St. Austin Review: Reclaiming Culture

February 3rd, 2012C.S. Lewis and Friendsby Joseph Pearce

Further to my post about Shadowlands, I thought I'd share this e-mail just received from the organisers of an annual conference on C. S. Lewis and Friends, at which I've been privileged to speak in the past. Admirers of Lewis and Tolkien might want to consider attending.

Hello, everyone!

The Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis and Friends is excited to announce that the website for the 2012 Frances White Ewbank Colloquium is now up and running. You can browse the website and find valuable information about this year’s Colloquium by clicking this link.

The 2012 Colloquium will take place May 31 ‐ June 2 and the speakers include Alan Jacobs (Wheaton College), David Downing (Elizabeth College), and Ron Reed (playwright and founder of the Pacific Theatre). We have a very exciting event planned this year, and we hope you can join us for the fun! To register for the 2012 Colloquium, go to http://lewisconference.zondervanlibrary.org/registration/stage1/.

Please feel free to email me with any questions you may have regarding this event. We look forward to seeing you in May!

Laura Constantine
Assistant, Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis and Friends
Taylor University
Upland, Indiana 46989
(765) 998-4690
The Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis and Friends - Taylor University

February 3rd, 2012Secular Fundamentalism and Religious Freedomby Joseph Pearce

Just received from Tony Ryan of Ignatius Press (see below).

Friends,

See this strong letter from Bishop Jenky in Peoria regarding the latest attack by President Obama on the Church and its pro-life principles. Then do all that you can to help stop this outrageous assault by this administration on the moral convictions of our faith.

Bishop Jenky's words in his letter are similar to "Iniquis Afflictisque" - the Encyclical letter sent to all faithful in Mexico during the persecution of the Catholic Church in the 1920s. That Encyclical is also included for you to read and pass along.

On a side note, a powerful new movie about the martyrs of the Cristeros war of Mexico is releasing in the movie theaters in June. Initially titled "Cristiada" it is now titled "For Greater Glory". It stars Andy Garcia, Peter O'Toole, Eduardo Verastegui, Eva Longoria and others. Watch for it.

Here is a link to the current film website, and trailer. 

Anthony J. Ryan
Marketing Director
Ignatius Press
1348 10th Ave
San Francisco, CA. 94122-2304
415-387-2324, ex. 201
www.ignatius.com

February 2nd, 2012From the Red Devils to the Priesthoodby Joseph Pearce

As an Englishman, I am passionate about football, i.e. soccer to those on the American side of the Pond. Ever since I was about seven-years-old, I've been a keen supporter of Chelsea, currently one of the best teams in Europe, though I've followed the team through the bad times when the team plumbed depths of ineptitude. One of Chelsea's biggest rivals are Manchester United, also known as the Red Devils, indicative no doubt of their infernal origins. In any event, I was greatly intrigued and encouraged to see that a former Manchester United player is now studying for the priesthood. It goes to show that there is life after death! Here's the article:

Former Manchester Utd player swaps Old Trafford for the Vatican

The shocking story of Phil Mulryne, the former Manchester United footballer who is training to become a priest, to the great surprise of a former teammate

Mauro Pianta,
Rome.

He has played alongside football champions such as David Beckham and Ryan Giggs, wearing the stripes of a top football team like Manchester United. During his football playing days he even dated supermodel Nicola Chapman and certainly lived the fast life. Today, however, 34 year old Phil Mulryne from Ireland, whose career was cut short by an injury in 2008, is undergoing a somewhat different type of "training". The former midfielder is studying. Studying to become a priest. He has enrolled at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome.

The Catholic Herald reported a statement by former Norwich teammate, Paul Mc Veigh who met Mulryne in Rome: "When I arrived in Rome, I was met by a very contented-looking Phil who took me back to the Irish college where he was to be based for the next four years." "I know for a fact that this is not something he took lightly as the training to be ordained as a Catholic priest consists of a two-year philosophy degree, followed by a four-year theology degree and only after that will he finally be qualified as a priest... it was a complete shock that he felt this was his calling." In an interview with a British newspaper, Mulryne's mother said her son's choice to follow his vocation was a "big decision."

The footballer turned his life around after the injury which put an end to his football career. His friendship with Noel Treanor, the bishop of the Diocese of Down and Connor, in Northern Ireland, was fundamental during that difficult period. It was Treanor who got him involved in charity work and helped him make this life changing decision. Mulryne's got the ball now and this time he's heading for the Vatican.

February 2nd, 2012Obama’s War on Religionby Paul Adams

In the words of John Paul II (Veritatis Splendor, N. 101):

February 2nd, 2012Their Last Communionby Fr. Simon Henry

‘The stark fact is that of the Diocese’s 100,000 Catholics, around 80,000 are lapsed from the practice of the faith. To be honest, the word ‘lapsed’ is inaccurate for many because it suggests that these 80,000 once practised the faith though regular participation in the Mass. The truth is that the majority of Catholics come from families who for generations have never practised the faith and only have their children baptised, confirmed and make their First Holy Communion out of social convention. A useful model to understand this is the ‘cycle of deprivation’ that describes how generations of unemployment lead families into intense poverty and an inability to work entrenched and enabled by the welfare state.

In a similar way, the existence of 5 million lapsed Catholics in England and Wales, with only 880,000 practising, reflects the dynamics of a ‘cycle of faith deprivation’ in which there is a generational impoverishment about the faith and a disinclination to practice entrenched and enabled by our parish sacramental system and Catholic schools.

Simply put, we have created a sacramental and educational system that has created a startling 5 million Catholics who have never practised the faith, never had a living relationship with Jesus Christ. The real problem is that this huge group of nominal Catholics have the social convention of presenting their children for the sacraments but with no intention of raising them in the faith because they themselves have no experience of practising the Faith. Furthermore, baptismal certificates are highly sought after by many as passports Catholic schools system. The reality in Lancaster Diocesan schools is:you don’t need any baptism because you get in anyway if you want to!

Canon Law states that children should only receive the sacrament of baptism if there is ‘a well-founded hope that the child will be brought up in the catholic religion’ (Can. 868). Maybe when non-practising families present their children for baptism the Diocese’s clergy think there is a well-founded hope that the children will be brought up in the catholic religion because they have made contact with the parish and will attend Catholic schools in the future. The fact that there are now 80,000 non-practicing Catholics in the diocese suggests that this hope in the majority of cases was not well founded.

The truth of the matter is, as Bishop O’Donoghue put it so well in Fit for Mission? Schools, tens of thousands of children leave the Catholic school system just as lapsed as they were when they entered our schools. Two of the questions we need to ask of the Diocese’s clergy and school Heads and Heads of RE is how many children, and their families, experience conversion to the Faith and engaged with parish life? How many children from practising families lose their faith while attending their schools?

The Catholic Voice of Lancaster has learnt that it is not uncommon for children from practising families to be bullied by other children because they are a such a tiny minority in schools in which the majority of children, and teachers, are either non-practising or non Catholic.Furthermore, it is common experience that young people are so scarce in the parishes that those who do attend can feel out of place and alien, surrounded as they are by mainly grandparents. Bishop Campbell is right to ask the question is it just and honest that 21,000 practicing Catholics support and maintain schools that are Catholic in name only. If these schools are not powerhouses of the Faith, building up those children who have faith, and encouraging conversion in the rest, what is the point of them? If young people are not an essential part of parish life, what will be the future of the parish?

It’s time that the Catholic project of mass education rediscovered its vitality be insisting on a vibrant Catholic ethos in our schools, based on the Four Pillars of the Faith – Creed, Liturgy, Moral Life and prayer, while the connection with the local parishes becomes ever more strengthened, not gradually growing apart. If this doesn’t soon show signs of taking hold in our schools maybe it’s time that the Catholic project of mass education comes to an end.

February 1st, 2012A Grief Observedby Joseph Pearce

Last night, having watched the episode of Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation, which was the subject of my previous post, I also watched the BBC adaptation of Shadowlands, starring Joss Ackland and Clare Bloom, as C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham respectively. This version is so much the superior of the later Hollywood version, starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, that the two do not even warrant serious comparison.

Although based on real-life events, Shadowlands is nonetheless a dramatic fiction that romanticizes the relationship of Jack and Joy as much as it dramatizes it. Joy gets many of the best lines and is seen as being not only smarter than the incomparable Lewis but stronger in courage and faith also. In the Hollywood version, this discrepancy is accentuated to such an absurd degree in the service of a propagandized feminist agenda that it is almost laughable. Hopkins' Lewis is little more than a buffoon beside the quipping wit of Winger's thoroughly modern Joy. In the BBC version, the acting is not only much better but the relationship between Jack and Joy is treated with much more subtlety and panache. In consequence, we are not particularly irritated by Joy's evident superiority because it is subsumed within the wider story and the problem of pain with which it grapples. Even if we know that Lewis is being treated somewhat unjustly, we are willing to suspend our disbelief in order to enjoy the story and the lessons it teaches.

Shadowlands brings to idealized life one of the great love stories of the twentieth century and shows us faith and reason struggling with the problem of pain. In order to understand it on a deeper level, we need to familiarize ourselves with Lewis' two great works, The Problem of Pain and A Grief Observed. The first discusses the problem in the abstract and in the light of pure reason; the latter looks at the same problem through the personal experience of great grief and suffering. The two complement each other superbly. The objectivity of the first is confirmed by the subjectivity of the second. The first uses reason to show suffering in the light of faith; the second shows the experience of great suffering leading ultimately, via an agony in the garden of bereavement, to the same conclusion about the truth of faith to which reason had led.

February 1st, 2012Mea Culpa ... But Not Maxima Culpaby Joseph Pearce

I note that my less than ringing endorsement of Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation has caused a ripple of irritation in certain quarters. So be it. I stand by what I said. I would, however, like to confess an element of prejudice and presumption. Having made my judgment solely on the basis of the first six episodes that I had seen, and not on the remaining seven that I had not, I was prejudging the case before hearing all the evidence and presuming guilt on the basis of this incomplete evidence.

Last night I watched episode seven, "Grandeur and Obedience", which covered the baroque and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. It was really excellent and Clark's almost gushing defence of Catholic art against the iconoclasm of the Protestant north was not only edifying and refreshing but served as an early prophecy of his future reception into the Church. True to form, his defence of the Catholic baroque was an aesthete's defence and not a theologian's or a philosopher's. It was, therefore, incomplete. It was also marred somewhat by the barbed comments at the episode's conclusion, in which Clark seemed keen to distance himself from any charges of "popery". Nonetheless, and to give credit where it's due, this particular episode was a rare example of secular television paying tribute to the majesty of Rome. Bravo, Sir Kenneth. Bravo!

Mea culpa ... but ...

I suspect that my overall judgment of the series will not be very different from that which I formed after watching the first six episodes. I have little confidence that Clark's inarticulate grasp of the rational foundations for faith will be sufficient to grapple with the complexities of the Enlightenment, utilitarianism, romanticism, impressionism, secular progressivism and the other isms that have beset civilization over the past three hundred years. Since these form the basis of the remaining six episodes, I expect to revert to my role as curmudgeon as I watch future episodes.

February 1st, 2012Thou Shall Use Canvas Bags – and Other Green Commandmentsby Lorraine V. Murray

In the beginning there were paper bags. Shoppers used them without thinking much about it. Kids turned them into makeshift covers for school books.

Then someone invented plastic bags, and soon a question arose during each shopping expedition: “Paper or plastic?”

Shoppers who wanted to help Mother Earth insisted on paper and felt rather virtuous since they weren’t clogging up landfills with that awful plastic stuff. Yes, it’s true that plastic bags can be recycled, but sometimes you’re just too busy.

But then one day they started wondering if perhaps they were encouraging the destruction of millions of trees through the supposedly environmentally-friendly choice of paper.

And so, when the bag boy chimed in with “paper or plastic?” many shoppers ended up mentally wringing their hands, wanting to scream, “It’s too big a decision!”

Recently, I’ve noticed shoppers who pride themselves on being “green” hauling in their own canvas bags—and thereby evading the whole “paper or plastic?” dilemma.

Canvas seems like the perfect solution—but is it really? After all, the bags will get tattered and worn and will need replacement—and if the cotton used to make them isn't grown organically, won’t this be taxing on the soil?

Please. Let’s stop, take a deep breath, and repeat to ourselves: Something is terribly wrong here.

Instead of being concerned about the truly appalling things happening in the world—such as, say the destruction of millions of babies in the womb or the bombing of churches in the Middle East—Greenies suffer excruciating guilt pangs for all the wrong reasons. These include taking a long shower or (gasp!) driving to work instead of biking.

Mr. and Mrs. Green also feel terribly guilty because they filled two extra-large bags with garbage this week, unlike their oh-so-much-greener neighbors who had only one bag for their entire family—and there are eight of them.

Oh, eight, you say? But isn’t that cause for alarm? In the Green religion, large families, you see, are inherently bad.

Greenies ardently believe it is far preferable for couples to forgo having babies entirely—but if they absolutely must reproduce, then, please, just have one. This way, there will be more room on the planet for all the endangered animals.

In fact, if the entire human race were in danger of dying out, many disciples of the Green religion would secretly think, “Well, it serves us right. Humans are the bad guys anyway.”

I think it’s wonderful when a person does something truly virtuous and feels good about it.

Giving food and clothing to a poor family, for example, is certainly a virtuous cause, as is cheering up an elderly friend in a nursing home.

Problem is, with the Green religion, virtue often is associated with actions that have nothing to do with other human beings.

Mr. Green thinks he’s done his good deed for the day because his morning coffee was grown organically, brewed with clarified water and served in a cup made of recycled cardboard.

Mrs. Green prides herself on limiting the length of her showers to five minutes.

Of course, there are plenty of Christians who perform virtuous acts—such as helping the poor and visiting the sick—while also showing a rational level of concern for the environment. It is certainly not an either-or situation.

In fact, the catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes that we should be good stewards of the earth. We should care for the world God has created by making good use of natural resources and trying not to pollute the world.

But this is a far cry from turning nature into a god, as Greenies do.

Radical environmentalists will talk about the “sins” of wasting resources and endangering species—but you don’t hear them fretting about breaking the Ten Commandments, which concern our relationship with God and our treatment of other human beings.

Maybe this is because Greenies are busy constructing their own commandments, such as: “Thou shall not consume too much energy,” “Thou shall not drive a big car” and “Thou shall carry thy own canvas bags into the supermarket.”

And the most basic commandment for the Greenies? It might be summed up as “I am Mother Earth, thy goddess. Worship me above everything else.”

--

Lorraine’s latest books include “The Abbess of Andalusia,” a biography of Flannery O’Connor, and “Death of a Liturgist,” a wild and wacky mystery featuring the rather satisfying demise of a layman who tries to make Sunday mass more groovy.

February 1st, 2012Consequences Continue—and so Does the Silenceby Dena Hunt

Pursuant to an earlier post a few days ago (“Why I’m Opposed to the Environment”), I am once again struck by the depth of my naivete. In this morning’s headlines, I discovered that the huge pink-ribbon charity for breast cancer research (the Komen Foundation) has been in partnership with Planned Parenthood all along. It turns out that donations made to breast cancer research have been going to Planned Parenthood in the form of grants.

Obviously, I shouldn’t have been surprised, therefore, by the silence about the strong link between abortion and breast cancer. It wasn’t the link that bothered me—that’s not surprising—it was the charity’s silence about it. Now I know why no one ever mentioned it.

The headline says that the Komen Foundation has severed its partnership with PP (a partnership we didn’t know existed until now). The Foundation claims its action was caused by a “conservative” congressman’s investigation of PP’s public funding. Meanwhile, PP blames “conservative” pro-lifers for the Foundation’s decision. A heart-rending quote from a PP spokesman implies that the lack of a cure for breast cancer is the fault of “conservatives”. It apparently doesn’t occur to anyone to blame abortion for its breast-cancer consequences—the only authentic non-political, non-financial cause and effect relationship in the whole story—and the only one still not mentioned by anybody.

February 1st, 2012Why American Don’t Do Darwinby Ed West

Despite the economic collapse of our continent and a vaguely hysterical populist campaign against the bankers who helped to bankrupt our country, the British are still glued to the US presidential election, with Mitt Romney’s image rarely off most UK news sites’ home pages.

American politics fascinates the British for a number of reasons; the sheer spectacle of the long, gruelling and expensive race, carried out over a physically enormous area; the glamour of the candidates; the strange attachment to morality as a central issue; the talk of God.

The strangest issue for Britons to comprehend is Americans’ views on evolution, as was expressed by my Telegraph colleague Tom Chivers in this piece “Republicans turn their back on the Enlightenment”.

To Europeans American arguments over Darwin seem genuinely baffling and depressing, while in reverse British secularists often appear like intellectual snobs, as was illustrated during the Guardian’s hilariously bad Clark Country campaign (although I should add, if it’s not clear to the reader, that Tom is very much not the stereotypical British intellectual snob and, though an atheist, does not dismiss the religious).

Yet it is understandable, if one looks at what Darwin actually entails as a package.

In the latest Catholic Herald Dennis Sewell explains just why Americans dislike Darwin:

Two years earlier, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life had published evidence that only 26 per cent of adult Americans accepted Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as it is understood by scientists and taught in public schools. Or, to put it another way, almost three in four American voters did not. The polling firm Gallup found Pew’s figure to be a considerable overstatement of support for the science side of the argument. According to its own 2006 survey, only 13 per cent of Americans accepted the truth of evolution.

For this year’s election, Gallup has been digging beneath the surface to produce numbers that allow candidates to optimise their responses to the inevitable evolution questions along the campaign trail. Voters were invited to choose between three options: “God created humans in present form within the past 10,000 years” “Humans evolved, God had no part in the process” or “Humans evolved, God guided the process”. The first of these is full-on Creationism. The second represents orthodox Darwinian science, while the third could be seen as congruent with Intelligent Design, but is not necessarily so, offering space for more nuanced theological and scientific positioning.

Gallup’s findings pose some radical challenges to the reflexive assumptions of secular, liberal commentators on both sides of the Atlantic. For a start, those rejecting the scientific orthodoxy do not all conform to the media stereotype of an inbred, Right-wing, Christian fundamentalist redneck. Support for the “God guided” option is, for instance, stronger among Democrats (40 per cent) and Independents (39 per cent) than it is among Republican voters (36 per cent).

Sewell is the author of The Political Gene, one of the most fascinating books of recent years, and one every Catholic should have in their rhetorical armoury. Focusing less on the well-trodden path between Darwin and Hitler, he looked at how social Darwinism in the United States inspired (most Left-wing) eugenicists to instigate campaigns of sterilisation against the poor.

And yet this dark, shameful story has disappeared down a historical wormhole, while our collective memory of the most famous Creationist v. Darwinist set piece, the Scopes Trial, is totally distorted.

In fact, Sewell wrote, John Thomas Scopes was just a football coach with “no special commitment to his pupils, and was not planning on staying in Dayton very long”, and probably never taught his class about evolution. The trial was a “cynical contrivance”, a plot hatched by local businessmen to make Dayton famous, and responding to an advert by eugenicists wishing to challenge the anti-evolution Butler Act. That Act, rather than being some ancient, outdated law, had only been signed into law by the Governor, less than 2 months previously, passed by overwhelming margins by both houses.

As Sewell pointed out:

These margins reflected the Butler Act’s enormous popularity among the people of Tennessee. In 1925, the nationwide eugenics campaign was at its height. In the rural areas of Tennessee folk may not have had a sophisticated grasp of Darwinian science, but they knew the eugenicists who preached Darwinism in the cities despised country people, called them “imbeciles” and “defectives” and would sterilise them if they got the chance. They knew they despised God and the Bible too. Now they wanted to teach children that grandpa was descended from an ape. But America was a democracy, and that meant that simple people, if they made their views plain, could fight.

The First World War probably played a part, the trauma of which caused different countries to behave in different ways (in France and Britain pacifism and self-hatred, in Germany revenge). Americans were especially influenced by a pacifist called Vernon Kellogg who went over to Belgium in 1915 on a humanitarian mission and, having spent much time with the German high command, came to see how Darwinian philosophy had poisoned their thinking. “The creed of natural selection based on violent and fatal competitive struggle is the Gospel of the German intellectuals,” he wrote, his words coming to influence American public opinion then and for a long time after.

As Sewell concludes in his piec, Americans clearly aren’t stupid and are nor are they anti-science, but they are foremost a Christian people and are never prepared to sacrifice a Christian worldview.