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Archbishop Chaput on Citizenship and Evangelization

lifted article

"We're Better Americans by Being More Truly Catholic"


NEW YORK, NOV. 5, 2007 (Zenit) - Here is the address Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver delivered Oct. 26 at St. John's University School of Law in Queens, New York. The talked is titled "Church and State Today: What Belongs to Caesar, and What Doesn't."

* * *

I always enjoy being with friends like tonight because I can leave my Kevlar vest in Denver. I do a lot of speaking, and while most of the people I meet are wonderful folks, not everyone is always happy to hear what I have to say.

In fact, one of the distinguishing marks of debate both outside and within the Church over the last 40 years is how uncivil the disagreements have become. Being a faithful Catholic leader today -- whether you're a layperson or clergy -- isn't easy. It requires real skill, and in that regard, I've admired the great ability and good will of Bishop Murphy for many years. So it's a special pleasure to be with him tonight. New York's Cardinal Edward Egan is another leader who's given extraordinary and sometimes difficult service to the Church.

I'm not really surprised by the environment in our country or in our Church because Msgr. George Kelly saw it coming 30 years ago. I read his great book, "The Battle for the American Church," as a young Capuchin priest when it first came out in 1979. I remember being struck immediately by George's very Irish combination of candor, scrappiness, clarity, intelligence and also finally charity -- because everything he wrote and said and did was always motivated by his love for the Church.

I also remember George's sense of humor, which was vivid and healthy, and which probably kept him so generous and sane. He was a man's man and a priest's priest -- and his commitment to Catholic family life, Catholic education and Catholic scholarship has remained with me as an example throughout my priesthood. George and I became friends through our mutual friend Father Ronald Lawler, O.F.M. Cap., and after I became a bishop in South Dakota, he would often call me or write me with his advice -- and I was always happy to get it, because it was always very good. So I'm grateful for a chance to acknowledge my debt to him.

We have a full evening, so I'll be very brief. I want to quickly sketch for you the picture of an anonymous culture. But everything I'm about to tell you comes from the factual record.

This society is advanced in the sciences and the arts. It has a complex economy and a strong military. It includes many different religions, although religion tends to be a private affair or a matter of civic ceremony.

This particular society also has big problems. Among them is that fertility rates remain below replacement levels. There aren't enough children being born to replenish the current adult population and to do the work needed to keep society going. The government offers incentives to encourage people to have more babies. But nothing seems to work.

Promiscuity is common and accepted. So are bisexuality and homosexuality. So is prostitution. Birth control and abortion are legal, widely practiced, and justified by society's leading intellectuals.

Every now and then, a lawmaker introduces a measure to promote marriage, arguing that the health and future of society depend on stable families. These measures typically go nowhere.

Ok. What society am I talking about? Our own country, of course, would broadly fit this description. But I'm not talking about us.

I've just outlined the conditions of the Mediterranean world at the time of Christ. We tend to idealize the ancients, to look back at Greece and Rome as an age of extraordinary achievements. And of course, it was. But it had another side as well.

We don't usually think of Plato and Aristotle endorsing abortion or infanticide as state policy. But they did. Hippocrates, the great medical pioneer, also famously created an abortion kit that included sharp blades for cutting up the fetus and a hook for ripping it from the womb. We rarely connect that with his Hippocratic Oath. But some years ago, archeologists discovered the remains of what appeared to be a Roman-era abortion or infanticide "clinic." It was a sewer filled with the bones of more than 100 infants.

If you haven't done so already, I'd encourage you to pick up a little book written about 10 years ago, "The Rise of Christianity" by the Baylor University scholar Rodney Stark. You'll find all of this history in its pages and more.

But what does ancient Rome have to do with my topic tonight, the relationship of Church and state today?

Let me explain it this way: People often say we're living at a "post-Christian" moment. That's supposed to describe the fact that Western nations have abandoned or greatly downplayed their Christian heritage in recent decades. But our "post-Christian" moment actually looks a lot like the pre-Christian moment. The signs of our times in the developed nations -- morally, intellectually, spiritually and even demographically -- are uncomfortably similar to the signs in the world at the time of the Incarnation.

Drawing lessons from history is a subjective business. There's always the risk of oversimplifying.

But I do believe that the challenges we face as American Catholics today are very much like those faced by the first Christians. And it might help to have a little perspective on how they went about evangelizing their culture. They did such a good job that within 400 years Christianity was the world's dominant religion and the foundation of Western civilization. If we can learn from that history, the more easily God will work through us to spark a new evangelization.

I'm not a historian or a sociologist, so I'll leave it to others to fully evaluate Rodney Stark's work. But Stark does address a couple of key questions: How did Christianity succeed? How was it able to accomplish so much so fast? Stark is not only a social scientist, but also a self-described agnostic. So he has no interest in talking about God's will or the workings of the Holy Spirit. He focuses only on facts he can verify.

Stark concludes that Christian success flowed from two things: first, Christian doctrine, and second, people being faithful to that doctrine. Stark writes: "An essential factor in the [Christian] religion's success was what Christians believed. ... And it was the way those doctrines took on actual flesh, the way they directed organizational actions and individual behavior, that led to the rise of Christianity."

Let's put it in less academic terms: The Church, through the Apostles and their successors, preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ. People believed in the Gospel. But they weren't just agreeing to a set of ideas. Believing in the Gospel meant changing their whole way of thinking and living. It was a radical transformation. So radical they couldn't go on living like the people around them anymore.

Stark shows that one of the key areas in which Christians rejected the culture around them was marriage and the family. From the start, to be a Christian meant believing that sex and marriage were sacred. From the start, to be a Christian meant rejecting abortion, infanticide, birth control, divorce, homosexual activity and marital infidelity -- all those things widely practiced by their Roman neighbors.

Athenagoras, a Christian layman, told the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the year A.D. 176 that abortion was "murder" and that those involved would have to "give an account to God." And he told the emperor the reason why: "For we regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God's care."

As this audience already knows, Christian reverence for the unborn child is no medieval development. It comes from the very beginnings of our faith. The early Church had no debates over politicians and communion. There wasn't any need. No persons who tolerated or promoted abortion would have dared to approach the Eucharistic table, let alone dared to call themselves true Christians.

And here's why: The early Christians understood that they were the offspring of a new worldwide family of God. They saw the culture around them as a culture of death, a society that was slowly extinguishing itself. In fact, when you read early Christian literature, practices like adultery and abortion are often described as part of "the way of death" or the "way of the [devil]."

There's an interesting line in a Second Century apologetic work written by Minucius Felix. He was a Roman lawyer and a convert. He's talking about a birth-control drug that works as an abortifacient. He describes its effects this way: "There are women who swallow drugs to stifle in their own womb the beginnings" of a person to be.

That's what the first Christians saw around them in their world. They believed the world was snuffing out its own future. It was stifling future generations before they could come to be. It was slowly killing itself.

Since we see similar signs in our own day, we need to find the courage those first Christians had in challenging their culture. We need to believe not only what they believed. We need to believe those things with the same deep fervor.

The early Christians staked their lives on the belief that God is our Father. They respected Caesar, but they didn't confuse him with God, and they put God first. They believed the Church is our mother. They believed their bishops and priests were spiritual fathers and that through the sacraments they were made children of God, or "partakers of the divine nature," as Peter said.

It's time for all of us who claim to be "Catholic" to recover our Catholic identity as disciples of Jesus Christ and missionaries of his Church. In the long run, we serve our country best by remembering that we're citizens of heaven first. We're better Americans by being more truly Catholic -- and the reason why, is that unless we live our Catholic faith authentically, with our whole heart and our whole strength, we have nothing worthwhile to bring to the public debates that will determine the course of our nation.

Pluralism in a democracy doesn't mean shutting up about inconvenient issues. It means speaking up -- respectfully, in a spirit of justice and charity, but also vigorously and without apologies. Jesus said that we will know the truth, and the truth will make us free. He didn't say anything about our being popular with worldly authority once we have that freedom. In the end, if we want our lives to be fruitful, we need to know ourselves as God intends us to be known -- as his witnesses on earth, not just in our private behavior, but in our public actions, including our social, economic and political choices.

If pagan Rome could be won for Jesus Christ, surely we can do the same in our own world. What it takes is the zeal and courage to live what we claim to believe. All of us here tonight already have that desire in our hearts. So let's pray for each other, and encourage each other, and get down to the Lord's work.

Bishop Vasa speaks

Documented, undocumented -- our citizenship is in heaven
03/01/2007 Bishop Robert Vasa

It will come as no surprise that the weekend entailed a bit of travel. Friday required me to be in Portland for an afternoon meeting and on Saturday and Sunday I needed to be in Milton-Freewater and Athena and on Monday I needed to be back in Bend. I did not keep a close record of the miles but it appears to be something in excess of 600 miles. Fortunately they were great days for travel. Unfortunately they would also have been great days not to travel. I could not help but be amused upon driving into Milton-Freewater to discover a rather prevalent frog theme. A number of the businesses have positioned anthropomorphic frogs such as a four foot frog dressed as a dentist, an accountant, a reader at the library, some shoppers and even a frog lineman positioned twelve feet up on a power pole. They struck me as both quite clever and delightful. I must admit, however, that I have not yet discerned the connection between Milton-Freewater and frogs. I have a hard time imagining that the local High School mascot is a frog but then again one never knows.

My purpose, of course, in coming to Milton-Freewater and to Athena was to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation. The class at Athena was small, being comprised of four members. There was also one First Communicant. The youngsters were quite well catechized which was a good thing because, since there were only four of them, each one needed to respond to several questions. The First Communicant was likewise given an opportunity to answer a couple of questions about Confession and Holy Eucharist. It was most delightful.

The class at Milton-Freewater was considerably larger and the Church was jammed to overflowing. It has been my experience that when a small community has a rather large Sacramental class it is usually true that a vast majority of that class will be Hispanic. This is certainly the case in Milton-Freewater. In this class of 46 confirmands I estimate that more than 40 were of Hispanic descent. I did not attempt to determine the legality or the illegality of the immigration or worker status of the families connected with these young people but it is something about which I know there is much concern. In terms of the Church we recognize a universal membership. A person baptized Catholic in Mexico is just as much a Catholic as someone baptized in the United States. As St. Paul says, our citizenship is in heaven. As fellow citizens in this one overarching kingdom of God we must be careful that our legitimate concerns about national security and unregulated borders do not cause us to think or act in a way unbefitting this primary citizenship. I suspect that there may be a significant number of Catholic Hispanics within our own diocese who are counted among the 10 - 12 million undocumented residents. That status, which some describe as criminal, deprives them of the tranquility which we enjoy, it deprives them often-times of the opportunity to be with their families for important familial and holiday celebrations, it deprives them oftentimes of access to the sacraments, most notably marriage. While it can be argued that they came here of their own accord and that they have chosen the good with the bad it is more likely true that they sought some good and overlooked the extent to which that good involved a high personal cost. It is important in our necessary discussions of the status of undocumented workers and residents that we not forget that there are still basic human rights which are not conditioned on citizenship. These basic rights and the Christian principles of justice, mercy, compassion and charity must be afforded to everyone who is our neighbor. The one who is our neighbor in Christ, towards whom Christ requires the extension of the hand of help and friendship, is not necessarily a good person, a well person, an honest person, a sober person; he is only a person in need. The one who is our neighbor in Christ, towards whom Christ requires the extension of the hand of help and friendship, is not necessarily properly documented. He is, nonetheless, our neighbor. This does not mean that we abdicate our social and civil responsibilities but it does mean that we seek to fulfill those responsibilities in a way which does not violate our higher responsibilities to human life and dignity.

It would be a terrible thing indeed if the reason for all of the concern about the presence of undocumented residents is tied more to fear that their presence will detrimentally impact upon our standard of living than it is about legitimate fears about national security. It is true that the legalization of the status of 10 to 12 million undocumented residents will have an impact on our society. I am not at all convinced that this impact will be a bad thing in the light of the eternal realities. I wonder, for instance, how many Confirmations I would have had in Milton-Freewater if there had been no undocumented or improperly documented families participating. I do know that the number would have been very scant if those of relatively recent arrival from Mexico had been excluded. It may well be that a vast majority of these young people are affiliated with families who have no immigration or documentation concerns and that would be wonderful. My fear is that a number of them may not be properly documented and that this is having a very detrimental impact on them, on their families and on their practice of the faith.

Earlier in the week I spent a day at the Powell Butte property studying and working on the irrigation system. I have always been a bit fascinated by wheel line irrigation and since there is a wheel line on the property and since it belongs to the diocese the maintenance likewise falls to the diocese, in this case, me. I think I learned a lot. I also got very wet - several times. In the process I decided that there really was no shortage of water-related recreational possibilities for our summer youth camps. I was reminded of the many summer time Sunday water fights which erupted on the family farm at home which generally involved squirt guns, hoses, buckets, balloons and sprinklers. The end result was very much like the end result of my working on the wheel line - very wet, very cool, well contented. The Milton-Freewater frog would have been right at home.


Copyright 2002-2006, Catholic Sentinel, Portland, Oregon

Happy b-earth day?

Earth day? Lenin's birthday? oh yeah. same thing...

read about it here:

Earth Day is crap, or: My last column for Our Sunday Visitor

Film review: AMAZING GRACE

March 16, 2007

The film Amazing Grace, currently playing in theaters, is a multi-layered story of love and triumph against powerful cultural forces that supported the slave trade in the United Kingdom. On the most basic level, it's the personal story of William Wilberforce, a British Member of Parliament, who championed the abolition of slavery in the UK during the 18th Century. On a deeper level, the film chronicles the cultural conflict between the entrenched evil of the slave trade and the force of the Truth. It is an unabashedly Christian message in our morally ambiguous age.

William Wilberforce, played by Ioan Gruffudd, was only 21 when he was elected to Parliament fresh from Cambridge, where he was graduated in 1780. Soon after entering Parliament he had a profound Christian conversion, and then began a twenty-year crusade against the slave trade. The film chronicles his life from that point on, using long flashbacks to alternate between his early public life and his climatic strugglesto achieve a vote against the slavers.

Wilberforce suffers physically during the second act, and his friends show great care and concern for him by seeing to his medication and encouraging him to rest. As the film progresses, his physical suffering from untreatable colitis seems to parallel the spiritual suffering he underwent trying to convince his countrymen of the evils of the slave trade. The film draws us into the debate as we accompany Wilberforce on a tour of a slave ship, guided by a freedman, Olaudah Equiano (Youssou N'Dour). He describes the brutal conditions of the hold where women were raped, the weak were cast overboard to lighten the load, and death stalked each African slave on the passage. Wilberforce and his friends also arrange for a river "tour" of the harbor for aristocrats, causing them to pass close by a slave ship where they could smell the stench of death emanating therefrom. The capstone for me was the scene where Equiano bares his branded chest and explains, "They give you this so that you know that you no longer belong to God, but to a man."

When his suffering is almost too much to bear, Wilberforce's friends come to the rescue by introducing him to the woman who would be his wife, Barbara Spooner (Romola Garai). She is intelligent and full of life, and, through her, his passion and strength for the cause is renewed. As their love blossoms, we see color return to the screen and the grey of suffering begins to pale. There is one scene in particular that becomes the turning point for his life's work. William and Barbara have spent the entire night talking, he narrating his effort to free the slaves and she encouraging him to go on, when he walks to the window and realizes it has become morning. As the third act begins, he opens the curtains to let the sunrise into the room, and Barbara reminds him, "after the night comes the dawn."

The third act begins with the wedding of Barbara and William, and the story is then completed in a series of scenes depicting the backroom political maneuvering in Parliament. As victory nears, Wilberforce's good humor returns and the story lightens a bit. Clearly his new wife, Barbara, and their children have a positive effect on Wilberforce, even apparently improving his physical condition. At the end, after achieving the political victory with the vote to outlaw slavery throughout the British dominion, he is so recognized for his achievement that even his political adversaries acknowledge his character.

Amazing Grace has a talented supporting cast, including Albert Finney who plays the evangelical preacher, John Newton, author of the popular hymn that lends the movie its name. Newton provides the binding of the film, and in some ways the voice of God, in guiding young Wilberforce to discern how best to serve God. Newton looks him straight in the eye and tells him flatly, "You have work to do." Wilberforce recognizes it as his commission. The rest of the cast is equally spectacular, giving performances both effortless and powerful.

The photography and musical score guide the mood of the film without becoming overbearing, lending credibility to each scene, and immersing the audience in the Britain of 200 years ago.

The film explores a number of themes: the dignity of life, the value of suffering, and the necessity for perseverance for truth, even, with a simple remark by Barbara, of the true end of marriage -- being open to life. I was struck again and again by the parallels between the fight then against the slavers and the fight now against the abortionists. As my dear mother often said, "the more things change, the more they remain the same."

Men of faith like William Wilberforce led the way for the abolitionists, and there was considerable cultural conflict between institutions and groups over the issue in America as well. At one time, the U.S. Postmaster General refused to carry abolitionist publications to the South, teachers with abolitionist beliefs were excluded from Southern schools, and even Harvard, Yale, and Princeton resisted the tide of abolitionist feelings in the North and sided with the slaveholders. Predictably, there was conflict between American Catholics and the Pope over the issue, with some American Catholics dissenting from Pope Gregory XVII's bull In Supremo Apostolatus that forcefully decried slavery and the slave trade as a "disgrace from the whole confines of Christianity" and "utterly unworthy the Christian name." Undoubtedly there were some Catholics, clergy among them, who took the position of "personally opposed" to the issue of the permanent bondage of another man.

Just as the Abolitionists were shouted down by "polite and established society," so the Pro-Life Movement is forced to shout to be heard. Once again, the established institutions of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale are on the wrong side of the issue, supporting the murder of the innocent as "choice." Pro-Life teachers are told to toe the line or loose their jobs, just like those who were sent away from the South in the 1850s. And once again, American Catholics, clergy among them, dissent from the magisterial teachings on the subject.

Just as his predecessor did, the current successor to Peter has spoken clearly to reaffirm the ancient Christian horror at the murder of innocent children. In 2005, Pope Benedict said, "For this reason, it is necessary to help all people to be aware that the intrinsic evil of the crime of abortion, which attacks human life at its beginning, is also an aggression against society itself." [emphasis mine]. Just as with slavery, Benedict knows that to cheapen a single human life cheapens all human life, and abortion most certainly reduces human life to a commodity, a child to mere property that a woman may dispose of as she chooses. Similarly, embryonic stem cell research takes tiny human beings and rips them asunder for their parts as one would disassemble a car for the a spare piston.

Some people on the pro-abortion side call for "compromise" and ask Pro-Life persons to "work together to make abortion rare." But there can be no middle ground in this issue because there is no middle state between life and death. Either a person is alive or they are not ... and innocent life must be defended. It is our responsibility, it is our duty, it is our vocation.

The success of the Abolitionist movement of the 19th Century should give us great hope, for far smaller groups than the Pro-life Movement inspired great progress in the protection of human beings from slavery. The new terrible slavery that grips the land is on the wane, despite what one might hear in "polite society." Two-hundred thousand people marched in Washington's freezing temperatures just a few weeks ago, and thousands more marched in other cities. Pro-Life politicians are being elected, and slowly the unjust laws that condemn men and society to the bondage of death are being rolled back.

It's really only a matter of time now, and I'm very proud to call myself an Abolitionist.

Copyright 2007 Catholic Exchange

Mickey Addison is a career military officer, and has been a catechist at the parish level since 2000. He and his wife have been married for 19 years and they have two children. He can be reached at addisoncrew@gmail.com.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Complete video is available here

March 15, 2007
Global Warming Swindle
By Thomas Sowell (http://www.realclearpolitics.com)

Britain's Channel 4 has produced a devastating documentary titled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It has apparently not been broadcast by any of the networks in the United States. But, fortunately, it is available on the Internet.

Distinguished scientists specializing in climate and climate-related fields talk in plain English and present readily understood graphs showing what a crock the current global warming hysteria is.

These include scientists from MIT and top-tier universities in a number of countries. Some of these are scientists whose names were paraded on some of the global warming publications that are being promoted in the media -- but who state plainly that they neither wrote those publications nor approved them.

One scientist threatened to sue unless his name was removed.

While the public has been led to believe that "all" the leading scientists buy the global warming hysteria and the political agenda that goes with it, in fact the official reports from the United Nations or the National Academy of Sciences are written by bureaucrats -- and then garnished with the names of leading scientists who were "consulted," but whose contrary conclusions have been ignored.

There is no question that the globe is warming but it has warmed and cooled before, and is not as warm today as it was some centuries ago, before there were any automobiles and before there was as much burning of fossil fuels as today.

None of the dire things predicted today happened then.

The British documentary goes into some of the many factors that have caused the earth to warm and cool for centuries, including changes in activities on the sun, 93 million miles away and wholly beyond the jurisdiction of the Kyoto treaty.

According to these climate scientists, human activities have very little effect on the climate, compared to many other factors, from volcanoes to clouds.

These climate scientists likewise debunk the mathematical models that have been used to hype global warming hysteria, even though hard evidence stretching back over centuries contradicts these models.

What is even scarier than seeing how easily the public, the media, and the politicians have been manipulated and stampeded, is discovering how much effort has been put into silencing scientists who dare to say that the emperor has no clothes.

Academics who jump on the global warming bandwagon are far more likely to get big research grants than those who express doubts -- and research is the lifeblood of an academic career at leading universities.

Environmental movements around the world are committed to global warming hysteria and nowhere more so than on college and university campuses, where they can harass those who say otherwise. One of the scientists interviewed on the British documentary reported getting death threats.

In politics, even conservative Republicans seem to have taken the view that, if you can't lick 'em, join 'em. So have big corporations, which have joined the stampede.

This only enables the green crusaders to declare at every opportunity that "everybody" believes the global warming scenario, except for a scattered few "deniers" who are likened to Holocaust deniers.

The difference is that we have the hardest and most painful evidence that there was a Holocaust. But, for the global warming scenario that is causing such hysteria, we have only a movie made by a politician and mathematical models whose results change drastically when you change a few of the arbitrarily selected variables.

No one denies that temperatures are about a degree warmer than they were a century ago.

What the climate scientists in the British documentary deny is that you can mindlessly extrapolate that, or that we are headed for a climate catastrophe if we don't take drastic steps that could cause an economic catastrophe.

"Global warming" is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.

Correction: Britain's Channel 4 produced the documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle," not the BBC. References to the BBC have been corrected or removed.

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate