Author: SDG

Found: Ancient Egyptian Church

An ancient Christian church, possibly dating to the founding of Christian monasticism, has been found near the Red Sea:

"Workers from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities found the ruins while restoring the foundations of the Apostles Church at St. Anthony’s Monastery. The remains are about 2 or 2 1/2 yards underground, said the head of the council, Zahi Hawass.

"The monastery, which is in the desert west of the Red Sea, was founded by disciples of St. Anthony, a hermit who died in A.D. 356 and is regarded as the father of Christian monasticism. A colony of hermits settled around him and he led them in a community.

"The remains include the column bases of a mud-brick church and two-room hermitages."

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Stories like this remind me of an observation made by the tour-guide priest during a pilgrimage I went on to the Holy Land in the Jubilee Year 2000. He noted that visiting the Christian sites in the Holy Land is a visible testimony to the antiquity of the Church. All of the major Christian sites in the Holy Land are claimed either by the Catholic Church or by Orthodox churches whose ancient communities in the Holy Land broke off communion with the Catholic Church. On the other hand, the Protestant presence at Christian sites in the Holy Land is negligible because Protestantism didn’t enter the scene until over a millennium-and-a-half after the founding of Christianity. While this isn’t "proof" against the claims of Protestantism, it is a historical reminder that Protestantism is a Johnny-come-lately phenomenon.

The Plot To Baptize The DaVinci Code

In what may be the premiere case of trying to have cake and eat it, too, Hollywood wants to both film Dan Brown’s trashy anti-Christian novel The DaVinci Code and market it to Christians as a Christian-friendly film:

"Filming is not yet complete on Ron Howard’s adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, but the controversy is already raging. An association called the American Society for the Defence of Tradition, Family and Property has called on Roman Catholics to boycott the film, saying: ‘It attacks everything that Catholics hold sacred.’

"They have the backing of the Archbishop of Genoa, who described the book as ‘a sackful of lies against the church and against Christ himself.’ And even enlightened Catholics [unlike, presumably, the Archbishop of Genoa?] such as the commentator Barbara Nicolosi, who runs Act One, a seminar for Christian film-makers in Hollywood, says: ‘The book is particularly repulsive. It says Jesus isn’t Divine and that the Church is basically evil.’

"Normally, such outrage would be all good clean fun at the box-office, but the re-election of George W. Bush on a wave of devout heartland votes and the phenomenal success of The Passion of the Christ have changed Hollywood’s thinking. The Christian moviegoer is now a recognised and lucrative demographic that Hollywood cannot afford to ignore.

"Columbia Studios, which is making The Da Vinci Code, clearly feels that it cannot count on divine protection [and should count itself fortunate not to be the target of divine wrath]. It has called on the services of Grace Hill Media to help to prepare the groundwork for the film, which is to be released next summer, and defuse controversy."

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In a backhanded way, this whole plot substantiates the Christian assertion that Dan Brown’s novel is anti-Christian. There would be no need to spin the film as "Christian-friendly" were Hollywood unconcerned that the movie was offensive to Christian sensibilities.

Hiroshima: 60 Years Later

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Sixty years later, Hiroshima remembers the atrocity:

"Though Hiroshima has risen from the rubble to become a thriving city of 3 million, most of whom were born after the war, the anniversary underscores its ongoing tragedy.

"Officials estimate about 140,000 people were killed instantly or died within a few months after the Enola Gay dropped its payload over the city, which then had a population of about 350,000.

[…]

"The true toll on Hiroshima is hard to gauge, however.

"Including those initially listed as missing or who died afterward from a loosely defined set of bomb-related ailments, including cancers, Hiroshima officials now put the total number of the dead in this city alone at 237,062.

"This year, about 5,000 names are being added to the list."

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On August 9, Japan will mark the sixtieth anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on another Japanese city, Nagasaki, which has been the epicenter for Catholicism in that country. For a Catholic perspective on the atomic bombings of Japan, see this e-letter by Karl Keating, written to commemorate the anniversary last year. For an overview of Catholic principles of just war, see Catholic Answers’ Answer Guide: Just War Doctrine.

Give A Pope A Blog…

… And it might look something like Musum Pontificalis, a parody blog that imagines how Pope Benedict XVI might blog were he a blogger.  (Here is a link to the satirist’s disclaimer.)  Now that the Pope has a blog, so to speak, you might be curious about "his thoughts" on the Harry Potter brouhaha:

"I sure didn’t see this one coming. Sometimes I just want to say, ‘Come on, people; get a life.’

"Obviously, I haven’t reinstated Index Librorum Prohibitorum and placed Harry Potter on it. Believe me, there are any number of Jesuit publications that would make it to the Index before Harry Potter."

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(Nod to Whispers in the Loggia for the link.)

For As Long As Love Lasts…

If the idea of marriage till death parts you is scary, some couples have come up with an Idea. Vow to stay married for "as long as we both shall love":

"Vows like ‘For as long as we continue to love each other,’ ‘For as long as our love shall last’ and ‘Until our time together is over’ are increasingly replacing the traditional to-the-grave vow — a switch that some call realistic and others call a recipe for failure.

"’We’re hearing that a lot — "as long as our love shall last." I personally think it’s quite a statement on today’s times — people know the odds of divorce," said New Jersey wedding expert Sharon Naylor, author of Your Special Wedding Vows, who adds that the rephrasing is also part of a more general trend toward personalizing vows.

"Naylor said killing the ‘death vow’ doesn’t mean that people don’t take their marriage promises seriously. Quite the contrary.

"’People understand that anything can happen in life, and you don’t make a promise you can’t keep. When people get divorced, they mourn the fact that they said ’til death do us part’ — you didn’t keep your word in church (if they had a church wedding). Some people are in therapy because they promised ’til death do us part’ — it is the sticking point in the healing of a broken marriage. The wording can give you a stigma of personal failure.’"

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Well, for those worried about the "stigma of personal failure," it can always be rephrased to "deferred success at marriage."   I had intended to comment on this story earlier, back when I first saw it, but Dale of Dyspeptic Mutterings beat me to it. For more commentary, go there.

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Four Of A Kine

From our Believe It Or Don’t Files, we bring you news of a cow who gave birth to quadruplets.

"It wasn’t that one of his cows had delivered twins that gave Paul Soucie pause when he checked his pasture. Eleven sets of twins had already been delivered this year on the farmstead near Deweese that Soucie runs with his wife, Janet. But what raised his curiosity on the morning of July 12 was that this particular cow still appeared pregnant.

"’I said, "She sure looks full for having already had twins. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has another calf,"’ Soucie said.

"He was right.

"The cow did indeed deliver another calf. Then another one.

"When the Soucies checked their pasture on July 13, they discovered that the cow had given birth to four offspring without human assistance."

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What Is Truth?

"For they have set out for his sake and have accepted nothing from the heathen. So we ought to support such men, that we may be fellow workers in the truth" (3 John 7-8).

Since the elevation of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to the papacy as Pope Benedict XVI, I have been reading several biographies of him. Among them are The Rise of Benedict XVI by John L. Allen Jr., the Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, Pope Benedict XVI: His Life and Mission by non-Catholic Christian historian Stephen Mansfield; and Pope Benedict XVI: A Personal Portrait by Heinz-Joachim Fischer.

One thing that struck me in the various accounts of our new Holy Father is that although his passion for objective truth is like a golden thread woven throughout his life pattern, those who tell his life story remark that he is one of the kindest, gentlest people you could ever hope to meet. He has been known to publicly debate non-Catholics, even atheists, and yet he is acclaimed for acceding to the good points they make. For example, in one such debate, recounted by Allen, before Ratzinger’s election to the papacy, an atheist challenged Cardinal Ratzinger, saying that there was a difference between a "life" and a "person." Yes, Ratzinger acknowledged, that is true and conceded the point by commenting that even a plant is a "life" and that there should be careful distinction between the two terms.

Contrast this generous and humble attitude with that of certain non-Catholic Christians and even some Catholics who appear to be just as passionately concerned for the purity of objective truth, even to the extreme of fashioning faddish "No Compromise" bracelets, but who cannot concede that anyone but they could be right in every detail. A person must either agree with them on everything they declare to be The Essentials, or, quite literally, be facing damnation.

My question then is how passion for objective truth can place one person on the road to sanctity and others on the road to sanctimony.

Perhaps the answer is that there is a difference between a love of truth and a love of being right.

A love of truth can allow a man to be one of the staunchest defenders of Catholic orthodoxy of modern times and yet also allow for him to be personal friends with those who sharply disagree with him. Dr. Fischer, for example, recounts how Cardinal Ratzinger confided in him before the opening of the conclave that he hoped that the new pontiff, whom Ratzinger in no way thought would be he, might choose Ratzinger’s favorite papal name, "Benedict"; yet, at the same time, Dr. Fischer counsels supporters of women’s ordination that they may yet have hope of succeeding in the generations to come. In other words, Cardinal Ratzinger could both be a defender of Catholic orthodoxy and a personal friend of someone whose own views on certain issues apparently are quite heterodox.

On the other hand, a love of being right can allow non-Catholic Christian apologists to bicker viciously among themselves over whether Roman Catholics are Christians and all but excommunicate those they perceive to be Dancing With Roman Wolves. It can also allow certain Catholics to bicker among themselves over whose interpretation of Vatican II is Right and to dismiss as lost in the quicksands of "modernism" any who, for example, attend the standard rite of the Mass or who think Vatican II was a Good Thing.

Perhaps the key to choosing the road to sanctity rather than the road to sanctimony is to understand that we must be servants of the Truth — fellow-workers in the Truth, so to speak — rather than masters of Truth who keep Truth as our personal possession.

Truth is Someone, an infinite Someone (cf. John 14:6), and that means that it is outside ourselves and cannot be packed fully into our finite minds. We can have access to the Truth, like the householder who inventories his storeroom and continually finds treasure both new and old (cf. Matt. 13:52). It also means that we may not have the access to Truth that others have. The Church is the depository of all Truth and will be guided into all Truth, but individuals may not see some facets of the Truth that other individuals do. It is for us to accept those facets, "baptize" them where necessary, and discern how they fit into the larger Truth entrusted to the Church. It is not for us to dismiss others, even those of different religions or of no religion, as know-nothings. They may not know it all, but then neither do we.

In short, to be at the service of the Truth is to admit the possibility of being wrong. Without an ability to acknowledge when we are in error — or that it is even possible that we might err — we will never grow in Truth. We’ll have only that Truth about which we are sure that we’re right and no more.

We Are Church: 10 Years Later

… or, "When I decided to move on with my life."

John Allen, Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, mentions in his weekly "Word from Rome" column (July 29) a story on which he is working that discusses where the "We Are Church" movement is ten years after its founding in April 1995 in the kitchen of a high school religion teacher:

"I was in Innsbruck, Austria, this week, for a story concerning the 10th anniversary of the ‘We Are Church’ movement, the most serious effort at a liberal Catholic reform movement in recent memory. It was born in April 1995 in the Innsbruck kitchen of a high school religion teacher named Thomas Plankensteiner, who went on to become the public face of the campaign.

"Today Plankensteiner is a schools inspector in the Tyrol region of Austria, disengaged from church activism. His story offers a metaphor for why ecclesiastical insurgencies so often lose steam — Plankensteiner grew weary of waiting for things to happen, and decided to get on with his life."

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Would that all those agitating for "reforms" that the Church has declared to be impossible (e.g., women’s ordination, artificial birth control) would give in, give up, and get on with their lives.

Return Of The Sith

Coming soon to a DVD player near you: Revenge of the Sith is to be released on DVD on November 1:

"The Force will return to retail stores Nov. 1 with a double whammy: Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith will be released on DVD, and Star Wars Battlefront II will be made available for all the top video game platforms.

Sith is the year’s top-grossing movie, with domestic box office earnings of $373.9 million (and an additional $425 million overseas). The two-disc set will include a full-length documentary; two new featurettes, one exploring the prophecy of Anakin Skywalker as the Chosen One and the other on the movie’s stunts; and a 15-part collection of ‘Web documentaries.’"

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Practice your Jedi mind tricks now so that you can convince the Star Wars fanatic in your life that he does not want the new DVD until Christmas Day. If that doesn’t work, take heart. There’s sure to be a jumbo-deluxe, extended-edition, collector’s set of all of the Star Wars movies Any Day Now.