits to this freedom. These limits are related to All four characteristics are explicit references to the the mission of a Catholic university to, above all, pro- direct contribution a University should make towards claim the fact that in God’s incarnation, humanity has the overall mission of the Church to proclaim salvation found the summit of Truth. Which limits they impose is in Christ. a vital question for the integrity of a Catholic univer- If a university embraces these characteristics as sity as a place of higher learning. This may lead to the essential aspects of its mission to bring the Christian question of whether those imposed limits are valid in message to the academy, then it is not enough to pro- the first place. Let us first look at those limits. claim its Catholicity by just having Mass on campus, The two popes, both great intellectuals in their no matter how well attended those Masses are. It is own right, express the boundaries of academic freedom not enough to encourage living a virtuous life in the in the following way. Pope John Paul states that a uni- dorms, no matter how well those virtues are lived out. versity, It is not enough to stand up for social justice issues, no possesses that institutional autonomy necessary to per- matter how important they are. Instead, it is also essen- form its functions effectively and guarantees its members tial to consider what is taught in the classroom, what is academic freedom, so long as the rights of the individual expressed in the auditoriums, what is discussed in semi- person and of the community are preserved within the nars; in short, it is essential to consider what happens confines of the truth and the common good.4 throughout the entire university as part of a constant Similarly, Pope Benedict states that, effort to consider, to evaluate, and to verify the depth in regard to faculty members at Catholic colleges univer- and reasonableness of the Christian proposal in light of sities, I wish to reaffirm the great value of academic free- human experience. The requirement imposed by the dom. In virtue of this freedom you are called to search mission of a Catholic university that is not present at for the truth wherever careful analysis of evidence leads secular schools is the conviction of the Church that the you. Yet it is also the case that any appeal to the prin- claim that Jesus makes about himself is in fact reason- ciple of academic freedom in order to justify positions able. That is the foundation on which we are to judge that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church anything else that happens at a university. would obstruct or even betray the university’s identity This presents a particular opportunity for the and mission, a mission at the heart of the Church’s munus Church, which, at the same time, at Catholic universi- docendi and not somehow autonomous or independent ties challenges the approach we are expected to take in of it.5 relationship to our students and the public, and to some

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 11 A r t ic l e s

Thus, both popes limit the reach of academic free- contrast with the earlier tradition, which sees freedom dom, one by appealing to the right of individuals and as giving the individual the possibility for excellence. St. the common good, while the other, more explicitly, Augustine, St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, and most of referring to the munus docendi of the Church, declaring the patristic tradition would follow this second notion it foundational for a Catholic university. of freedom.8 It assumes that freedom must be oriented Yet the question of whether those limits are reason- towards the good of the person, opening the horizon able parameters within a rightly understood academic towards perfecting the individual and society. The high- freedom is at the center of any acceptance of such pro- est ideal, then, is not to have the option to choose, posals, and has fueled much of the current debate.6 It is, but the option for excellence. And this is, in fact, what therefore, important to turn to the question about the nature of academic freedom to seek an answer to the makes freedom valuable. question of the reasonableness of the limits proposed by Learning and perfecting an art, for example, with its the Church. requisite toil, moves the learner towards the perfection Because the Church is convinced about the nature of expression. Thus, as the learner of the art improves of her relationship with Christ, who is font and summit in the art, he or she is moved towards a greater excel- of all truth, all institutions that emerge from within the lence that provides the ability to create great art. The Church are participants and co-missionaries in the work self-denial that brings mastery to an art or an academic of the proclamation of this truth. Thus, one must under- field, or even in life, is a culmination of freedom, and stand freedom and the place of dialogue that a univer- the process of reaching great expertise requires choices sity has within society as service to the salvific work of that by nature constitute the blocking of future choices. Christ. For a Catholic university, as a key place within The principle that governs this effort is the perfection the Church for both dialogue with the world and the of the human person, not the availability of choices. formation of mature Christians, the attitude should Choices are secondary to the attainment of excellence. be one of openness to the discovery of truth and the This approach to freedom that seeks excellence is what conviction that one has found it in Christ. Ideological considerations, which are bound to emerge within the Ex Corde Ecclesiae uses to define the Catholic university. university campus, must be evaluated first and foremost Thus, what to the modern eye may seem as limitations for their claim to truth. This is what the Church expects to academic freedom (i.e., that some possibilities are of all of us. denied to the university and its agents), to the Church, by virtue of higher goods—foremost among them the The Notion of Freedom dignity and sanctification of the person—some limita- tions are perfectly acceptable. That is to say, universities, in the Tradition as do people, make choices all the time; those choices, t risk of oversimplifying the issue but hoping, however, must be made with the end in mind, the telos, nonetheless, to provide a valid path that might the goal that is desired, not simply with the idea of giv- be helpful, I would like to point out how the ing choices for the sake of having varied possibilities. tradition has understood the notion of free- This understanding of freedom is what justifies dom.A7 There are essentially two major notions of free- the limitations that the popes and the Church pres- dom that have developed in Christian tradition. The most ent to Catholic universities’ use of academic freedom. popular in modern times is one that defines freedom as It explains why the limitations on the grounds of the the possibility to choose between alternatives (derived common good and the proclamation of the Gospel are principally by William of Ockham, c. 1288 – c 1347). Thus not only acceptable limits, but also necessary guideposts one is truly free when one is given the choice to select. towards a properly understood notion of the human Our American system of government is predicated on the quest for truth and fulfillment. This notion stands in ability of the electorate to choose among a pool of can- stark contrast to the prevalent assumption that universi- didates. The possibility of making a choice is considered ties in the western world have a duty to maintain an one of the highest expressions of freedom. This notion, with its attendant variations, which can unrestricted flow of information so that the student will vary from one extreme to another (e.g., a democratic have access to all points of view. ideal, an individualistic approach to choices), stands in

12 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 Academic Freedom and Steubenville, as I said, while it is not opposed in theory or in practice to inviting controversial speakers to Controversial Speakers and Topics engage in real dialogue with professors and students, would not invite President Obama to campus to re- he secular view of academic freedom of- ceive an honorary doctorate and to address its graduat- ten leads to the welcoming of controversial ing class—a setting that is obviously neither a dialogue speakers, theater productions, and activists nor a debate. Instead, the commencement proclaims from outside, as well as allowing and nur- primarily and very publicly that the university offi- turingT on the inside a professoriate with divergent and cially holds the person who is being honored as a role opposing views. Additionally, same-sex marriage pro- model for the lives of the new graduates. While there ponents, reproductive rights activists, the availability of is much to honor and respect about President Obama, pornography on campus, and people or activities that Franciscan University would not have made that choice are at odds with Church teaching, may find a welcome based on the University’s understanding of its Catho- sign at universities precisely because those views imply lic identity. The reasons for this stance should be clear. choices, and thus freedom for the students’ intellectual The very fact that as a Catholic university Franciscan development. The university, the argument goes, must seeks to recognize the event of Christ’s incarnation as not be a bubble that keeps the student from the matu- the pivotal point for all human reality, sets for us a series rity that he or she must attain by exploring the possi- of obligations. First of all, we embrace the principle of bilities the world offers. ecclesial unity, especially with the College of Bishops, as The Catholic university’s response, however, must an absolutely necessary aspect of Franciscan’s existence. be careful not about denying entrance to many voices, Secondly, we recognize the fundamental importance as those are indeed necessary for a proper and mature of the proclamation of the Gospel of Life, with its at- formation of the student, but about how those voices tendant commitment to Catholic social justice, which are presented and understood within the context of the is grounded on solidarity with those in greatest need— freedom that seeks excellence. Dialogue, even animated the unborn, and that this recognition, which emanates and controversial is not, in and of itself, a problem from the Gospel itself, demands that those who are within Catholic academia. On the contrary, debates invited and presented as role models for our students are often enormously helpful in framing questions and be men and women who, while not perfect, do not finding solutions. At Franciscan University, for example, ardently, in word and action, act against the excellence we not only allow, but also have actively invited con- the University wishes to inculcate in its students. The troversial and dissenting speakers to present and engage invitation of someone who is such a passionate and in debate. What has marked a drastic difference in the powerful supporter of the pro-choice position amounts approach we take is that we have made it clear that to a betrayal of the principles of excellence that ought our position is one that seeks to promote the com- to guide Franciscan University. This is not a matter of mon good, the dignity of the person, and ultimately the politics or ideology, but it is a position that we see as salvation of souls, and not simply the free flow of infor- something grounded in the University’s understanding mation. of its relationship to Christ.

Honorary Doctorates and Conclusion Controversial Speakers hus, we at Franciscan make an important he commitment that a university makes as distinction between inviting people to dis- a Catholic institution of higher learning cuss or debate issues, and inviting people to to support the salvific message the Church present them as role models for our gradu- proclaims requires it to evaluate under the ates,T especially if we honor those guests in a very public sameT lens those people it might wish to invite as com- forum. That distinction, grounded in our understand- mencement speakers or honorees. The current case of ing of freedom that seeks truth and the mission of the the University of Notre Dame’s invitation to President Catholic University as a privileged place to proclaim Obama to its commencement exercises serves as an il- the Truth, enables the Catholic university not only lustration to this point. Franciscan University of to be true to its commitment to society as a locus of

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 13 A r t ic l e s inquiry and unbiased exploration, but also as a place Ward, 1970. where that exploration has brought us to the realization, Manier, Edward, John W. Houck, and University of Notre Dame. after full use of the powers of the intellect, that an event Academic Freedom and the Catholic University. Notre Dame, Ind.: Fides Publishers, 1967. two thousand years ago has pointed us in the direction May, William W. Vatican Authority and American Catholic Dissent : The of, and brought us to the culmination of, all true hu- Curran Case and Its Consequences. New York: Crossroad, 1987. man aspirations. The encounter with this event, God Morey, Melanie M., and John J. Piderit. Catholic Higher Education: A made Man, imposes on the Church, but particularly on Culture in Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Orsy, Ladislas M. The Church : Learning and Teaching : Magisterium, As- the institutions within her committed to education, an sent, Dissent, Academic Freedom. Wilmington, Del.: M. Glazier, 1987. obligation to be true to that encounter especially when Pinckaers, Servais. The Sources of Christian Ethics. Washington, D.C.: announcing it to youth and the world. Catholic University of America Press, 1995. Any actions that are taken within the university should Vigilanti, John Anthony. Academic Freedom and the Adult Student in be considered in light of its mission as a servant to the Catholic Higher Education. Original ed. Malabar, Fla.: Krieger Pub. Co., 1992. truth of God’s love, and in accord with the demands Worgul, George S. Issues in Academic Freedom. Pittsburgh, Pa.: of freedom. Without those two elements, the work of Duquesne University Press, 1992. a university becomes subject to ideological distortions that do not serve the common good. Trustees and all Endnotes others entrusted with guiding the work of Catholic universities ought to carefully reflect about these things, 1 Pope Benedict XVI, Remarks at the Catholic University of and demand of administrators and faculty a clear com- America, April 17, 2008 2 ECE, 13. mitment to seek the truth without bias, and to promote 3 ECE, 13. Emphasis added. freedom that leads to the perfection of the individual 4 ECE, 12. and society. 5 Pope Benedict, Remarks. 6 The debate has been long. Consider, for example, Annarelli, Works Cited James John, Academic Freedom and Catholic Higher Education, Con- tributions to the Study of Education, (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987); Cafardi, Nicholas P. and Duquesne University., Aca- Annarelli, James John. Academic Freedom and Catholic Higher Educa- demic Freedom in a Pluralistic Society: The Catholic University ([Pitts- tion Contributions to the Study of Education, New York: Greenwood burgh]: Duquesne University, 1990); Carron, Malcolm Theodore Press, 1987. and Alfred D. Cavanaugh, Readings in the Philosophy of Education, Cafardi, Nicholas P., and Duquesne University. Academic Freedom in 3d ed. ([Detroit]: University of Detroit Press, 1963); Curran, a Pluralistic Society: The Catholic University. [Pittsburgh]: Duquesne Charles E., Catholic Higher Education, Theology, and Academic Free- University, 1990. dom (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990); Carron, Malcolm Theodore, and Alfred D. Cavanaugh. Readings in Curran, Charles E. and Robert E. Hunt, Dissent in and for the the Philosophy of Education. 3d ed. [Detroit]: University of Detroit Church:Theologians and Humanae Vitae (New York: Sheed & Ward, Press, 1963. 1970); Curran, Charles E. and Richard A. McCormick, Dissent Curran, Charles E. Catholic Higher Education, Theology, and Academic in the Church, Readings in Moral Theology (New York: Paulist Freedom. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, Press, 1988); Dovre, Paul John, The Future of Religious Colleges: 1990. the Proceedings of the Harvard Conference on the Future of Religious Curran, Charles E., and Robert E. Hunt. Dissent in and for the Colleges, October 6-7, 2000 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Church; Theologians and Humanae Vitae. New York: Sheed & Ward, Pub., 2002); Finkin, Matthew W. and Robert Post, For the Com- 1970. mon Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom (New Haven: Curran, Charles E., and Richard A. McCormick. Dissent in the Yale University Press, 2009); Hesburgh, Theodore Martin, The Church Readings in Moral Theology. New York: Paulist Press, 1988. Hesburgh Papers: Higher Values in Higher Education (Kansas City, Dovre, Paul John. The Future of Religious Colleges; the Proceedings of the Kan.: Andrews and McMeel, 1979); Hunt, John F. and Terrence Harvard Conference on the Future of Religious Colleges, October 6-7, R. Connelly, The Responsibility of Dissent: The Church and Academic 2000. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2002. Freedom (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1970); Manier, Edward, Finkin, Matthew W., and Robert Post. For the Common Good: Prin- John W. Houck, and University of Notre Dame., Academic Free- ciples of American Academic Freedom. New Haven: Yale University dom and the Catholic University (Notre Dame, Ind.,: Fides Publish- Press, 2009. ers, 1967); May, William W., Vatican Authority and American Catholic Gallin, Alice. American Catholic Higher Education: Essential Documents, Dissent : The Curran Case and Its Consequences (New York: Cross- 1967-1990. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, road, 1987); Orsy, Ladislas M., The Church : Learning and Teaching : 1992. Magisterium, Assent, Dissent, Academic Freedom (Wilmington, Del.: Hesburgh, Theodore Martin. The Hesburgh Papers: Higher Values in M. Glazier, 1987); Vigilanti, John Anthony, Academic Freedom and Higher Education. Kansas City, Kan.: Andrews and McMeel, 1979. the Adult Student in Catholic Higher Education, Original ed. (Ma- Hunt, John F., and Terrence R. Connelly. The Responsibility of Dis- labar, Fla.: Krieger Pub. Co., 1992); Worgul, George S., Issues in sent: The Church and Academic Freedom. New York: Sheed and

14 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 Academic Freedom (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 7 For an indepth treatment of this subject, see Pinckaers, Servais, 1992). See also, Gallin, Alice, American Catholic Higher Education: The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Uni- Essential Documents, 1967-1990 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of versity of America Press, 1995, pp. 327ff). Notre Dame Press, 1992); Morey, Melanie M. and John J. Piderit, 8 See St. Agustine’s, De libero arbitrio, BK II, ch. 19, whose treatment of the Catholic Higher Education: A Culture in Crisis (New York: Oxford subject is pivotal for the patristic tradition. See also, St. Thomas Aquinas, University Press, 2006). Summa Theologiæ, I-II, q. 13, aa. 3-6.

“Walker Percy the Philosopher,”1 Revisited

Rev. Robert A. Connor into any category. He was not, I will argue, in search of Chaplain of Riverside Study Center – Opus Dei abstract thought or immateriality as the key to concep- tual knowing, but the unique and un-repeatable “me” alker Percy sees our culture as a dis- that had fallen through the categorical “gaps” of scien- eased patient who has already died – tific abstraction. perhaps around 1914. The name of the The thesis of Joseph F. Previtali’s “Walker Percy the culture was Christendom. The greater Philosopher” seems to have interpreted Percy’s diagno- Wdifficulty beyond ascertaining death is to name the sis of the malaise as a materialist entrapment that can be disease; or, as he says, “if not to isolate the bacillus under cured by an apologetic of immateriality in the human the microscope, at least to give the sickness a name, to person, and this by the immateriality involved in the render the unspeakable speakable.”2 semiotics of sign-giving or naming. He writes: “Since Percy was acutely sensitive to the bacillus, and we know that there are some times when the signified and the all the male Percy’s before him. His biographer Jay signifier are purely material, we can conclude that the intellect, Tolson remarked: “The problem, specifically, was depres- at least sometimes, must be that which has immateriality.” 5 sion – a wracking, disabling depression… partly hereditary”3 This would be the traditional neo-scholastic response that engulfed his great-grandfather (suicide), his two to the reduction of sensible reality to mere matter and uncles (LeRoy accidentally shot himself) and his father measurement. Percy, indeed, uses the Helen Keller ex- who deliberately shot himself after a previous attempt perience of naming the water at the well in Tuscumbia, at slashing his wrists. Walker suffered acutely from the Alabama as the eureka moment when it seems that she same fugues, melancholy and meaninglessness. While has escaped from the dyadic physiology of stimulus (S) in medical school at Columbia, he was seeing a psy- - response (R) as the connecting of the Braille symbol chotherapist on a regular basis. While interning at Bel- for water to the wet liquid. Previtali says: “To emphasize levue’s pathology lab, he contracted tuberculosis, was the immateriality of the coupler, Percy asks the reader to draw sent to a sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York. Percy a picture of someone asserting a proposition or judging a paint- reports: “I lived a strange life then. For weeks I saw no one, ing or composing a piece of music. As the reader comes to learn, except the person who brought me food, on a try, three times Percy knows that it is not possible to do so. Here we have the a day, and occasionally a doctor. I read and read.”4 What climactic discovery of Percy’s investigation into human nature: did he read? Thomas Mann, Kafka, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, the human intellect must have an immaterial element in order Kierkegaard. He left the sanatorium and the practice of to account for the phenomenon of human language.”6And medicine, returned to the south, traveled with Shelby Previtali is led to think that Percy is fixing his atten- Foote to New Mexico and there expanded his read to tion on the psychic work of abstraction and immaterial Gabriel Marcel, Heidegger, Mounier, Jaspers, and Sartre. conceptualization from whence comes the name. He Like Kafka, the scientist, he was on the hunt in search presumes that Percy’s philosophical perspective is an of the bacillus that was killing him (and everyone else). “Aristotelian/Thomistic metaphysical view.” 7 What did he seek? Himself. Not himself in a self- He is clearly right in that symbolization has taken ishness of everything “for me,” but the identity and the place which is a “throwing” (Ballein) “together” (sym) reality of me as a unique subject; a “me” that did not fit of name (an abstraction) and individual thing by the

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 15 A r t ic l e s verb “is.” Percy says: “A child points to a flower and says and immateriality… Given Percy’s desire for an anthropology ‘flower.’ One element of the event is the flower as perceived by that expresses an integration of body and soul, this view would sight and registered by the brain: blue, five-petaled, of a certain seem to be most in line with his thinking.”12 shape; and the spoken word ‘flower,’ a Gestalt of a peculiar I would suggest Percy’s whole endeavor works on little sequence of sounds of larynx vibrations, escape of air a different level, namely, the level of the subject as “I.” between lips and teeth, and so on. But what is the entity Percy’s take on Helen Keller’s discovery in the act of at the apex of the triangle, that which links the other naming the water is not that she discovered thought. two? Peirce, a difficult, often obscure writer, called it by Rather, she discovered herself – her existential “I” - in various names, interpretant, interpreter, judge. I have the exercise of her subjectivity by “throwing” the sign used the term ‘coupler’ as a minimal designation of that and at the water and uniting them in “meaning.” She which couples name and thing, subject and predicate, experienced herself as a “thrower,” an agent exercising links them by the relation which we mean by the pecu- causality. liar little word ‘is.’ It, the linking entity, was also called Percy’s whole discovery is the act of conjoining of by Peirce ‘mind’ and even ‘soul.’ signs with signified by a signifier. His problematic is “Here is the embarrassment, and it cannot be gotten that there is no sign that can be “thrown” at the sign- round, so it might as well be said right out: By whatever user whereby he is signified. “Semiotically,” he says, “the name one chooses to call it – interpretant, interpreter, self is literally unspeakable to itself. One cannot speak or hear coupler, whatever – it, the third element, is not material. a word which signifies oneself, as one can speak or hear a word “It is as real as a cabbage or a king or a neurone, but signifying anything else, e.g., apple, Canada, 7-Up. The it is not material. No material structure of neurons, how- self of the sign-user can never be grasped, because, once ever complex, and however intimately it may be related to the self locates itself at the dead center of its world, there the triadic event, can itself assert anything. If you think it is no signified to which a signifier can be joined to make can, please draw me a picture of an assertion. a sign. The self has no sign of itself.”13 Hence, the signifi- “A material substance cannot name or assert a er cannot have “substance” as its “name” since the signifier proposition. as active agent is irreducibly “I” as in George, or James “The initiator of a speech act is an act-or, that is, or Helen. “You are Ralph to me and I am Walker to an agent. The agent is not material” 8(bold mine). you, but you are not Ralph to you and I am not Walker to me”14 In this text, Percy is not referring to the work of Karol Wojtyla expressed the need, as we approached an immaterial intellect, precisely because “intellects” do the Third Millennium, to undergo this migration of not work. The agent of the naming is an “interpretant,” a seeing the human person as existential subject rather “interpreter,” and a “judge.” The “coupler,” the “namer” than as the objectivized mental category, “rational ani- is not “the human intellect”9 as Previtali suggests. Rath- mal.”15 He went on that “the antinomy of subjectivism vs. er, and in accord with the best of thomistic anthropol- objectivism, along with the underlying antinomy of idealism vs. ogy where “actiones sunt suppositorum,”10 the coupler realism, created conditions that discouraged dealing with hu- or namer is an “act-or, that is, an agent. The agent is man subjectivity – for fear that this would lead inevitably to not material.” Previtali assumes that the coupler is the subjectivism.” But as “we are seeing a breakdown of that line intellect as “immaterial agent.” Having identified agency of demarcation… we can no longer go on treating the human with the intellect as a medium of knowing names and being exclusively as an objective being, but we must also some- not the knower, he then finds himself with the false how treat the human being as a subject in the dimension in problem of “how… the immaterial part of the intellect inter- which the specifically human subjectivity of the human being acts with our brain matter in the phenomenon of coupling the is determined by consciousness. And that dimension would sign and the signified?”11 Discovering that Percy does not seem to be none other than personal subjectivity.”16 deal with such a problem because he never entered into Previtali ends by saying that “the ultimate end of it, he suggests that “it is reasonably likely that the Aristote- Percy’s quest is to discern the implications for human existence lian hylomorphism of St. Thomas Aquinas would be Percy’s of this newfound discovery that man is indeed more than just response to the question of interaction, and it does seem to be an organism interacting with an environment. Percy proposes the most cogent answer to this problem of interaction.” He that our unique nature is such that our search for fulfillment then goes on to say: “In this view, the human being is a single reaches beyond the here and now.” 17 Such a conclusion substance composed of a unity of body and soul of materiality squares with his thesis that Percy’s discovery is the im-

16 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 materiality of the intellect, and therefore the immateri- 2 Walker Percy, “Diagnosing the Modern Malaise,” Signposts in ality of the soul that transcends the here and now into a Strange Land ed. Patrick Samway, The Noonday Press, Farrar, immortality. Straus, Giroux (1991) 206. 3 Jay Tolson, “Pilgrim in the Ruins” Chapel Hill, (1992) 28. But, in line with the perspective that Percy is talk- 4 Robert Coles, “Walker Percy – An American Search” Atlantic- ing about the self not only as immaterial, but more Little Brown (1978) 66-67. deeply as “subject,” I would submit that Percy’s thesis 5 Previtali, op. cit. 29 has much to do with the world of here and now. His 6 Previtali, op. cit 29. 7 Previtali, op. cit. 29. explicit complaint and suffering – “the modern malaise” 8 Walker Percy, “The Fateful Rift: The San Andreas Fault in the - is the feeling “in the deepest sense possible that something Modern Mind,” Signposts in a Strange Land ed. Patrick Samway, has gone wrong with one’s very self? When one experiences The Noonday Press (1991) 287. the common complaint of the age, the loss of meaning, pur- 9 Previtali, op. cit. 29 poselessness, loss of identity, of values, and so on?”18 The 10 S. Th. II-II, 58, 2, Respondeo: “Now actions belong to supposits and wholes and, properly speaking, not to parts and forms or partial and temporary solution he proposes points to powers, for we do not say properly that the hand strikes, but a the recovery of – not immateriality – but of identity… man with his hand, nor that heat makes a thing hot, but fire by even as “neurotic.19” Being able to be named such by the heat, although such expressions may be employed metaphori- “experts” is an achievement in identity and becomes in cally.” this moonscape a glimpse of recovery: “I may be sick but 11 Previtali, op. cit. 30 12 Ibid. how happy I am when I can present my doctor with a sickness 13 Walker Percy, “Lost in the Cosmos,” Noonday Press (1996) 106- or a symptom or a dream which is recognized as a classical 107. example of such-and-such a neurosis: I am an authentic neu- 14 Ibid 107. rotic.”20 15 Karol Wojtyla, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” Person and Community (1993) 209. 16 Ibid 210. 17 Previtali, op. cit. Endnotes 18 Walker Percy, “Diagnosing the Modern Malaise,” Signposts… op. cit. 211. 1 Joseph F. Previtali, “Walker Percy the Philosopher,” Fellowship of 19 Ibid. Catholic Scholars Quarterly, 31, Number 4, Winter 2008, 26-31. 20 Ibid

Is “Beauty” an Objective Reality or Only in the Eye of the Beholder?

Hamilton Reed Armstrong, the Latin ars, akin to the Greek techne, which, for the Sculptor Professor of Fine Arts, ancients, referred to certain skills. Thus we speak of the International Catholic University, Notre Dame, IN art of writing, the art of medicine, the art of building, the art of painting, or the art of flower arrangement, he nature of “Beauty” is a question that has and so on. The object of these “arts” was to make or do challenged thinkers from antiquity onward things as they ought to be done, recta ratio factibilium. right up to our own times. But, before try- The “fine arts,” as more clearly seen in other ing to present the problems and, God willing, languages,—beaux arts, bellas artes, schöne Kunst—deal someT answers to the question of beauty, or aesthetics, I with the production of beautiful objects, or the appre- should like to start with the question, “What is art?” ciation thereof. The word art, it must be remembered, comes from To understand our traditional conception of beauty,

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 17 A r t ic l e s

we have to go back to the ancient Greeks, who were sounds held sway in the West up to the mid to late16th the first to speculate on the subject from a rational century when it was modified—not replaced- by the perspective. For Plato, beauty was the splendor of truth, tempered scale. The Greek scale also passed on into Ara- or as he posits in the Symposium, beauty is akin to the bic music via the 10th century Muslim philosopher Al good—all three being transcendental attributes of Farabi and his followers who broke the octave into 24 the divine essence. These attributes exist absolutely as notes of equal temperament but with 7of these notes to “archetypes” and all physical manifestations of beauty be chosen for a given scale. It would appear that the 7 merely imitate the one divine beauty. Human art, tone scale, with but slight variations as in the Chinese pictures, sculptures etc. are, therefore, “imitations of pentatonic scale which leaves out the 3rd and 7th notes, is imitations” and are on the third or lowest level. The near universal to the folk music of all peoples. true artist, however, through divine “inspiration,” Thea For the “realist” philosopher, beauty exists in na- mania, makes present the effusions of pure beauty or ture or, the created order. For the believer, as man is “divine goodness” and is, according to Plato, on much created in “the image and likeness of God,” he derives the same level as the philosopher involved with “divine pleasure from the infinitely complex but ordered work truth.” Platonic, and Neo–platonic philosophy have had of the Creator and turns to Him in praise. As for the a tremendous influence on Western art, especially in non-believer, he simply delights in participating via the the Renaissance, when the pursuit of evermore rari- senses in contemplation of the existing cosmic design fied experiences of beauty were seen as a means of of which he forms a part approaching God; hence the epithets for such geniuses St. Thomas Aquinas, indebted to Plato and Aristo- as the “divine” Raphael, the “divine Michelangelo, the tle, placed beauty in both the supernatural and natural “divine” Leonardo. Platonic and Neo-platonic theories orders. Accordingly, Aquinas acknowledges that “God of beauty abounded well into the 19th and early 20th is beautiful in himself…and the source of all beauty” century and are, in some circles, currently in vogue (Cf. Commentary on the Divine Names), but also lists the again. attributes of beauty to be found in nature. These are For Aristotle, beauty exists in the here and now and proportion, clarity, and integrity. Proportion, or the har- points to the elements of symmetry, harmony, and defi- mony of the parts to the whole and to each other is, niteness in a given work or composition. In a true work based on the mathematical and geometric relationships of art it is not possible either to take away or to add discovered by the Ancient Greeks; clarity refers to the anything, implying that excess and defect destroy the intelligible quality of design, as well as the luminosity of goodness of any work of art. This may be called the “re- coloration. The concept of Integrity follows the Aristote- alist” view of beauty as opposed to the Platonic “ide- lian proposition that nothing can be added to or taken alist” view. This “realist” view is based on the discov- away from a perfect work of art. St. Thomas taught that ery—not invention—by the Greeks, of the underlying beauty is intimately tied to knowledge, and that we geometry and mathematics of the Cosmos. The “Gold- form our judgments according to what pleases us. As en Section” –TB:AT :: AT:AB—a ratio found in natural such, “Carnal people love carnal beauty and spiritual phenomena such as the growth of sea shells became people love spiritual beauty” (Commentarium in Psalmos). the norm for Greek architects and remained the norm The subjective element of beauty, therefore, involves in Western architecture up to the first half of the 20th discernment, not opinion. century. In music, Pythagoras identified the resonance St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas’s contemporary, in of the strings of instruments in “octaves” and the har- order to bridge the Platonic “ideal” and Aristotelian monic fractions that they contained and brought about “real” referred to this autonomous natural beauty as the a rational method of tuning, according to the length of vestigia or “imprint” of the divine on the created order strings, that pleases the human ear. The Greek Kithara, a which brings about delight and praise. For a modern fifteen stringed instrument, was thus tuned according to day realist philosopher, the late Joseph Pieper, “Beauty the theories of Pythagoras to produce different “modes” is the glow of the true and the good that shines forth to augment the aesthetic and emotional range of music from every ordered state of being” (The Four Cardinal beyond the dithyrambic [— ⌣ ⌣ —]—Bacchic meter. Virtues). (Music, according to Plato, began with the rites of Bac- The modern subjectivisation of art can, I believe, chus and the lewd songs and dances performed in his be traced back to René Descartes who in his 1641 praise) The Pythagorean classification of harmonious Discourse on Method, uttered his famous “je pense donc

18 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 je suis.”—I think therefore I am—thereby moving the yond nature—a new form of mysticism tied to the concept of truth from observed reality to the mind of evolving spirit. 2 the individual thinker. Although Descartes was not in- It started in Europe with such “Theosophical ab- terested in aesthetics, a corollary to “truth being in the stractionists” as Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian mind of the thinker, would be, “beauty is in the mind as “thesis” while the fragmentation of nature by the (eye) of the beholder. “Cubists” Braque and Picasso, along with the “Fauves” Immanuel Kant, following Descartes’s estrangement (wild beasts) Derain, Matisse and de Vlaminck served as from reality, actually proposed this subjective approach “antitheses.” There was the 1917 Armory Show in New to beauty in his Critique of Judgment, in that the aesthetic York displaying “Dadaist,” Marcel Duchamp’s “Urinal” experience is purely subjective and takes place within the to “épater le bourgeois” (shock the middle class) and break mind. The feelings of pleasure derived from the aesthetic down traditional aesthetic values and thus pave the way experience do not derive from the object observed but in America. from one’s own refinement of individual taste in order to Following the Second World War, such experts as achieve an experience of the sublime. “If a man does not Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, and Leo Stein- find a work of art beautiful, a hundred voices praising it berg, redefined art for the so called, “Modern Age.” will not force his innermost agreement.” Rosenberg spoke of the “purities,” “opticalities,” and G.W.F. Hegel, writing his Aesthetics in the early “formal factors” of art” espoused by a select group of 19th century, locates the beautiful in the realm of “art” “Abstractionist” Bohemians, mainly in New York City, excluding it from nature entirely, and submits it to a as “thesis” while Rosenberg espoused the “action paint- historical process, which is also a process of gradual ing” of Jackson Pollock and De Kooning et al. as “an- dematerialization and subjectification. For Hegel, ex- tithesis.” Steinberg introduced Pop Art, as a “synthesis,” ternal nature is inanimate and inert. Art for its part is but that never really took hold. He is best remembered “born of the spirit and born again.” For him, art, is for his pithy aphorisms such as, “All great art looks ugly higher than nature for it represents the manifestation at first.” The modernist movement “must applaud the of “Geist” (spirit) in a self-splitting, self-readjusting, and destruction of values we still cherish,” and Modern art, self-reunifying progression toward the “Absolute.” Man, “must transmit this anxiety to the spectator.” 3. As the the artist, creates by this process ever new “epiphanies general public was left clueless as to what was going on, of beauty.” Beauty, then for Hegel is neither an eternal a new art market emerged, manipulated by the self- given nor present in nature; it is the procession of the proclaimed “experts” that appealed to wealthy patrons spirit through time as made manifest by individual men wishing to cash in on this gnostic “wave of the future.”4. of genius in every age.1 For Hegel, the artist, not the Individuals and investment firms have invested billions priest, is the pontifex between the natural and evolving in this highly dubious market. Paintings by Pollock, supernatural order. Hence the importance of aesthetics Rothko and de Kooning et al. until recently, fetched in the Hegelian system. prices in the millions and tens of millions of dollars. The influence of Hegel on modern thought in The collapse of these investments will predictably be in general and art theory in particular can not be overstat- an order of magnitude equal to Bear Sterns and Bernie ed. * This school of thought is not only the underlying Madoff. philosophy of modern abstract movements in art, but, At the moment—the beginning of 2009—avan- has produced the cult of creativity, spontaneity, innova- garde art, as seen in the prestigious galleries and peri- tion, and originality as the criteria for judging what is, odicals, is polarized between “Eros” with a proliferation or what is not “art.” of “art works” depicting joyless mechanical sex, and But, who are these artists, and who is now to say, “Thanatos” the “culture of death” as in von Hagen’s what is art and what is beauty? It would appear that “Body Works” featuring plasticized corpses in grotesque the artists with the most “Chutzpah” take the lead and positions. Where will the dialectic now take us? No- a self-promoting and inbred establishment of experts, body knows because, according to the theory, anything academics, museum directors, and gallery owners, have goes, as propelled onward and upward by the march arisen to point out and promote the chosen ones with- of the “Zeitgeist” (spirit). Unfortunately, rather than in, of course, the guidelines of the on-going dialectic. onward and upward to the “Absolute,” present trends By the end of the 19th century artists no longer looked point rather towards barbarism and the demise of aes- to nature for inspiration, but into a spiritual order be- thetics and Western values on all fronts.

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 19 A r t ic l e s

There is, however, a renewed interest and concern 2. Carl Jung, Man and his Symbols (NY: Doubleday, 1964) Part 4 by Aniele Jaffe, esp. p. 264 among prominent religious figures, led by His Holiness See also: The Spiritual in Art : Abstract Painting 1895—1985 (New York: Los Benedict XVI and even secular thinkers, regarding the Angeles County Museum of Art/Abbeville Press, 1985) 3. Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word (NY: Bantam, 1965) Chapters 4, 5 relativisation of truth, beauty, and traditional morality. 4. The following is a typical example of the mystifying Hegelian style of How this will affect the arts, remains to be seen..5 contemporary art criticism: Referring to some limestone abstract sculptures, Burton Wasserman wrote for Art Matters in 1996, “The limestone carvings of Bradford Endnotes Graves are a celebration of profound perplexity and mystery. They explain themselves neither quickly nor easily. Instead, they invite 1. See: Alain Besançon, The Forbidden Image (Chicago: University of Chi- deliberately paced intellectual search and spiritual speculation… cago Press, 2000) Chapter six, for a resume of the aesthetics of Kant and Stimulating the exercise of imagination, the sculptures challenge to Hegel. invent their own relevant meanings…these silent pieces of chiseled * Hegel’s philosophy was not only influenced by such thinkers as Des- rock plumb the sublime. In their unique way they illuminate mystical cartes, Kant, Fichte and Shelling, but by the German Romantic milieu depths…there is a growing coterie of admirers able to appreciate the and Pietist circles in which he lived, and, as shown by the contents of his majesty implicit in Graves language of form.” library, the writings of such occult and Hermetic thinkers as Paracelsus, 5. The Jan. 2009 issue of the prestigious New Criterion magazine, edited by Agrippa Von Nettesheim Giordano Bruno, and Jacob Böehme, as well as Hilton Kramer, a former art critic for the New York Times and guru of the the Kabbalists, Oetinger and Knorr Von Rosenroth. He also was involved, avant garde, is most interesting in this respect. off and on, with Rosicrucianism and theosophical Masonry. A Religion of Spirit and Flesh

Jim Gontis One obvious example of a reason “contrary to Director of Religious Education, Diocese of Harrisburg Christian doctrine” would be a person being cremated because of a lack of belief in the resur- ot long ago, I read an article about crema- rection of the body. tion by Rabbi Marc Gellman of “God The reason the Rabbi Gellman’s article resonates Squad” fame, (cf. View of Cremation Varies with me so deeply is that I have a very “incarnational” Widely Among Religions by Rabbi Marc sense of life, death, and religion. This is one of the NGellman, Tribune Media Services). It was in response things I most love about our Catholic Faith. Catholics to a question from a Protestant woman in Florida who are not deconstructionists and we see the reality that had written to ask, “Is it acceptable for a Christian to be we are not purely spiritual beings like angels, but rather cremated, or must my husband and I be buried?” Rabbi that we are body-soul composites. Not only the soul, Gellman replied that generally it is allowable for Chris- but also the body is important and good. It is constitu- tians to be cremated, but that on a personal level he is tive of the human person. Originally, we were never “…vigorously opposed to cremation and especially so meant to be without it. Now, because of the effects of if the intention is to scatter the ashes somewhere. I have original sin, we will be without it for a time, but only seen and I know the spiritual value of a grave. A grave is until the Second Coming of our Lord. Our Lord gives a place where mourners can come before holidays and us a preview of this in His risen and glorified body and on special occasions to pay their respects and focus their we get a glimpse of it as well in Our Lady’s Assumption. memories.” At the end of her earthly life, God took the Mary into First of all, let me say that I completely accept the heaven body and soul. We have to wait for this reality, Church’s allowance for cremation. The Church speaks but, as we state each Sunday in the Creed, we believe in directly on this in the Code of Canon Law, which is the the resurrection of the body for ourselves as well. Not official listing of the laws of the Church. The follow- only that, but those who die in God’s grace and friend- ing is the quotation from the relevant canon (#1176 ship will have glorified bodies, with magnificent char- paragraph 3) in the Code on cremation. “The Church acteristics and properties. The fact is, the current state of earnestly recommends that the pious custom of bury- separation of body and soul at death is a very unnatural ing the bodies of the deceased be observed, neverthe- state and also a temporary one. less, the Church does not prohibit cremation unless it God imprints the “Incarnational Principle” was chosen for reasons contrary to Christian doctrine.” throughout His Creation and throughout the Church.

20 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 It is imprinted most especially in His own Incarnation man born blind. In working this miracle, Christ spits (cf. Gospel of John 1 Prologue, 1John. 1: 1-4). Even in into dirt, thereby making mud. Then he rubs the mud terms of Sacred Scripture, the Incarnational Principle on the man’s eyes and he is made to see (cf. Jn 9). Did is at work. The Holy Spirit does not simply drop the Jesus have to work this miracle in this manner? Cer- books of the Bible from the sky (though He surely tainly he did not. He chose to do it this way, I think, could have), but rather, inspires human authors to write because he is intending to show us something of the what He wants them to write, while making full use sacraments, i.e. invisible graces given through physical of their own talents, personalities, and experiences, to signs. He is working out a healing, both physical and convey His eternal truths. spiritual, through material means. He knows that this I love the fact that the Incarnational Principle is sacramentality is helpful to us. It is helpful to us because in play in Catholic art and architecture. We Catholics it corresponds to our human nature. are not iconoclasts. That heresy was condemned rather For the same reason, I think that burial of the dead early in the Church’s history. Rather, we have always and reverence for the body, even after death, are im- realized that depictions of God and of sacred persons, portant. Both correspond well with a sacramental way places, and things can help us to come to a greater love of looking at things—of looking at life and of looking and knowledge of Him. It is not that they replace the at death. Belief in the resurrection of the body teaches Creator, but that they help us creatures (albeit creatures us not to be dismayed by the deaths of whose who in His image and likeness) to raise our minds and hearts became blind, lame, and possibly even disfigured either to Him. We make full use of physical matter and so early or later in life. The body will be restored in all its does God. Physical matter and the spirit are both good. magnificence. This Incarnational Principle at work in the Church Reverence for the body, including the burial of the and in creation corresponds to our nature. It is how dead, shows that no matter what, the body in union Jesus established the sacraments, which give us spiritual with the soul was and is always a gift. I think this was gifts through physical signs. It is why our church ar- one of the great lessons that Pope John Paul II taught chitecture, church music, and sacred art, etc. should be us in his teaching on the Theology of the Body, and beautiful, not simply pragmatic or functional. It is why through his own example as a “suffering servant” in his we pray and worship with body and soul. It influences latter years. There are many others, perhaps people we why we do things like genuflecting, folding our hands, know personally, who teach us this as well. making the Sign of the Cross, using holy water, bowing, I think that reverence for the body after death helps etc. That is, what one does with his body can and very family and friends to pray for the deceased. I think it often does affect the state of his soul. also helps remind people to pray for themselves and Many heresies have fallen under the general cate- their family members who are still alive. And finally, gory of “body bad, spirit good” (the genus here is “du- the reverence and burial of the body can help to pave alism,” the individual species are legion). This dualistic the way for the fervent hope that when God raises our mentality is not Christian and certainly not Catholic- bodies, they will be glorious and beautiful beyond be- Christian. lief, that they will have power, given by Christ, beyond One of Jesus’ signs noted in Scripture that is both our wildest imaginings. And that when this happens, interesting and sacramental, as well as Incarnational, is God’s definitive victory over death will be consum- the manner in which Christ restores the eyesight of the mated and God will be all, in all (1 Cor. 15:28)!

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 21 Re v i e w Es s a y s Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty

Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: them with texts from individual authors and comments Emerging Conflicts, edited by Douglas Lay- of my own. cock, Anthony R. Picarello, Jr., and Robin Marc Stern (“Same-Sex Marriage and the Churches,” 1-57) identifies potential church-state conflicts if same- Fretwell Wilson. Washington, D.C.: The Becket sex marriage is legalized, including “restrictions on Fund and Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, speech against same-sex marriage in public employ- 2008, xi-xiv+ 327pp. ment and educational contexts, and elsewhere in the public square, the withholding of licenses and accredi- tations from professionals and institutions that oppose Reviewed by William E. May same-sex marriage, and civil rights laws that prohibit Emeritus Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology discrimination in employment, housing, public ac- Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage commodations, and education” (Picarello, p. xii). Stern and Family at The Catholic University of America reviews 5 potential problem areas: I. The freedom to Senior Fellow, Culture of Life Foundation preach in the church, public schools, elsewhere in the Washington, D.C. public square (pp. 2-19); II. Licensing and registration of entities opposed to same-sex marriage (pp.19-24); III. n 2005 the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty Eligibility for and conditions attached to government sponsored a workshop of legal scholars—Douglas funding of institutions so opposed (pp. 24-25); IV. Ex- Laycock, Anthony R. Picarello, Jr., Robin Fretwell pansion of existing civil rights laws regarding employ- Wilson, Marc Stern, Jonathan Turley, Douglas ment, housing, access to public property, etc. (pp. 25-56); IKmiec, Chai R. Feldblum, and Charles R. Reid, Jr.—to and V. Whether the Religious Freedom Restoration discuss the impact that legalizing same-sex marriage Act or Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment might have on the exercise of religious liberty. The will insulate individuals objecting to application of civil present volume contains the studies produced by this rights laws in ways that burden religious exercise (p. 56). group of scholars. Editor Picarello contributes an “In- In conclusion he notes that the conflicts he explored troduction,” editor Laycock an “Afterword,” and editor “unfolded in a world without same-sex marriage,” and Wilson one of the six intervening chapters authored by adds “its legalization would represent the triumph of an the other scholars who participated. It is an exception- egalitarian-based ethic over a faith-based one, and not ally important work demanding careful study, analysis, just legally. The question is whether champions of tol- critique, and commentary. erance are prepared to tolerate proponents of a different Here I first provide a “summary overview” of the vol- ethical vision. I think the answer will be no” (pp. 56-57). ume, and follow this with an analysis and critique of Stern’s chapter, the longest in the book, is very valuable the chapters contributed by Wilson, Feldman, Reid and but needs no further analysis. He clearly worries that of Laycock’s “Afterword,” insofar as I consider them legalizing same-sex marriage will severely restrict the more in need of further study than the other contribu- free exercise of religion. It seems to me that subsequent tions. Stern’s chapter is of great importance, but in the contributions fully warrant Stern’s worries, particularly “summary overview” I consider it and its significance in today in the changed political climate brought about by some depth. “Concluding Reflections” bring this re- the 2008 presidential and congressional elections. view essay to an end. Jonathan Turley (“An Unholy Union: Same-Sex Marriage and Use of Governmental Programs to Penal- A Summary Overview ize Religious Groups with Unpopular Practices,” pp. 59-76) focuses on government denial of tax exemp- ditor Picarello offers a summary of the book’s tion to religious organizations and barring unpopular contents in his helpful “Introduction” (xi-xiv). groups from publicly funded charity sites. He argues EI here make use of his summaries but expand that the Supreme Court, whose reasoning up to now

22 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 is muddled, should “resolve ambiguities arising from Douglas Kmiec (“Same-Sex Marriage and the legalizing same-sex marriage strongly in favor of the Coming Antidiscrimination Campaigns Against Re- freedoms of expressive association and religious exercise, ligion, 103-121) identifies “some considerations that in part to assure a genuine diversity in civil society of could conceivably enable religious institutions to pre- competing views on controverted questions” (Picarello, vail in those conflicts, whether politically or judicially,” p. xii). Turley, a strong supporter of gay rights and same- but admits the job will be difficult. If “jurisdictions sex marriage, nonetheless believes “strongly that the begin to follow the California Supreme Court’s finding government should not use tax policy or charity funds that sexual orientation is a highly protected classifica- to discriminate against groups on the basis of their reli- tion, Kmiec predicts that state-level tax exemptions will gious views or practices” (p. 60). He thinks that cultural be particularly vulnerable to attack” (Picarello, p. xiii). changes caused by same-sex marriage “will depend on Kmiec’s contribution is very narrow in scope: exemp- greater, not lesser, protection of speech and association tion from tax exemption for churches opposing same- on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate” (p.76). sex marriage. He stresses that any right to same-sex Robin Fretwell Wilson (“Matters of Conscience: marriage assumes one answer to a disputed question, Lessons for Same-Sex Marriage from the Healthcare namely that same-sex marriage is equivalent to tradi- Context,” pp. 77-102) “draws on an analogous expe- tional marriage (pp. 103-121). I think there is growing rience from the healthcare context…to predict the evidence, despite the 2008 referendum in California, kinds of religious liberty conflicts that will arise out that soon this equivalence will be legally mandated. It of same-sex marriage…and to offer some construc- should be noted that the liberal Federal District Court tive potential solutions to those conflicts.” Focusing on 9 has agreed to consider that referendum to determine limits to conscience in healthcare sparked by refusals whether or not it violates the California Constitution. to dispense emergency contraceptives, Wilson thinks Kmiec’s paper is narrow in scope and does not address that history “suggests that proponents of same-sex mar- several major possible conflicts identified by Stern. riage may seek to harness the power of state and federal Chai R. Feldblum (“Moral Conflict and Conflicting governments to withhold funding streams and tax ex- Liberties,” 123-156) focuses on the kind of constitution- emptions….[and thus] transform a negative right to be al analysis that should be used in adjudicating potential free from government interference in the controverted conflicts. Although liberty interests on both sides of the activity…into a positive right to support for that activ- debate are genuine, she holds that “one of the interests ity. That history also suggests that ‘conscience clauses’ must ultimately prevail at the expense of the other.” A and other legislative and regulatory exemptions can go strong supporter of sexual liberty and same-sex mar- a long way toward reducing the number and severity riage, she argues that on her preferred analysis “claims of conflicts between same-sex marriage and religious of freedom to observe religious beliefs should not be liberty” (Picarello, pp. xii-xiii). Wilson admits that le- treated any differently than those based on analogous galizing same-sex marriage leaves policy makers “with secular beliefs and should rarely, if ever, prevail over the…thorny task of weighing two sets of interests: the claims of sexual liberty” (Picarello, pp. xiii-xiv). Her dignitary interests of same-sex couples and the moral contention that the liberty to practice religious and and religious convictions of potential objectors.” After secular identity beliefs must yield to protecting the suggesting compromising policies not likely to be ac- liberty of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual persons cepted by either side, she notes that States could take (LGBT) needs to be challenged. She clearly thinks that (a) a win-lose approach elevating the interests of one the liberty of churches and church members publicly to or the other side or (b) a do nothing policy. Deeming express opposition to same-sex unions must be denied, (b) the worst option, she indicates that if the action although she thinks that some scope for “limited ex- taken against Catholic Charities in Massachusetts after ceptions” to this denial can possibly be carved out (pp. mandating adoption for gay couples is any indication, 123-156). Her paper requires further study and critique. “policy makers will opt for a winning solution for same- Charles J. Reid, Jr. (“Marriage: Its Relationship to sex couples and a losing one for those who oppose Religion, Law, and the State,” 157-188) “critically ex- such unions on moral and religious grounds” (pp. 101- amines a proposed solution to some of these conflicts, 102). This important paper verifies Stern’s fears, suggests which is to disjoin legal and religious marriage…. The some constructive ways to protect religious liberty, and history [of the institution of marriage in Amglo-Amer- merits further study that will follow below. ican culture] suggests that any attempt at separating

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them completely would create an extreme discontinu- who in conscience can neither support nor participate in ity... Reid argues that…disjoining legal and religious same-sex marriages (80). An advocate of such unions, marriage appears undesirable and unworkable, if not Wilson believes that demand for them will trigger a simply incoherent” (Picarello, p. xiv). Reid’s important “torrent of litigation” that legislatures should deflect essay “serves two essential purposes. First it provides with accommodations as they did after Roe with re- a historical context to contemporary debates decou- spect to abortion with health care services (80). Note pling the legal regulation of marriage from its roots in her narrow focus: support of and participation in same-sex a Christian order…. Second [it] seeks to demonstrate unions. Because of this narrow focus Wilson ignores the ultimate unworkability of a radical separation of most of the serious threats to the exercise of religious religion and law on the subject of marriage” (157). liberty that Stern had identified in his opening es- Reid shows that from the 12th century on marriage was say, e.g., the right to preach, teach and publish articles that defined in Anglo-American culture in legal categories same-sex unions are invalid and illicit. shaped by Christian theological insight. His review of She thinks “the possibility of a church (as opposed the Christian sources of American law on marriage to a religious organization) losing its federal tax exempt reveals a consistency from the 12th century to the last status may be remote in the current political climate [em- 2 or 3 decades of the twentieth (150-176). His conclu- phasis added],” but admits that churches “are not wholly sion is that the separation of marriage from religion is exempt from the IRS reach.…” This possibility in fact far more difficult than might appear. He argues that “all “cannot be ignored…. Churches and religious groups marriage has a religious dimension that is probably un- have reason to worry” (89). Even at the time Wilson avoidable” and is recognized in some way in practically wrote, what she had to say was not too encouraging for all societies throughout the world. “Marriage is a com- the protection of some First Amendment rights. More- mitment that embraces not only the good of the parties over, the “political climate” during the Obama admin- but points to…society’s sense of the ultimate” and law istration is certain to worsen in this area. I will consider itself has both an educational and religious dimension the significance of this below. (p. 187). His essay is another meriting closer examina- Wilson thinks that lessons from the healthcare tion and analysis. conscience clauses [e.g., the protections afforded health Laycock’s “Afterword” (pp. 188-207) divides “the care persons, including nurses, doctors, medical schools conflicts between religious and sexual liberty into the by the Church and Weldon amendments of 1973 and avoidable…and the unavoidable. He evaluates the con- 2001 respectively after Roe; see 85-86] can help avoid trasting approaches for resolving these conflicts offered clashes over refusal to support or participate in same- by Feldblum (sexual liberty almost always prevails) and sex unions if state legislatures act to protect the right Wilson (religious liberty prevails if the same-sex couple to refuse on the part of churches, clergy, state officials can obtain services elsewhere), ultimately aligning with [justices of the peace], and even private individuals Wilson. He also critiques Reid’s opposition to the sepa- [florists who might refuse to supply flowers for same- ration of legal and religious marriage….and concludes sex unions] (94-99). If a state official asked to solemnize that the separation is not only possible but desirable” a same-sex marriage refuses, “states may conclude that (Picarello, p. xiv). I found his critique of Reid challeng- if there is another celebrant in a specified time period ing, especially his statement, “The state has no business or geographical area who will marry the couple, the imposing a single answer to that question [the nature of objecting celebrant should be allowed to refuse.” If not, marriage]” (p. 207). His essay demands further study. “the denial is tantamount to a denial of access to mar- riage” and states might then be forced to choose be- Analysis and Critique of tween barring conscientious refusals entirely or provid- ing a hardship exception for the objecting clerk. Wilson the Contributions of Wilson, suggests ways that states might provide such an excep- Feldblum, Reid, and Laycock. tion (99-100). Nonetheless, she admits that if the action taken against Catholic Charities in Massachusetts after ilson (“Matters of Conscience: Lessons for mandating adoption for gay couples is any indication Same-Sex Marriage from the Healthcare “policy makers will opt for a winning solution for same- W Context,” 77-102) explores dilemmas facing sex couples and a losing one for those who oppose churches, clergy, state officials, and private individuals such unions on moral and religious grounds” (101-102).

24 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 This hardly bodes well for respecting the First Amend- liberty of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) ment rights of opponents of same-sex marriage. people so that they may live lives of dignity and integ- But what about the “political atmosphere?” It rity and the religious beliefs [a “belief” liberty] of some has been dramatically changed by the recent election. individuals whose conduct is regulated by such laws” Obama seeks to remove the protection of the con- (124-126). science of healthcare personnel who regard abortion as She believes, correctly in my judgment, that we morally repugnant, thus forcing such personnel to act must admit that moral assessments underlie civil rights in violation of their own conscientious objections. He laws. She thinks false the claim that it is not for the is also prepared to sign the badly named “Freedom of government to decide moral issues, like same-sex mar- Conscience Act” (FOCA) that would eliminate every riage and LGBT sexual activity. Passage of a law based restriction on abortion democratically enacted since on a moral assessment different from one’s own can im- Roe v. Wade. It thus seems to me that the Church and pose a burden on a person’s “belief identity” if this law Weldon Amendments to which Wilson appeals to pro- requires “that an individual act, or refrain from acting, in tect the “conscience rights” of medical personnel, in- a manner that the individual can credibly claim under- cluding medical schools, to refuse participation in abor- mines his or her core beliefs and sense of self” (130-135). tion (see below) will be of little avail in the years ahead. Feldblum acknowledges that “belief liberty” “could I likewise think that Wilson’s suggestions for protecting be assumed under identity liberty,” and is often con- the right of conscientious objection to abortion and to flated with rights protected by the First Amendment same-sex marriage, even given her extremely narrow (140). But she thinks that analyzing “belief liberty” and focus, will not be adopted so long as Obama is presi- “identity liberty” under the Due Process clause of the dent and legislators favorably disposed to the “liberties” Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments—as Justice Souter of domestic partners and same-sex couples are domi- did in Washington v. Glucksburg—rather than under the nating forces in Congress and the various states. An First Amendment allows us to order our priorities and administration staffed with personnel so dedicated and that if we do so we will discover that “identity liberty” a Congress poised to pass the FOCA act will surely not trumps “belief liberty.” Using this approach she claims respect the consciences of those opposed to abortion or that “If the ‘justifying principle’ of the legislation is to same-sex marriage. protect the liberty [=identity liberty] of LGBT people In fact, recently a former student’s husband, who to live freely and safely in all parts of society, it is perfect- is an army surgeon with the rank of major, consulted ly reasonable for a legislature not to provide any exemp- me with a serious moral problem he is facing. He says tion [based on a “belief liberty”] that will cordon off a that one of Obama’s first acts as president will be to significant segment of society from the nondiscrimina- order army hospitals to perform abortions—at pres- tion prohibition” (emphasis added) (149-150). Exemp- ent by presidential order they are not so permitted. He tions for business owners, service providers, employers, told me that he thought he would in conscience have etc. would leave LGBT people “vulnerable to surprise to resign his commission if this occurred, and it is most discrimination” (153). Thus “society must come down likely that it will, and passage of FOCA would coerce on the side of protecting the identity liberty of LGBT him and other medical personnel (and hospitals, includ- people,” and the reasons given by the state for doing so ing Catholic hospitals) to perform abortions or go out must reflect the public good. She claims that “ensuring of business so that he could not be given an exemption that members of the public who have a morally neutral from the executive order in face of FOCA. characteristic will be able to live without fear of or vul- Feldblum (“Moral Conflict and Conflicting Liber- nerability to discrimination based on that characteristic ties,” 123-156) distinguishes between an “identity lib- certainly seems to be a reason that reflects the public erty,” (e.g., the liberty of a gay couple to have sex and good” (152-153). to marry), and a “belief liberty,” (e.g., the liberty of a However, and this I think somewhat remarkable, Christian couple to refuse to rent rooms either to co- Feldblum thinks some “limited exceptions” are pos- habiting unmarried heterosexual couples or to cohabit- sible. The first concerns “enterprises engaged in by ing homosexual couples) (123-124)—and whether a belief communities…specifically designed to inculcate belief liberty stems from a religious or secular source is values in the next generation (schools, day care centers irrelevant (129-130). She thinks a “serious conflict ex- etc).” She thinks that a subset of such enterprises should ists between laws intended to protect the [“identity”] be exempted if they meet the following criteria: “the

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enterprise must present itself clearly and explicitly as values, and (3) that law has a religious dimension. Re- designed to inculcate a set of beliefs; the beliefs must be garding (1) he reviews the work of the agnostic anthro- clearly set forth as being inconsistent with a belief that pologist Bronislaw Malinowski whose studies clearly homosexuality is morally neutral, and the enterprise demonstrated the centrality of religious belief for hu- must seek to enroll only individuals who wish to be inculcated man society and its transcendent significance. Accord- with such beliefs” (154; emphasis added). The second ing to Malinowski “marriage in all human societies is concerns leadership positions in such enterprises, espe- regarded as a sacrament” in the sense that all human cially those religiously affiliated, e.g. hospitals, adoption societies have attached symbolic significance to the act agencies etc. “Such leaders must be able to articulate of joining persons in marriage. He warned against the the enterprises’ beliefs and values” (155). While it is “es- danger inherent in completely secularizing marriage, a sential that we not privilege moral beliefs that are reli- trend he noted in the early 1950s and seemingly com- giously based over other sincerely held core beliefs…. ing to pass today (176-179). we should do the best we can…to protect both identity With respect to (2) Reid calls attention to Mary liberty and belief liberty to the greatest extent possible” Ann Glendon’s book on Rights Talk in which she se- (156). verely criticizes those lawyers and jurists who have Feldblum’s essay rests on the assumption that LGBT miseducated the American people by failing to inform people have a right to marry equal to that of hetero- them of law’s intrinsic duty to teach values and uphold sexual couples and that their sexual activity ought not those moral norms whose observance is necessary for only to be decriminalized but also acknowledged as protecting the common good. Her methodology, ap- just as morally good as heterosexual marital acts. It also plied to marriage, shows us “the primacy of marriage assumes that legally acknowledging this and protecting in the ordering of society. Marriage was so important the “identity liberty” of LGBT people by simultane- that it was consistently explained and justified by refer- ously restricting the “belief liberty” of those opposing ence to the ultimate and the divine….part of the divine same-sex marriage serves the public good. Note that plan for the world…supremely important to social well her “exemption” for religious schools (and this embrac- being” (180-181). Marriage was never regarded as a es grade and high schools, colleges and universities) re- creation of the state because its existence predated the quires that “only individuals who wish to be inculcated state and was “something that state authorities were with such beliefs be enrolled,” and this is surely not true charged with conserving” (182). This is in stark contrast of Catholic institutions of this kind today—many non- to the claim Massachusetts’ legislators made when they Catholics want to attend these Catholic educational sanctioned same-sex marriage by asserting that the state institutions because they are much better at educating “creates” marriage.(182-183). their students than are many public school systems. A To support (3) Reid cites the work of legal scholars critical analysis of her essay, in my judgment, ought to Harold Berman and John Noonan. Berman noted that invoke the difference between a “liberty right” and a “religion is not only a set of doctrines and exercises; it “right in the strict sense,” a critically important distinc- is people manifesting a collective concern for the ulti- tion well described by John Finnis in his discussion mate meaning and purpose of life…a shared intuition of “Hohfeldian” rights in his Natural Law and Natural of and commitment to transcendent values” (183). If Rights. viewed in purely secular terms, as a utilitarian or in- Finally, the “limited exceptions” Feldblum defends strumentalist product, law fails to conform to human may well be most difficult to carve out in the new “po- nature and gains its force only through the threat and litical climate.” Reid (“Marriage: Its Relationship to Re- use of coercive force, not by virtue of its intrinsic truth ligion, Law, and the State,” 157-188) is very important. I and reasonableness. Reid thinks this view of law “will summarized pp. 157-176 above; in them he showed that ultimately prove unworkable because so conceived law traditionally in Western civilization and particularly in does not command respect and allegiance” (184-185). Anglo-American history marriage was regarded as “a He believes that the “not-so-hidden danger in these divine institution.” Here I focus on the section “Mar- claims [justifying same-sex marriage] is precisely…the riage and the State” (176-187) and on his “Conclusion” replacement of norms that reflect deeply held convic- (187-188). tions of right and wrong with a series of second-order In “Marriage and the State” Reid argues (1) that instrumentalist claims” (186). Moreover, as John Noo- marriage is inherently religious, (2) that law teaches nan emphasized, a believer who relies on religious

26 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 belief to reach a particular public policy position “does another merchant or another landlord or the tradition- nothing different from any conscientious citizen or ally religious merchant or landlord must violate deeply politician who consults the source of truth he holds in felt moral obligations. These conflicts are thus unavoid- highest regard” (186). able” (196). But Laycock thinks them “manageable.” He Reid concludes that all marriage has a religious firmly insists that same-sex unions be legally recognized, dimension that is probably unavoidable; moreover, the and he advises their religious opponents to enlist the truths or lessons that law teaches and that lawgivers help of “liberal” religionists who support gay rights in seek to inculcate must, if they are to be respected, ap- order to preserve peace on the larger issues and work peal to a substantive vision of the good, a transcendent out compromises where possible (197). I think it un- understanding of right and wrong (187-188). From this likely that this advice will be welcomed by those who it follows that separating legal marriage from religious oppose same-sex marriage on “religious” grounds. marriage is undesirable and unworkable if not utterly In attempting to “balance interests” (197-201) Lay- incoherent. I think that from this it also follows that it cock basically follows Wilson’s solution. In communi- is a tragic error to sanction same-sex unions as mar- ties where many merchants refuse to serve same-sex riage. couples a public notice requirement is necessary to In his Afterword, 189-207,Douglas Laycock stresses avoid the burden imposed on such couples in search- that the six contributors to the volume (Stern, Turley, ing for a merchant who will serve them. But even with Kmiec, Wilson, Feldblum, Reid), although on differ- such notice, if the burden becomes severe, merchants ent sides of the debate, agree that same-sex marriage should be compelled to serve despite their convictions. threatens religious liberty. By doing so they are, he Their “right to moral integrity is outweighed by the thinks, both wrong because both religious minorities same-sex couple’s right to live in the community with (who oppose same-sex marriage) and sexual minorities their moral commitments” (199). (who clamor for it) “need space in order to live their Churches have no reason to worry. Let them marry own lives according to their own beliefs, values, and only according to their own understanding of marriage identity.” His major claim is that they can. A model for (Catholic, Baptist, etc.). But individuals who refuse letting them do so is the Equal Access Act that guaran- cooperation with same-sex couples because it violates tees the right of student clubs such as gay rights clubs their conscience can do so only when refusal does not and evangelical religious clubs to meet in the country’s matter because someone else will perform the desired secondary schools (189). Laycock thinks we should service. Religious dissenters can live their own values, enact gay rights laws and religious exemptions so that they have no right to prevent same-sex couples from champions of religious liberty can continue to express living theirs (200). their disapproval of, and opposition to, such laws but Laycock rejects Reid’s view. He insists that we nonetheless cannot stop gay activists from exercising separate “civil”--or better “legal”--marriage and “reli- their right to marry (190). gious” marriage and that doing so will allow members He distinguishes between “avoidable conflict” of both sides to live and let live. In fact, he thinks we (192-194) and “unavoidable conflict” (193-197). He should drop the term “marriage” when referring to is convinced that “in principle we can create private legal unions (such as those of same-sex couples) and spaces in which each side can live its own values. Such call them “civil unions” (203). For him the state creates a commitment to live and let live is the essence of civil marriage and makes it mean what it means. liberty” (192). He thinks that if same-sex marriage were It is highly ironic, and will not, I am confident, legalized and if each side would refrain from seeking please ardent advocates of same-sex marriage, that Lay- to prevent the other from all forms of opposition, then cock prefers to call them “unions” and not “marriages.” “large bodies of litigation would disappear” and major He assumes and never shows why society must legally conflicts would be avoidable (194). recognize such “unions” or “marriages.” But he argues There will inevitably be conflicts in issuing licenses, that if they are recognized legally as they should be conducting weddings, which involve printers, caterers, individuals who repudiate them because they violate photographers, lodging for honeymoons, etc. Same-sex their consciences ought under certain conditions to couples will meet reluctance or refusal to serve their be compelled to “serve” the needs of same-sex couples. needs from small businesses, individual officials, and He notes that in the past and at present civil laws have others. Then “either the same-sex couple must find declared marriages of heterosexual couples null if they

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have never been consummated (202). but says noth- of First Amendment rights for opposing such unions. ing regarding the “consummation” of same-sex unions. Kmiec seems ambiguous on this matter but emphasizes The reason is that there is no specific act by which they that whether same-sex persons can marry is a disputed could do so (on this see, e.g., John Finnis, “Law, Moral- question. ity, and ‘Sexual Orientation,’” Notre Dame Law Review One of the most glaring failures of same-sex mar- 69 [1997] 97-134; Patrick Lee and Robert P. George. riage enthusiasts is their refusal to recognize the abso- “What Sex Can Be: Self-Alienation, Illusion, or One- lutely indispensable contribution heterosexual couples Flesh Union,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 42 [1997] make to the common good, especially if in getting 135-158). married they consent to a life-long union for better Laycock in no way answers the arguments Reid or worse, etc. until death should them part. They do so marshaled to show the religious significance of mar- because our society or any society cannot long endure riage and its relationship to the law. He simply dismisses unless a new generation succeeds the old and is pre- this view. Perhaps today, however, when many people pared to care for those who have given them life. And think that consent to marry is consent to live as a mar- this generation comes into being by being “begotten” ried couple so long as each is satisfied in doing so but in a bodily act open both to the gift of human life and not when one or the other is no longer satisfied, Lay- to the deepening of a unique kind of love, marital love. cock is on to something. The Catholic Church does Recent studies show in great detail that children— not and cannot regard as valid “marriages” based on and the future of our society—thrive when they live in that kind of commitment no more than it does or can a home headed by a man and a woman who have com- regard same-sex unions as “marriages.” It is instructive mitted themselves to one another in a life-long union here, I believe, to consult Jessie Bernard’s The Future open to the gift of children whom they will welcome of Marriage, originally published in 1972 and revised in lovingly, nourish humanely, and educate in the love and 1982. In one of its key chapters Bernard said that central service of God and neighbor. Among such studies are to a marriage is the kind of commitment made by the the following: W. Bradford Wilcox, “Social Science and man and the woman, and she described in some detail the Vindication of Catholic Moral Teaching,” in The such contemporary commitments as the “commit- Church, Marriage, & the Family: Proceedings from the 27th ment to help each other grow, even if this means that Annual Convention of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, they grow apart,” a commitment quite different from September 24-26, 2004, Pittsburgh, PA, ed. Kenneth White- that commitment to have and to hold, for better or for head (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007), pp. 330- worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” 340. Wilcox summarized the principal findings he re- ported in that paper and updated them in “The Facts of Concluding Comments Life & Marriage: Social Science & the Vindication of Chris- tian Moral Teaching,” Touchstone (February, 2005); Elizabeth f the six contributors to this volume three— Marquart, Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children Turley, Wilson, and Feldblum—and editor of Divorce (New York: Crown Books, 2006); Why Mar- Laycock are ardent champions of same-sex riage Matters, Second Edition: Twenty-Six Conclusions from O marriage and in certain circumstances want to deny the Social Sciences. New York: Institute for American or curtail the liberty of individuals (and for some, even Values. The study was done under the chairmanship of that of religious organizations) to refuse to participate in W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia, Wil- or facilitate such unions. Two contributors—Stern and liam Doherty of the University of Minnesota, Norval Reid--are clearly opposed both to legalizing same-sex Glenn of the University of Texas, and Linda White of unions and to depriving persons or religious entities the University of Chicago. ✠

28 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 The Pope, the Rabbi, and the Antichrist: The Sermon on the Mount as a Hidden Christology

Edmund J. Mazza, PhD the name Jesus for the word Torah is Paul’s “gospel”…. Implicit in Paul’s teaching is the revolution of Christian- “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we ity, inasmuch as it effectively universalizes the people of preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to God. Gentiles…” (1 Cor 1:23) The notion that Jesus is the embodiment of the mong secular observers of religion, Time Law of Israel and not its abolishment has been the posi- magazine was as taken aback as any when tion of the Church since its founder first said as much Pope Benedict XVI in his new book, Jesus (Mt 5:17). It is a stance which Pope Benedict takes up of Nazareth, devoted a full twenty pages to again in Jesus of Nazareth, a stance which, as we shall see aA Rabbi Talks with Jesus by Jacob Nuesner. In his 1993 in this article, Rabbi Neusner recognizes, but cannot work, Rabbi Neusner quite literally placed himself at accede to; it is also a position recognized by another the foot of the Sermon on the Mount as recounted in author whom Benedict quotes, one, who, as we shall St. Mathew’s Gospel. After listening attentively along- also see, not only identifies Jesus with Judaism, but also side his first-century co-religionists and questioning wantonly seeks the abolishment of both—Friedrich the Master on his novel interpretations of the To- Nietzsche. rah, Neusner respectfully agreed to disagree with the Just before he recapitulates Neusner’s arguments, founder of Christianity. As Time correspondent David Pope Benedict quotes Jesus’ declaration: “Think not Van Biema observes: “In his 14-years-delayed response, that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; [Pope] Benedict not only compliments Neusner as a I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. ‘great Jewish scholar’ but also recapitulates the thesis of For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, A Rabbi Talks and spends a third of one of his 10 chap- not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is ters answering it.”1Actually, the Roman Pontiff’s schol- accomplished …” (Mt 5: 17-19). The pope adds: “The arly dialogue with an American rabbi should come as intention is not to abolish, but to fulfill….”3 This senti- a shock to no one who has “ears to hear,” nor, for that ment is repeated throughout Benedict’s book, but per- matter, was Benedict’s reply more than a decade late-in- haps most pointedly in his consideration of the Gospel coming. of St. John: In his 1994 book, Evangelium—Katachese—Kate- chismus, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger quotes the John stands squarely on the foundation of the Old Testa- following passage from A Rabbi Talks: “When I accept ment. “Moses…wrote of me” (Jn 5:46), Jesus says to his the yoke of the commandments of the Torah and do adversaries. But already at the beginning—when John them, I accept God’s rule. I live in the kingdom of God, recounts the calling of the disciples—Philip had said to which is to say, in the dominion of Heaven, here on Nathanael: “We have found him of whom Moses in the earth. To lead a holy life means to live here and now ac- law and also the prophets wrote” (Jn 1:45). Providing an cording to God’s will.”2 Ratzinger immediately com- explanation and a basis for this claim is ultimately the aim of Jesus’ discourses. He does not break the Torah, but ments: brings its whole meaning to light and wholly fulfills it.4

The Christian can agree entirely with Neusner; he need only replace the word “Torah” with another word—the But what proofs does Benedict adduce in support name “Jesus.” Instead of saying, “when I accept the yoke of this argument? Besides referencing Old Testament of the commandments of the Torah and do them…I am predictions, the Holy Father cites the New Testament in the kingdom of God.” the Christian will say, “when I parables of Jesus, for instance, the famous story of “the am in communion with Jesus, I live in the kingdom of Good Samaritan.” In the Gospel of St. Luke, Jesus is God.” Jesus is the Torah in person. This substitution of approached by a Jewish lawyer who asks him what he

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 29 Re v i e w Es s a y s must do to inherit eternal life. The Pope points out that way of imitating God.”8 The distinctively Jewish way of Jesus refers the scholar back to the Torah. So the scholar imitating God (by resting on his Sabbath) is what is at combines Deuteronomy 6: 5 and Leviticus 19: 18 and stake here. For as Benedict and Neusner both contend, offers the following reply: “You shall love the Lord your Jesus, himself, now claims to be both Temple and Sab- God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and bath! “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and neighbor as yourself” (Lk 10:7). The fact that Jesus tells learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and him he has answered correctly leads Benedict to con- you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, clude: “Jesus’ teaching on this question is no different and my burden is light” (Mt 11:28-30). Neusner inter- from that of the Torah, the entire meaning of which is prets Christ’s words in this way: “My yoke is easy, I give contained in this double commandment.”5 you rest, the son of man is lord of the Sabbath indeed, Rabbi Neusner wonders aloud, however, whether because the son of man is now Israel’s Sabbath: how Jesus’ teaching is identical with the Torah or whether we act like God.”9 Or as he also writes: “Christ now (as Benedict also affirms) he is identifying himself as stands on the mountain, he now takes the place of the the Torah. If the latter is true, Neusner cannot become Torah.”10 The substitution of Jesus for the Temple, for a disciple, for it would mean the dissolution of all he the Sabbath, for the Torah, can only mean one thing for holds sacred. Take for example, Jesus’ reinterpretation Neusner, the abolition of everything distinctly Jewish. of the third commandment regarding keeping holy the As Benedict writes: Sabbath. In just one case among many which could be cited from the Gospel, the Pharisees criticize Jesus and What disturbs Rabbi Neusner about Jesus’ message con- his disciples for plucking heads of grain to eat on the cerning the Sabbath is not just the centrality of Jesus Sabbath. According to Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus reminds himself…. Rather he is concerned with the consequence these strictly observant Jews of precedents already set by of Jesus’ centrality for Israel’s daily life: The Sabbath loses King David and by the temple priests with regard to la- its great social function. The Sabbath is one of the essen- bor and consumption on the Sabbath. One might— as tial elements that hold Israel together. Centering upon Pope Benedict does—argue that here again Jesus intro- Jesus breaks open this sacred structure and imperils an duces no novelty; that again he sends his interlocutors essential element that cements the unity of the People of back to the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. Indeed, if God.11 this were all that was at stake, a liberal or strict interpre- tation of the requirements of the Torah, Neusner would Similarly with the fourth commandment, Jesus’ have no problem with Christ: “What troubles me…is teaching would again seemingly imperil Jewish iden- not that the disciples do not obey one of the rules of tity itself. In that same chapter in Matthew, Jesus, the the Sabbath. That is trivial and beside the point.”6 What busy rabbi, is informed that his mother and his kin are bothers Neusner is Jesus’ concluding remark: “I tell you, outside anxiously awaiting him. Jesus says: “Who is my something greater than the temple is here. And if you mother and who are my brothers?” He then stretches had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not out his hand toward his disciples and says: “Here are my sacrifice’ (cf. Hos 6:6; 1 Sam 15:22), you would not have mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is lord of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and moth- the Sabbath” (Mt 12:8). er” (Mt 12:46-50). A seemingly innocuous remark to One may rightly ask what it means to be “Lord of twenty-first century ears is anathema to first-century— the Sabbath”? To understand this, Pope Benedict holds and twenty-first century—Jewish sensibilities. If Jesus is that we must first understand what the significance of to be taken at his word, then the bonds of Jewish family the Sabbath is in the first place. kinship no longer pull rank; all that matters is that the Rabbi Neusner argues that for observant Jews, the individual does the will of God—in communion with Sabbath is no mere individual respite; it is the central Jesus and his disciples. “Honor your father and mother,” axis about which the people of Israel subsist: it “makes takes on a distinctly un-Jewish meaning. As Benedict eternal Israel what it is, the people that, like God in writes, “According to Neusner, it is the family of Israel creating the world, rest from creation on the Seventh that is threatened by Jesus’ message, and the foundations Day.”7 Or as he says elsewhere: “Not working on the of Israel are thrust aside by the primacy of his person.”12 Sabbath stands for more than nitpicking ritual. It is a The pontiff goes on to quote Neusner directly: “We

30 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 pray to the God we know, to begin with, through the wood of the Cross, prefigured in Isaac who carried the testimony of our family, to the God of Abraham and wood for his own sacrifice. But while God spared Abra- Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah and Rachel. ham’s only (legitimate) son, God “the Father” so loved So to explain who we are, eternal Israel, sages appeal to the world as to offer his only Son, so that whoever be- the metaphor of genealogy…to the fleshly connection, lieves in him might not perish but have eternal life (Jn the family, as the rationale for Israel’s social existence”13 3:16) (emphasis mine). For Benedict, “the vehicle of this For Neusner, Jesus is uprooting the third and fourth universalization [of the faith of Abraham],” the point commandments and along with them, the whole Jew- of entry into this “blessedness,” is now acceptance into ish social order. Ultimately he concludes: “I now realize, Jesus’ new family, “the Church.” Needless to say, the only God can demand of me what Jesus is asking.”14 “individual juridical and social regulations” of the Torah Pope Benedict’s ultimate reply to Neusner is a resound- could hardly “apply universally in their literal historical ing “Yes.” “Yes, it is God who is demanding this of you.” form” when it came to opening “the family”16 up to Not only because the pope affirms Christ’s divinity, but the Gentiles. According to Benedict, St. Paul was right because the Old Testament itself repeatedly confirms not to impose circumcision, for example, on Gentile that the nation of Israel does not ultimately exist for the converts to Christianity: “A literal application of Israel’s benefit of its own members, but like its Messiah, it ex- social order to the people of all the nations would have ists to sacrifice itself for the salvation of the world: been tantamount to a denial of the universality of the growing community of God. Paul saw this with perfect It is our Jewish interlocutors who, quite rightly, ask again clarity. The Torah of the Messiah could not be like that. and again: So what has your “Messiah” Jesus actually Nor is it, as the Sermon on the Mount shows—and brought? He has not brought world peace, and he has likewise the whole dialogue with Rabbi Neusner….”17 not conquered the world’s misery.… Yes, what has Jesus The good rabbi, however, is not the only witness brought? We have already encountered this question and “hostile” to the implications of Jesus’ teaching on that we know the answer. He has brought the God of Israel mount in Galilee. For very different reasons, the nine- to the nations, so that all the nations now pray to him teenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietz- and recognize Israel’s Scriptures as his word, the word of sche could not embrace the radical teachings of Christ. the living God. … The Torah did indeed have the task of What is interesting for our contemporary discussion is giving a concrete juridical and social order to this par- ticular people, Israel. But while Israel is on the one hand that Nietzsche rejected Jesus of Nazareth precisely be- a definite nation, whose members are bound together cause, unlike Rabbi Neusner, he believed that Jesus did by birth and the succession of generations, on the other bring “the God of Israel to the nations, so that all the hand it has been from the beginning and is by its very nations now pray to him and recognize Israel’s Scrip- nature the bearer of a universal promise.15 tures as his word.…”

Though he does not quote Genesis explicitly, Pope Which of them has won for the present, Rome or Judea? Benedict is of course thinking of God’s own sworn But there can be no doubt: consider to whom one bows oath to Abraham after he demonstrated his faith in the down in Rome itself today, as if they were the epitome Almighty by being willing to sacrifice his son Isaac: of all the highest values—and not only in Rome but over almost half the earth, everywhere that man has become tame or desires to become tame: three Jews as is “I swear by myself,” says the Lord, “Since you have done known, and one Jewess (Jesus of Nazareth, the fisherman this and have not withheld your only son, I will indeed Peter, the rug weaver Paul, and the mother of the afore- bless you, and will surely multiply your descendants as mentioned Jesus, named Mary). This is very remarkable: the stars of the heavens, as the sands of the seashore. Your Rome has been defeated beyond all doubt.18 descendants shall possess the gates of the cities of their enemies. In your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed me” (Gen 22: 16-18) So Friedrich Nietzsche lamented the state of the world (emphasis mine). in his day. He decried the fact that Jewishness had be- come all-pervasive in Western culture, that a Jewish morality of “good and evil,” had for nearly two millen- The conclusion is clear. It is in Jesus, the descendant nia, successfully overcome a Greco-Roman morality of of Abraham, that all the nations of the earth are now “good and bad”: blessed. The catalyst for this event was Jesus bearing the

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 31 Re v i e w Es s a y s

Let us conclude. The two opposing values “good and precisely through the bypath of this “Redeemer,” this bad,” “good and evil” have been engaged in a fearful ostensible opponent and disintegrator of Israel? 21 struggle on earth for thousands of years; and though the latter value has certainly been on top for a long time, For Nietzsche, Jesus is only the “ostensible” disinte- there are still places where the struggle is as yet unde- grator of Israel, for in truth, he is really the bypath to cided.…The symbol of this struggle, inscribed in letters legible across all human history, is “Rome against Judea, world-wide Jewish morality—the morality revealed in Judea against Rome”:—there has hitherto been no the “Beatitudes.” In Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict greater event than this struggle, this question, this deadly considers Nietzsche’s criticism: contradiction.…19 Is the direction the Lord shows us in the Beatitudes and In Nietzsche’s view of history, there was a time when in the corresponding warnings actually the right one? “good and bad” differentiated not the saint and the sin- Is it really such a bad thing to be rich, to eat one’s fill, to laugh, to be praised? Friedrich Nietzsche trained his ner, but the warrior and the cripple, the aristocrat and angry critique precisely on this aspect of Christianity. It the beggar. Nietzsche’s Homeric heroes were “good,” is not Christian doctrine that needs to be critiqued, he precisely because they were powerful enough to take says, it is Christian morality that needs to be exposed as a what they pleased. The vulgar masses were “bad,” pre- “capital crime against life.” And by “Christian morality,” cisely because they lacked the power to resist the strong. Nietzsche means precisely the direction indicated by the In order to “avenge” themselves against their rivals, Sermon on the Mount…. Nietzsche sees the vision of Nietzsche hypothesizes, the priestly caste, epitomized the Sermon on the Mount as a religion of resentment, as by the Jews, turned the tables on their Greco-Roman the envy of the cowardly and incompetent, who are un- conquerors by proclaiming: “The Lord hears the cry of equal to life’s demands and try to avenge themselves by the poor” (Ex 22:20-22). blessing their failure and cursing the strong, the success- ful, and the happy. Jesus’ wide perspective is countered with a narrow this-worldliness—with the will to get the For this alone was appropriate to a priestly people, the most out of the world and what life has to offer now, to people embodying the most deeply repressed priestly seek heaven here, and to be uninhibited by any scruples vengefulness. It was the Jews who, with awe-inspiring while doing so.22 consistency, dared to invert the aristocratic value- equa tion(good=noble=powerful=beautiful=happy=beloved Pope Benedict acknowledges Nietzsche’s attack on of God) and to hang on this inversion with their teeth, Christian values, but fails to make explicit that they are the teeth of the most abysmal hatred (the hatred of im- potence), saying “the wretched alone are the good; the attacked precisely for being Jewish values, a fact which poor; impotent, lowly alone are blessed by God, blessed- undoubtedly bolsters his position in the exchange with ness is for them alone—and you, the powerful and noble, Rabbi Neusner. Imagine, the Church’s sworn enemy are on the contrary the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the actually agrees with the pontiff’s central thesis, the Jesus insatiable, the godless to all eternity; and you shall be in of the Sermon on the Mount is the embodiment of the all eternity the unblessed, accursed, and damned!”…One Torah, and hence, what it is to be Jewish. But a more knows who inherited this Jewish revaluation…20 important opportunity for answering both Neusner and Nietzsche presents itself at this juncture and though it is Nietzsche rages because the pagan races “inherited” the intimately bound up with the primary thesis of Jesus of Jewish notions of “good and evil,” instead of their own Nazareth, the Holy Father seems to have overlooked it valuation system “good and bad.” And who is most to too. For Nietzsche, the springboard for Jewish “revalua- blame for the new “Jewish Beatitudes”? The author of tion of all…nobler ideals” is none other than the Cross the Sermon on the Mount: of Christ:

This Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate gospel of love, this Was it not part of the secret black art of truly grand “Redeemer” who brought blessedness and victory to the politics of revenge, of a farseeing, a subterranean, slowly poor, the sick, and the sinners—was he not this seduc- advancing, and premeditated revenge, that Israel must it- tion in its most uncanny form, a seduction and bypath to self deny the real instrument of its revenge before all the precisely those Jewish values and new ideals? Did Israel world as a mortal enemy and nail it to the cross, so that not attain the ultimate goal of its sublime vengefulness “all the world,”namely all the opponents of Israel, could

32 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 unhesitatingly swallow just this bait? And could spiritual Peter, the rugweaver Paul, and the mother of the afore- subtlety imagine any more dangerous bait than this? Any- mentioned Jesus, named Mary). This is very remarkable: thing to equal the enticing, intoxicating, overwhelming, Rome has been defeated beyond all doubt.24 and undermining power of that symbol of the “holy cross,” that ghastly paradox of a “God on the cross,” that In the end, the venom of Nietzsche’s pen might be the mystery of an unimaginable ultimate cruelty and self- mightiest weapon in Pope Benedict’s rhetorical arse- crucifixion of God for the salvation of man? nal in his “knockdown debate”25 with Rabbi Neusner What is certain, at least, is that sub hoc signo Israel, with (though one should hardly characterize their respect- its vengefulness and revaluation of all values, has hitherto ful exchange in such terms). Neusner cannot embrace 23 triumphed over all other ideals, over all nobler ideals. Christ precisely because he sees him as the disintegrator of Israel. But as Pope Benedict argues (and Nietzsche Nietzsche grieves because “’all the world,’ namely all proves): for eternal Israel to gain its life, it must (seem- the opponents of Israel,” took the Jewish “bait,” the ingly) lose its life. This is the “ghastly paradox of the “holy cross” of Christ. But without realizing it, Nietz- cross” of Christ, the hidden Christology behind the sche is validating a four thousand year-old Jewish proph- Sermon on the Mount: only by the sacrifice of self can ecy, that is, God’s sworn testimony to the Patriarch one achieve self-fulfillment. This is Benedict’s prescrip- Abraham: “In your descendants all the nations of the earth tion as much for Neusner, as for Nietzsche: shall be blessed, because you have obeyed me” (emphasis mine). According to Nietzsche this is precisely what We have seen that the Sermon on the Mount is a hidden has happened; though for him (as befits a self-professed Christology. Behind the Sermon on the Mount stands “antichrist”) everything is “inverted.” The glorious the figure of Christ, the man who is God, but who, blessing which Jesus, the descendant of Abraham, has precisely because he is God, descends, empties himself, brought to “all the world/all the nations” is for him, all the way to death on the Cross. The saints, from Paul “secret black art,” “undermining,” and dripping with through Francis of Assisi down to Mother Teresa, have Jewish “vengefulness.” But the more loudly Nietzsche lived out this option and have thereby shown us the protests, the more strenuously he confirms Christian correct image of man and his happiness. In a word, the biblical eschatology. His solemn affirmation “sub hoc true morality of Christianity is love. And love does ad- mittedly run counter to self-seeking—it is an exodus out signo Israel, with its vengefulness and revaluation of all of oneself, and yet this is precisely the way in which man values, has hitherto triumphed over all other ideals,” is comes to himself. Compared with Nietzsche’s image of an allusion to the Emperor Constantine’s miraculous man, this way seems at first wretched and thoroughly victory over his pagan rival Maxentius under the Sign unreasonable. But it is the real high road of life; it is only of the Cross at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. His tri- on the way of love, whose paths are described in the umph in AD 312 and subsequent legalization of Chris- Sermon on the Mount, that the richness of life and the tianity in AD 313, laid the foundations of Christendom greatness of man’s calling are opened up.26 and spelled the end of the classical world. But is this not also the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham? The Christian answer to the world is Love, the love “Since you have done this and have not withheld your preached by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount and only son…. Your descendants shall possess the gates of the more explicitly in the “sermon” on Mount Calvary, cities of their enemies.” If the Arch of Titus demonstrated “the School of Love.” The essence of Benedict’s Jesus of Rome’s victory over Judea, the Arch of Constantine Nazareth is the age-old refrain from the Apostle Paul: symbolizes Judea’s triumph over Rome. Again, as Ni- “…Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we etzsche himself laments: preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles…” (1 Cor 1:23). Which of them has won for the present, Rome or Judea? But there can be no doubt: consider to whom one bows Endnotes down in Rome itself today, as if they were the epitome of all the highest values—and not only in Rome but 1 David Van Biema, “The Pope’s Favorite Rabbi,” Time (24 May 2007). over almost half the earth, everywhere that man has 2 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Gospel, Catechesis, Catechism: Sidelights on the become tame or desires to become tame: three Jews as is Catechism of the Catholic Church, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 54. 3 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 102. known, and one Jewess (Jesus of Nazareth, the fisherman 4 Ratzinger, Jesus, 235.

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5 Ibid, 195. 16 Ratzinger, 118. 6 Ibid, 107, cf Jacob Neusner, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus, (Montreal: McGill- 17 Ibid, 118. Queen’s University Press, 2000), 83. 18 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. and ed. Walter 7 Neusner, 74. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1969), 53. 8 Ibid 75. 19 Nietzsche, 52. 9 Ibid, 86. 20 Ibid, 34. 10 Ibid, 87. 21 Ibid, 35. 11 Ratzinger, Jesus, 111. 22 Ratzinger, 97. 12 Ratzinger 113. 23 Nietzsche, 35. 13 Neusner, 58. 24 Cf note 18. 14 Ibid, 68. 25 Van Biema 15 Ratzinger, Jesus, 116, 117. 26 Ratzinger, 99.

Re p o r t The Nassau Community College Center for Catholic Studies: History, Purpose, Activities, Future*

By Joseph A. Varacalli, Ph.D. second is that the Center has raised its own funds to pay for its speakers and for the food and drink it regu- (*Address given to the Long Island Chapter of Legatus, larly provides at its functions held at Nassau Commu- Wednesday, February 4, 2009, at Molloy College, Rock- nity College. Thus far, over the first eight and one-half ville Centre, New York) years of its existence, the supporting community has donated just short of $80,000 to the Center for Catho- et me first start off by thanking Father John J. lic Studies sub-account of its funding entity, the Nassau McCartney, Mr. Paul Durnan, and the Long Foundation. Island Chapter of Legatus for giving me the opportunity this evening to say a few words History and Purpose Labout the history, purpose, activities, and future of the Center for Catholic Studies at Nassau Community mong the many related factors that must College which I founded in the year 2000 and have be included in a full accounting of the since directed. I am delighted by the invitation, not founding of the Center for Catholic Stud- only because it is an honor to address your group but ies here at the College, three stand out. The also because it has forced me to take the time to put firstA was the encouragement of the administration to pen to paper in order to record some of the history and develop various “centers” at the college which allow accomplishments of the Center to date, and to speculate a talented faculty to pursue their more advanced and on what its future may hold. (Someday, God willing, the specialized work without violating the foundational topic might warrant a much more detailed account.) mission of a community college to offer basic introduc- My brief presentation this evening may be of some tory coursework. ( In this regard, I had co-founded in interest to you as a group of dedicated Catholic profes- 1994, with Dr. Salvatore LaGumina, the first center at sionals who share with me membership in both the the College, the Center for Italian American Studies. Diocese of Rockville Centre and Long Island cultural Under the auspices of the Center for Italian American and educational life. studies, Dr. LaGumina and I, with two other colleagues, Two facts about the Center for Catholic Studies Dr. Salvatore Primeggia of Adelphi University and Dr. should be pointed out at the outset. The first is that the Frank Cavaioli of SUNY-Farmingdale, co-edited the activities of the Center are academic and intellectual first encyclopedia on Italian Americans, The Italian and are not to be confused with the religious activities American Experience: An Encyclopedia, Garland, 1999.) In of a campus ministry or of catechetical instruction. The many respects, the Center for Italian American Studies

34 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 served as an early prototype and model for the various be allowed to contribute, albeit it in a relatively minor centers that would emerge later at N.C.C., including way, to college and society wide intellectual and social the Center for Catholic Studies.) The second factor policy debates and discussions. The Center is a bit more was N.C.C.’s commitment to the concept of multi- firmly situated within the College at the moment, in culturalism and to the idea of providing a forum for part, because of its record of successful programs that intellectual and educational worldviews and traditions consistently have attracted large audiences, especially hitherto unrecognized either by the civilization at large from the outside community. or by the academy. A third pivotal development was the The existence of the Center for Catholic Stud- immediately previous founding of the Jewish Studies ies also makes a modest contribution to keeping the Project at Nassau Community College, which crossed Catholic intellectual, moral, and social policy traditions another barrier to a fuller inclusion under the academic alive given the pervasive secularization that is occurring umbrella of “multiculturalism,” i.e., the issue of the po- within certain sectors of American society. The first is tential academic and cultural contributions of religious in America’s public sphere institutions of government, traditions to the academic life of the institution. the corporations, and the mass media. The second is It is important to underscore the potentially revo- within Catholic higher education, characterized by a lutionary character of the creation of a Catholic Studies slightly more subtle form of internal secularization or Center at a public institution of higher education. To what sociologists call a “secularization from within.” my knowledge, at the time of its founding, the Center (For a discussion of the latter, see my books, The Catho- for Catholic Studies was only one of two such exist- lic Experience in America, www.greenwood.com and ing animals, the other founded around the same time Bright Promise, Failed Community: Catholics and the Ameri- at the University of Illinois, Chicago campus. Why can Public Order, www.lexingtonbooks.com) this indifference toward, at best, and animus against, at worst, religion, especially Catholicism, in the acad- Activities emy? One need not be an historian to realize that the Enlightenment was recognized by many to represent a he activities of the N.C.C. Center for fundamental break with religious authority, especially Catholic Studies over its first eight and half Catholic religious authority, in European society. While years of existence (2000-9) have involved there are many other reasons for the animus directed conferences (ranging from one to three against traditional religion and, especially, Catholicism daysT in length), lectures, seminars, debates, “club hour” (e.g. the dominance of liberal Protestantism in America, talks, well over 100 recorded and aired radio shows (the progressive interpretations of the separation of church “Catholic Alternative” on WHPC 90.3), non-credit and state, the influence of secularism in American edu- Continuing Education courses, the awarding of student cation through John Dewey and others of like mind), scholarships to graduating N.C.C. students who intend the primary opposition to religiously based education to pursue Catholic Studies at some recognized four year in higher education (in my opinion) derives from the institution of higher education, and other miscellaneous typical American academic’s rejection of religious au- endeavors (the Catholic Update Newsletter; now entering thority that posits any “top down” approach to culture its ninth year, with a mailing list of 2,000; commu- and morality. Put another way, most academics in the nity meetings; hosting receptions like that for Dr. Julie humanities and social sciences promote and defend Byrne, the Monsignor Hartmann Chair of Catholic what comes close to the (illusory) idea of an unfettered Studies at Hofstra University (3/7/07); serving as a or autonomous individualism in thought and action clearing house of information and advice for individual and to the idea that reality is merely a “social construc- citizens and local, state, and national Catholic groups, tion of reality,” one that rejects the possibility of any etc.). Of possible interest to this group is that radio in- transcendent, supernatural reality. Given this, it is not terview number 44 hosted a talk by Mr. Gregory Floyd, surprising that there was some very real opposition then the Northeast East Regional Director of Legatus to the founding of the Center for Catholic Studies at on the purpose and history of the group. N.C.C., an opposition that continues to this day, mostly The Center has co-sponsored many activities with sotto voce. However, there was (and is) sufficient recog- both national and regional groups and associations. nition at the College that the intellectual, social, and Nationally, the Center has worked with the following moral contributions of the Catholic heritage should individuals or organizations: Office of the Supreme

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 35 Re p o r t

Knight of the Knights of Columbus (New Haven, Sisters of Life, 10/13/04. The Hispanic Ministry of the Ct) for a major conference honoring the “The Con- Diocese of Rockville Centre co-sponsored a lecture by tributions to Church and Society of Bishop James T. Oswald Sobrino from Sacred Heart Major Seminary in McHugh” (The deceased Bishop of Rockville Cen- Detroit, Michigan on the topic of “Hispanics and the tre. Principal speaker, Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Future of the Catholic Church in the U.S,.” (6/25/07). Bishops Conference,12/7/01); the Provost’s Office In the Spring of 2008 (3/15/08), the Center sponsored of Adelphi University; the Center for Italian Stud- a conference with the local C.S. Lewis Society from ies at Stony Brook University; and the Order, Sons of Douglaston, New York, with lectures on 1) “The Na- Italy, for an unprecedented three day, three institution ture of Evil As Depicted in J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Re- conference titled “Models and Images of Catholicism turn of the King (Part Three of The Lord of the Rings) and in Italian Americana” (10/4-6/02) that brought in na- in Georges Bernanos’s The Diary of a Country Priest” tional scholars from the U.S. and Canada and led to the by Dr. J. Brian Benestad of the University of Scranton publication of one of my co-edited volumes of same and 2) “Dealing with the Devil: C.S. Lewis and The name; Dr. William Donohue and the national office of Screwtape Letters” by Dr. James T. Como of York College the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights for of the City University of New York. a discussion of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ The Center has also worked internally with other (4/16/04); Father Joseph D. Fessio, S.J. and the Pro- Nassau Community College organizations. The Center vost’s Office of Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida has co-sponsored two projects with the N.C.C. Jew- with lectures on “Pope Benedict XVI and Liturgical ish Studies Project. One event focused on the topic of Renewal” and “Building a New Catholic University” Johannes Reichlin and the burning of Jewish books (4/8/06); George Weigel and the Washington, D.C. during the Middle Ages (11/6/02)—the main speaker based Ethics and Public Policy Center with a lecture on was Mr. Peter Wortsman with Discussants Father Joseph “The Secularization of European Society” (3/31/07); Koterski, S.J., of the Fordham University Philosophy the Society of Catholic Social Scientists in coordinat- Department and Monsignor Daniel Hamilton, former ing the 15th Annual Conference of the S.C.S.S. at the Editor of the Long Island Catholic (11/6/02). The second St. John’s School of Law (Conference Co-Chair, David was a lecture by Bob Keeler of Newsday on his co-au- L. Gregory, Esq., Dorothy Day Professor of Law) that thored book—Days of Intense Emotion: Praying with John attracted approximately 400 scholars and other regis- Paul II in the Holy Land-- with fellow journalist, Paul tered participants in addition to upwards of a hundred Moses, on Pope John Paul II’s visit to Israel (11/9/05). college and high school students who attended as guests There were also cooperative efforts with the N.C.C. (10/26-7/07). Center for Italian American Studies (regarding the three Regionally, the Center has worked consistently day conference previously mentioned and on a book over the years with such groups as the Long Island by Dr. Salvatore LaGumina, The Humble and the Heroic: Chapter of University Faculty for Life (based at Molloy Italian Americans During World War II (4/20/07) and College and led by Dr. Jane Gilroy) and the local New with the N.C.C. Respect Life Group (headed by Flor- York Metropolitan Chapter of the Society of Catholic ence Scarinci), on a lecture by Martin Luther King’s Social Scientists, first led by the now deceased Profes- niece, Dr. Alveda King, who made the case that the civil sor of Political Science at Molloy College, Dr. Donald rights and pro-life movements are inextricably linked Doyle, and now by Monsignor George P. Graham, (10/10/06). Ph.D., J.C.D., Pastor Emeritus of St. Bernard’s Parish in Other major events sponsored by the Center in- Hicksville, Long Island. The Center co-sponsored a de- clude the following: “Religious Discrimination as a bate on school choice (4/4/02) with the New York af- Social Problem in Society, the Academy, and within filiate of the American Family Association (with the as- Scholarly Disciplines” with Dr. William Donohue and sistance of President Frank J. Russo, Jr.) and the Nassau then S.U.N.Y. Board member, Dr. Candace de Russy, Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (with among others (4/22/01);” “Catholic Social Thought, the assistance of A.C.L.U. Nassau Chapter President, Social Science, and Social Policy: I” (54 academic pre- Barbara Bernstein). There was a “Catholic Promotion sentations plus plenary talks by Gerard V. Bradley of of the Culture of Life” conference consisting of four the University of Notre Dame Law School and Bishop presentations and headlined by Mother Mary Agnes William Murphy of the Diocese of Rockville Centre Donovan, S.V., Ph.D., of the Bronx, New York-based 3/28-29/03); “The Crisis in the Catholic Church: the

36 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 Anatomy of the Sexual Scandal” (principal speaker, the pedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and late Father Richard J. Neuhaus, editor of First Things Social Policy,” talks by Stephen M. Krason of Francis- Magazine (5/9/03); “The Intra-Catholic Debate on the can University, Richard Myers of Ave Maria School American Invasion of Iraq,” with Russell Shaw, for- of Law, and Michael Coulter of Grove City College mer official spokesman for the U.S. Catholic Bishops (10/25/07); “Valiant Women of Faith and Action: A Conference (9/9/03); “The Life You Save May Be Your Study of Catholic Female Leadership in Nineteenth Own” by Paul Elie (on his book on Thomas Merton, Century America,” with Dr. Marynita Anderson of Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor, Nassau Community College, (4/26/08); “Communi- 10/7/03); “The Prudential Application of Catholic cating the Truth About the Perils and Promises of the Social Thought,” with Rick Hinshaw, then columnist Contemporary Bio Tech Revolution,” with Rick Hin- of The Long Island Catholic (11/7/03); “Catholic So- shaw, Editor of the Long Island Catholic as the principal cial Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy: II” (27 speaker, (6/21/08); “Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Com- academic presentations plus plenary talks by Paul Vitz munication, and Communion in the Catholic Church” (then Professor of Psychology at New York University by Russell Shaw, (10/11/08), and “Liturgical Reform: now at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences at Pluses and Minuses,” with Monsignor George P. Gra- Arlington, VA) on the topic of the relationship between ham, Ph.D.(11/3/08). Catholicism and psychology and Father Kenneth Baker, Scheduled for the Spring and Summer of 2009 S.J., (Editor of the Homiletic and Pastoral Review) on the are the following events: “Catholicism and Econom- desirability of linking social scientific activity to the so- ics: Democratic Socialist, Democratic Capitalist, and cial doctrine of the Church, (6/11-12/04); “The Saints Distributist Options” with speakers Dr. Charles M.A. throughout World Culture” (with 13 presentations Clark of St. John’s University, Michael Novak of the including those by Patricia Mulrooney, N.C.C. Trustee American Enterprise Institute, Thomas Storck of the and Mr. John Mulrooney, of the Advisory Board of the Society for Distributism and a member of the Edito- N.C.C. Foundation, 10/12/04); “Catholic K-12 Educa- rial Board of Seton Hall University’s The Chesterton tion: Problems and Prospects” (Father Philip Eichner, Review, and Dr. Stephen M. Krason, Esq., of Franciscan S.M., President of Kellenberg Memorial High School; University (4/4/09); “Christianity and Modernity Meet: Sister Joanne Callahan, Superintendent for Schools for Pascal’s Pensees by Boston College Professor of Philoso- the Diocese of Rockville Centre; Joseph Geoghan, phy, Peter Kreeft, 5/2/09); and a conference, “Youth and head of the Bishop’s Diocesan Education Commission; the Future of the Pro-Life Movement” featuring more and Frank J. Russo, Jr., of the American Family Associa- than a dozen presentations by college and high school tion (4/18/05); a lecture, “The Facts of Life and Mar- students with ensuing discussions led by those from riage: Social Science and the Vindication of Christian the ranks of the professoriate and leadership ranks of Moral Teaching” by W. Bradford Wilcox of the Uni- Catholic pro-life organizations (5/30/09). Other future versity of Virginia Sociology Department, 4/22/05); a possibilities include lectures on Catholic-Anglican rela- lecture, “How the Catholic Church Built Western Civi- tions; the Catholic response to the devastating Decem- lization” by Thomas Woods, then Professor of History ber 28th, 1908 earthquake that struck the Messina Straits, at Suffolk Community College-S.U.N.Y., (10/2/05); in Sicily; and the future of Catholic higher education. “Staying the Course with Benedict XVI in a Post- Mention should additionally be made of two other John Paul II Church” (principal speakers, the late Avery significant activities of the Center. The first was a fall, Cardinal Dulles, S.J., the McGinley Chair of Religion 2001 Seminar that included nine consecutive Friday and Society at Fordham University and Kenneth afternoon presentations by different scholars, including Whitehead, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Educa- ones by the late Father Francis Canavan, S.J., Professor tion under President Ronald Reagan, 10/22/05);” “The Emeritus of Political Science at Fordham University President’s Council on Bioethics” (presentation by and Dr. John Rao of St. John’s University. The second Dr. Robert P. George, Esq., the McCormick Professor was a series of “club hour” talks specifically geared to of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison students given by the various distinguished members Program for American Ideals at Princeton University, of the N.C.C. Catholic Studies Faculty Advisory Board 6/19/06); “The Obligations of the Catholic Politician” during the spring, 2002 semester. Philosopher Mark (lecture, Denis Dillon, former District Attorney of Halfon spoke on “Religious Fundamentalism,” Histo- Nassau County, 10/28/06);” “Introducing the Encyclo- rian Marynita Anderson on “Ireland’s Holy War,” Ro-

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 37 Re p o r t

sanne Scarpelli on “Fearing Death,” Biologist Maureen has succeeded, to a surprising degree, in making itself Daddona on “Stem Cell Research,” Criminologist and known nationally. Secondly, the Center has also become Sociologist Robert Costello on “School Voucher Pro- something of a local staple, at least for the serious Cath- grams,” and I spoke on one of my books, Bright Promise, olic community of Long Island. Thirdly, my recent ap- Failed Community: Catholics and the American Public Order. pointment by the State University of New York Board of Trustees as a “Distinguished Service Professor”—a Many other members of the Nassau Community promotion based, in part, on my founding and direct- College administration, faculty and staff have partici- ing the Center—is indicative that is now a recognized pated in, and contributed to, the activities of the Center entity (although still with low visibility) within the over its existence. These include former College Trust- S.U.N.Y. system of higher education. ee, Mr. William Schroeder, Professor Catherine Vanek On the other hand, there are many questions and of Student Personnel Services, Dr. Richard Renoff concerns that must be addressed satisfactorily if the of the Sociology Department, Dr. Hugh O’Rourke Center is to institutionalize itself over time and increase of the Criminal Justice Department; and Rev. Deacon significantly its educational impact. For one thing, the Nicholas Daddona of the Reading Department. The Center has yet to offer credit-bearing courses at the Center has also been assisted by many local and re- College. Having drawn sufficient attention to its activi- gional Catholic educators and elites including the late ties over its first years of existence, the Center must Monsignor George A. Kelly of St. John’s University, Dr. soon rectify this omission. Another issue that must be Salvatore Primeggia of Adelphi University, Dr. Anthony confronted soon is to devise a mechanism to better sys- DiPerna of Molloy College, Dr. Anthony Haynor of tematize the Center’s fund-raising efforts which, while Seton Hall University, Dr. James R. Kelly of Fordham sufficient to date, are too incremental and ad hoc in University; Dr. Donald J. D’Elia of S.U.N.Y.-New Paltz; nature to allow long-term planning, development, and Professor Peter Amato of St. Francis College; private expansion. This is an especially daunting task in light of scholars Dr. Frederick Marks and Adrian Calderone, the nation’s and region’s recent economic downturn. columnists John Metzler and Pete Sheehan, William Tied into these issues is the need to attract to the Devlin of the local Long Island “Faith on Tap” initiative, Nassau Community College faculty who are simultane- Alex LaPerchia, a Queens based author and play-write; ously 1) serious scholars, 2) committed Catholics, and high school teachers Brother Lawrence Syriac, S.M. of 3) trained experts in the area of introducing Catholic Chaminade High School and James Krug of Kellenberg perspectives across the educational curriculum. The High School, among numerous others. College has enough of the first, some of the second, but The crowning accomplishment of the Center for very little of the third. The insufficient pool of trained Catholic Studies, to date, has been the publications of and motivated scholars in the Catholic tradition is tied the Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Sci- intimately to the College’s hiring practices. Like most ence, and Social Policy (2 Volumes), Scarecrow Press, mainstream colleges, public or otherwise, the prevail- 2007, www.scarecrowpress.com (850 entries and 300 ing interpretation of the hiring principle of “affirmative contributors). Well over one hundred of the 850 en- action” at Nassau Community College is not one con- tries published in the encyclopedia were presented at ducive to creating a pool of talent that could utilized one academic event or another sponsored and held at by the Center. Theoretically at least, it is possible to the Nassau Community College Center for Catholic conceive of the College allowing some future faculty Studies. There is a possibility of the development of a hiring along the lines of specifically looking for experts Volume Three, Supplement One for the encyclopedia both trained in and committed to the authentic Catho- project. lic intellectual, moral, and social policy traditions. That likelihood, however, would be significantly increased The Future (although not certainly guaranteed) if the Center dem- onstrated the ability to raise funds through government he future of the Nassau Community Col- and philanthropic agencies as well as through Catholic lege Center for Catholic Studies is very organizations devoted to the idea that public institu- open and “up in the air.” On the one hand, tions of higher education should be truly, and in an there are certain favorable signals pointing inclusive sense, “multicultural,” incorporating for discus- toT possible continued success. For one thing, the Center sion, reflection, and debate the fruits of Catholic in-

38 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 formed scholarship. (I use as a proto-type regarding the will not be around on this side of the great divide for- related issue of including ethnicity under the umbrella ever. When the call from above comes in, what happens of multiculturalism another example drawn from the then? All that I can promise is that I will attempt to State University of New York. I refer to the enormously address the issues concerning the future of the NCC successful institutionalization of the Center for Italian Center for Catholic Studies as best as I can, given both Studies at Stony Brook University, under the direc- the limits of my situation and my limited abilities. After tion of Dr. Mario Mignone, who has demonstrated an that, may the will of God be done. impressive ability to put together a sound curriculum, attract important scholars in the field, publish books (Joseph A. Varacalli, Ph.D., is State University of New and a journal, and draw support for his program from York Distinguished Service Professor. the local Italian American population as well as from regional political elites. It is, of course, the case that Individuals interested in making a tax deductible contribution ethnicity is not the “hot button” item that religion, to promote the future activities of the Center can write a check especially Catholicism, represents.) made out to: “Center for Catholic Studies-Nassau Founda- Related to all of these problematic concerns, the tion” and send it to Vice-President Joseph Buckheit, Nassau Center must address the crucial issue of a second gen- Foundation, Nassau Community College, 1 Education Drive, eration of leadership. Too much of what the Center has Garden City, New York, 11530. The Foundation will send accomplished over the course of its history has relied you back a letter acknowledging your donation for your tax on one person. Simply put, I am all too aware that I records.)

Bo o k Re v i e w s

The Person and the Polis: Faith and man and has now generated two fine sider personhood primarily in terms Values within the Secular State, ed- volumes of these addresses. of relationships to others (parents, ited by Craig Steven Titus, Vol. 1 of In concert with the Institute’s siblings, etc.) from those approaches the John Henry Cardinal Newman broad-ranging concern for Catholic that tend to ignore relationship in the Lectures. (Arlington VA: The Institute intellectual life, the essays in these effort to promote individuation, Vitz for the Psychological Sciences Press, volumes come not only from profes- analyzes the strengths and weaknesses 2006). 187 pp., $29.95, pb. On Wings sional psychologists but also from of these approaches and then outlines of Faith and Reason: The Christian theologians, philosophers, and special- what psychology lost as it grew in- Difference in Culture and Science, ists in other disciplines. The editor creasingly secular and what it needs edited by Craig Steven Titus, vol. 2 of has provided a lengthy introduction to recover from the Christian under- the John Henry Cardinal Newman for each volume that goes beyond standing of person and individual. Lectures (Arlington VA: The Institute the usual charge of summarizing the The essay by Kenneth Schmitz is for the Psychological Sciences Press, contents of the essays to providing a a splendid synthesis of what Karol 2008). 155 pp., $24.95, pb. substantive essay of his own on the Wojtyła/Pope John Paul II contrib- themes indicated in the titles of these uted to the understanding of per- Reviewed by Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., books, and the essay by Romanus sonhood, especially by way of the Fordham University Cessario, O.P. at the end of the first philosophy of action articulated in his volume (“Moral Realism and Chris- dense and difficult The Acting Person. he Institute for the Psycho- tian Values”) synthesizes the contents Schmitz not only contrasts this view logical Sciences (Arlington of the first volume brilliantly. with that offered by Kant and Scheler TVA) was founded in 1997 to The inaugural volume concerns but also shows the fundamental con- sponsor a graduate program for men- the relations between personhood and tinuity between this approach and tal health professionals and to provide the political community. The essay by traditional Thomism. In this article support for the development of ap- Paul Vitz (“From the Modern Indi- Schmitz demonstrates yet again his proaches to psychology that are con- vidual to the Transmodern Person”) ability to take extremely complex no- sistent with the teachings of the Cath- is representative of the high quality of tions and present them with precisely olic Church. In addition, the Institute these essays. After distinguishing be- the clarity and accessibility needed for has sponsored a series of lectures in tween the approaches within modern interdisciplinary projects like this one. honor of John Henry Cardinal New- and postmodern psychology that con- The essays by Daniel Robinson

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 39 Bo o k Re v i e w s

(“In Defense of Moral Realism”) and including intellectual culture, that was cient philosophy and typically ignored Robert P. George (“The Concept of always a crucial part of John Paul II’s in modern thought. Public Morality”) are invaluable for program for the “new evangelization.” The final pair of essays in this making clear some of the most im- Edmund Pellegrino, M.D., who is volume have a refreshingly evangelical portant issues in contemporary de- clearly the dean of Catholic scholars outlook. In bates about morality. Robinson ana- in the area of bioethics, also makes “Christ, the Redeemer of Culture,” lyzes the forms of argumentation that use of Newman in his account of the John Haas, the president of the Na- tend to reduce moral opinions to feel- prospects for Catholic medical educa- tional Catholic Bioethics Center, ings and sentiments. Like John Rist’s tion (“Medicine and Medical Educa- considers various practical ways to magnificent exposé of the incoher- tion in Newman’s University”). promote John Paul II’s theme of the ence of moral arguments that do not Two of the essays in this volume evangelization of cultures. And with have a transcendental ground (Real are of a more technical philosophical his characteristic wit and wisdom, Ethics, Cambridge University Press, nature, but happily they are written Peter Kreeft treats the Beatitudes to 2002), this essay is a tour de force that with a more broadly educated audi- show how utterly different and infi- will be of particular help in exposing ence in mind. Kevin Flannery, S.J., nitely more profound Jesus’ concept the inconsistencies of much of what elucidates John Paul II’s case for the of happiness is than any secular substi- passes for serious academic argument interdependence of philosophy and tute notion. about ethics despite question-beg- theology by explaining Aquinas’s way Like the interdisciplinary efforts of ging assumptions. Similarly, George of handling a problem in regard to the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, provides a hard-hitting review of a the philosophy of Aristotle that was these two volumes from the Institute number of the strategies frequently just being recovered in his day. The of the Psychological Sciences Press employed by modern liberalism in the issue was how to handle Aristotle’s present fine scholarship in an explicit- effort to disenfranchise any religious position on the eternity of the world ly Catholic mode. They much deserve position from participating in moral when contrasted with belief in divine a careful reading. discussions in the public forum. creation of the world that is part of The final two essays in the first Christian faith. Flannery traces the volume bring a political perspective distinctions that Aquinas offered be- to bear. Michael Novak recounts the tween philosophical and theological An Ethical Analysis of the Portrayal prescient insights of Alexis de Toc- method to discern the strengths and of Abortion in American Fiction: queville on the place of religion, and the limits to philosophical argumenta- Dreiser, Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos especially Catholicism, in American tion and to appreciate what it is that Passos, Brautigan, and Irving by Jeff democracy. The essay by Hadley Arkes revelation adds to what can be known Koloze (Lewiston ME: Edwin Mellen (“The Maladies of the Political Class: by natural reason. Press, 2005. Pp. 412). When Reasons Cease to Matter”) The essay entitled “The Christian is an invaluable historical witness to Difference in Personal Relation- Reviewed by Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., the development of the strategy of ships” applies one of the signature Fordham University. gradualism that has been successfully concepts of Msgr. Robert Sokolowski employed by the pro-life movement, to the issue of personhood. In many he campaign to legalize abor- for instance, in opposing partial-birth a previous volume Sokolowski has tion in state legislatures during abortions as a way of planting prin- worked to articulate just what the Tthe 1960s and early 1970s is ciples within the law that may even- distinctive difference is between a relatively well known. That there were tually prove useful in undermining Christian viewpoint and that of some allies in the literary establishment the entirety of Roe v. Wade. This article pagan or secular philosophy, and he should not be surprising, but the also provides a highly insightful les- finds the difference often to reside in phenomenon is less well studied. The son in the area of political philosophy Christianity’s insistence that God is analysis offered here by Jeff Koloze is by its more general reflections on the not just the highest being within the a significant contribution to our un- significant changes within a polity universe but truly transcendent. Once derstanding of the events and trends when “reasons cease to matter.” this difference is clear, its significance that contributed to the change. The title of the second volume for any number of questions can be Lawyers, philosophers, and theo- alludes to John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio, made apparent. By a careful review logians tend to argue about such and its contents are much in the spirit of the logic of personal terms and questions straight on, but writers of of that encyclical. Both Jude Dough- then a phenomenological analysis of imaginative literature are generally erty’s essay (“Wretched Aristotle”) intersubjectivity, Sokolowski turns to inclined to a different approach. They and that of Richard John Neuhaus the significance of the Christian claim often prefer to hold up a mirror to (“Newman’s Second Spring–Once that God has made personal love and the age. Yet in doing so, these authors Again”) have a rhetorical flair that friendship with Himself possible to can still be trying to shape perceptions make for delightful reading. They human beings, a development utterly by the way in which they angle that stress the evangelization of culture, beyond anything conceivable in an- mirror. The evidence for the deliber-

40 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 ate efforts to alter American percep- ignored the traditional religious view- Like White Elephants” is a short story tions about abortion is presented here point on ethical problems with abor- that had enormous popularity in through a study of some of the mas- tion. Instead, they tended to portray the 1920s. It originally appeared in a ters of American fiction in the two the situation in ways that supported collection suggestively labeled Men generations prior to Roe v. Wade. the perception of a need for a change Without Women and was frequently William Faulkner’s Wild Palms, for in American law and mores so as to do anthologized. Without ever mention- instance, has an abortion plot. Hem- away with the moral taboo. ing the word “abortion” it tells an ingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” Koloze also performs an analysis elaborate story about abortion in the presents a dialogue between lovers on these authors and their abortion course of recounting a fixed boxing about a prospective abortion. Theo- writings from the point of view of match, a homosexual proposal, and dore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy catharsis, the crucial element in classi- a contract killer. With every page it uses abortion to resolve certain “prob- cal drama that has often found its way serves to challenge the mores of main- lems.” Koloze’s study does not merely into the modern novel. In ancient stream public opinion. As we know note the fact that there are references tragedy, Aristotle assures us, the dra- from elsewhere with Hemingway, to abortion in the works of classic matist worked to obtain a catharsis, a there were to be no forbidden sub- American writers of the first half of purification of the emotions, through jects. the twentieth century, nor merely pity and fear. The catharsis usually The encyclopedic trilogy of John observe that there are more such uses operates for the characters, and of- Dos Passos, U.S.A. (1938) presents of abortion that one might at first ten enough for the audience as well. an amount of plot information on suspect, but takes note of the way in Many scholars have urged that some- American life and culture that would which abortions are mentioned and thing similar can often be discovered rival a Russian novel. Yet recurrent in used in literature. in the novel, and that this has been the course of the book, Koloze shows, Merely for an abortion to be dis- one of their great sources of attraction is the presence of an author lobbying cussed or to take place is not yet to in the modern age. for the relaxation of abortion laws, know the stance or the agenda of an But, regrettably, few such opportu- especially by the way in which he author. In fact, literary criticism is nities for catharsis surround the abor- presents certain characters sympathet- explicitly mindful of the dangers of tions that occur in the fiction under ically who would find that they could what is called the “dramatic fallacy.” study, whether through anxiety, hate, resolve their problems if only the law That a character says or does some- loneliness, love, or the classical pair of were different. thing is no guarantee about the views pity and fear. Instead, the emphasis is In addition to surveying the major of the author. We would not, for often upon presenting the irrationality figures of American fiction from be- instance, hold Shakespeare to downs of laws that restrained recreational sex fore the 1973 court decision, Koloze for what Lady Macbeth has to say. It or affairs outside of marriage. What also offers a somewhat briefer treat- might simply be a matter of ensuring Koloze can display as the result of his ment of some representative writers that a persona acts and speaks in char- analysis is, not surprisingly in light of who took up the issue after the Court acter. the cultural shift that this country has decision. His section on John Irving’s But when one is properly guarded witnessed, that the authors regarded 1985 The Cider House Rules is particu- against the dangers of reading some as particularly prominent in that age larly well done. position into a text, there are ways to frequently used their creations as a An astute observer of the Ameri- ascertain the intention of an author, vehicle for advocating social change can scene might well have predicted such as by noting the ridicule or satire in that direction. that the literary intelligentsia would that an author uses against a point of By way of example, consider have taken such a position as this. But view, or appreciating the sympathy Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 An American with Koloze’s study we have displayed with which a character or an action is Tragedy. The book recurrently offers the evidence, presented in a measured painted. There are also the approaches a kind of commentary on religious and temperate way with the scholarly that make use of comments by the fundamentalism and an examination resources of literary criticism brought author in venues other than the fic- of “excessive” moral scrupulosity. The to bear. It is volume worth knowing tion itself. thought of how “helpful” abortion about for those troubled about the Koloze’s study is a fine effort at might have been to prevent a “trag- degradation of morals in this country, scholarly and well-disciplined inves- edy” turns out to be at the center of especially for its excellence at bring- tigation of a topic that has been ad- an important crime that is depicted in ing scholarship to bear on this topic. dressed with surprising frequency in those pages. Clyde Griffiths is un- American literature and yet one that able to kill the child he fathered out has seldom been examined by liter- of wedlock, and so he resolves to kill ary critics. The authors that he has Roberta Alden, and thus rid himself chosen constitute a highly representa- not only of the unborn child but also tive set from the period selected. He of the woman he no longer loves. finds them almost universally to have Ernest Hemingway’s 1927 “Hills

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 41 Bo o k Re v i e w s

Embryo: A Defense of Human Life preciated the introductory chapters ment of their brains are addressed as by Robert P. George and Christopher explaining the science of embryology. well. The authors rightly point out Tollefsen (Doubleday Publishing, Physicians and scientists will reso- that such attribution arguments are 2008, 256 pp., $23.95). nate with the description of mitosis, in their own words “fatally flawed.” meiosis, and the complex biological They are quick to point out that the Reviewed by Dr. Greg F. Burke, MD,FACP processes of fertilization. There is no controversial theological concept of Department of General Internal Medicine, reference to the Bible, a catechism, or “ensoulment” is not necessary to pro- Geisinger Medical Center, Danville, Penn- even classic philosophical texts, but tect embryos from destruction. Reli- sylvania simply to the standard reference works gious arguments are not required to of embryology. Although a bit dry, appeal for such protection. The moral he intellectual force of argu- this section of the book is absolutely debate stands alone outside of religious ments in defense of human necessary as a foundational element of conviction. To quote John Rawls, we Tlife has been well articulated the authors’ arguments. Embryos are can agree to use “our common human in many venues over the last 40 years. human persons in the earliest biologi- reason” as we struggle through these It has always been apparent to this cal stages. That is a blunt and truth- profound questions of human rights. author that the reasons to protect ful scientific fact. It is true that some Newer objections to embryonic unborn human life are beyond dispute scientists and philosophers will distort rights are addressed in sequential fash- even without any reference to religion the language and reality of these pro- ion. These objections vary from the or divine revelation. As the pro-life cesses, but the undeniable truth of the preeminent role of sentience in the civil rights movement continues to unique genetic character and potential definition of true human life to argu- engage opposing political ideologies of ongoing human development re- ments about the unity of the early hu- and slogans of choice, it now has a mains. man embryo. To put it in other words, new weapon in the debate. Robert P. Following the introductory review does the early embryo operate in a George and Christopher Tollefsen’s of embryology, the authors enter into way characteristic of a single whole book, Embryo: A Defense of Human the realm of philosophy and, in par- organism? The text is somewhat Life, should be seen as a primer in the ticular, the philosophy of the human complex and technical in this area, but rhetorical library of every pro-life person. The first order of business is to nonetheless competently shows the apologist. Without any timidity, the intellectually deconstruct the “mind- biological unity of embryonic human authors explain and defend our ab- body” and “soul-body” dualism. To life and the utter weakness of the “sen- solute responsibility to protect every make their points the authors pay tience” argument that dehumanizes human embryo and simultaneously close attention to writings of Plato, embryos, fetuses, and early infants. disarm all of their opponents’ counter- Descartes, Locke, and Aquinas. George Finally, George and Tollefsen take philosophical arguments. and Tollefsen develop a framework on new and future challenges to The authors start their work with which leads one to the inescapable the moral protection of embryos. the emotional telling of the media- conclusion that in the natural order, The cloning debate is touched upon worthy tale of the rescue of a frozen human animals live personal lives through discussion of Dr. Paul embryo in the midst of hurricane-rav- and are therefore persons. Moreover, McHugh’s assertion that embryos aged New Orleans. This frozen em- if human beings are deliberately de- derived by somatic cell nuclear trans- bryo later implanted becomes known stroyed in the zygotic, embryonic, or fer (ie. cloning) do not create a be- by the postpartum name of Noah. As fetal stage of development, it is surely a ing worthy of moral respect. The the authors state, “Noah would have wrong committed against their being. “clonote” (McHugh’s term for such perished” if not saved by 7 Illinois Despite their solid moral argu- embryos) is of a different “kind” in conservation police officers. Who in all ments, the authors recognize that comparison to embryos engendered honesty could not see the fluidity of serious doubts will remain about the through sexual procreation or even life as represented by Noah—from fro- protection of embryonic life. The in vitro fertilization. McHugh lays zen limbo in a canister to the reality of mid-portion of their book will ad- stress on the ontological differences human infanthood? From this starting dress a multitude of objections to the between a clonote and embryo. The point, the book systematically begins defense of early human life. Common authors rightly show that the argu- the defense of human life, the human objections based on utilitarianism, ment fails: “If a clonote is not an life of embryos. Abortion proponents consequentialism, and moral dual- embryonic member of the species of will have great difficulty with this for ism are dealt with head-on. Professor the animal from which it is cloned, if a human embryo is truly human life, George’s colleague at Princeton, Peter then even in the adult stage, the then its destruction is an act of homi- Singer, and bioethicist, Ronald Green, clonal entity cannot be a member of cide, without any judgment of intent who share a similar (attribution) view the species.” Despite ongoing objec- or necessity required. In today’s com- of human dignity with Singer are tions, the authors’ final conclusions mon language—it is what it is. engaged in the debate. Other voices are clear—human beings (embryos) As a biology major in college and which propose that human persons have a moral right not to be inten- active physician now, I especially ap- come into being with the develop- tionally killed to benefit others (ie.

42 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 by embryonic-destructive stem cell The Vision of Gabriel Marcel: Epis- deficient and even stifling in its er- research). As creatures with a rational temology, Human Person, the Tran- roneous epistemology. This is most nature, human beings are entitled to scendent by Brendan Sweetman. New conspicuous in the crucial areas of the basic human rights. The authors are York: Rodopi Books, 2008, 179 pages. origin and nature of knowledge. The right on with their contribution to problem begins with Descartes. The this debate and do it without argu- Reviewed by Tim Weldon, Professor of “Cartesian view is not a presentation ments based on emotion, religion, or Philosophy, University of St. Francis, of how the self actually is,” Sweetman political calculation. Joliet, Illinois notes, for the self, “according to the Finally, the book’s last chapter pro- Cartesian view, regards itself as a self poses a number of political and cul- rendan Sweetman’s The Vision contemplating a world of objects.” tural approaches that will help defend of Gabriel Marcel, provides the How limiting—epistemologically and embryos from destruction. Such pro- Breader with the most incisive ontologically—is the Cartesian world- posals include increased funding for commentary on Marcel’s thought in view as it reduces the very essence adult stem cell research, alternatives to recent memory. The serious student of human being and his experiences somatic cell cloning, and limitations of Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) knows to an atomizing exercise of thinking. on in vitro fertilization procedures (of that this is no mean feat. As elusive as We learn as much from Descartes’s note, the book was released prior to he was profound, Marcel’s philoso- cogito, wherein the self is understood the media’s fascination with a wom- phy still today defies a definitive label as disembodied thinker—severed from an’s use of IVF to become pregnant (existentialist or phenomenologist or the greater reality of experience. “The with 8 fetuses—all which thankfully both?). There is more than one reason subject of the cogito is the epistemo- came to birth). The authors also sug- for this: Marcel’s approach to philoso- logical subject, “Sweetman quotes gest greater availability of adoption phy was unsystematic, his philosophy Marcel. services for discarded IVF-engendered is also found in multiple venues (dra- Marcel’s understanding of the embryos. Recent Vatican teaching as matic plays, essays, books, music) and self—as an embodied human—allows defined in Dignitas Personae, however, his subject matter, the human person, for our necessary ontological founda- is less than enthusiastic about such implicitly withstands the quantifying tion, being understood in its totality. adoption procedures. limits of a label. “Being-in-a-situation,” is Marcel’s Today’s political climate is not very Sweetman’s sustained focus and term. Against the Cartesian world- receptive to the assertions made by very capable scholarship highlight view, Sweetman presents the fullness the authors of this book. For those with conciseness the philosophical of Marcel’s understanding of human engaged in the current intellectual essence of this great twentieth cen- experience: battles and the defense of human life tury thinker without betraying any In the realm of experience, we are at all stages, this work is a necessary of Marcel’s stylistic difficulty. Sweet- in a kind of existential contact with part of the armamentarium. Read- man’s scholarship is also unique. In reality, and are not primarily medi- ers will appreciate the cogent and his introduction, the author informs ating reality by means of clear and logical style of the authors as well as us—and rightly—that “this book is a distinct ideas. That is to say, the world the comprehensive nature of their little different from other books on is not primordially mediated through rhetorical approach. I believe their Marcel because it does not attempt a concepts (or, in more contemporary reasoned arguments will win the day systematic presentation of his work philosophical language, through theo- if the opposition ever recognizes tht as a whole.” Sweetman’s uniqueness ries). Rather, “our fundamental situ- the language used by George and is found in his in-depth portrayal of ation” in the world will define our Tollefsen is true to reality. No argu- Marcel’s most salient themes: the hu- “ideas” for Marcel, and any analysis or ment based on misused terms such man being-in-a-situation or “situated description of our ideas must involve as “choice,” “freedom,” and “privacy” involvement,” Marcel’s critiques of a reference to a particular human should be allowed a privileged place skepticism, the objectivity of knowl- body, and to its particular place or on the table. If we talk in terms of edge, secondary reflection, ethics, the “situation” in existence.’ biology, reasoning, and human rights, Transcendent, religious experience, Situated as such, the entirety of we have the greatest hope for trans- the affirmation of God and his skill- our involvement goes well beyond forming the hearts and minds or those ful placement of Marcel’s philosophy the purely conceptual disposition of who currently do not defend embry- alongside the thought of Descartes, Descartes or the phenomenology onic human life. My deep gratitude Heidegger, Maritain, and Buber. This of Heidegger (which, as Sweetman is extended to both George and many-hued contrast serves to enlight- notes, lacked a phenomenology of the Tollefsen for their contribution to our en the reader not only as to Marcel’s body). For Marcel, the human person shared humanity, and in a particular profundity but also to the thematic is knower and lover. Marcel’s theory way to our brothers and sisters who direction—however flawed—of West- of situational involvement expands now exist as embryos. ern philosophy from modernity to our experiential and epistemologi- the present. cal horizon because it includes our For Marcel, modern philosophy is exercise of the theological virtues

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 43 Bo o k Re v i e w s

(few philosophers—if any— achieved cal corrections reprinted by Sophia trampled garden to lay at the feet of his eloquence and insights on hope), Institute Press. This Catholic publisher the twice-martyred Christ. The ar- and our relationships with others and has gained a reputation for producing rows were too deeply embedded for God. This inclusion brings to the fine books for pilgrims on their way him to remove. He said a brief prayer forefront Marcel’s idea of the realm of through this world to the Heavenly for the souls of all the dead about him mystery. Kingdom. And they have done it and, in that moment, understood the Perhaps Marcel’s best known again! mysterious force that had driven him philosophical theme, mystery, con- For the past 15 years or so, espe- from Genazzano and sustained him notes little of its vernacular meaning. cially since 9/11, the legendary Battle for many weary miles” (p. 80). Marcel understands mystery to be of Lepanto has raised interest among The Blood-Red Crescent seems to be beyond the problematic, the solv- the general Catholic public. Usu- particularly suited for young adults, able, scientific and calculable issues ally the emphasis that I have seen has but will prove to be enjoyable for before us. Rather, it is an ontologi- been on the importance of the “rosary readers of all ages. The Blood-Red Cres- cal mystery: the wholly participative prayer crusade” called for by Pope cent is an excellent and wholesome nexus wherein my relationships with Pius V to intercede for a Christian book, and I highly recommend it for others and God unfolds—the same victory for Europe. a touch of leisure and a lot of history. nexus that reveals the totality of be- The Blood-Red Crescent is a short ing. “If he had done nothing else, his historical novel about that ferocious (Marcel’s) success in this matter would five-hour naval battle which left tens constitute a major contribution to of thousands of sailors and soldiers The Tripods Attack. The Young Ches- philosophy,” Sweetman quotes Ralph dead. The plot follows a young Vene- terton Chronicles. I, John McNichol, McInerney. Throughout the book, tian boy, Guido Callatta, in the years Sophia Institute Press, Manchester, Sweetman rightly uses mystery as a 1570-1571, who wants to join Don NH. 2008. foundation when examining Marcel’s Juan of Austria and the Holy League groundbreaking epistemology, ethical to fight the Moslems led by the Ot- Reviewed by: John Gavin, S.J. theory, religious and theological un- toman Sultan. The European and Pontifical Biblical Institute derstanding, modern skepticism, and Turkish armadas clash off the western traditional philosophical problems. shore of Greece in the Gulf of Patras. n recent years we have witnessed Mystery is also the necessary pivot of The Battle of Lepanto was the last, a resurgence of creativity in lit- Sweetman’s comparison of Marcel’s and decisive, battle saving Europe Ierature for children and young thought with philosophical luminaries from total Moslem domination. adults. Books by J. K. Rowling, Philip such as Jacques Maritain (the discus- This is an interesting and thrilling Pullman. Stephenie Meyer. Anthony sion of Marcel and Maritain on non- read presenting many aspects of the Horowitz and Eoin Colfer have dom- conceptual knowledge is especially historical times, culture, travel, means inated even the adult bestseller lists helpful). of fighting and the naval build-up for and have successfully drawn millions In all, The Vision of Gabriel Marcel, the battle. The book contains adven- of children away from the X-Box and is a significant contribution to under- ture, humor, romance, drama, sus- Nintendo. Reading has actually be- standing modern and contemporary pense, religion, and of course, history. come a cool thing! philosophy. “This book is a must read There are also numerous moral But is this resurgence entirely for persons seriously interested in lessons depicted for leading a virtu- healthy? The world of Harry Potter, modern philosophy,” writes Katherine ous life. We read of obedience, familial unlike that of Narnia or Middle-Earth, Ross Hanley in her foreword. Read- piety, devotion, sacrifice, loyalty, etc. clearly emerges from a post-Christian ers will agree wholeheartedly. The writing flows well and the de- culture with many questionable moral scriptions are accurate without being lessons. (And Rowling’s recent “out- overly grotesque. One example is in ing” of one of the main characters the Chapter entitled, “Village of Des- during a Q and A with young fans The Blood-Red Crescent by Henry olation.” Guido and his companions should make parents reconsider if they Garnett, Manchester NH: Sophia are searching for his younger sister want these books on their shelves.) Institute Press, 2007, 170 pages, paper- who has been kidnapped. They have Philip Pullman explicitly attacks back, $14.95. been separated and Guido stumbles Christianity in his His Dark Materials upon a Turk whose split head is cov- trilogy, and the Twilight novels por- Reviewed by Sister Mary Jeremiah, OP, ered with swarming flies. As Guido tray a heroine who considers eternity Monastery of the Infant Jesus, Lufkin TX. retraces his steps, his deep faith turns with vampires a viable option. Not all of these bestsellers offer solid moral him from the brutal to the beautiful. formation for the next generation. he Blood-Red Crescent by “With a heave of his shoulders, he Sophia Institute Press has responded Henry Garnett was originally set the crucifix, in its ruined shrine, to the authentic need for good young upright again and gave a minute to Tpublished in 1960. It now adult literature through its new line, appears with some slight grammati- gathering a few spring flowers from a Imagio Catholic Fiction, and one of its

44 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 first offerings is The Tripods Attack: traying him as a plucky Midwesterner; on her head a crown of twelve stars” The Young Chesterton Chronicles I but he loses something in the transla- this is the book for you. by John McNichol. McNichol finds tion, namely the fine English forma- Miravalle’s book is short, but that is the inspiration for his novel in the tion that molded the man in his early an asset not a liability. It is a gem with “alternate histories” of Philip K. Dick, years. Fortunately, every chapter boasts many facets. Furthermore, the author Harry Turtledove, and Tim Powers. a quotation from the real Chesterton resists all temptation to wear his vast He re-envisions the Edwardian age that will surely inspire the reader to erudition upon his scholarly sleeve. as a world of high-tech steam driven delve into the original works. I have had the pleasure of hearing machines (‘steam-punk” as the sci- Chesterton asks in Orthodoxy: Mark Miravalle speak upon various ence fiction aficionados like to call “How can we contrive to be at once mariological topics on EWTN over it), where fictional characters such as astonished at the world and yet at the years. His knowledge is encyclo- Lewis’ Dr. Ransom and Chesterton’s home in it?” A good novel can awak- pedic, yet in this book one feels as own Fr. Brown walk among such real en our wonder in the world, while if he or she is being gently tugged personalities as Thomas Edison and H. demonstrating the divine moral or- into the mysteries of Mary by one G. Wells. The United States has become der that is our home. Give this book who cares more about you than he fragmented after the North lost the to your nearest twelve year old. It does about any reputation he might civil war, and England rules the planet will occupy him for hours and keep enhance as an expert in the field. In as a technologically superior empire. him far away from the Nintendo for other words Miravalle honestly exhib- In this bizarre world the young G. a few days. its the kind of sincere humility called K. C. is actually an American. who, for when dealing with the guiltless through a series of circumstances, and guileless mother of our Lord. finds himself slaving away in a punch- Meet Mary: Getting to Know the Mother After a brief introduction intended to card factory in London. He doesn’t, of God, by Mark Miravalle remind us that Mary’s motherhood is however, remain in this dead-end job Reviewed by Glenn Statile universal, and not just the property of for long and soon becomes a reporter St. John’s University Catholics and Orthodox Christians, sent to investigate a mysterious mete- the book is divided into five carefully orite that crashed outside of the city. pon stepping foot upon chosen chapters. The first chapter is Accompanied by another young jour- American soil for the start of primarily scriptural and lays out the nalist named Herbert Wells, a certain his whirlwind cross-country references to Mary in the Old and Fr. Brown, and a strange figure known U lecture tour a little over a century ago New Testaments and in the life of the only as the Doctor, Chesterton con- the Irish playwright and deathbed fronts an alien invasion that threatens very early Church. Chapter two adds Catholic Oscar Wilde is reputed to tradition to scripture and deals, both the entire planet. have boasted to both Customs officials Most of all, however, the novel takes historically and theologically, with the and reporters alike that he had noth- four Marian dogmas (Mother of God, place in a moral universe inspired by ing to declare except his genius. I too Christian values. The book coveys its Perpetual Virginity, Immaculate Con- have something to declare, namely that teachings without sounding preachy ception, Assumption). After having Mark Miravalle’s recent mariological and without sacrificing a fast paced established the theological bona fides work entitled Meet Mary: Getting to plot. Courage, respect for life, faith, and of Mary then Miravalle uses chapters suffering for the truth allow the heroes Know the Mother of God, published by three and four to explore the recipro- to claim the day against impossible Sophia Institute Press (2007), is alto- cal relationship of Mary’s relation to odds. Well, almost. The ending leaves gether joyous, luminous, and glorious. us as a mother and our relationship many questions open and the reader If one however is looking for some- to her as children, including various will eagerly await the sequel. thing a bit more sorrowful, or perhaps forms of Marian devotion like the My one complaint with Mc- sensational, pertaining to our heavenly Rosary. Chapter five includes a dis- Nichol’s novel, unfortunately, would mother; then I would heartily recom- cussion of the always fascinating topic be the character of G. K. C. himself: mend either an evening alone with of private revelation in relation to the He hardly resembles the real Chester- Jacopone da Todi’s always soul-piercing recent history of alleged and Church ton at all! In fact, though an inspiring Stabat Mater, or even an afternoon at approved Marian apparitions. The character in the book, he never makes the Tate Gallery in London meditating Appendix, which includes a discussion one think of his historical namesake. over Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s pre- of the structure of the Rosary and the Making him an American (though Raphaelite portrayal of a frightened text of various well known Marian — spoiler alert! — born of English and bewildered teenage Mary suddenly prayers, is welcome and helpful. One parents) was a mistake, since so much startled out of sleep by the angel Ga- might do worse than to head right of who the real G. K. C. was, was briel. But for those looking to be both for the prayer of total consecration English. Perhaps McNichol, who was enlightened and entertained about the to Jesus through Mary written by St. born in Canada but now lives in the woman whom Revelation 12:1 de- Louis de Montfort, a special favorite States, wanted to endear his character scribes as “a woman clothed with the of none other than Pope John Paul II. more to the American market by por- sun, with the moon under her feet, and As I can only speak for myself,

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 45 Bo o k Re v i e w s please allow me to share with you a ogy with natural motherhood. This is ous modern means of medical testing sampling of what I found especially because of the assault upon the con- such as EEG and EKG devices. Just enriching and valuable within the cept of motherhood in recent times. in case he doesn’t already know this book. Therefore a proper understanding of already Professor Miravalle, as well Miravalle’s handling of the rela- Mary’s motherhood must involve a as other FCSQ readers, might en- tionship between dogmas and doc- reconstruction of our understanding joy consulting the work of scientists trines is especially well done. While of natural motherhood. such as Andrew Newberg and Mario all Marian dogmas are doctrines, the Beauregard. Newberg, for example, converse need not necessarily follow. 4. Miravalle does a wonderful job in regularly conducts research dealing explaining the distinction between with the relationship between brain 2. Most of us are probably accustomed the two different meanings of devo- function and mystical or religious to referring to Original Sin as a stain tion. Latria is the form of devotion experiences. upon our spiritual constitution. Many which signifies adoration, which is This book is neither a work of of the Fathers of the Church, such due to God alone. Dulia is the form apologetics nor a biography of Mary as St. Ambrose for example, lead us of devotion which involves a venera- as Miravalle informs us in the In- in this direction. Miravalle writes: tion or honoring of those who have troduction. What he has provided us “Original Sin isn’t something that was excelled in their own proper devotion with is a guidebook for those who added to the human soul, the way a to God. While we do not adore Mary, both want to know about as well as stain mars clean clothing. It’s more as Catholics are often accused of do- to know Mary better. While treat- like something that was taken away, ing, we do owe her the highest degree ing Mary like a goddess, or as part of something now lacking in the soul: of veneration which is consistent with some Holy Quartet, is strictly forbid- namely, the grace that God originally her status as God’s greatest creation. den by the Church, so “is ignoring intended for us to have within us.” Or as Dante puts it in Canto XXXIII her.” For while Mary is not Jesus (pp. 29-30) Metaphysicians might of the Paradiso: “umile e alta più che she is the flesh and blood Ark of the find it an interesting exercise to com- creatura – more humble and sublime Covenant in whose womb the Lord pare this explanation of Original Sin than any creature.) of all Creation entered the world. She with the Augustinian view of meta- is both our mother and the mediatrix physical evil as a privation. 5. In its assessment of the legitimacy of all graces. We cannot do justice to of alleged Marian apparitions the the Fourth Commandment without 3. In dealing with the issue of Mary’s Church investigates the nature of the properly honoring Mary. In keeping spiritual motherhood Miravalle points ecstasy experienced by the mystic. with the words of the Magnificat it is out the difficulty of simply trying What I did not know was that such only fitting that all generations con- to understand this concept via anal- testing now regularly includes vari- tinue to call her blessed.

Bo o k s Re c e i v e d

If you would like to receive a compli- Christian Humanism: Creation, Redemp- The Audacity of Spirit: The Meaning mentary copy of one of the books below tion, and Reintegration, John P. Bequette, and Shaping of Spirituality Today, Jack in order to review it for a future issue, University Press of America: Lanham, MD, Finnegan, Veritas: Dublin (2008), Paper. please email your request to Alice Os- (2007) Paper, 178 pp. 400 pp. berger at [email protected] The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement, Christ in the Mysteries, Blessed Columba Charles Edwin Jones, The Scarecrow Marmion, Zaccheus Press: Bethesda, MD, If there are books you know of that Press: Lanham, MD, (2008), Hardcover, (2008), Paper. 467 pp. should be reviewed, let Dr. Brian Ben- 500 pp. estad know at [email protected] Introduction to Medieval Philosophy: Ba- Escape and Return: The Search for Iden- sic Concepts, Fr. Joseph Koterski, Malden, ———————————————— tity, A Cultural Journey, Anne Paolucci, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009 Griffon House Publications: Middle Vil- The Language of Poetry as a Form of Francis Thomson: A Reflection on the Po- lage, NY, (2008), Paper. 460 pp. Prayer: The Theo-Poetic Aesthetics of etic Vocation, Frank Morris, St. Paul, MN: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Francis X. Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History Borromeo Books, 2009 McAloon, The Edwin Mellon Press: of the Papacy, Roger Collins, Basic Books: John Paul II Confronting the Language Lewiston Queenston Lampeter, (2008), New York, NY, (2009), Hardcover. 565 pp. hardcover, 245pp. Empowering the Culture of Death, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in William Brennan, Sapientia Press of Ave Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse I the Catholic the Jordan to the Transfiguration, Joseph Maria University, 2009 Church, Leon J. Podles, Crossland Press: Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, Ignatius Baltimore, MD, (2008), hardcover, 675 pp. Press: San Francisco (2007) Paper. 384 pp. Additional Study Guide.

46 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 Ex Ca t h e d r a Pope Benedict XVI on the Way to Africa

uring Pope Benedict’s flight to Africa ability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) in March of 2009 a journalist reiter- HIV-infection rates.” These studies also show that the ated a common complaint against reduction of multiple and concurrent sexual partners the Church’s position on AIDS: it is is the most effective way to reduce the infection rate. “not realistic and not efficacious.” Green believes that condoms may not be as effective TheD pope responded, “I would say that the problem as people expect because condom users are prone to of AIDS cannot be overcome with advertising slogans. take risks, believing they are protected. If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one an- Another way to appreciate the wisdom of the other, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing pope’s remarks is to reflect on the alternatives of an condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the HIV-infected husband who has no moral objections problem.” Pope Benedict proposed, instead, a two- to the use of condoms. The most reasonable and lov- fold solution: “the humanization of sexuality” so that ing thing to do would be to avoid conjugal relations people treat each other with respect, and “friendship” with his wife in order to protect her from any chance with those suffering from the AIDS virus, includ- of infection. Abstinence, not condoms, offer 100% ing a willingness to make personal sacrifices on their protection against infection by HIV. behalf. The reaction to this statement was swift, in- Pope Benedict’s reasonable comments on con- tense and intolerant. One Belgian lawmaker said, “It doms were not only roundly dismissed as wronghead- is not up to the pope to cast doubt on the politics of ed and even immoral, but also condemned as an im- public health, which are unanimously supported and proper papal interference in the culture and politics of save lives every day.” The governments of Belgium, France, and Germany, as well as the New York Times, the world’s nations. In other words, governments and the Washington Post, the World Health Organization, NGOs are attempting to inhibit the religious freedom the British medical journal, Lancet, et. al. all expressed of the pope and the Catholic Church. They want to their utter dismay and scorn for the pope’s remarks. suppress the input of Catholics on matters pertaining Support for the pope’s statement came from a to the common good of nations. Unfortunately, this is seemingly unlikely source: the Center for Popula- a trend that has been developing for some time now. tion and Development Studies at Harvard University. Recently, even some Catholics are joining the secu- The Center’s Edward C Green, the director of the lar movement to keep the Church out of the public AIDS Prevention Research Project, said, “We have square on the grounds that anything less is both a found no consistent associations between condom use violation of the separation of the church from the and lower HIV-infection rates, which 25 years into state, and a distortion of genuine religion, which is the pandemic, we should be seeing if this interven- falsely understood as a wholly private affair. ✠ tion was working.” In fact, Green argues that the best studies indicate an association “between greater avail- J. Brian Benestad

FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009 47 Of f ic e r s a n d Di r e c t o r s

(as of September 2008) PAST PRESIDENTS ELECTED DIRECTORS (2004-2007) (2006-2009) OFFICERS Dr. William May President [email protected] Prof. Stephen Barr Dr. Max Bonilla Fr. Joseph W. Koterski [email protected] [email protected] Rev. Earl A. Weis, S.J. [email protected] [email protected] Dr. Stephen F. Miletic Dr. Kristin Burns Vice-President [email protected] [email protected] Dr. James Hitchcock Mr. William Saunders [email protected] [email protected] Mr. William Saunders Dr. Joseph Capizzi [email protected] [email protected] Prof. Gerard V. Bradley Editor of FCS Quarterly [email protected] Mr. Kenneth D. Whitehead Dr. J. Brian Benestad Dr. Gladys Sweeney [email protected] [email protected] Prof. Ralph McInerny [email protected] [email protected] Executive Secretary Dr. Carol (Sue) Abromaitis Rev. Msgr. Stuart Swetland Dr. Bernard Dobranski (2005-2008) [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Fr. Peter F. Ryan [email protected]

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48 FCS Quarterly • Winter 2009