Mr. DeJak's latest: "Living a Catholic Life: What the Ratzinger Family can Teach Us"

March 1, 2012 saw the publication in English of Msgr. Georg Ratzinger’s new book My Brother, the Pope. Media outlets have widely reported this ultimate insider’s view of Pope Ratzinger and have published excerpts from the book. Of particular interest to this writer was Msgr. Ratzinger’s recollections of his childhood with his younger brother. The traditional piety with which they practiced the faith may strike some of us modern Americans as strange, but it is instructive. This type of traditional piety is something that we must rediscover if we wish to grow in holiness in our own families; and it is an essential to prepare for the dark clouds of persecution that gather day by day.

Though we are in the season of Lent, dear readers, indulge me as I quote Msgr. Ratzinger’s recollections of Advent and the Ratzinger family’s participation in the rich liturgical life of the Church:

Generally speaking, our family made a big thing of Christmas. The preparations already began with the First Sunday of Advent. At that time, the Rorate Masses were celebrated at six in the morning, and the priests wore white vestments. Normally violet is the color of the vestments in Advent, but these were special votive Masses that were supposed to recall the appearance of the Archangel Gabriel to the Mother of God and her words, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word” (Lk 1:38). That was the main theme of these “liturgies of the angels,” as they were also called, in which the appropriate passage from the Gospel of Luke was read. After we started school, we used to attend these Masses in the early morning, before classes began. Outside it was still night, everything was dark, and the people often shivered in the cold. Yet the warm glow of the sanctuary compensated for the early rising and the walk through snow and ice. The dark church was illuminated by candles and tapers, which were often brought by the faithful and provided not only light but also a little warmth. Afterward we went home first, ate breakfast, and only then set out for school. These Rorate Masses were wonderful signposts leading us to Christmas.

Read the rest of Mr. DeJak's article at The Wanderer Forum Foundation.

BXVI on Integrated Education

Christmas homily of Pope Benedict XVI at Midnight Mass

Here's an excerpt from the pope's words:

"God became poor. His Son was born in the poverty of the stable. In the child Jesus, God made himself dependent, in need of human love, he put himself in the position of asking for human love – our love. Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity. Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light."

Read the Holy Father's Christmas homily at the Vatican's website.

Merry Christmas!

A Child Is Born (Well... a different one)!

Benedict Joseph was born on December 24th at 1:17 a.m.!
Named after our dear Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, as well as St. Benedict the Father of Western Monasticism. Joseph is a family name (my great-grandfather, grandfather, and my own middle name); it is also fitting to name him after St. Joseph during this Christmas season. Deo gratias!
Mrs. A. and baby are well.
Thank you for your continued prayers.
Merry Christmas!
-Mr. A.

Rommen and Ratzinger on Metaphysics: Its Importance for the Law and Society

In Fr. Robert J. Araujo, S.J.'s remarks on the natural law, he referenced a brilliant German lawyer and thinker, Heinrich Rommen. (If you haven't read Rommen, shame on you!) He was imprisoned by and later fled the Nazis for his defense of law as an "ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated" (Summa Theologiae I-II, 90, art. 4). The Nazi regime--as well as any totalitarian regime--in its embracing of the Modernist position (which is nothing other than the embrace of the Enlightenment project, specifically that of Descartes), perverted law from an "ordinance of reason" to be rather an "ordinance of will."

In our example in class the other day, we saw how an arbitrary exercise of the will can result in an unjust law. In the example given, we looked at the "reasonableness" aspect of the definition of law. But what is the foundation for a law's reasonableness? The answer lies in the Chesterton quote below. There we saw that one cannot escape the essential question of being or existence; and even more, the Ultimate Being or Existence Himself, God. In philosophy, this area of inquiry is called metaphysics. Rommen expands upon this in his magisterial tome The Natural Law. He looks historically at the times when natural law was esteemed:

The idea of natural law obtains general acceptance only in the periods when metaphysics, queen of the sciences, is dominant. It recedes or suffers an eclipse, on the other hand, when being and oughtness, morality and law, are separated, when the essences of things and their ontological order are viewed as unknowable. The natural law, consequently, depends on the science of being, on metaphysics (The Natural Law, 141).

I cannot emphasize enough, dear students, the importance of considering this fundamental question. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger in an article entitled, "Faith, Philosophy, and Theology," [11 Communio 351, 357 (1984)] stated: "The true philosopher, if he wishes to reach the ultimate questions, cannot free himself from the question of God, the foundation and end of being itself." The implications of this for the society are profound. It is the difference between the gulag and freedom.

Building a "culture of the word"

The pope instructs "ministers of culture"

After reading The Rule of St. Benedict, we took in the pope's "Address to Ministers of Culture" when he visited Paris, France and Lourdes.  The pope gathered all the intellectual elites, politicians and dignitaries and, gathering them at an ancient Cluniac monastery, sought to teach them to re-discover their roots: in western monasticism.

The address is quite remarkable. 

The pope points out how every Christian is called to live in and develop a "culture of the word" whereby he contemplates the Scriptures and the various other great writings of the Church - precisely what we are doing in the Capstone Seminar.  I hoped to emphasize, dear students, that we are - in our class and in our small way - developing and living in a unique "culture of the word". 

Here's what the pope says [my emphasis]:

"What motivated men [the monks] to come together to these places?  What did they want?  How did they live?

"First and foremost, it must be frankly admitted straight away that it was not their intention to create a culture nor even to preserve a culture from the past.  Their motivation was much more basic.  Their goal was: quaerere Deum.  Amid the confusion of the times, in which nothing seemed permanent, they wanted to do the essential – to make an effort to find what was perennially valid and lasting, life itself.  They were searching for God.  They wanted to go from the inessential to the essential, to the only truly important and reliable thing there is.  It is sometimes said that they were “eschatologically” oriented.  But this is not to be understood in a temporal sense, as if they were looking ahead to the end of the world or to their own death, but in an existential sense: they were seeking the definitive behind the provisional.  Quaerere Deum: because they were Christians, this was not an expedition into a trackless wilderness, a search leading them into total darkness.  God himself had provided signposts, indeed he had marked out a path which was theirs to find and to follow.  This path was his word, which had been disclosed to men in the books of the sacred Scriptures.  Thus, by inner necessity, the search for God demands a culture of the word or – as Jean Leclercq put it: eschatology and grammar are intimately connected with one another in Western monasticism (cf. L’amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu).  The longing for God, the désir de Dieu, includes amour des lettres, love of the word, exploration of all its dimensions.  Because in the biblical word God comes towards us and we towards him, we must learn to penetrate the secret of language, to understand it in its construction and in the manner of its expression.  Thus it is through the search for God that the secular sciences take on their importance, sciences which show us the path towards language.  Because the search for God required the culture of the word, it was appropriate that the monastery should have a library, pointing out pathways to the word.  It was also appropriate to have a school, in which these pathways could be opened up.  Benedict calls the monastery a dominici servitii schola.  The monastery serves eruditio, the formation and education of man – a formation whose ultimate aim is that man should learn how to serve God.  But it also includes the formation of reason – education – through which man learns to perceive, in the midst of words, the Word itself."

Read the entire address of the pope here at the Vatican's website.

On science & stem cells

In the excerpt below from the pope's recent address to an international conference on stem-cell research, he summarized well the gifts and limits of scientific inquiry:

"Scientific research provides a unique opportunity to explore the wonder of the universe, the complexity of nature and the distinctive beauty of life, including human life. But since human beings are endowed with immortal souls and are created in the image and likeness of God, there are dimensions of human existence that lie beyond the limits of what the natural sciences are competent to determine. If these limits are transgressed, there is a serious risk that the unique dignity and inviolability of human life could be subordinated to purely utilitarian considerations. But if instead these limits are duly respected, science can make a truly remarkable contribution to promoting and safeguarding the dignity of man: indeed herein lies its true utility. Man, the agent of scientific research, will sometimes, in his biological nature, form the object of that research. Nevertheless, his transcendent dignity entitles him always to remain the ultimate beneficiary of scientific research and never to be reduced to its instrument."

In our recent discussions on The Rule of St. Benedict and Thomas Woods' "How the Monks Saved Civilization", we were reminded that the monks developed modern scientific inquiry from the fundamental belief that God's creation is good.  It is easy to forget this, but it is the fundamental reason why the west surpassed the east in scientific inquiry: faith in the God of Jesus Christ.  How can we have "science" if the cosmos isn't intelligible (random, chance, just an explosion) and if it hasn't been ordered by a Creator?  The image at right is of Monseigneur Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest and scientist who developed the "Big Bang" theory; clearly this priest believed that we are more than simply the product of an explosion.

It is rewarding to have these conversations; it is even more rewarding to have them with high school seniors!

Read the rest of the pope's address at Vatican Radio.