June 2006 – Page 3

On The Road

I thought I’d share with y’all a couple of pictures I took on my recent trip to go square dancing in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago.

The first is a picture of the sign you see when you enter the town of Gila Bend, Arizona. A number of desert communities have humorous or otherwise interesting signs, and I particularly like Gila Bend’s (click to enlarge):

The second picture is one I took in Imperial County, California, where the Salton Sea is located. The Salton Sea is the lowest body of water in the United States–a couple hundred feet below sea level, making it American’s equivalent to the Dead Sea. But you don’t have a body of water be that low without the surrounding land being low, too, and so on many various buildings in Imperial County you’ll see elevation markers like this one (click to enlarge):

GREELEY: “Give B16 A Break!”

Is it just me or does it seem to anyone else that Fr. Andrew Greeley — priest, novelist, sociologist, Catholic progressive — is mellowing in his old age? A few months ago, he was in the press defending Francis Cardinal George of Chicago against unfounded allegations of apathy on the priest abuse issue; now he’s come out swinging for Pope Benedict XVI:

"These have been rough days for the pope. It was inevitable his visit to Auschwitz would stir up complaints from Jewish spokespersons and commentators. No matter what he did or said, they had to criticize. The critics were a minority. Moreover, one can hardly blame Jews for sticking it to Christians for the long history of anti-Semitism and to Catholics for the long history of anti-Semitic popes. If I were Jewish I might be reluctant to believe the stand of the Second Vatican Council even after 40 years, especially if I had read some of the debates that preceded the endorsement of the document on anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, one would hope that they would give Pope Benedict a break.

"In a major article in the New Yorker, ironically titled "Forgiveness," the case was made that the pope has been complicit in the Holocaust because he prayed at cemeteries in which SS troops were buried and did not indict the whole German people for the Nazis’ crimes. The complaints against his failure to condemn the whole German people during his visit to Poland follow the same theme, accompanied by a picture of the pope as a frightened-looking teenage conscript in his Wehrmacht uniform.

"The Catholic Church, one must insist, is committed to forgiveness by the very words of the Lord’s Prayer. It cannot accept the notion of unforgivable collective guilt because it believes that final judgments on guilt belong to God. (Moreover, if everyone is guilty, then no one is guilty.) We pray for all the dead in hope that God’s mercy and love embraced them before it was too late — even if they were members of the SS.

"If we are good Christians, we pray for Islamic terrorists who have blown themselves up in the act of murdering innocent women and children. We should pray even for the World Trade Center assassins. We do not put any limits on God’s mercy. Do not expect this pope or any pope to condemn the Christian theory of forgiveness or embrace the notion of collective guilt."

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Mark Shea for the link.)

I might bracket out and quibble with bits and pieces of Fr. Greeley’s analysis. For example, he really ought to read Rabbi David G. Dalin’s The Myth of Hitler’s Pope before making unqualified statements about "the long history of anti-Semitic popes." But for the most part, I was pleasantly surprised and cheered by Fr. Greeley’s defense of B16.

I’ve also found it interesting that, in the months since Pope Benedict’s election, more often than not Catholic progressives have been defending the Pope while those commonly thought to be orthodox (click here and here for examples) have been raking him over the coals. Is it perhaps because the orthodox were indeed expecting SuperPope?

Sciencs Vs. Magic: Hawking Vs. Potter?

The comments he made regarding John Paul II weren’t the only things that Stephen Hawking had to say recently.

ACCORDING TO THIS STORY,

he stated a number of other interesting things, such as humans needing to start establishing offworld colonies that can function independently from earth if we want to survive long term.

That project might take awhile–longer than most of us will be around–but Hawking also mentioned a much shorter-term project he’s involved in:

Hawking said he’s teaming up with his daughter to write a children’s book about the universe, aimed at the same age range as the Harry Potter books.

"It is a story for children, which explains the wonders of the universe," his daughter, Lucy, added.

They didn’t provide other details.

St. Paul-Minneapolist Man Excommunicates Self?

Earlier this month the Rainbow-Sashers attempted to receive Communion in the cathedral in the Diocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis.

Fortunately, they were denied Communion.

Unfortunately, some of them got it anyway.

GET THE STORY.

EXCERPT:

In an act that some witnesses called a "sacrilege" and others called a sign of "solidarity," a man who was not wearing a sash received a Communion wafer from a priest, broke it into pieces and handed it to some of the sash wearers, who consumed it on the spot.

Ushers threatened to call the police, and a church employee burst into tears when the unidentified man re-distributed the consecrated wafer, which Catholics consider the body of Christ. But the Mass was not interrupted, and the incident ended peacefully, said Dennis McGrath, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

"It was confrontational, but we decided not to try to arrest the guy," he said.

I’m not sure of all of the details of the incident, and I’m not sure on what grounds the guy could have been arrested, but this situation has potential canonical implications that go beyond civil law.

The man who took the host and then used it to give Communion to the Rainbow-Sashers may have excommunicated himself and incurred an excommunication that can only be lifted by the Holy See.

The Code of Canon Law provides:

Can. 1367

A person who throws away the consecrated species or takes or retains them for a sacrilegious purpose incurs a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; moreover, a cleric can be punished with another penalty, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state.

Now, the unnamed man in the Diocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis clearly took the consecrated species, and on the face of the matter, he took them for purposes of distributing Communion to the Rainbow-Sashers, so the question becomes whether this was a sacrilegious purpose.

Normally, sacreligious purposes would be things like using the consecrated Host in a "black Mass" or similar act of overt and unambiguous desecration, but what the man did may count.

The Rainbow Sash movement is in open opposition to the Church’s teachings on homosexuality, and wearing a raindbow sash at Mass signals this opposition. It is thus no surprise that the Cardinal Arinze, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, has intervened to prevent Communion from being distributed to them.

The Code would certainly back him up:

Can. 915

Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.

To publicly oppose the Church’s teachings on homosexuality at the very moment Communion is being distributed is, by its nature, manifest grave sin, and since the Rainbow-Sashers persist in doing it, they also appear to be doing so obstinately.

This means that the man who gave them Communion was taking the sacred species for purposes of distributing Comunion to those who are canonically prohibited from receiving Communion on the grounds that they were obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin.

That sounds like he had a sacrilegious purpose to me.

Further, his action has the appearance of itself being an act of public opposition to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality (or at least its pastoral practice in the distribution of the sacraments) and thus itself appears to be an act of manifest grave sin. The quality of obstinacy may not be present here, but the act of taking the sacred species in order to commit an act of manifest grave sin (publicly defying the Church’s teaching on homosexuality/publicly defying its law regarding the distribution of Communion) would itself seem to be a sacrilegious purpose.

So it sounds to me like this gentleman may have excommunicated himself, and done so in a way that will require the action of the Holy See to undo (since this offense is reserved to the Holy See).

If this is the case, then it happened automatically, without any intervention on the part of the Diocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis.

Quote Of The Day

Because I don’t want the feature to become stale, I ordinarily try to keep the Quote of the Day posts to once per month. (Don’t ask me why I haven’t changed the title to Quote of the Month. As Ralph Waldo Emerson liked to say, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.) The following quote though tickled me so much I just had to share it now rather than wait for some future date.

"It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope." –Pope John XXIII

Who was Blessed Pope John XXIII? I know you know, but in order to be foolishly consistent with the pattern of these quote posts, I’ll tell you anyway.

CLICK HERE.

By the way, did you know that John XXIII kept a diary that has been published, titled Journal of a Soul? If not, now you do.

GET THE BOOK.

Apocalypse Soon?

The date of the Last Day may be unknown, but some religious groups are seeking to speed up its arrival. The twist is that its not just some Christians who are working out plans for welcoming the End Times, but some Muslims and Jews as well:

“With that goal in mind, mega-church [Christian] pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus’ message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.

“In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

[…]

“Ahmadinejad hopes to welcome the Mahdi to Tehran within two years.

“Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam’s holiest shrines.”

GET THE STORY.

If the Jewish groups mentioned in the story actually are trying to displace the Dome of the Rock, I can well see how such a plan might culminate in Apocalypse Now.

For more information on apocalyptic questions, see Jimmy Akin’s “Apocalypse Not,” which ran in the January 2000 issue of This Rock.

GET THE ARTICLE.

If Breast Is Best…

… why is it that so many mothers bottle-feed their babies in developed countries? I’m don’t consider myself a "lactivist" — someone who is hysterical in support of breastfeeding to the point of scorning mothers who feel they must bottle-feed, as unfortunately a few breastfeeding activists can be — but I found the following article from The Ecologist to be fascinating:

"Infant formulas were never intended to be consumed on the widespread basis that they are today. They were conceived in the late 1800s as a means of providing necessary sustenance for foundlings and orphans who would otherwise have starved. In this narrow context — where no other food was available — formula was a lifesaver.

"However, as time went on, and the subject of human nutrition in general — and infant nutrition, in particular — became more ‘scientific,’ manufactured breastmilk substitutes were sold to the general public as a technological improvement on breastmilk."

What was the result of this alleged scientific advance?

GET THE (SOMETIMES SCARY) STORY.

Photo Caption

SOURCE.

STARTING CAPTIONS:

1) NEW EXPERIMENT IN TELEPATHY!

2) "AND THEN SHE SAID MY NEW HAT WAS TOO ‘LOUD’"

3) PROP DEPARTMENT MISUNDERSTANDS NATURE OF VIKING HORN HELMENTS IN BEIJING PRODUCTION OF WAGNER’S DIE WALKURE.

Hawking On JP2 On Creation

Stephen Hawking raised eyebrows recently when he said that Pope John Paul II had said scientists should not inquire into the moment the universe was created, because it was the work of God. It’s thus natural that a reader would write:

I’m somewhat suspect of THIS ARTICLE, specifically when Hawking quotes a dead man, but I thought I’d get your take on what JP2 might have meant when he said:

"It’s OK to study the universe and where it began. But we should not enquire into the beginning itself because that was the moment of creation and the work of God."

I’m not sure I understand the distinction here.

Please elucidate.

I’ll do what I can. We have a problem, though, in that we don’t have the full text remarks of what Hawking said, only the snipped you quoted above from the press. There’s also the problem that Hawking said that JP2 said this at "a cosmology conference at the Vatican" (no date given, making it hard to look up what the pope may have said) and he then joked that "I was glad he didn’t realize I had presented a paper at the conference suggesting how the universe began. I didn’t fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo."

In view of the last comment, the whole thing might have been a joke on Hawking’s part that got taken literally. Or it may be that he’s stretching the truth in order to serve the joke or he’s misremembering. He’s certainly not giving a verbatim quotation from the pope, who would not be expected to use the English colloquialism "OK" in an address to cosmologists.

The conference that JP2 addressed may have been THIS ONE, but maybe not. The published version of JP2’s remarks certainly don’t have anything in them like what Hawking reported.

The perplexing statement that we can examine "where" the universe began but not "the beginning itself" suggests that we are dealing with a badly remembered articulation of JP2’s thought, and in the absence of further info from Dr. Hawking or someone coming up with a plausible candidate for the text of the pope’s remarks, I can only speculate on what the pontiff may have been trying to communicate.

But I’m not averse to speculation (as long as it is flagged as such), so here goes: I would conjecture that JP2 encouraged scientists to study the origin of the universe but not to try to force the origin of the universe into a materialistic model that would reduce its existence to purely natural forces, without any Creator. Science must respect its own in-built limits, I conjecture JP2 as communicating, and not presume to preclude the action of the Creator by the theories it proposes. Science must speak to its own realm without trying to settle theological questions, just as theology must speak to its own realm without trying to settle scientific questions.

Or something along those lines.

That’s my guess, anyway.

PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE THINKS IT HAS IDENTIFIED WHAT CONFERENCE HAWKING WAS TALKING ABOUT AND THUS WHAT JP2 SAID.