Why Are You Staring at the Sky?
Gospel Commentary for Feast of the Ascension
By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
ROME, MAY 2, 2008 (Zenit.org).- In the first reading an angel says to the disciples: "Men of Galilee, why are you staring at the sky? This Jesus, who was taken up from among you and assumed into heaven, shall one day return in the same way in which you saw him go to heaven."
This is an occasion to clarify once and for all what we mean by "heaven." Among almost all people, heaven indicates the habitation of the divinity. Even the Bible uses this spatial language: "Glory to God in the highest heaven and peace to men on earth."
With the advent of the scientific era, all these religious meanings attributed to the word "heaven" are now in crisis. The heavens are the space in which our planet and the whole solar system moves, and nothing else. We all have heard of the remark attributed to the Soviet astronaut after returning from his trip through the cosmos: "I traveled through outer space a long time and didn't see God anywhere!"
It is important therefore to try to clarify what we Christians mean when we say "Our Father who art in heaven," or when we say that someone "went to heaven." In these cases the Bible adapts itself to the common way of speaking (we do it today too, even in the scientific era, when we say that the sun "rises" and "sets"). But the Bible knows well and teaches that God is "in heaven, on earth and everywhere," that he is the one who "created the heavens" and, if he created them, cannot be "contained" by them. That God is "in the heavens" means that he "dwells in inaccessible light," that he is as far beyond us "as the heavens are above the earth."
We Christians also agree that in talking about heaven as God's dwelling place we understand it more as a state of being than a place. When we speak about God it would be nonsense to say that he is literally "above" or "below," "up" or "down." We are not therefore saying that heaven doesn't exist but only that we lack the categories with which to adequately represent it. Suppose we ask a person who is blind from birth to describe the different colors to us: red, green, blue. ... He could not tell us anything since we only perceive colors through our eyes. This is what it is like for us in regard to "heaven" and to eternal life, which is outside space and time.
In light of what we have said, what does it mean to proclaim that Jesus "ascended into heaven"? We find the answer in the Creed. "He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father."
That Christ has ascended into heaven means that he "is seated at the right hand of the Father," that is, as man too, he has entered into God's world; that he has been constituted the Lord and head of all things, as St. Paul says in the second reading.
In regard to us, "going to heaven" or going to "paradise" means going and being "with Christ" (Philippians 1:23). Our heaven is the risen Christ together with whom we shall form a "body" after our resurrection but also, in a provisional and imperfect way, immediately after our death. It is sometimes objected that no one has returned from heaven to assure us that it truly exists and is not just a pious illusion. It's not true! There is one who -- if we know how to recognize him -- returns from heaven every day in the Eucharist to assure us and to renew his promises.
The words of the angel -- "Men of Galilee, why are you staring at the sky?" -- also contain an implicit reproof: We should not just "stare into the sky" and speculate about the beyond, but rather we should live in expectation of his return, follow his mission, bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth, improve life in this world.
He has gone to heaven but without leaving earth. He has only disappeared from our field of vision. Indeed in the Gospel he himself assures us: "Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the world."
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
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Father Raniero Cantalamessa is the Pontifical Household preacher. The readings for this Sunday are Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Matthew 28:16-20.
Globalizing the Common Good
Social Sciences Academy Considers Subsidiarity, Solidarity
VATICAN CITY, MAY 2, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The Vatican is considering how the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity can work together in a globalized pursuit of the common good.
Today in the Vatican press office, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences presented its plenary session on "Pursuing the Common Good: How Solidarity and Subsidiarity Can Work Together." The meeting began today and continues through Tuesday.
Participating in the press conference were Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; Margaret Archer of the University of Warwick, England; and Pierpaolo Donati of the University of Bologna, Italy.
The goal of the assembly, explained an English-language note released for the press conference, "is to give new meaning and application to the concept of common good in this age of globalization, which in certain fields is leading to growing inequalities and social injustice, laceration and fragmentation of the social fabric, in short, to the destruction of common goods throughout the world."
The note continued: "The main hypothesis on which scholars are called to exchange their views is that the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity can, unlike the compromises between socialism and liberalism, mobilize new social, economic and cultural forces of civil society which, within politically shared fundamental values, can generate those common goods on which the future of humanity depends."
4 principles
During the plenary session, participants will study current radical changes in light of four fundamental principles of Catholic social doctrine: the dignity of the human person, common good, solidarity and subsidiarity.
With this study, they seek "to understand how and in what measure these principles are effectively applied, and to suggest new solutions where they are misconstrued, misunderstood, disobeyed or distorted."
With this in mind, the pontifical academy plans to examine case studies where the interweaving of these principles has been successful.
The note mentions cases such as the "economy of communion" and the "Food Bank"; shared access to information goods on communication networks, specifically the Internet; subsidiary educational activities in developing countries; and third-sector organizations using the instrument of microcredit for social, economic and human development.
The note concluded by underlining how "the fundamental challenge" facing the assembly is that "once we acknowledge that the great deficit of modernity, which is nevertheless responsible for many social conquests, has been and still is social solidarity -- at all levels, from local to global -- it is a matter of seeing whether and how this deficit can be overcome by a new way of intending and practicing subsidiarity as a proactive, promotional principle, not only as a defensive, protective one."
"In short," the pontifical academy said, "the challenge is for a new combination of subsidiarity and solidarity to become the key to activate those social circuits on which common goods depend, the key to turn globalization into a 'civilization of the common good.'"
The Scots-Irish are derived from a mass migration from Northern Ireland in the 1700s, when the Calvinist "Ulster Scots" decided they'd had enough of fighting Anglican England's battles against Irish Catholics. One group settled initially in New Hampshire, spilling over into modern-day Vermont and Maine. The overwhelming majority -- 95% -- migrated to the Appalachians in a series of frontier communities that stretched from Pennsylvania to northern Alabama and Georgia. They eventually became the dominant culture of the South and much of the Midwest.
True American-style democracy had its origins in this culture. Its values emanated from the Scottish Kirk, which had thrown out the top-down hierarchy of the Catholic Church and replaced it with governing councils made up of ordinary citizens. This mix of fundamentalist religion and social populism grew from a people who for 16 centuries had been tested through constant rebellions against centralized authority. The Scots who headed into the feuds of 17th-century Ulster, and then into the backlands of the American frontier, hardened further into a radicalism that proclaimed that no man had a duty to obey a government if its edicts violated his moral conscience.
Matched with this rebelliousness was a network of extended family "clans," still evident among the Scots-Irish, built on an egalitarianism that measured a person by their own code of honor, courage, loyalty and audacious leadership. Noted Scottish professor T.C. Smout said it best when he observed that these relationships were "compounded both of egalitarian and patriarchal features, full of respect for birth while being free from humility." They demanded strong leaders, but would never tolerate one who considered himself above his fellows. Andrew Jackson, the first president of Scots-Irish descent, forever changed the style of American politics, creating a movement that even today is characterized as Jacksonian democracy.
The New Dixie Manifesto:
States' Rights Will Rise Again...
by Dr Michael Hill and Dr Thomas Fleming
First Published in The Washington Post,
Sunday, 29 October 1995
America is only a geographical expression. Metternich's joke was made originally at the expense of Italy, but there are all too many modern states that have tried to build artificial national identities out of the ruins of historic and traditional regions -- the provinces, the sticks, the boondocks, the places where real people live, write poetry and pay their taxes.
In this respect, American Southerners have much in common with the Scots and the Welsh in Britain, the Lombards and Sicilians in Italy and the Ukrainians in the defunct Soviet Union. All have made enormous economic, military and cultural contributions to their imperial rulers, who rewarded their loyalty with exploitation and contempt.
In the United States, where ethnic slurs are punishable as hate crimes, it is still socially acceptable to describe Southerners as "rednecks" and "crackers," even though Southerners have, in fact, contributed to American culture, high and low, to a degree vastly out of proportion to their numbers.
What would American literature be without Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Walker Percy and Eudora Welty? What sort of political system would our ancestors have given us, if George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had decided to remain British? What kind of popular music could we listen to, if white "crackers" like Hank Williams and Merle Haggard and Southern blacks like Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles had been content with the bland commercial music churned out by Tin Pan Alley? The mind of the South remains distinctive, even today, if only for the tenacity with which its people hold onto their religious faith.
Until recent years, it looked as if the progress of history had condemned all the little nations to the ash heap of history. But the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union and of Yugoslavia have inspired regional and ethnic movements all over Europe. Some of them are threatening secession; others have been content to demand home rule and a right to assert their culture and language.
Here in the United States, a new group of Southerners is calling for nothing more revolutionary than home rule for the states established by the U.S. Constitution. The Southern League was founded in 1994 at a meeting of scholars, journalists and political activists in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Our members are pledged to seek the well-being and independence of the Southern people by every honorable means. Far from wishing any ill to the rest of the nation, we believe that a renewed South will be an inspiration to other regions in search of their own identities and to all Americans who wish to lead their lives in peace.
A concern for states' rights, local self-government and regional identity used to be taken for granted everywhere in America. But the United States is no longer, as it once was, a federal union of diverse states and regions. National uniformity is being imposed by the political class that runs Washington, the economic class that owns Wall Street and the cultural class in charge of Hollywood and the Ivy League.
The easiest way to secure home rule for Southern states is to restore the federal constitution. What had been a genuinely federal union has been turned into a multicultural, continental empire, ruled from Washington by federal agencies and under the thumb of the federal judiciary. And all this is done regardless of the party or ideology that controls the White House. If the liberal Democrats have saddled us with affirmative action, conservative Republicans are busily "federalizing" crimes that used to be within the purview of states and local communities.
We believe it is time for the people of the Southern states to take control of their own governments, their own institutions, their own culture, their own communities and their own lives. On the national political level, this will mean sending men and women to Congress who will insist upon a strict construction of the Constitution and a restoration of the 10th Amendment that explicitly reserves all unenumerated powers to the states and to the people.
On the state level, self-government should be restored to the towns and communities that make up the states. This means an end, not only to federal interference, but to state interference in local government and local schools. Under federal and state mandates, American schools have become the joke of the civilised world, and in the guise of helping black children, we have destroyed educational opportunities for children of all races. It is time to give the schools back to the parents.
Local control over local schools is not a recipe for resegregation. Involuntary desegregation, forced busing and court-ordered redistricting have succeeded only in lowering the standards of education, precipitating "white flight" and de facto segregation and exacerbating racial tensions. As black novelist Zora Neale Hurston observed in 1954, the premise of Brown v. Board of Education -- that all-black schools were inherently inferior -- was an insult to black Americans. Brown, as Hurston predicted, set the stage for "government by fiat." If neighbors, black and white, cannot work out their problems among themselves, then no government can do it for them.
On a personal level it is time for Southerners to wean themselves from dependence on federal largesse. Since the New Deal, Washington has funneled more tax dollars into the South than it has taken out, and this has caused the region to be bound tightly by the attached strings. If Southerners are ever to be free from federal dictates, we must learn to provide for our own needs without depending on government wealth transfers.
On a spiritual level, we take our stand squarely within the tradition of Christianity. This historic faith, though everywhere attacked by the hollow men of modernity, has always been central to the pursuit of personal honor, political liberty and human charity. Asking for only the religious freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, we oppose the government's campaign against our Christian traditions.
The war that is being waged against the Southern identity and its traditional symbols must cease. Legislatures in Southern states are under pressure to rename streets and destroy monuments that honor Confederate soldiers. Corporations headquartered in Southern states have refused to fly state flags that contain a Confederate emblem; public schools have forbidden the display of the Confederate battle flag as if it were an example of gang colors.
If the Confederate flags are tainted by the abuses of slavery, so are the flags of the United States, Great Britain, France and Spain -- all countries that engaged in the trading of human beings. We do not claim that all our ancestors were infallible or even honorable in all their actions, but we utterly repudiate the one-sided and hypocritical movement to demonize Southerners and their symbols.
Race relations are nowhere perfect in the United States, but black and white Southerners have learned through experience, often painful, how to get along with, or at least tolerate, each other. Southerners on both sides who were "racist" by principle were decent and humane in their actual conduct. As Dick Gregory used to say, "Down South they don't care how close you get, so long as you don't get too big; up North they don't care how big you get, so long as you don't get too close." This regional difference in attitude may help to explain why so many decent black American families are moving back to the South.
After so many decades of strife, black and white Southerners of good will should be left alone to work out their destinies, avoiding, before it is too late, the urban hell that has been created by the lawyers, social engineers and imperial bureaucrats who have grown rich on programs that have done nothing to help anyone but themselves.
The same Northern intellectuals, who in the 19th century were denouncing Southern "racism," greeted the arrival of Catholics and Jews with horror. They designed public school programs to Protestantise the Irish and practised the same kinds of genteel and not-so-genteel discrimination against blacks. Southern history tells a different story. Both Jews and Catholics quickly made their way into the highest political and social circles. In fact, the first Catholic and the first Jew to sit in an American cabinet were picked by Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. Southerners have been remarkably free of the anti-immigrant prejudices that have characterised Northern politics since the 1840s.
Southerners respect the rights of all Americans in every region to preserve their authentic cultural traditions and demand the same respect from others. For too long, Northern intellectuals have tried to control Southern culture and to northernise our schools and universities. They and their Southern allies have rewritten history and imposed their mythology upon generations of students, who have come to believe that their ancestors were uniquely guilty in the annals of inhumanity, that their region is -- in the graphic phrase of one brainwashed Southerner -- "the nation's armpit." This is not scholarship but propaganda.
If Southerners were any other people in the world, the campaign to rob them of their symbols, their history and their cultural identity would be termed cultural genocide -- a term that several scholars have not hesitated to apply. The late Raphael Lemkin, the Polish legal scholar who helped give the term its currency, defined "genocide" not merely as an attempt to annihilate a people physically but as a plan for "the disintegration of the political and social institutions of culture, language, national feelings, religion." If Southerners are a blight on the American landscape, as they are almost uniformly portrayed, then the only "solution" is to eliminate them by destroying their cultural identity.
As Southerners, we prefer not to think of ourselves as victims. We are proud, not of what our people have suffered (although they have suffered a good deal), but of the good things they have done. We are not asking for reparations or set-aside programs. All we ask are the rights the Constitution gave us and all Americans over 200 years ago: the right to be let alone to mind our own business, to raise our own children and to say our own prayers in the buildings built with our own money. As one of Faulkner's characters remarks, "That don't seem like too much to ask."
_________________
Michael Hill, a former professor of British History at the University of Alabama, is the president of the League of the South, based in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Thomas Fleming is the editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
This is a picture slideshow of Scotland and The Isle of Skye. I hope you enjoy the pictures and the music! (PLEASE DO NOT COPY THIS VIDEO)Thank You for all the nice comments!
Music~ The Baltimore Consort, ''On The Banks Of Helicon, Early Music Of Scotland''
Jack Bauer is headed to Africa after all!
You’ll recall the ORIGINAL original plan was to start season seven of "24" with an episode or two set in Africa before jumping in time and place to Washington, D.C.
Well, the writers’ strike has suddenly brought us back to that plan, sort of, with a two-hour TV-movie that takes the lead “24” character to the Dark Continent.
The “24” movie will air this autumn. Season seven, part of which was shot prior to the movie (and the strike), is slated to start airing January of next year, Screen Actors Guild permitting.
The news of Bauer’s next destination was spilled in a related Associated Press story on “24” webisodes one can read here.
No word on whether such a technique would ever be used on Big "24," which went back into production on April 22 in Los Angeles in preparation for the January 2009 premiere of its delayed seventh season. The show had completed eight episodes of the season prior to the writers strike late last year, including shooting in Washington, D.C.
"Jack Bauer is under Senate investigation for crimes against humanity," Coto explains. But while in Washington, FBI agent Renee Walker brings him in to deal with a series of possible terrorist attacks instigated by former CTU agent Tony Almeida, previously presumed dead. "Jack's thrust into this mystery of how Tony is still alive, and why is he trying to bring down this country?"
To further fill "24's" gap this year, Coto says a two-hour "prequel" TV movie is expected to air this fall, which will bring Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer to Africa and "lead directly into the events of Season Seven."
"He's a soul in turmoil and has been moving from place to place trying to find somewhere he can be at peace," Coto says. "But he winds up in Africa in the middle of a military coup."
Meanwhile, Bauer is subpoenaed to appear before the Senate hearing while in Africa, but doesn't want to go.
"He's not running away from anything," Coto says. "It's because they've taken everything from him, but they won't let them take his freedom."
Q: How is the "responsibility to protect," mentioned by the Holy Father, a new principle for the international community? How would this differ from the international community's response to oppressive governments in the past?I'll have to read the Holy Father's address to the UN more carefully. I did find this on a quick search of the text:
Archbishop Migliore: He stated that the moral basis for a government’s claim to authority, to sovereignty, is its responsibility for, its willingness to, and effectiveness in protecting its populations from any kind of violation of human rights. While borrowing this expression from the Outcome Document adopted by Heads of State and Government in 2005, Pope Benedict outlined a broader concept: Responsibility to protect covers not only the so-called humanitarian -- military -- interventions, rather, it could be used as the new name for sovereignty, which is not only a right, but above all a responsibility to protect and promote the populations in their daily lives.
This is all the more necessary at a time when we experience the obvious paradox of a multilateral consensus that continues to be in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world’s problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community.
Recognition of the unity of the human family, and attention to the innate dignity of every man and woman, today find renewed emphasis in the principle of the responsibility to protect. This has only recently been defined, but it was already present implicitly at the origins of the United Nations, and is now increasingly characteristic of its activity. Every State has the primary duty to protect its own population from grave and sustained violations of human rights, as well as from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether natural or man-made. If States are unable to guarantee such protection, the international community must intervene with the juridical means provided in the United Nations Charter and in other international instruments. The action of the international community and its institutions, provided that it respects the principles undergirding the international order, should never be interpreted as an unwarranted imposition or a limitation of sovereignty. On the contrary, it is indifference or failure to intervene that do the real damage. What is needed is a deeper search for ways of pre-empting and managing conflicts by exploring every possible diplomatic avenue, and giving attention and encouragement to even the faintest sign of dialogue or desire for reconciliation.If a government is non-functional, and the people cannot create a new government, then the burden falls upon the international community, having concern for the common good of which all peoples have a part, to create the stability and conditions that will enable an effective government to be created?
The principle of "responsibility to protect" was considered by the ancient "ius gentium" as the foundation of every action taken by those in government with regard to the governed: at the time when the concept of national sovereign States was first developing, the Dominican Friar Francisco de Vitoria, rightly considered as a precursor of the idea of the United Nations, described this responsibility as an aspect of natural reason shared by all nations, and the result of an international order whose task it was to regulate relations between peoples. Now, as then, this principle has to invoke the idea of the person as image of the Creator, the desire for the absolute and the essence of freedom. The founding of the United Nations, as we know, coincided with the profound upheavals that humanity experienced when reference to the meaning of transcendence and natural reason was abandoned, and in consequence, freedom and human dignity were grossly violated. When this happens, it threatens the objective foundations of the values inspiring and governing the international order and it undermines the cogent and inviolable principles formulated and consolidated by the United Nations. When faced with new and insistent challenges, it is a mistake to fall back on a pragmatic approach, limited to determining "common ground", minimal in content and weak in its effect.
Experience shows that legality often prevails over justice when the insistence upon rights makes them appear as the exclusive result of legislative enactments or normative decisions taken by the various agencies of those in power. When presented purely in terms of legality, rights risk becoming weak propositions divorced from the ethical and rational dimension which is their foundation and their goal. The Universal Declaration, rather, has reinforced the conviction that respect for human rights is principally rooted in unchanging justice, on which the binding force of international proclamations is also based. This aspect is often overlooked when the attempt is made to deprive rights of their true function in the name of a narrowly utilitarian perspective. Since rights and the resulting duties follow naturally from human interaction, it is easy to forget that they are the fruit of a commonly held sense of justice built primarily upon solidarity among the members of society, and hence valid at all times and for all peoples.An insistence upon the grounding of rights in justice and the natural law. But what sort of rights? Subjective passive rights are more readily acceptable than subjective active rights, but are we bound to accept even all of the subjective passive rights enumerated by the Holy See, such as the right to health care? Is the right to health care derived from commutative justice or from legal justice? Is health care a common good? Or is it a derived common good if it is subsidized by the state treasury? And suppose it cannot be subsidized by the state treasury without incurring debt, or dependence upon an unjust political economy, what then? Does the right still exist? If not, then is it a right?
Live act from Loituma. Their song is called "Ieva's polka".
Lyrics:
Finnish:
Nuapurista kuulu se polokan tahti
jalakani pohjii kutkutti.
Ievan äiti se tyttöösä vahti
vaan kyllähän Ieva sen jutkutti,
sillä ei meitä silloin kiellot haittaa
kun myö tanssimme laiasta laitaan.
Salivili hipput tupput täppyt
äppyt tipput hilijalleen.
Ievan suu oli vehnäsellä
ko immeiset onnee toevotti.
Peä oli märkänä jokaisella
ja viulu se vinku ja voevotti.
Ei tätä poikoo märkyys haittaa
sillon ko laskoo laiasta laitaan.
Salivili hipput.
Ievan äiti se kammarissa
virsiä veisata huijjuutti,
kun tämä poika naapurissa
ämmän tyttöä nuijjuutti.
Eikä tätä poikoo ämmät haittaa
sillon ko laskoo laiasta laitaan.
Salivili.
Siellä oli lystiä soiton jäläkeen
sain minä kerran sytkyyttee.
Kottiin ko mäntii ni ämmä se riitelj
ja Ieva jo alako nyyhkyytteek.
Minä sanon Ievalle mitäpä se haittaa
laskemma vielähi laiasta laitaa.
Salivili.
Muorille sanon jotta tukkee suusi
en ruppee sun terveyttäs takkoomaa.
Terveenä peäset ku korjoot luusi
ja määt siitä murjuus makkoomaa.
Ei tätä poikoo hellyys haittaa
ko akkoja huhkii laiasta laitaan.
Salivili.
Sen minä sanon jotta purra pittää
ei mua niin voan nielasta.
Suat männä ite vaikka lännestä ittään
vaan minä en luovu Ievasta,
sillä ei tätä poikoo kainous haittaa
sillon ko tanssii laiasta laitaan.
Salivili.
English:
The sound of a polka drifted from my neighbor's
and set my feet a-tapping oh!
Ieva's mother had her eye on her daughter but
Ieva she managed to fool her, you know.
'Cause who's going to listen to mother saying no
when we're all busy dancing to and fro!
Ieva was smiling, the fiddle it was wailing
as people crowded round to wish her luck.
Everyone was hot but it didn't seem to bother
the handsome young man, the dashing buck.
'Cause who's going to mind a drop of sweat
when he's all busy dancing to and fro!
Ieva's mother she shut herself away
in her own quiet room to hum a hymn.
Leaving our hero to have a spot of fun
in a neighbor's house when the lights are dim.
'Cause what does it matter what the old folks say
when you're all busy dancing to and fro!
When the music stopped then the real fun began
and that's when the laddie fooled around.
When he took her home, when the dancing was over
her mother angrily waiting they found.
But I said to her, Ieva, now don't you weep
and we'll soon be dancing to and fro!
I said to her mother now stop that noise
or I won't be responsible for what I do.
If you go quietly and stay in your room
you won't get hurt while your daughter I woo.
'Cause this fine laddie is a wild sort of guy
when he's all busy dancing to and fro!
One thing I tell you is you won't trap me,
no, you won't find me an easy catch.
Travel to the east and travel to the west but
Ieva and I are going to make a match.
'Cause this fine laddie ain't the bashful sort
when he's all busy dancing to and fro.
THE ACADEMY OF PHILOSOPHY AND LETTERS
Announces its Annual Meeting
At the Holiday Inn, Baltimore/Washington International Airport,
890 Elkridge Landing Rd., Linthicum Heights, Maryland/410-859-8400
May 30-June 1, 2008
The Ron Paul Evolution
By Daniel McCarthy
The Ron Paul revolution looks to the future.
Also from The American Conservative:
The Case for Recession
by Nelson Hultberg
When the economy is ailing, federal cures can be worse than the disease.
Surging to Defeat
By Andrew J. Bacevich
The Petraeus strategy buys time but not victory.
Superpower Play
By Luke Coppen
China’s Olympic quest isn’t just for gold medals but for global prestige.
What Is a Catholic University?
Cardinal Arinze's Homily on Christendom's 30th
FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, APRIL 27, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is the homily Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, gave April 20 at the closing Mass of the 30th anniversary celebrations of Christendom College.
* * *
1. A Day of Grace
The Eucharistic Celebration is our supreme act of worship of God. It is the highest tribute of thanksgiving which the Church can offer to our Creator. It is therefore very fitting that on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, Christendom concludes its celebration of its 30th Anniversary with this Solemn Mass.
As we gather at this Mass, we are in spiritual union with the Vicar of Christ, Pope Benedict XVI, who is at this time celebrating the Holy Eucharist in New York City. Having commemorated yesterday the third anniversary of his election to the See of St. Peter, we are in a special time of grace. For a Catholic educational institution such as Christendom College which has a particular and deep link and attachment to the Church and her Magisterium, this is reason for added joy.
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, for thirty years Christendom College has given distinguished service as an authentic academic institution. It has performed admirably to live, to show and to share its Catholic character. And it has educated citizens that are a credit to Church and society. These will now be the points for our reflection.
2. An Authentic University or College
A university or college is expected to be a centre of studies and research, a community of teachers and students who are engaged in the joint love and pursuit of knowledge, and an institution which is at the service of the wider society.
Christendom College has admirably fulfilled this role. As a liberal arts college, it has given dynamic leadership to its students on how to discover the true, the good and the beautiful, and how to pursue these goods which are so deserving in themselves. The students are educated to work hard to be free and to remain free persons by disciplining themselves to choose the good, both for themselves and for others. This is the avenue that leads to becoming men and women of virtue, of justice, of prudence, of temperance, of fortitude and of knowledge. This leads to true wisdom. The students are taught not to be afraid of the truth, of reality.
When students in the beginning of their higher studies acquire such a solid foundation, then they can safely go on to pursue a vocational training, a technical specialization or a career. Christendom College has done well in helping students acquire this indispensable foundation.
3. A Catholic College or University
Christendom College is above all a Catholic educational institution. It does not just give proof of a rigorously serious member of the national and international community of knowledge and research. It importantly expresses its Catholic identity through an explicit profession of the Catholic Faith, and through studies given unity and a sense of direction by sound philosophy and authentic Catholic theology.
The College knows that the true, the good and the beautiful is finally God himself. And God has manifested himself to us in his Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. The splendour of divine truth, goodness and beauty shines forth in Christ. In the Gospel just read, Jesus tells us: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6). If we follow the light of Christ, we shall have true freedom and be able to arrive at wisdom. “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn. 8:31-32).
A genuine Catholic university or college, therefore, distinguishes itself by developing and showing a harmonious relationship between faith and reason. Revealed truth and truths acquired by human reason and experience both come from the same God. They do not, and cannot, contradict each other. As the First Vatican Council says: “Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth” ("Dei Filius," 4: DS 3017).
For this reason the Second Vatican Council encourages this harmony and therefore the contribution of a Catholic university or college under the light of the Christian revelation. It says: “Therefore, if methodical investigation within every branch of learning is carried out in a genuinely scientific manner and in accord with moral norms, it never truly conflicts with faith. For earthly matters and the concerns of faith derive from the same God. Indeed, whoever labours to penetrate the secrets of reality with a humble and steady mind, is, even unawares, being led by the hand of God, who holds all things in existence, and gives them their identity” ("Gaudium et Spes," 38: cf also Catechism of the Catholic Church, 159).
All this means that a Catholic university or college would have abandoned its identity and specific role if it did not allow the light of the Catholic faith to bear on such areas of study as history, psychology, ethics and the humanities in general; if it did not see the necessity of reference to higher truths or morality as authoritatively interpreted by the Magisterium; if, in short, it did not allow theology to be a core subject.
A Catholic university, says the Servant of God, Pope John Paul II, needs to develop “courageous creativity and rigorous fidelity” ("Ex Corde Ecclesiae," 8). “While each discipline is taught systematically and according to its own methods, interdisciplinary studies, assisted by a careful and thorough study of philosophy and theology, enable students to acquire an organic vision of reality and to develop a continuing desire for intellectual progress” ("Ex Corde Ecclesiae," 20). Pope Benedict XVI spoke on 4/17/08 of the duty of intellectual charity towards the students by their educators (cf. p. 6 of his Address to Catholic Educators).
We thank God that Christendom College has for thirty years rendered this service.
4. Alumni, a Credit to Christendom College
The alumni are a credit to Christendom College. By their fruits you shall know them (cf Mt 7:16). The College has equipped its students to ask fundamental questions: Where do we come from? Why do we exist? Where are we going? How can we get there? What have great men and women done in the past in their response? What does our Catholic faith teach us?
Is it any surprise that the students learn to be the salt of the earth, the leaven in society, lamps set on a lampstand, a city set on a hill, or, in brief, children of light (cf Mt 5:13-16; Jn 12:36)?
They therefore want to contribute to make this world a better place. They reject negativity and a withdrawal syndrome attitude towards society. They get involved. They work to build on what past generations have handed on to them and because they are Christians, they are people of hope which is finally based on Jesus the Saviour, who gives meaning, synthesis and a sense of direction to our life endeavours (cf "Spe Salvi," 27).
Is it any surprise that alumni have distinguished themselves as teachers, bank workers, medical practitioners, scientists, legal experts, sales people, industrialists and managers in various institutions?
Deserving of special mention as alumni whom Christendom College education has inspired to answer God’s call are priests and consecrated people. I am informed that there is a total of 53 priests and 45 monastics, religious sisters and brothers originating from this institution. This is eloquent testimony to the service which Christendom College has rendered to Church and society.
5. A Prayer
May God bless the founders of Christendom College. May eternal rest be the reward for those of them who have gone before us from this valley of tears.
We pray for the President, the Board Members, the Faculty and the Students of Christendom College. May they continue to build on Jesus Christ who is the cornerstone, as St. Peter tells us in the Second Reading of this Sunday.
May God bless the benefactors and all friends of Christendom College and all of us here gathered, and grant us daily growth in wisdom and grace.
By the intercession of Our Lady Queen of Christendom, may this dear institution ever flourish in its contribution towards restoring all things in Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Francis Card Arinze
20 April, 2008
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