Shocking: Cardinal George's "What are you giving up for Lent?"

This article by his imminence, Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago bluntly states the predicament of the Catholic Church in America under the current regime.

We were blessed to meet with Cardinal George in December and he did not mince his words then either.

Ad multos annos!

Here's a snippet of the Cardinal's recent article:

The Lenten rules about fasting from food and abstaining from meat have been considerably reduced in the last forty years, but reminders of them remain in the fast days on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and in the abstinence from meat on all the Fridays of Lent. Beyond these common sacrifices that unite us spiritually to the passion of Christ, Catholics were and are encouraged to “give up” something voluntarily for the sake of others. Often this is money that could have been used for personal purposes and instead is given to help others, especially the poor.

This year, the Catholic Church in the United States is being told she must “give up” her health care institutions, her universities and many of her social service organizations. This is not a voluntary sacrifice. It is the consequence of the already much discussed Department of Health and Human Services regulations now filed and promulgated for implementation beginning Aug. 1 of this year.

Why does a governmental administrative decision now mean the end of institutions that have been built up over several generations from small donations, often from immigrants, and through the services of religious women and men and others who wanted to be part of the church’s mission in healing and education? Catholic hospitals, universities and social services have an institutional conscience, a conscience shaped by Catholic moral and social teaching. The HHS regulations now before our society will make it impossible for Catholic institutions to follow their conscience.

So far in American history, our government has respected the freedom of individual conscience and of institutional integrity for all the many religious groups that shape our society. The government has not compelled them to perform or pay for what their faith tells them is immoral. That’s what we’ve meant by freedom of religion. That’s what we had believed was protected by the U.S. Constitution. Maybe we were foolish to believe so.

Read the entire article here.

Fr. Barron on atheist Christopher Hitchens

We've asked the students to watch this and think about it; a great example of modern apologetics.

Thought provoking article from David Brooks of NYT

David Brooks is an inconsistent writer. He jumps from one school of thought to another. He's a classic liberal, though he's branded as a conservative thinker. (There's a difference between today's political liberalism and "classical liberalism"... we won't get into that right now!)

Anyway, here are some tidbits from a recent Brooks article that I found interesting.

"How to Fight the Man" by David Brooks

A few weeks ago, a 22-year-old man named Jefferson Bethke produced a video called “Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus.” The video shows Bethke standing in a courtyard rhyming about the purity of the teachings of Jesus and the hypocrisy of the church. Jesus preaches healing, surrender and love, he argues, but religion is rigid, phony and stale. “Jesus came to abolish religion,” Bethke insists. “Religion puts you in bondage, but Jesus sets you free.”

[...]

Right away, many older theologians began critiquing Bethke’s statements. A blogger named Kevin DeYoung pointed out, for example, that it is biblically inaccurate to say that Jesus hated religion. In fact, Jesus preached a religious doctrine, prescribed rituals and worshiped in a temple.

Bethke responded in a way that was humble, earnest and gracious, and that generally spoke well of his character. He also basically folded.

[...]

Bethke’s passionate polemic and subsequent retreat are symptomatic of a lot of the protest cries we hear these days. This seems to be a moment when many people — in religion, economics and politics — are disgusted by current institutions, but then they are vague about what sorts of institutions should replace them.

This seems to be a moment of fervent protest movements that are ultimately vague and ineffectual.

[...]

But rebellion without a rigorous alternative vision is just a feeble spasm.

Read the thoughtful conclusion here.

UPDATE: A Solid Rebuttle to the YouTube phenom: "Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus"

This new video was produced by a priest in response to "Why I Love Jesus, and Hate Religion". Not bad!


You may have heard of this YouTube video "Why I hate Religion, but love Jesus" making the rounds, dear students.

The video raises some interesting questions and gets a number of important issues right,

but many of the statements are highly problematic (e.g. the main premise that religion is contrary to Jesus) by way of shallow rhetoric. The theology and Scriptural references are easy enough to parse.

I would suggest that this fellow's view of religion is not simply one we can ignore; this is because there are many, many Christians (even Catholics) who share his view in America and the modern west. We cannot afford simply to mock it - it needs to be engaged and thoroughly rebutted. This is one of the aims of our Capstone Seminar: to give you the tools to articulate truth in the face of skepticism, shallow fads, ideology and hatred in an unbiased manner. Likewise, if you cannot admit that some of the things he (and other people who are 1/2 correct) says are spot-on, we've failed too.

Also, the young man is obviously coming from a shallow, non-denominational protestant perspective, so many of the statements he makes (that are obviously wrong to Catholics) are simply the logical consequence of the failed teachings and pragmatism of main-line protestant religion. We as Catholics can learn from these mistakes.

With that, I offer you a solid rebuttal from "Bad Catholic".

It’s worth beginning with this: I agree with this guy on a lot of points. He reminds us Catholics of a striking truth; that without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, religion is a joke. He speaks the truth that Christ died for our sins, once and for all. I can’t help but think, in the midst of all this, that this hating-religion-loving-Jesus thing is the logical consequence of Protestantism. For a 21st-century Protestant looking at a thousand-something churches, I imagine there is an immense temptation to say “It’s all a wash. I will follow Christ, not a religion,” and be done with it. I empathize with him, knowing that if I were a Protestant I would be in full agreement: There is either one, true religion or there is no religion at all.

But nevertheless, there are two main problems with this video. 1. Jesus Christ would strongly disagree with it. That is to say, the creator of this video is very, very wrong. 2. He’s very, very wrong with some great video editing, good background music, a strong emotional appeal, catchy rhyme, and all in relatively well-timed YouTube moment. He’s wrong in style. When a man gains immense popularity by making blanket statements stylistically, how likely is it that his followers will read a rebuttal making specific statements prosaically? I don’t know, but rebut I must, for it is the duty of the Catholic to resist fashion and fads, no matter how unfashionable he looks doing it.

Read "Bad Catholic's" entire roast here.

Another related post by "Bad Catholic" here. Whoever the author of "Bad Catholic" is, he's pretty dang clever! Enjoy.

Ideology: the Tie the Blinds

Another excellent article from the Director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, Jason Adkins.

Adherence to Ideology: the Tie that Blinds

"The 2011 legislative session is finally drawing to a close.
Many were surprised by the inability of legislative leaders and the governor to reach a compromise agreement be­fore a shutdown occurred. When the two parties did finally produce a budget framework, neither side was pleased with an outcome that few believe represents the beginning of a long-term solution to the state’s fiscal woes.
The inability to compromise, however, was not based so much on stubbornness or sheer partisanship as it was on adherence to ideological principle.
On one level it is refreshing to see politicians stake out principled positions and stick to them. But on another level, an almost slavish adherence to ideology in politics can and does inflict harm to the very people public officials claim to serve. And it was ideology that marked the 2011 legislative session.
‘The Catholic mind’
An ideology typically involves building an intellectual system around a particular idea or truth, but to the exclusion of other ideas or information.
It is a lot like a theological heresy.  In many cases, an ideology represents an “ideal” system whose adherents are often, you might say, religiously devoted to it.
By contrast, what the Jesuit philosopher James V. Schall calls “the Catholic mind” is a radical intellectual openness to “all that is.”  It recognizes that truth and reality are not so much ours to create but instead are gifts to be received. We flourish as human beings only when we conform our actions to the truths around us, which we must first have the humility to recognize and receive."

Read the rest of the article at The Catholic Spirit.

The content of this article fits in well with our discussions about St. Augustine's Confessions.  Recall the section in LIBER X (Book 10, chapter 23, pg. 217) which Augustine takes to task those who even "hate" the truth because it exposes themselves to others.  Those men suffer from ideology.  See what Augustine says; it cuts to the heart of every one of us:

This is how we read our texts - with notes and markings in the margins for in-class discussion.

Occupy Wall Street? Director of the MCC has a suggestion

The following article appeared in the Nov. 10 edition of The Catholic Spirit and was written by Jason Adkins, Director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, who is also brother of Michael Adkins, Academic Dean at Saint Agnes School, and one of the teachers of the Senior Capstone Seminar.

This piece ties nicely to our reading of The Rule of St. Benedict.  At the very heart of the monks' "action" is the Liturgy.  Many of you have commented on how St. Benedict orders everything so specifically on time.  Keener readers have seen that this is intricately linked to the Church's liturgical cycle, feasts and seasons.  Ora et Labora, yet the Father of Monasticism and Western Culture clearly underlines prayer as the heart of monastic life.

Occupy Wall Street?

"The Occupy Wall Street movement has been the big story of the last few months.  What fictional “Wall Street” movie character Gordon Gekko called the NINJA generation (No Income, No Jobs, No Assets) is gathering to­gether in major urban centers to protest growing income inequality, a lousy economy in which there are few available jobs, and the feeling that our nation is ruled by a plutocracy of bankers and financial speculators.
How should Cath­olics respond?
Like its fraternal twin, 2010’s Tea Party movement, OWS has elements of a truly populist uprising. Although neither movement has a specific set of political goals, there is definitely a sentiment across the political spectrum that something is wrong.
Many people no longer believe that democracy works for them or for the common good.
But each movement correctly identifies only half the problem.
The Tea Party recognizes that Big Government too often imposes the arbitrary rule of tax-loving bureaucrats who stifle authentic liberty and strangle entrepreneurism in a mass of red tape. Big Government also tends to usurp responsibilities that should be performed by individuals, families, businesses, churches and other institutions of civil society.
On the other side of the coin, OWS recognizes that Big Business (particularly financiers and the military-industrial complex) have enriched themselves at public expense, often conspiring with politicians to do so through tax breaks, corporate bailouts and legal regimes that funnel capital into usurious loans and other forms of financial speculation that do little else than provide massive profits for a select few.
And when the financial house of cards collapses, the average Joe gets stuck with higher taxes and fewer jobs to make sure GM and the banks don’t “fail.”
Further, poverty is on the rise, a record number of people are receiving food stamps, and homelessness is now common in the suburbs, not just the inner city.
People are, understandably, upset."

Read the entire article at The Catholic Spirit, the paper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul & Minneapolis.