Cretin-Derham Hall

Yesterday’s sophomore retreat on EUCHARIST: love in the food, was a great success. I hope the students rememrb Forliti’s Five ways to make a meal really good for everyone at the table. 1) Bring a smile to the table. 2) bring a story, something to share (Sophomores, this will take some work for many of you since your adolescent bones often make you tired and crabby, sorry, but you can overcome that!) 30 Take a moment and recall who put love in the food, beginning with God who made everything you eat, and your parents who bought and prepared, etc.) 4) Come early and offer to help, set the table, fill the water glasses, etc. and 5) always help with the clean-up. emember, your parents are not your slaves! Sorry, but that’s reality. So, good eating. Remember the differenc between a “feeding” and a a family meal! You can make the difference.

What a great thing it would be if all CDH students could sing the words of the National Anthem at sports events!  I noticed some students singing at UST last Friday but I also noticed that other students were mocking them (Is mocking too strong a word? Maybe they were just joking and didn’t mean anything bad.) Let me share a thought about the Naitonal Anthem. To older generations whose memories of war (World War II, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan) remain raw, having CDH students talking, laughing, joking  during the National Anthem hurts.  During the National Anthem, out of rsepect for those who served or gave their lives  for our freedom, we remove our hats, stand in silent reverence, and take a moment to appreciate the shoulders upon which this nation stands.  What a great gift  it would be to everyone if CDH students sang with pride our National Anthem. Often when I attend CDH sports event I sit with classmates and alums of Cretin and it is heartening to hear the oldtimers sing along.  Hey, CDH, let’s show our best to the rest of the world.

Teens not there yet! Teens are at the front end of the adolescent phase of human development, a phase beginning at puberty (age 11 or so) and ending in the mid or late twenties. Would you agree or not: all teens are “at risk” today, a term usually used to designate teens struggling with chemical dependency, alcohol abuse, gang involvement, and similar difficult life conditions? I believe that all adolescents are at risk for the following reasons.

 

1) Modern medicine, now able to take pictures of the developing brain, has demonstrated that, contrary to earlier beliefs that the human brain was fully developed around age 17 or so, our brains continue to grow into the mid twenties. And it’s the pre-frontal cortex that is doing the growing. So, what does this part of the brain do? Executive function! That is, it’s that part of the brain that makes decisions and judgments, that differentiates among conflicting thoughts, that determines good and bad, better and best. It presents future consequences of present actions, helps us work toward defined goals, predicts outcomes from current behaviors, and applies social control (suppressing urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially-unacceptable outcomes). In adolescents, the pre-frontal cortex is NOT THERE YET. Which is why the young folks need parents, mentors, and friends to help them make good decisions: about speed limits and not texting while driving, about binge drinking (the scourge among college “kids”), about porn and premature sexual behaviors, about sexually transmitted diseases and the limits of safer sex, about drug use and hanging around with the wrong crowd, or jumping off cliffs without checking the depth of the river below. A challenge for all parents and parental surrogates is to save us from ourselves as we go through adolescence.

a. Some corollaries:

 i. “But we love each other” ends with her being used and both more confused about what love truly is.

ii. “At risk behaviors” (sex, drugs, erratic thinking and doing) have a way of derailing us on our way to maturity. Actually, some of us never really “grow up”.

iii. Sexually active teenage girls are four times more likely to experience depression than girls who are not sexually active. For boys, the ratio is two times more likely.

iv. Having life goals, that is, a career and life purpose to aim at, helps significantly in our making good decisions during adolescence. Vast numbers of college students still do not know what they want to do with their lives. We live in an era of extended adolescence.

v. How can something that feels so good possibly be bad is a question most teens are not ready yet to be wise about. The power of passion, the “love is blind” reality. Added to this moral dilemma is that a case can be made that love is not only blind, it’s deaf too! They don’t hear a word their parents are saying!

vi. The damage to one’s brain cells caused by chemical abuse is not the first thing on an adolescent’s mind when he/she is floating in mid-air. Drinking and driving, binge drinking, acts of vandalism, date-rape, etc.

vii. “If I get in trouble, medications will fix me.” The youthful feeling of invulnerability. Knowledge about long term side-effects are only part, and a small one oftentimes, in the prevention of destructive behaviors. The distance between the head and the heart (knowing what’s right and doing it) can be especially difficult for adolescents to bridge. It’s that prefrontal cortex again!

 

2) Preponderance of peer pressure during adolescence makes all teens and young adults “at risk”. Our identities (sexual and core identities) typically do not settle for life until the middle and late twenties. That is when, hopefully for all, we have reached a personal authenticity, with our morals and values pretty well established for life, and a strong sense of self, making us capable of making good choices in a mature manner. The leap from friend to lover is huge and the pressure to make this leap sets teens up for unwise choices. “Everybody is doing it” may be the mantra but a false one. Current data indicates that today’s teens are less likely to be sexually active than a decade ago. Even if true, majority rule is not a solid basis for morality.

 

3) A third factor making all adolescents “at risk” is the stimulation in western culture. So much of the media that dominates adolescents’ lives is driven by greed, created and promoted by premature adults, fueled by readily available access to porn and other negative shallow or false values. Add to this the current wave of anti-religious sentiment which serves to sever adolescent’s ties to highly principled communities and morally strong role models.

 

4) Most adolescents are on the way, but not there yet, in their capacity to understand the relationship between love and sex, the responsibilities which come with adult behaviors, the interplay of gender similarities and gender differences (e.g. males will play at love to have sex, females will play at sex to have love).

 

Some adolescents seem to understand their “at risk” phase of growth and appreciate and work with the adults in their lives. These young folks will survive the risks with a few minor scars. Others, more resistant to external controls, benefit greatly from the adults who hang in there with them, see them through their hurting and healing, continue to provide encouragement and guidance, offer honest feedback, and persist in loving them while not approving of certain behaviors. Adults know from their own experience that new beginnings are always possible, that some past mistakes may leave permanent scars but scars can be blessings once the festering has finished. There is no substitute for genuine moral strength. A moral fabric that is founded upon faith in our Creator God and, –for Christians, faith in Jesus, will serve us well till the shadows fall and our journeys end.

During adolescence, the over-arching task in human development is the I-Thou relationship, growing in the capacity to develop healthy relationships. Friendship is the field of play most critical to this development.

What do you think? I have come to believe that the statement commonly offered these days to the effect "I'm spiritual but not religious" may be a cop-out, one more sign that community is out and individualism is in. Sort of like:

    I'm patriotic but let somebody else fight to protect my freedom.

    I love my family but I rarely attend family gatherings.

    I wear my team's uniform but I usually skip practices.

    I want to live in a clean and safe neighborhood but I hate paying the taxes.

The "spiritual but not religious" expression might also be one way to say "Organized religion has been a source of pain and disappointment for me and I'm stepping away for a while or maybe forever." Or it might be a temporary phase on the way from "I" to "We" in personal development. I can understand these sentiments and developments. But there may be more to it.

Could it be that some baby boomers and/or their offspring are disconnected from the historical movements that brought them the good life they enjoy. I am thinking of the Church's promotion of the labor movement, and the Catholic social teaching that had a great deal to do with establishing humane working conditions and the benefits enjoyed by the majority of Americans. I am also thinking about the Martin Luther King Jr. and the gains made in the civil rights movement, again largely fueled by organized religion, by communities of faith doing together what alone or separately would never have been accomplished. 

Individual spirituality cut off from a community of faith does not benefit from what only a social order can bring to it, namely, beliefs tempered by reason, moral values moderated by a shared wisdom and common human experiences. 

Human beings are not islands unto themselves. We are social beings by nature. At some point in our spiritual journeys we will seek out others of like mind and find ourselves –imagine that – organized into a faith community.    

Some reasons why I love my Catholic Faith:

    1) We trace our comunity back to Jesus and the Apostles. He gave us Word and Sacrament, experienced in community, to continue to feed us until the end of time.

    2) We've done it all, the worst and the best, to some degree or other, which both gives us good reason to be humble and good reason to continue to strive to do great things.

    3) Through the roughest centuries of Western civilization, our monastic tradition preserved the classical heritage that remains the basis of Western culture.

    4) Our social justice teaching has been forged over centuries of history, giving positive major impetus to societal and economic policies and structures, challenging institutions of all kinds to work for the common good.

    5) Our Church has maintained a profound respect for the human mind, being a major force in the development of schools and universities.

    6) From the time of Jesus, the dignity of women and children, the priority of family, respect for every human being have been protected and fostered.

    7) Our Church has fostered the development of science, striving to maintain its accountability to a higher order. Science is not an end in itself. Just because we can doesn't mean we ought to.

    8) Our Church fosters the totality of human nature, including its respect for music and the arts.

There is more, to be sure, but these strike me as good beginners to the answer the question; What is so great about Catholicism!

Whether innocently or mischieviously, we sometimes bite the hand that feeds us. In this series of brief essays I will attempt to summarize bits and pieces of a fascinating book, WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT CHRISTIANITY, by Dinesh D'Souza. I believe he slays several dragons of ignorance and dishonesty toward organized religion and the Catholic Church. It is pretty well established that Europe is abandoning its Christian roots and the United States is on the edge of doing the same. D'Souza sees much of the energy for this change as being fueled by a new atheism, one founded on the classical proponents of a century earlier, such men as Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin. The new atheism is intellectually militant and morally self confident, he writes, a confidence based strictly on science. Science has become the new religion for many, inspiring their passion, goals, devotion and arrogance. I strongly recommend D'Souza's book.

By titling this series "Biting the hand that feeds us" I mean to suggest that much of the contemporary criticism of organized religion, and Christianity particularly, is unwarranted, exaggerated, unfair, and myopic. It seems to me to be the "sore thumb" syndrome, that is, seeing only the small part that is wounded while failing or refusing to see the rest of the body which is healthy and doing quite well. It is a major mistake for us Christians to retreat from the critics, and indeed a sad state of affairs if our backing away is because we have failed to realize the great things Christianity has done for democracy, gender equality, racial harmony, business ethics, economic justice, education of the poor, health services, works of compassion, and other improvements for the common good of humanity.

Dragon # 1   Atheists charge that organized religions, including the Catholic Church, are enemies of science.

It is unquestionably true that some religious bodies defy and deny scientific facts, for example, fundamentalist Christians who reject the evidence surrounding the theory of evolution. Not only does the Catholic Church accept the scientific evidence of evolution (Pope John Paul II taught that the theory is now more than a theory but fact, given all the evidence) but the Church was one of the earliest proponents of scientific research through its establishment of universities as far back as the 13th century, and continues today. Across the globe, Catholic educational institutions at all levels of learning –universities prominent among them–continue to foster science.

Dragon # 2  Galileo's case demonstrates the Catholic Church's animosity toward science. Prominent atheist, Carl Sagan, portrays Galileo "in a Catholic dungeon threatened with torture."

In this charge antagonists toward the Church demonstrate either ignorance of history or anti-religious bias or both. Galileo lived at a time when science itself was having an internal struggle between Ptolemy (the sun revolves around the earth) and Copernicus (the earth revolves around the sun). In his time, religious faith and science were closely intermingled –an environment we find it difficult to comprehend, cherishing as we do, the separation of church and state. Galileo's run-in with Church authorities placed him at odds with some theologians and he was called to account for his views. Contrary to atheist claims Galileo was never tortured or placed in a dungeon. House arrest for the first five months in a luxurious palace followed by going home to his villa with liberty to continue his scientific researh is far from the false picture promoted by atheist propangandists. He was never charged with heresy despite the fact that he ventured outside his scientific arena into theology. (D'Souza, ch. 10)

Dragon # 3 Through its Inquisition the Catholic Church cast fear into all of Europe by hunting down huge numbers of heretics and by persecuting Jews.

While it is true -and not to be excused–that religion is sometimes the source of conflicts and killing, it is also true that atheistic and anti-religious writers have greatly exaggerated religion's role. More often than not, though religion has been blamed, ethnic rivalry and politics were and still are the real issues. Examples are plentiful: the Thirty Years War in Europe was primarily political not religious. Northern Ireland, the Sunni-Shiite conflict in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are all politically motivated conflicts in essence.

The historial stereotypes of the Inquisition –that the Catholic Church cast fear into all of Europe by its hunting down and executing large numbers of heretics and persecuting Jews are largely myths created by political enemies of religion. One contemporary historian, Henry Kamen in THE SPANISH INQUISITION estimates the executions at 2,000 over a period of 350 years. Ugly and bad, to be sure, but far from the number of executions by atheists over a period of 100 years: Stalin's twenty million, Hitler's ten million, Mao Zedong's seventy million, without counting lesser atheistic tyrants such as Pol Pot, Castro, Hoxha, Ceausescu, and Kim Jong-il. D"Souza (page 219) writes; "Taken together, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and witch burnings (the latter accounting for half of this number) killed approximately 200,000 people. Adjusting for the increase in population, that's the equivalent of one million deaths today. Even so, these deaths caused by Christian rulers over a 500 year period amount to only 1 per cent of the deaths caused by Stalin, Hitler, and Mao in the space of a few decades." D'Souza's point is not to justify the sins of Christians but rather to offer a perspective that seems to have evaded the atheist's view of history.

Dragon #4  "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries." – Columnist Robert Kuttner spelling out the case against Christianity.

Before Mohammed's time, the majority of inhabitants of Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Egypt were Christians. Inspired by Islam's call to jihad, Mohammed's armies conquered Jerusalem and the Middle East. By the time Christendom began to fight back (two centuries later) Islam had pushed into Africa, Asia, and Europe, including parts of Italy and most of Spain. (D'Souza ch. 18)

The term Crusades was unknown to the Christian pilgrims who, at great sacrifice to themselves, chose to recapture places they revered as holy. Yes, there was pillaging and rape committed by some and the killing of many Jews, but it must be noted that the vast majority of the crusader pilgrims were uneducated and were left to themselves to find food, shelter, and safety. They left their homes passionate about reclaiming the holy places that Islam had taken from them. They had to provide their own horses, pack animals, and equipment. The pillaging and murders they committed cannot be justified but neither can the charges be justified that the crusades were a crime against humanity. "The Crusades can be seen as a belated, clumsy, and unsuccessful effort to defeat Islamic imperialism. Yet the Crusades were important because they represented a fight for the survival of Europe. (D'Souza, p. 210)

Dragon #5  "Faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the small pox virus but harder to eradicate. …Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness."  Richard Dawkins. (D'Souza p.196)

Some religious beliefs can be dangerous, even crazy. Witness suicide bombings and 9/11 for recent examples of dangerous. The resident of a psyche ward who claims to be Napoleon is an example of illness. So, where would Dawkins, an atheist, put Stalin, Hitler, and Mao who collectively annihilated 100 million innocent people? Is human faith the power that needs to be harnessed, rather than religion?

One of the persistent contributions of the Catholic Church historically is its respect for rationality, for the human capacity to reason. And, believe it or not, it is reason that harnesses faith, and faith that harnesses reason.

Atheists would have us believe that science and reason are the only roads to truth, the only realities that are real. But faith is real also. In fact, faith alone can deal with some parts of reality that science cannot. One example: science may be able to tell us how the world developed over the eons of time, the Big Bang theory and evolution giving very believable evidence for both, the when and how. But science cannot answer the questions of who and why. These are questions that point to realities beyond science's capability.

Try to change the beliefs of another person. You can reason, thinking that you are being reasonable in your arguments but to no avail. People believe what they choose to believe. Evidence to the contrary may have an influence in changing or modifying another's faith, or it may not. Faith can be powerful in wreaking havoc or creating the good and the beautiful.

Dragon #6  If scientists can destroy the influence of religion on young people, "then I think (this) may be the most important contribution we can make." Physicist Steven Weinberg.

No wonder parents worry about their children losing their faith at the college door. Many teachers, at the college level especially, cast scorn upon religious beliefs, labeling them as simplistic, unsophisticated. Scientific views and naturalistic world views are presented as fashionable and enlightened, and the only true reality. A bonus for young adults that such an attack on religion offers is its characterization of religion as sexually repressive, therefore, abandoning religious faith leaves one free and without restraints. 

It is standard fare in universities and colleges to presume that religious beliefs are something to grow out of, and education is a major means of achieving that. The problem for Christians is not that they have been indoctrinated in their religion and know too much, but that they know too little. They freeze up when challenged by the atheist perspective and are too easily intimidated by atheist claims. A way out is to seek the safety of other ill-informed believers rather than the charged up non-believers eager to spread anti-religious attitudes of the "intellectually elite." Christianity needs apologists for the faith who are well informed and passionate about their faith to meet the intellectual and scientific challenges against it. We can no longer presume that we live in a Christian West.

Dragon # 7  "The cosmos is all there is or ever was or will be." Carl Sagan.

In other words, the natural is all that exists. The supernatural does not exist, never did, does not now, and never will. Children should be taught to revere science as a replacement for religion. Dawkins asks "should parents be free to impose their beliefs upon their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in?" Dawkins goes so far as to say that teaching children religious doctrine is a form of child abuse. What a dangerous and unsophisticated belief this is! Christianity holds firmly to the rights of parents over the state.

Dragon #8 Atheist Christopher Hitchens condemns Chrstianity as "a creepy movement to impose orthodoxy on a free and pluralist and secular republic."  (D'Souza, ch. 22)

Atheists do not object to morality, many of them are known for their decent moral living. They object to absolute morality, a moral code issued from "above", a set of standards that obligates every human being, a universal and objective morality. As non-believers in God, they reject any notion that whatever universal morality there seems to be, it is not divinely derived. The golden rule –do unto others as you would have them do unto you –they say, is a natural development in the evolutionary process. The "oughts" that people feel are ultimately for self-preservation or for the survival of one's genes into the future.

D'Souza unveils Christianity's belief in the existence of a natural moral law (e.g. honesty) just as there are natural physical laws (e.g. gravity), and that these universal prescriptions for right behavior are obvious when we consider the workings of conscience. Deep in the Judaeo-Christian experience is belief in God as the One who is the giver of these universal moral laws just as God is the Creator of nature's laws. Contrary to the opinions of some, exceptions do not falsify or eliminate the existence of a universal and objective morality, they reinforce it. Disagreements among humans do not eliminate it either but rather demonstrate its complexity. Simply put: some behaviors every human ought to do, other behaviors humans ought not do.  

Contrary to atheist claims, our experience of a universal moral code is a strong argument for the existence of God, and further, powerful evidence that this God is good, the source of love itself, and a respecter of the freedom God gave humans to choose good and or to choose evil.

Dragon # 9  …the claim that Christianity and Christ do not matter.

In D'Souza's final chapter he reflects on how Christianity "can change your life."

No question that organized religion, Christianity a major one among them, has plenty of failures. elcome to the human reace. Evenso it must be said that Christianity is unique for what it holds to be true, and for the ideals and relationship to God through Jesus that are at its core. Distinct from other world religions (e.g. Judaism, Buddhism, Islam) Christianity is defined by one person, Jesus, who claimed to be more than God's human messenger (Moses, Buddha, and Mohammed), claiming to be divine as well as human.

Jesus remains the most influential person in history. The claims about His resurrection are unique. The requirements he makes of His followers can be rejected but not ignored –there will be judgment and justice done.

How can Christianity improve our lives? D'Souza offers several thoughts. 1) Christianity makes sense of who we are in the world. Christianity has always embraced both reason and faith. While reason helps us discover things about experience, faith helps us understand things that transcend experience.  

2) Christianity infuses life with a powerful and exhilarating sense of purpose. Our lives on earth have meaning not only to ourselves but to God. Injustices experienced and sufferings undergone are not the end, but point to a transcendent power who can bring good from evil and blessings from misfortune. Each person matters. This life is but prologue to the next. We live our lives in the "shadow of eternity."

3) Christianity gives us the answer to our loneliness. In life as in death we are never alone. God is with us. Since it is impossible for us to reach up to God, God has reached down to us. Jesus is the Way, the truth, and the life. 

Selma and Inauguration Day. It was 44 years ago that I marched with an estimated twenty-five thousand plus Americans from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery. It was an intense time: fresh memories of civil rights workers seized and murdered, of red necks' and KKK's open hostility towards blacks and northern "do-gooders", of mounted police mercilessly whipping peaceful protesters, of deep seated bigotry and hate. We slept on church basement floors and in the open air chill. We sang "We shall overcome", over and over, as we walked, hope filled but with an ever present realization of potential danger. Reminding us of the danger were the national guard personnel, evenly spaced, facing away from us, with their guns held in the ready, for our protection. An experience I shall never forget.

Yesterday, as I watched the broadcast of President Obama's inauguration and listened to comments from both blacks and whites, I felt the surge of hope and bubbling joy in young and old alike. I began to realize that I would never truly appreciate what this day must mean for African Americans.

I was one of the marchers at Selma and am glad to have been there. I needed to be there. But, like yesterday, Selma's significance for blacks was far beyond my comprehension. Still, I did not need to comprehend Selma to participate in its noble purpose. Nor do I need to comprehend yesterday's Inauguration to be grateful for its occurence. We humans may be slow in accomplishing God's work. And it may take a while for us to get it right. Whether or not we comprehend it, it may be sufficient to partake and be grateful.

Dr. Francis Collins directed one of the most significant and amazing scientific projects in modern times. The genome project arrived at the genetic code for humans. It has over 3 billion letters and, if written on paper and the papers stacked on top of each other, the pile would equal the height of the Washington monument!

Collins was not raised with any serious religious training and went through a period of agnosticism in his late teens, then in college believed he was an atheist. Then he read MERE CHRISTIANITY by C.S. Lewis and changed his mind about atheism. Now  atheism struck him as denying reason. He began to search for God and found God in the Christian faith. What is an amazing story is his capacity to embrace science and faith in beautiful harmony. His book THE LANGUAGE OF GOD is a first rate read for anyone espousing atheism but open to learn.

THE BODY OF CHRIST means three things. First, His physical body, born of Mary in Bethlehem and matured in wisdom, age, and grace as he walked this earth (Mt. 2:1) and is now in heaven (Mk. 16:19). Second, the Sacramental Body which He gave to His followers in the Eucharist (Mk. 14:22) of which we partake every time we receive sacramental Communion. Third, the Church, the body of believers baptized into His Spirit, giving witness to Jesus until the end of time, is the Body of Christ (I Cor. 12:27).

CHRISTIAN FAITH is, at its core, a relationship between a human person and God. It is the choice we make to embrace Jesus as the One sent from God to unite us with the God whom Jesus called "Abba, Father." The word "faith" can also mean WHAT we believe, that which we believe to be true and which we accept as our creed, namely, the beliefs of our faith community. As important as beliefs are, more important is the faith relationship we have with God, more important is the believer.

THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH. The word "catholic" means universal. Demographers say we Catholics number about one billion believers worldwide. Imagine the challenge of our Pope and Bishops to hold us all together as one community of faith. We are present in every nation and area of the globe. We represent hundreds if not thousands of cultures and sub-cultures, languages and dialects, customs and histories, rituals and philosophies. American Catholics are enriched as we appreciate the differences within our universal faith community. American Catholics are wiser for the realization that our tent is world wide and our ministries must at the same time achieve unity among the whole Body of Christ while nourishing the personal faith of a billion individuals. This why we pray for our Pope and Bishops at every Mass.

(more to come)