Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum;
habemus Papam:
Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum,
Dominum Josephum
Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Ratzinger
qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedictum XVI
Dr. Dillon spoke a few words of tribute to Fr. Borden and gave him as a parting gift an icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, saying,We have lost some good, good people in this past couple of weeks but I think we have gained some intercessors in the "cloud of witnesses" that surround us.
“As you have faithfully tended to your flock here at the College, may Our Lady of Perpetual Help intercede for you in all your needs. We pray that God will abundantly reward you as you continue to inspire us now with your example of great patience and fortitude. We shall miss you, dear friend.”
Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine,
cum sanctis tuis in aeternum,
quia pius es.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
"...Joy is a passion we experience with respect to a good we actually possess. Hope, on the other hand, is the passion we experience with respect to a difficult good we wish to possess, but do not yet have. Hope is what we feel when the children are young and we are working toward the goals we want to achieve for and with them. Sorrow is the passion felt regarding an evil actually existing, while fear is the passion we experience regarding an evil not yet experienced."
and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
"the true, the good, and the beautiful have much greater reality than do the false, the evil, and the ugly, which latter are too often idolized in the larger world. So I urge you to bring reality to that world - to take whatever you have grasped here of the true, good, and beautiful out into that larger world, so much in need of what is real rather than what is illusory."
I'm 23 years old and a single mom to a very special little girl.When I was 19 weeks pregnant, I was told that my baby had no brain. This condition is known as "anencephaly." I was told that my baby was only alive because she was attached to me, but that she couldn't survive on her own. The doctor said that I could continue the pregnancy safely, but that my baby would die shortly after being born. Or I could choose to terminate the pregnancy then, which would mean being induced at 20 weeks and letting my baby die without ever seeing or holding her (I don't even want to know what they do with babies in this case). Well, to some people this would be a difficult decision, but it wasn't for me. I knew there was nothing to gain by terminating the pregnancy and I already loved my daughter more than anyone else in the world. Even if she was unconscious like the doctors said and lived for only a few seconds or minutes --even if she was stillborn --it was worth it to me. And so we began our journey...
Q: It's evident that a passion of yours is education through your involvement with Ave Maria, the work you began and still do with Ignatius Press, and your involvement with NAPCIS. Share with our readers what you think the current state of Catholic education today is and why you feel so many parents are opting to home school their children?
A: Yes. Let me limit myself to the United States and certain features of the United States. For many years, I have received letters and phone calls from parents who are in tremendous grief because their children have lost their faith going to Catholic schools. The problem with the catechetics and academics was basically denied by those in authority and lay people were told that they were working on it- don't worry things will get better. But when your kids are growing up, you don't have time. You need to have a Catholic education now.
So, as a result of that, many Catholic parents began to home school. Primarily because they could no longer entrust their kids to the parochial schools. Once they started doing that however, many of them discovered that it's a better form of education if you can do it. So, now I know many Catholic home school parents, who even if they had a great Catholic school right across the street, would still home school. Right here at Ave Maria, we have a wonderful grammar and prep school - Ave Maria Grammar andPrep- with some of the Dominican sisters from Ann Arbor who are teaching there, a wonderful headmaster, excellent faculty and great kids. But there are many families that live literally a block or two from the school, and who home school- it's not that they think the school isn't a good school, they just think home schooling is a better education for their kids.
Q: Would you agree with them?
A: I would agree that as a general principle that home schooling is superior to schooling in a more structured context of a classroom. But, that doesn't mean it's for everybody at all times and at all grades. I do think it's better. Here at University, half of our students are home schooled. Through high school, about 25% are home schooled.
You find, in general, even though the other students are good too, a greater love of learning, willingness to study on their own, receptivity- and in addition, incredible talent. A number of our students can play the piano, or the violin, or can act, or sing, and do it well. It's astounding to me. I've never seen such a concentration of talent, and a lot of it is because they have large families that home school and can learn these things. So no one can claim now that there's no opportunity to educate their kids in a Catholic way. They can always home school.
Then there are these new family schools, many members of NAPCIS as you mentioned- there's more than a hundred of them around the country. These are family-operated, small, Catholic schools, which are loyal to the Tradition of the Church and to a classical education. And as far as universities go, there are 10 or 12 spread across the country, so I think you can get a good education. I think Ave Maria is one of the best- I really love the kids here as well as the faculty and the curriculum, but there are other good places too.
Q: In terms of a classical education, there are those who would argue that the idea of a classical education would actually include the dynamic of having peers among you in the learning environment, simply in regards to the idea that the original idea of school being leisure among friends, and granted you can get that in the home element as well…
A: What's classical about that? Do they have to be the same age? The idea of schools, is as they say in French a “pis aller” a second best type of thing. What were the best types of education in medieval and post-medieval times? It was with the nobility in the castles. How? With the tutors for the children of the noble families. They didn't go to some school. And then, when you started with the cathedral schools and in the monastaries, you would go in with the monks. You would have young men join the monastery as clerics, lower clerics, when they were 7 or 8 years old.
I think schools have a value, but I think They are not as good as the kind of care and attention you can get in a home schooling environment. I've seen it happen- in a family of four kids, the oldest boy who was very analytical and very argumentative did a lot of reading and a lot of essays on different topics; but his brother, a couple of years younger, was very intuitive and artistic. So, he did more poetry, literature, art and that sort of thing. And by doing that he also learned the other skills he needed, but learned by doing the things that he loved.
There's a fellow that helps do some work for us in our retreat house north of San Francisco. When he and his fiance were getting ready to get married, he had about a fourth or fifth grade reading level. But, he loved to hunt, so his fiancee’s mother got him three subscriptions to some hunting magazines and suddenly his reading level zoomed up because he finally found something he wanted to read. That's how home schooling works.You take a look at your kid and say, "He's interested in WWII" so there's an entrée. You learn to read better and do research. Then you might want to go on to other things, like geography or weather. Who knows what it might be. I think home schooling is a great sign of hope in this country, and the small Catholic schools as well, and as a result of that, the parochial schools and Catholic schools are going through a renewal process. We also have younger bishops now who are more traditional and younger priests who are more traditional. I do see a lot of movement in the right direction.
You could also say that it's a book about intuition, except that I don't like that word. In fact it never appears in "Blink." Intuition strikes me as a concept we use to describe emotional reactions, gut feelings--thoughts and impressions that don't seem entirely rational. But I think that what goes on in that first two seconds is perfectly rational. It's thinking--its just thinking that moves a little faster and operates a little more mysteriously than the kind of deliberate, conscious decision-making that we usually associate with "thinking." In "Blink" I'm trying to understand those two seconds. What is going on inside our heads when we engage in rapid cognition? When are snap judgments good and when are they not? What kinds of things can we do to make our powers of rapid cognition better?I have struggled with this concept of "intuition" before in trust, and the knowledge of the heart. What does it mean to say that our intuition is telling us something, sometimes when our overt reasoning process is trying to lead us elsewhere? It is undeniable that "intuition" or gut instinct has led people wrong in the past. There are examples in the book. Usually it occurs either when the judger is taking TOO much into account or when he or she is taking too little into account.
A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.This seems to me to be roughly analogous to the process of forming right thinking about whatever area of life you are called to be well-grounded in. Almost all the saints and Catholic general wisdom says that moral formation isn't just intellectual knowledge but has to be carried through all the little moments of daily life. When the crunch comes and you go into "default mode" you will have good ways of operating built into your very muscle memory and bottom-line mental processes. But if this process hasn't taken place, or if it's been overly distorted by emotion or appetites, it won't be as reliable as it would have been otherwise.
This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man "takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin." In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.
Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one's passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.
If - on the contrary - the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience.
The Divine law does not prescribe the impossible. Yet it prescribes perfection according to Matthew 5:48, "Be you . . . perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect." Therefore seemingly one can be perfect in this life.
I answer that, ....the perfection of the Christian life consists in charity. Now perfection implies a certain universality because according to Phys. iii, 6, "the perfect is that which lacks nothing." Hence we may consider a threefold perfection.
One is absolute, and answers to a totality not only on the part of the lover, but also on the part of the object loved, so that God be loved as much as He is lovable. Such perfection as this is not possible to any creature, but is competent to God alone, in Whom good is wholly and essentially.
Another perfection answers to an absolute totality on the part of the lover, so that the affective faculty always actually tends to God as much as it possibly can; and such perfection as this is not possible so long as we are on the way, but we shall have it in heaven.
The third perfection answers to a totality neither on the part of the object served, nor on the part of the lover as regards his always actually tending to God, but on the part of the lover as regards the removal of obstacles to the movement of love towards God, ..... Such perfection as this can be had in this life, and in two ways.
First, by the removal from man's affections of all that is contrary to charity, such as mortal sin; and there can be no charity apart from this perfection, wherefore it is necessary for salvation.
Secondly, by the removal from man's affections not only of whatever is contrary to charity, but also of whatever hinders the mind's affections from tending wholly to God. Charity is possible apart from this perfection, for instance in those who are beginners and in those who are proficient.
Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.
And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created.
From this it follows that man is to use them as much as they help him on to his end, and ought to rid himself of them so far as they hinder him as to it.
For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things in all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it; so that, on our part, we want not health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, long rather than short life, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created.
Although even now every man who progresses, advancing ever with an upright purpose, departs from all sin, and becomes further removed from it as he approaches nearer to the fulness and perfection of the righteous state; because even concupiscence itself, which is sin dwelling in our flesh, never ceases to diminish in those who are making progress, although it still remains in their mortal members. It is one thing, therefore, to depart from all sin,— a process which is even now in operation,— and another thing to have departed from all sin, which shall happen in the state of future perfection. But still, even he who has departed already from evil, and is continuing to do so, must be allowed to be a doer of good.
Now that some false ideas of perfection have been mentioned, to try and go deeper into a true definition of perfection."So I might heap up citation upon citation, but these will suffice to show how difficult it is to arrive at a formula for perfection which will fit all the saints, determine the common trait which permits us to classify them all under one head, and enables us to say of each one, "Here is a saint."Here the example of Mary, Jesus's mother, comes up. Of all humans, she was the closest to Our Lord. He resided under her heart for nine months and was nursed at her breast and brought up by her from infancy to childhood. She alone was called "gratia plena", full of grace, which to the Catholic Church has been a testimony that there was no part of her interior that was not flooded with God's light. Yet in her earthly life she was not a queen, not a doer of great deeds; little is said about her life directly in scriptures; her life was hidden. From her life we can conclude that
"Sanctity does not at all consist in splendor or magnificence or the glitter of exterior things, but rather in an interior principles which animates the most ordinary actions, and communicates to them an almost inestimable value."If Mary is an exemplar, does that necessarily mean that the ideal life is solely hidden and quiet and domestic? To think that would be missing the point, because saints have been kings and queens, missionaries, parents of families, lacemakers and tentmakers, explorers, scientists, anything you can imagine. Without the interior principle, these professions and vocations don't mean anything; with them, every sphere of life is sanctified.
"Perfection is accomplishing the will of God in a constant and generous fashion. That person, then, is perfect who does at every instant what God wishes."Personally, this is troublesome to me. I have a good friend who tells me that she always knows what God wants of her. Sometimes she doesn't actually do it, but she always knows. I've searched my heart, and I don't have that kind of certainty. I always feel that I could be doing something better (or worse, for that matter). I suppose though that this is not the point. The point is a radical openness. I usually know when I'm getting locked into my own will or being sluggish or fearful about carrying out something good. So maybe that's what my friend means about knowing what God wants.
So here goes: As the title Counsels of Perfection indicates, the book is composed of counsels or pieces of advice. The first section of the book is about obstacles, the second is about means to the end, and the third is about "the means par excellence". The "end" mentioned, of course, is Christian perfection and the means are how we reach it.As you see, there are a few things here: (1) there has to be a habit, not just an occasional sporadic act (2) it depends on God's grace plus our will to preserve that grace (3) it involves action plus (4) withdrawal from things that are obstacles. Except for the bit about God's grace, Aristotle would have agreed with all these conditions, and he clearly laid out convincing reasons why the only road to true happiness "eudaimonia" was through virtue.
Christian perfection consists not only in the habit of charity, i.e. the possession of sanctifying grace and the constant will of preserving that grace, but also in the pursuit or practice of charity, which means the service of God and withdrawal of ourselves from those things which oppose or impede it.
“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. And you must love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love is a mighty power, a great and complete good; Love alone lightens every burden, and makes the rough places smooth. It bears every hardship as thought it were nothing, and renders all bitterness sweet and acceptable. The love of Jesus is noble, and inspires us to great deeds; it moves us always to desire perfection.So I guess it's pretty clear that love is the means by which we approach closer to what we are supposed to be as human beings. However, most of us know by now that Love is not just a feeling, a desire or impulse to draw closer or do well, but a matter of the will and intelligence. If we didn't already know it, a long stay in the ER with a sick child, or a rough patch in our marriage, would show us the truth of it. Love, perhaps "devotion" would be a more targeted word, is an integration of emotion and intelligence and will.
Although charity is at times intensely emotional, and frequently reacts on our sensory faculties, still it properly resides in the rational will: a fact not to be forgotten by those who would make it an impossible virtue.As you see, there is both a positive and a negative aspect to these efforts, just like there might be if you were trying to strength train or lose weight or learn something new. You want to increase your strength -- your ability to do the thing. And you want to avoid things that will present obstacles or hurt your attempts to grow. Even though growing in Christian perfection is something that can't be done by ordinary human means, that doesn't mean it doesn't INVOLVE human means -- it just means that it has to go beyond those.
"My daughters, you all aspire to perfection. But what is your idea of perfection?"
I thought that was interesting.
I think it is possible to be strengthened by the image of the past without being either deceived or puffed up. The image becomes dangerous in the precise degree to which it is mistaken, or substituted, for serious and systematic historical study. The stories are best when they are handed on and accepted as stories. I do not mean by this that they should be handed on as mere fictions (some of them are after all true).
But the emphasis should be on the tale as such, on the picture which fires the imagination, the example that strengthens the will. The schoolboy who hears them should dimly feel - though of course he cannot put into words - that he is hearing saga. Let him be thrilled - preferably "out of school" - by the "Deeds that won the Empire"; but the less we mix this up with his "history lessons" or mistake it for a serious analysis - worse still, a justification - of imperial policy, the better.
When I was a child I had a book full of coloured pictures called Our Island Story. That title has always seemed to me to strike exactly the right note. The book did not look at all like a text-book either. What does seem to me poisonous, what breeds a type of patriotism that is pernicious if it lasts but not likely to last long in an educated adult, is the perfectly serious indoctrination of the young in knowably false or baised history - the heroic legend drably disguised as text-book fact.
I couldn't find that talk or any version of it online, to my regret but this is nice.
Gilbert.... speaks for the Richmond and Kew branch of the P.N.E.U. on "The Romantic Element in Morality"
To a Christian existence is a story, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he might be eaten by cannibals. The hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero. So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn't....
All Christianity concentrates on the man at the cross-roads. The vast and shallow philosophies, the huge syntheses of humbug, all talk about ages and evolution and ultimate developments. The true philosophy is concerned with the instant. Will a man take this road or that?--that is the only thing to think about, if you enjoy thinking. The aeons are easy enough to think about, any one can think about them. The instant is really awful: and it is because our religion has intensely felt the instant, that it has in literature dealt much with battle and in theology dealt much with hell. It is full of danger, like a boy's book: it is at an immortal crisis.
(God)has already communicated to us the “substance” of things to come, and thus the expectation of God acquires a new certainty.....
It is the expectation of things to come from the perspective of a present that is already given.
Somewhere in my closet I have a picture of Aidan a few months after his transplant. He was maybe nine months old but hardly even using his hands yet because he was still so weak. This dragon on the left was a favorite toy of his and we would watch him struggle mightily with the recalcitrant creature. Sometimes the dragon would overwhelm him and land on his face in spite of his best efforts. At other times, he would prevail, his small unaccustomed hands in a grapple hold around the serpent's throat, pushing it away.the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle.This wounded child of ours who was willing to heroically engage in battle to subdue a soft toy was greater than the machines that supported his life, greater than his physical body: indispensable, invaluable, eternal, whatever sickness or injury befell him.
Some call it the pop quiz from hell. You are about to find out if you know as much about your faith as you claim to know. Take it from me: Your ego will suffer. But don’t fall into despair. Most Catholics (including some priests) will answer a majority of these questions incorrectly.
...To save you acute embarrassment this quiz will not be turned in. It is for your enlightenment—and amusement—only. In fact, I suggest you take the quiz in private so no one else will know the truth about the state of your Catholic knowledge. If you do well, you can brag later.
From an essay originally published in First Things in 2000 "Born Towards Dying."Our great, good friend is gone.
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two.
We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well....Death is the warp and woof of existence in the ordinary, the quotidian, the way things are. It is the horizon against which we get up in the morning and go to bed at night, and the next morning we awake to find the horizon has drawn closer.
"One of the most discussed issues in the history of thought is that concerning the foundation of knowledge. How do we know anything? To this question, Rene Descartes, a 17th century philosopher, answered, I know at least this: that I think. And if I think, then I must exist.
Descartes is considered to mark the transition from the Middle Ages to the "modern" world. Yet Descartes' ideas were founded on ideas much older than himself. In fact, the argument we study here, sometimes known simply as "the cogito"..... was thought of long before .... Aristotle, who wrote about 2,000 years before the birth of Descartes, is quoted by St Thomas Aquinas (a 13th century philospher) saying, "We sense that we sense, and we understand that we understand; and because we sense this, we understand that we exist."."
What if we understand that to mean that enjoyment of things is the opposite of duty? That's wrong-headed, it seems to me. ..Instead, what if we enjoy things that are ours to do? What if we do them, not "because" we enjoy them, but because they are what we are good at?.....
Prioritizing by way of enjoyment only is not right, obviously. But prioritizing away from enjoyment? That seems just as wrong. Does that make sense?
The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions. Human virtues are firm attitudes, stable dispositions, habitual perfections of intellect and will that govern our actions, order our passions, and guide our conduct according to reason and faith. They make possible ease, self-mastery, and joy in leading a morally good life. The virtuous man is he who freely practices the good.
All I want is a room somewhere/ Far away from the cold night air..
gratuitous New Year's family photo -- the big boys are watching the sparkly ball come down in New York, while Paddy is watching Kevin open a bottle of champagne (it fizzled -- the cork disintegrated, so no POP).Motion, i.e. the passing from power to act, as it takes place in the universe implies a first unmoved Mover (primum movens immobile), who is God; else we should postulate an infinite series of movers, which is inconceivable.Hume opposed both the idea of "cause" in itself .... that one thing was actually "caused" by another, or at least, that our minds could know them to be.
For the same reason efficient causes, as we see them operating in this world, imply the existence of a First Cause that is uncaused, i.e. that possesses in itself the sufficient reason for its existence; and this is God.
But I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No. If I convinced myself of something [or thought anything at all] then I certainly existed.
The fact that an atheist can be “clearly aware [clare cognoscere] that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles” is something I do not dispute. But I maintain that this awareness [cognitionem] of his is not true knowledge [scientiam], since no act of awareness [cognitio] that can be rendered doubtful seems fit to be called knowledge [scientia]. Now since we are supposing that this individual is an atheist, he cannot be certain that he is not being deceived on matters which seem to him to be very evident (as I fully explained)......
Thus I see plainly that the certainty and truth of all knowledge [scientiae] depends uniquely on my awareness of the true God, to such an extent that I was incapable of perfect knowledge [perfecte scire] about anything else until I became aware of him.
But if life itself is good and pleasant (...) and if one who sees is conscious that he sees, one who hears that he hears, one who walks that he walks and similarly for all the other human activities there is a faculty that is conscious of their exercise, so that whenever we perceive, we are conscious that we perceive, and whenever we think, we are conscious that we think, and to be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious that we exist... (Nicomachean Ethics, 1170a25 ff.)
All these considerations are enough to establish that it is not reliable judgement but merely some blind impulse that has made me believe up till now that there exist things distinct from myself which transmit to me ideas or images of themselves through the sense organs or in some other way. (Med. 3, AT 7:39-40)In the end, I decided that of the two choices, though in one sense I had no way of having complete certainty, that the "trustworthy God who created a trustworthy universe that could be understood to some extent by a human intellect" thesis was much more workable than the alternatives. It came down to choosing the road to intellectual and material life. It "felt" like somewhat of a leap of faith. At the same time, it seemed that it was the only rational choice.
To-day, we have substituted the word "sloth"; a failing from which we all suffer, and one which none of us ever admits. I think the best way of examining your conscience, if you want to discover whether you are an idle man, is to leave on one side all the things which interest you and concentrate on some side-line of your daily habits which doesn't interest you....
Idleness, with most of us, doesn't mean lying in bed and doing nothing; it means giving priority, always, to the things which interest us, and leaving our other duties to queue up and take their turn, if they ever get a turn. Watch idleness; it can become a sort of creeping paralysis.
