My Take on the Election

Thanks to JP Catholic students Molly O'Hare and Joe Connolly I was able to do something with the ultrasound video we have of Michael Jr. We just threw this together... I wish we had some more time to really perfect it, but it makes the point.

Seriously, how can some other issue really trump this?

Of course none can. So, yes, there are other issues--there are many areas in which I disagree with John McCain. But just remember that every 25 seconds another child--just like my little boy--is slaughtered in the womb. No other issue comes close to take the lives of 1.3 million people a year. That actual statistic is outrageous--it's obscene--how can we brush that off? As far as I'm concerned, it is absolutely ridiculous to imagine that any other issue represents a greater evil.

And by the way, not that it is acceptable to kill anyone before that point, but it should be pointed out that already at 9 weeks after conception (first trimester!) a pre-born baby is able to bend its fingers around an object in its hand and feel pain. I mean, we treat animals--skunks!--more
"humanely" than these little children!

How can we do this? How can we look at a little boy in the ultrasound and turn a blind eye? Put simply: how can we vote for someone who supports legalizing killing him on the grounds that "other issues" are more important? And don't tell me we can't legislate morality--we put murderers and thieves on trial every single day.

This is the most important issue in this election. In fact, to make this clear numerous Catholic Bishops have now come forward and stated explicitly--in terms stronger than ever before--that in this election, no issue is more important than defending the unborn. Here are links to their statements:

Cardinal Francis George OMI of Chicago (USCCB president; 15 Oct)
Cardinal Edward Egan of New York (23 Oct)
Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia (USCCB Pro-Life Chair; 23 Oct, 12 Sept)
Archbishop Daniel Buechlein OSB of Indianapolis (3 Oct)
Archbishop Eusebius Beltran of Oklahoma City (5 Oct)
Archbishop Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe (8 Oct)
Archbishop Charles Chaput OFM Cap. of Denver (18 Oct)
Archbishop Alfred Hughes of New Orleans (11 Oct)
Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee (28 Sep)
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas (8 Sept)
Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio (10 Oct)
Archbishop John Nienstedt of Saint Paul and Minneapolis (19 Oct)
Bishop Patrick Zurek of Amarillo (24 Sept)
Bishop Robert Vasa of Baker (16 Oct)
Bishop Robert Baker of Birmingham (20 Oct)
Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport (USCCB Doctrine Chair; 28 Sept)
Bishop Joseph Galante of Camden (6 Oct)
Bishop Peter Jugis of Charlotte (26 Oct)
Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs (17 Oct)
Bishop Kevin Farrell of Dallas (8 Oct)
Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo (23 Oct; 8 Oct)
Bishop Kevin Vann of Fort Worth (8 Oct)
Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay (17 Oct)
Bishop Larry Silva of Honolulu (20 Oct)
Bishop Jerome Listecki of La Crosse
Bishop William Higi of Lafayette in Indiana (28 Sept)
Bishop Glen John Provost of Lake Charles (7 Oct)
Bishop Earl Boyea of Lansing (22 Oct)
Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison (16 Oct)
Bishop Alexander Sample of Marquette (17 Oct)
Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson (15 Oct)
Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix (18 Sept)
Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh (28 Oct)
Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence (29 Oct)
Bishop Michael Burbidge of Raleigh (26 Oct)
Bishop Thomas Doran of Rockford (24 Oct)
Bishop Paul Coakley of Salina (17 Oct)
Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton (30 Sept; 19 Oct)
Bishop Walker Nickless of Sioux City (4 Sept; 23 Oct)
Bishop Timothy McDonnell of Springfield in Massachusetts (3 Oct)
Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo (3 Oct)
Bishop J. Vann Johnston of Springfield-Cape Girardeau (3 Oct; 26 Sept)
Bishop Robert Hermann, archdiocesan administrator of St Louis (17 Oct; 24 Oct)
Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St Joseph (17 Oct; 8 Sept)
Bishop Paul Swain of Sioux Falls (2 Oct)
Bishop Gerald Barbarito of Palm Beach (24 Oct)
Bishop Michael Jackels of Wichita (24 Oct)
Bishop Bernard Harrington of Winona (2 Oct)
Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester (24 Oct)
Bishops of Florida (7 diocesans, 2 auxiliaries; 15 Sep)
Bishops of Kansas (4 diocesans; 2006 statement reissued 15 Aug 2008)
Bishops of New York State (8 diocesans, 11 auxiliaries; 1 Oct)
Bishops of Pennsylvania (7 diocesans, 6 auxiliaries; 10 Oct)
Bishops of Virginia (2 diocesans; 1 Oct)

(Source: Whispers in the Loggia.)

***UPDATE: Bishop Finn Weighs In***

Hear Bishop Finn's interview here. Here's an excerpt:

Chris Stigall: There are Catholics listening right now who are thinking strongly or are convinced that they will vote for Barack Obama. What would you say to them?

Bishop Finn: I would say, give consideration to your eternal salvation.

B. F. Streeter on Form Criticism

“If the sources have undergone anything like the amount of amplification, excision, rearrangement and adaptation which the [form-critical] theory postulates, then the critic’s pretence that he can unravel the process is grotesque. As well hope to start with a string of sausages and reconstruct the pig.”

--B. F. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (London: Macmillan, 1924), 377.

All Sacrifices Will Cease But One

Some of you may know this already, but there is an ancient Rabbinic tradition regarding sacrifice in the the Messianic Age. Although I've read it dozens of times, I'm still stunned every time I see it. 

According to Leviticus Rabbah 9:7 and Pesiqta Rabbati 12, several ancient Rabbis taught the following:

In the Age to Come all sacrifices will cease, but the thank offering will never cease; all songs will cease, but the songs of thanksgiving will never cease." (Cited in Hartmut Gese, Essays in Biblical Theology 133).

In Hebrew, the word for "thank offering" is todah; in Greek, it is eucharistia. The thank offering was a special sacrifice that consisted of both a bloody offering (of a lamb or goat) and an unbloody offering (of bread or wafers) (see Leviticus 7). According to the prophet Jeremiah, the saved will celebrate with thank-offerings at the coming of the Messiah and the ingathering of the exiles (Jeremiah 33).

The obvious question raised by this is: Did Jesus see the Last Supper as the eschatological sacrifice which would replace all the other sacrifices in the Age to Come?

More on this in Michael's forthcoming dissertation and my forthcoming book on the Last Supper.  (Who will finish writing first is another question!)

Benedict's Words at the Synod

Pope Benedict addressed the Bishops gathered for the Synod discussing the role of Scripture in the life of the Church. In particular, he talked about the need to build a bridge between exegesis and theology.

Here's what he said:

_________________________

Dear Brothers in the Episcopate, dear brothers and sisters!

At the start of our Synod, the Liturgy of the Hours offers us a passage from the great Psalm 118 [Psalm 119 in modern numbering] on the Word of God: a eulogy of his Word, expression of Israel's joy at being able to know it, and in it, to know his will and his face.

I would like to meditate with you on some verses of this excerpt from the Psalm.

It starts this way: "In aeternum, Domine, verbum tuum constitutum est in caelo... firmasti terram, et permanet". (Your word, LORD, stands forever; it is firm as the heavens...your truth endures; fixed to stand firm like the earth".)

It speaks of the solidity of the Word. It is solid, it is the true reality on which to base one's life. Let us recall the words of Jesus who continues these words of the Psalm: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words never will".

Humanly speaking, the word, our human word, is almost a nothing in reality, a whiff of breath. No sooner said, it vanishes. It seems to be nothing. And yet the human word has an incredible power. They are words that make history, they give shape to our thoughts, thoughts which give rise to words. Words shape history and reality.

But much more so is the Word of God which is the basis of everything - it is the true reality. And to be realists, we must depend on this reality. We should change our idea that material things, those that are solid, that can be touched, are the most solid and sure realities.

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord tells us the two possibilities of constructing the house of our own life: on sand or on rock. He who builds only on visible and tangible things, on success, on career, on money, builds on sand. These seem to be the realities.

Only the Word of God is the foundation of all reality - it is as stable as heaven, and more than heaven. It is reality. So we must change our concept of realism.

The realist is he who recognizes in the Word of God - this reality which can appear to be so weak - the foundation of everything. The realist is he who builds his life on this foundation which will stay permanently.

Thus these first verses of the Psalm invite us to discover what is reality and in this way, to find the foundation of our life, how to build our life.

The next verse says: "Omnia serviunt tibi" (All things are your servants). All things come from the Word, they are a product of the Word.

"In the beginning was the Word". In the beginning, heaven spoke. And so, reality is born from the Word, it is 'creatura Verbi', a creature of the Word. Everything is created from the Word, and everything is called on to serve the Word.

This means that all of creation, ultimately, was ideated to create the place of encounter between God and his creatures, a place where the love of the creature responds to divine love, a place where the love story between God and his creatures takes place. "Omnia serviunt tibi".

The story of salvation is not a small event, in a poor planet lost in the immensity of the universe. It is not a minimal thing that is happening by chance in an out-of-the-way planet.

It is the mover of everything, the aim of creation. Everything was created so that this story would take place - the encounter between God and his creature. In this sense, the story of salvation, the covenant with God, preceded creation.

In the Hellenistic period, Judaism developed the idea that the Torah (the Jewish book of laws) had preceded the creation of the material world. This material world was created only to provide the setting for the Torah, to the Word of God which creates a response and becomes a story of love.

Already, the mystery of Christ shines through. It is what we are told in the Letters to the Ephesians and to the Corinthians: Christ is the protòtypos, the firstborn of Creation, the idea for which the universe was conceived. He embraces everything. We enter into the movement of the universe by uniting ourselves to Christ.

We might say that while material creation is the condition for the story of salvation, the story of the covenant is the true reason for the cosmos. We come to the roots of being by arriving at the mystery of Christ, to his living Word which is the purpose of all creation.

"Omnia serviunt tibi". Serving the Lord, we realize the purpose of being, the purpose of our own existence.

Let us jump forward. "Mandata tua exquisivi" (I shall consider your commands with care). We are always in search of the Word of God. It is not just present in us. If we stop at the letter of the Word, we have not necessarily understood the Word of God. There is the danger that we only see the human words and fail to find within the true actor, the Holy Spirit. We do not find the Word in words.

St. Augustine, in this context, reminds us of the scribes and Pharisees consulted by Herod when the Magi arrived. Herod wanted to know where the Savior of the world would be born. They knew it, and gave him the correct answer; Bethlehem. They were great experts, who knew everything. And yet, they did not see reality, they did not recognize the Savior.

St. Augustine says - they showed the way for others, but they themselves did not move. This is a great danger,too, in our reading of Scripture: we stop at the words, human words from the past, a history of the past, and we do not discover the present in the past, the Holy Spirit which speaks to us today in words from the past.

And so we fail to enter into the interior movement of the Word, which hides in human words and opens the divine words. That is why there is always need for 'considering with care'. We should be in search of the Word within words.

Therefore, exegesis, the true reading of Sacred Scripture, is not simply a literary phenomenon, it is not limited to reading the text. It is the movement of my own existence. It is moving towards the Word of God in human words.

Only by conforming to the mystery of God, to the Lord who is the Word, can we enter into the Word, only then can we truly find the Word of God in human words.

Let us pray to the Lord that he may help us to search not only with the intellect, but with all our existence, to find his Word.

In the end: "Omni consummationi vidi finem, latum praeceptum tuum nimis" (I have seen the limits of all perfection, but your command is without bounds). All human things, all the things we could invent or create, are finite.

Even all the human religious experiences are finite, they show an aspect of reality, because our being is finite and always understands only a part, some elements. "Latum praeceptum tuum nimis": Your command is without bounds.

Only God is infinite. And so even his Word is universal and does not not recognize any limits. And so in entering the Word of God, we are truly entering into the divine universe. We leave the limitations of our experiences and enter into that reality which is truly universal.

Entering into communion with the Word of God, we enter into the communion of the Church that lives the Word of God. We are not entering a small group, into the order of a small group , but we go beyond our personal limits. And we go towards largeness. the true largeness of the only truth, the great truth of God. We are really into the universal, into the communion of all our brothers and sisters, of all mankind, because in our heart is hidden that desire for the Word of God which is one.

That is why even evangelization, the announcement of the Gospel, mission - these are not a kind of ecclesial colonialism with which we want to bring others into our group. It is leaving the limits of single cultures towards the universality that links everyone, unites everyone, makes us all brothers.

Let us pray too that the Lord may help us enter truly into the 'largeness' of his Word and thus open ourselves to the universal horizon of mankind, that which unites us despite all our differences.

Let us turn back to a preceding verse: "Tuus sum ego: salvum me fac" (I am yours; save me) (v. 94). it is translated into Italian as 'I am yours'. The Word of God is like a ladder which we can climb, and with Christ, descend as well into the depths of his love. It is a way to get to the Word within words. Because this Word has a face - it is a person, Christ. Before we can say "I am yours", he has already told us "I am yours'.

The Letter to the Hebrews, citing Psalm 39, says: "A body you have prepared for me... And so I said, Here I am, I am coming". The Lord prepared himself a body to come to. With his Incarnation, he said, "I am yours". And in Baptism, he tells me: "I am yours". In the Sacred Eucharist, he says the same thing anew, "I am yours", so that we may respond, "Lord, I am yours".

In the journey towards the Word, entering into the mystery of his Incarnation, of his 'being with us', we wish to appropriate his being to ourselves, we want to expropriate ourselves of our existence, giving ourselves to him who gave himself to us.

"I am yours". Let us pray to the Lord to be able to learn with our whole existence to say these words. Thus we will be in the heart of the Word. And thus we shall be saved.

Origen on Understanding the Gospel of John

As anyone who has studied the New Testament or the Gospel of John knows, modern Biblical scholars love to quote the early Church Father Clement of Alexandria's comment that the Gospel of John is a "spiritual Gospel." It is interesting that you never see the similar comments of the great biblicist, Origen, who had this to say:

"No one can grasp the meaning of the Gospel (of John) unless he has rested on the breast of Jesus, and unless he has received from Him Mary, who becomes his mother also." (Origen, Commentary on John, 1:6)

JP Catholic Students Making Waves

JP Catholic students are all over two big propositions in California--and now the mainstream news media is taking notice of their efforts.

First, Proposition 4, or Sarah's Law, would require parental notification for abortion. Right now, a high school can't give an asprin to a student without notifying parents--but a child can get an abortion and the parents don't have to know a thing about it. This, of course, enables child predators, as our students highlight in this ad. This ad aired in California on television immediately after the Vice Presidential debate last Thursday.

Second, Propoisition 8 would ammend the state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Yes, we already voted on this a few years ago and such a definition won a majority of the vote (61%). But the California Supreme Court ruled (4-3) that the vote didn't matter and legalized gay marriage despite the vote. The students have been making ads for that as well.

Their ads have become an internet sensation--the LA Times even reported their efforts in a recent story.

Last night the local Fox affiliate ran the story about them below (sorry for the 15 second ad which runs before it!). [See it here.]

For the record, Steve Marshall is right on about the impact these ads can have. While a TV spot reaches far more homes--no doubt about that!--one should remember that TV ads are often simply blocked out. During the commercials you run to the kitchen to get a soda, you fast forward through them if you're watching them on DVR, etc. An internet ad is clicked on by the viewer--the audience is FAR more likely to actually watch the ad. They also reach a different audience than say the people who watch Dancing with the Stars.

And... internet ads can get so big they end up on television. The spot done by the students that ran on broadcast TV after the debate on Thursday started out as an internet ad. Here's another look at it. By the way, the young man playing the pervert is actually a really wonderful guy...


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