Ugh

What is Agape Latte?

"Agape" is a Greek word for a kind of love that seeks nothing in return.

Agape Latte is a monthly event designed for students seeking to learn more about faith and religion in an inviting social environment. Occurring the first Tuesday of each month in Hillside Cafe at 8:30 p.m., students are treated to free desserts, coffee, and an engaging lecture followed by Q & A.

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Thanks for a definition of agape that fails to show its significance for Christianity. This is liable to the kind of fuzzy-wuzziness that has replaced a robust understanding of agape/caritas that is inseparable from God's commandments. And who might be representative of such a false form of Christianity? The next speaker:

Jim Keenan, S.J., Professor of Theology at Boston College will be speaking on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 at 8:30pm in Hillside Cafe for the next Agape Latte. The event is open to all undergraduate students. For more information, please visit our Student Corner.

The title of the talk is "Family Dynamics of the Church: Love and Disagreement." Using the family to understand the Church can be problematic even if done in a legitimate manner, since the correspondence between the two is very imperfect. What is worse is when it is done in an illegitimate manner; I hope this will not be exercise in showing BC students how one can love the Church and still disagree with the teachings of the Church. You might think that this sort of disobedience was outdated and out of fashion, but no, we still have plenty of whacked theologians around.

How better to justify dissent and failure to follow the commandments of God, especially the 6th and the 9th, than to appeal to an amorphous conception of love? Insofar as the comparison between the Church and American families is apt, one can think of dissenting moral theologians and others as spoiled, rebellious teenagers who think they know it all and can do anything they want, as long as they don't "hurt" anyone, and as long as they "love."

Let me make it clear: I don't care for Professor Keenan or his opinions concerning moral theology. (Or his new-fangled casuistry.) He is a priest, but why tranish the priesthood by associating his name with that sacred order?

Online expose of Fr. Keenan; from a review of Fr. Michael Sherwin's book, By Knowledge and By Love:

The theologians of moral motivation, which includes such figures as Karl Rahner, Josef Fuchs, and James Keenan—a group to whom we owe that remarkable invention called the fundamental option—take the basic position that, in moral action, will takes precedence over intellect, and for that reason they can be fairly described as voluntarist. In effect, these moralists attempt to rule reason out of moral behavior. Reason, for them, has to do with what is right, not with what is good. The pursuit of the good is, of course, the whole purpose of the moral life, but as these moralists view things, it is only will, or charity, that can attain the good, and a charity that somehow manages to be antecedent to, and independent of, practical reason. But if this is true, then “moral man” is only half a man, an uninformed Will.

(Review of the same book by Reinhard Hutter)

God have mercy on moral theologians who have forgotten what St. John says in his epistles: "And this is love, that we follow his commandments." (2 John 6)

Matthew 18:5-9
Et, qui susceperit unum parvulum talem in nomine meo, me suscipit. Qui autem scandalizaverit unum de pusillis istis, qui in me credunt, expedit ei, ut suspendatur mola asinaria in collo eius et demergatur in profundum maris. Vae mundo ab scandalis! Necesse est enim ut veniant scandala; verumtamen vae homini, per quem scandalum venit! Si autem manus tua vel pes tuus scandalizat te, abscide eum et proice abs te: bonum tibi est ad vitam ingredi debilem vel claudum, quam duas manus vel duos pedes habentem mitti in ignem aeternum. Et si oculus tuus scandalizat te, erue eum et proice abs te: bonum tibi est unoculum in vitam intrare, quam duos oculos habentem mitti in gehennam ignis.

Something the administration at BC, as well as the majority of the Jesuit community there and of the theology faculty, should keep in mind.