Here are this week’s items for The Weekly Benedict (subscribe here):
ANGELUS: Angelus, 29 January 2012
AUDIENCE: 25 January 2012
HOMILY: 25 January 2012: Feast of the Conversion of St Paul the Apostle – Celebration of Vespers
MESSAGE: 46th World Communications Day, 2012 – Silence and Word: Path of Evangelization
MESSAGE: World Mission Day 2012
On Feb. 3, 313 the Emperor Constantine (and his co-emperor, Valerian) issued the Edict of Milan, ending once and for all the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire. YAY!
The city of New Amsterdam was incorporated on Feb. 2, 1653. It was later renamed “New York,” but I don’t think that’s the reason they say that it’s “The city so nice, they named it twice.”
Jimmy Akin answers:
I want to believe — how do I pray for belief? (NOTE: Here’s the article I mentioned that I wrote on Pascal’s Wager.)
How long do annulments generally take? Before you go through the process, can you get an idea of whether or not you have a chance of getting one?
How can I go through an RCIA program since I travel a lot for my job?
Why has the Catholic liturgy in America become so watered-down?
How does the Catholic Church justify its collaboration with the states throughout history?
Are the Assumption and Coronation of Mary metaphors of us being crowned in heaven with our full bodies, or are they just special things that happened to Mary?
Why has the Catholic Church been a hindrance to individual liberty since the Magna Carta?
I saw something on the History Channel that said Jesus married Mary Magdalen and had children — is this possible?
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Under the headline “Contraceptive mandate could face tough sledding in Supreme Court” the LA Times is reporting:
The Supreme Court and the Obama administration, already headed for a face-off in March over the constitutionality of the healthcare law, appear to be on another collision course over whether church-run schools, universities, hospitals and charities must provide free contraceptives to their students and employees.
The dispute stems from one of the more popular parts of the new healthcare law: its requirement that all health plans provide “preventive services” for free. That category includes vaccines and such routine screenings as cholesterol checkups and mammograms. Starting this year, it also includes coverage of birth control pills, IUDs and other contraceptives.
Catholic leaders reacted fiercely when the administration announced in recent days that it would hold most religious institutions to that mandate, even those that have moral and religious objections to what some of their lawyers describe as “abortion-inducing drugs.”
Already two religious colleges have sued, and their cause got a major boost earlier this month from a unanimous Supreme Court decision that greatly expanded the definition of religious freedom.
Personally, I’m optimistic that this is going to get overturned. The policy is so bad that it’s only a question of who will reverse it. Several options spring to mind. Will it be the next Republican administration? The Supreme Court? Congress? The Obama administration itself?
This will not stand.
The policy is so bad, and so certain to be reversed, that I have difficulty understanding why the Obama administration would pursue it. The jackbooted, “jam it down your throat” approach that the Obama administration has taken in this is shocking. It’s a real, “What were they thinking?” situation.
I’m still trying to figure that out. Is this to be chalked up simply to incompetence (e.g., not realizing the kind of pushback this would create) or is it to be chalked up to conscious, deliberate evil—the same kind of disturbing, jackbooted, Orwellian authoritarianism that the Obama administration displayed in its bid to tell churches who they must hire as ministers (the case that the Supreme Court just slapped down 9-0). Or maybe it was a combination of incompetence and evil, with different members of the Obama administration displaying different degrees of those two vices.
Maybe they think that this would please the base in a way that would get the more votes.
Really?
I mean, if you’re already mandating free contraceptives for virtually the whole population then you’ve got about all the bounce from your base that you are going to get. Forcing Catholic schools, hospitals, and charities offer free contraceptives to those they provide insurance to is going to create a lot of bad press, and simply allowing a religious conscience exception for those institutions would allow you to have the same base bounce without the bad press. It’s impossible to see how you would get more votes out of this. By making yourselves look like jackbooted totalitarians you are going to get fewer votes—if for no other reason that you have revealed your naked antipathy to the Catholic faith and will make it all the more difficult for squishy Catholics to rationalize voting for you.
Sure, way too many Catholics accept contraception, but there’s a difference between not-agreeing-with-Church-teaching and wanting-to-see-one’s-Church-coerced-into-violating-its-teachings, and there’s certainly a difference between undertaking a policy that will allow squishy Catholics to continue to support you and forcing the leaders of their Church into a position where they will start actively campaigning against your policy.
The timing is even worse, with Pope Benedict ramping up religious liberty as a key concern, and focusing in particular on religious liberty in the United States by lighting a fire under the American bishops in the current series of ad limina talks.
This is just bad politics, and it will hurt them more than help them in the next election.
That’s no way to “Win The Future”!
If they understand that, then what is the reason behind the move?
I’ve heard some speculate that it’s part of a grand gambit to destroy Catholic healthcare in America by creating more and more lines Catholic hospitals will not cross, forcing them to either give up their Catholic identity or go out of business.
Or maybe it’s part of a one-presidential-term-used-to-achieve-maximum-societal-transformation-leading-to-a-secular-totalitarian-America plot.
Or maybe they think they’re doing some kind of too-clever-by-half thing of creating a policy that they know will be reversed but will still leave their larger goals in place (free contraceptives for almost everyone).
Frankly, I don’t know what they think that they’re doing.
They still need lots of pushback, though, so be sure to HEED THE U.S. BISHOPS’ URGENT ACTION ALERT (CLICK HERE).
In the meantime: What do you think they’re trying to do?
Cats cannot taste sweetness AT ALL. (I guess that means that they have a “meat tooth” rather than a “sweet tooth.”)
A reader writes:
Question: An atheist has claimed that Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus couldn’t have happened because it’s a greek word that has two meanings, critical to the story, and Jesus didn’t speak greek.
I know neither greek nor aramaic, and according to some english, so any thing you happen to know would be useful. Thanks!
It’s true that in John’s account of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus (John 3:1ff) the Greek word anothen (an-OH-thin) is used, and that this word can mean either “from above” or “again.” It is often assumed that the Gospel of John uses this word as a deliberate pun (“born again” vs. “born from above”).
However, from an apologetic perspective, this is a non-problem.
#1 Paraphrase is allowed in writings of this sort. It is easy to demonstrate that the New Testament authors employ paraphrase (as do ALL ancient historical writers). The claim is that the gospels faithfully reflect the teaching of Jesus (they speak with his ipsissima vox) not that they give an exact word-for-word Greek translation of what he said on all occasions (his ipsissima verba). Thus in faithfully transmitting the *teaching* of Jesus, John may have noticed that a Greek pun was possible and chosen to use it. On the other hand . . .
#2 Cross-language puns are far easier to construct than people imagine. Just because there is a pun in one language doesn’t mean that there can’t be an *equivalent* pun in another. Jesus may have made a pun in Aramaic and then John constructed an equivalent pun in Greek. On the other hand . . .
#3 The pun may not be intentional on John’s part. The objection assumes that John was deliberately punning, but as we all know, it’s quite possible for someone “to be a poet and not know it.” On the other hand . . .
#4 They *did* speak a good bit of Greek in first century Palestine. While it is more likely that they were speaking in Aramaic, this conversation could have taken place in Greek.
I don’t view these alternatives as equally likely (my money would be on #1 as the most likely explanation, then #2), but they are all possible, and the claim that the conversation couldn’t have happened because of a Greek pun in the gospel is simply false.
Today is Monday of the 4th week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.
In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Epiphany, and the liturgical color for today is red.
Saints & Celebrations:
On January 30, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.
In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Martina, virgin and martyr, who died in A.D. 228. It is a Class III day.
If you’d like to learn more about St. Martina, you can click here.
For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.
Readings:
To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.
Or you can click play to listen to them:
Devotional Information:
According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:
40. The reform of the Council of Trent brought many advantages for the Liturgy. There was a return to the “ancient norm of the Fathers” in many of the Church’s rites, notwithstanding the relatively limited scientific knowledge of the period then available. Elements and impositions extraneous to the Liturgy or excessively connected with popular sensibilities were eliminated. The doctrinal content of the liturgical texts was subjected to examination to ensure that they reflected the faith in its purity. The Roman Liturgy acquired a notable ritual unity, dignity and beauty.
The reform, however, had a number of indirect negative consequences: the Liturgy seemed to acquire a certain fixed state which derived from the rubrics regulating it rather from its nature. In its active subject, it seemed to become almost exclusively hierarchical which reinforced the existing dualism between Liturgy and popular piety.
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