RULE OF LAW; LIFE OF VIRTUE

St. Martin of Tours

 I have been mulling this over in my mind for a long time.  I know what I want to say.  I was blocked for a while, until I thought of this fellow who lived some 1,700 years ago.  He is one of the famous people who gave up a life of luxury and comfort for a life of shared love and compassion for his fellow humans.
We tend to go through life wondering if there are any of these people left.  We go through life hearing that the "redistribution of wealth" is not right.  We live with the legality of abortion;  we live with the legality of alcohol and the unlawful use of marijuana; we live with the "blind eye" towards employers who hire the people for whom it is illegal to be here and therefore illegal to be hired.  We hear of usurious practices that enslave the borrowers, enrich the lenders but nevertheless are legal.  So many times we also hear "I am going to abide by the law.  My religion is one thing, the law of the land is another."  That's the rub.
I am not talking religion here.  I am talking morality.  There is morality outside of religion.  There is a morality that belongs to all of us as human beings.  We do not need a law to tell us that it is wrong to kill another person.  We do not need a law to tell us that it is wrong to steal the widow's last dollar.  We do not need laws to tell us a lot of things.  We have conscience and virtue to guide us through life.  We do need law to help us resist the temptation to be nasty now and then.  We need law to support and guide our conscience and our virtue.  Law is the external force that is meant to make us all abide by the common expectations of the community in which we live.  
In a democracy we give the people whom we elect the delegated authority to underpin morality and virtue with "obeyable" and enforceable laws.  The people we elect are expected to know how to do this.  They are expected to legislate in such a way that morality and virtue will be sustained, not demolished.  They are expected to legislate in such a way that the common good will be assured.  They are not expected to legislate in such a way that their personal comfort will be assured before that of the community.  They are not expected to compromise the morality of the community by their legislation.  They are not expected to be so venal in their life style that their personal morality will be so weak that their moral authority will be demolished.  When that happens, they abdicate the trust of the electorate and therefore the right to continue governing.  So, yes, morality and law do go together.  No matter what anyone says, that is the truth.  
When morality and law part ways, humans degenerate into a lower species.  When morality and law part ways, democracies fail.  Not only democracies, I might add, Empires, Kingdoms, Dictatorships, you name it.  
So, yes, that is my thought for the day.  
I will therefore leave you to your devices, since I have been burdened with some remunerative work that has to be done in the next three hours.


Peace and joy to you all.

PRAISE THE LORD AND PASS THE AMMUNITION

There are fewer things that I can praise than there are about which I can "rant."  That's not bragging, it's only true.  There is something about praise that rings false.  Yet, it is supposed to be one of the easiest tasks that fall to someone to accomplish.  I have found myself questioning that all my life.  I had a moment in my life when I was constantly berated for being a constant grouch and a useless curmudgeon.  Curmudgeon?  I was only 16!  It came to me because I  was an outspoken critic of movies.  It was because I only liked "Tom and Jerry" cartoons and everything else was nothing but technology trying to explain life.  I have truly never been much of a movie fan.  I just can't get behind the screen.  The worst possible behavior that holds forth in movie houses is the applause at the end.  Yaay!  Great job, Clint!  Come on out and take a bow.  Hey, where is ol' Clint?  I just saw him stare down 125 people.  Where'd he go?  Gee, he's so shy.  Doesn't even appear for a bow after such a great performance.  It's going to be a cold day in Dante's place before I ever applaud for him again. 
A couple years later I go to another movie and the viewers applauded again.  I was pretty amazed.  All these people must never have been to a movie before.  Didn't they know that the leading man and the leading lady weren't going to come out to take a bow?  Really amazing a stuff.  Now if I were going to praise movies, how could I be humorous about it?
How could I be humorous if I were praising the Red Sox?  Or the San Diego Chargers?  or Beach Volley Ball?  

I have to admit that the things above are really quite frivolous to begin with.  There are other things that could get a lot heavier.  Like discussing cruel dictators; organized, legal bribery and politics; religion and religious convictions; morality and a host of other interesting realities, like bullfighting.  Even these things can be discussed in humorous ways, and very often they are, but only when what is being proposed is not laudatory.  
So that's who I am.  I love the give and take of cool discussion.  I love the cold, hard dynamics of intellectual exchange.  Interestingly enough, I can only do that in some areas.  There are some things that I just can't touch.  I just don't have the desire or the zeal to engage in useless give and take when I know that there is absolutely no chance that I will ever cross the divide between my position and that on the other side.  It has now become obvious to you that it is not a question of inability, it's a question of escape.  So, yep I escape from some things, especially if they are lodged in certain people.  It is then that I decide that silence is the only valor that I am going to parade around in at that time.  Believe it or not, that does happen.  It usually happens when I know that humor is not going to be the safety valve that I want it to be, or need it to be.   
So, dear readers, let me praise you for choosing to follow these humble musings.  You're the best audience I have ever had.  I love each and every one of you more than I love myself.  Since you know that I love you so much, know that I would never, ever prevaricate in your presence, not even in a moment of great need and great challenge when the bases were full in the bottom of the 9th with two strikes on me and two outs in the seventh game of the World Series and my team behind by two runs.  When I hit the walk-off home run, I would not expect one single, solitary syllable of praise from anyone and never, ever expect anyone to cry at my funeral after I got hit by a speeding car when I stepped off the curb in an ethyl alcohol, celebration induced, drunken stupor.
So there.

ADULT CATECHISM, YOU BET ------->>>>>> PART 2

There they sit...Then what?

I have been thinking a lot about the 12/1 thought.  I am not satisfied that I made my point clearly enough, so that's why I'm revisiting the thought, and not dwelling too much on the idea.

For years I have been watching the Catholic Church invest huge amounts of time, money, resources, emotional and physical energy "planting the seed" of the faith into children.  On the surface it looks and sounds good.  In practice the returns are not that great.  

Without getting too worked up and too negative, here are some of my observations about what happens to the "seed."  

The children grow up, receive the Body of Christ for the first time and fall through the cracks until they get to be fourteen or so.  Then their parents (you know, the children sitting there in the picture who grew up) harass them to get confirmed because "you're Catholic, you know."  So because the youngster doesn't have anything else to do and nowhere else to go, confirmation it is.  From there, it will be a very small probability that the individual will find the way back to the Church for marriage. We the Church keep pouring sand down that eternal rat hole in the conviction that the children are the Church of tomorrow.

Belle and I decided, some time back, to start exposing adults to the grace of Faith and the Wisdom of walking in the Grace of God's presence.  Slowly but surely, the idea is catching on.  We enjoy shocking parents by asking them if they remember what they were told on the day of their church wedding.  I can say that 5% of them remember that they were told that it is their responsibility to nurture their children in the discipleship of God.  The rest just shake their heads and know that it is time for them to set their hand to the plow.  You should see their face when we quote the admonition of Deuterononmy, chapter 6, verses 4 to 9: 

4  "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!

5 Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your        strength.

6 Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today.

7 Drill them into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest.

8 Bind them at your wrist as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead.

9 Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates."

So that's what we do.  Busy and at rest, we dedicate ourselves to the formation of adults in the faith.  Our situation is such that we can do it for God.  He blesses us with audiences of people of good will. It is our conviction, our THOUGHT, if you will, that this should be the template of where the great resources of the Church should be invested.  In this case, it happens to be the thought and the teaching of the bishops of the United States.  I think that they got this one right.

ADULT CATECHISM, YOU BET -- THE ONLY WAY TO GO

ADULT CATECHISM FREE FOR ALL

I'll bet you never thought you'd see the day.  That is indeed a roomful of adults in a Bible/Catechism "class".  We caught them at a rather relaxed part of the session.  But believe me, they are serious.  When they are focused, they are focused and they are a deep "see" challenge for the presenter.  Without telling their names, let me just give you a description of what they represent.  One is publisher of the online magazine, ParishWorld.net; one is a social worker who has come back to the Catholic Church and is one of our very best "plants" in any religious ed group for adults;  one is a doctor (MD); one is a nurse, chaplain to one of the bigger hospitals in the region and one is a housewife.  The young person with his back to the camera is a nineteen year old who attends all the sessions with the family, three boys and one girl and the mother and father.  This is but a small representation of the entire group of 40 plus.  Here we were "learning" about the presence of Sacred Scripture in the structure of the Mass.  The bearded man who was the leader of this study is a long time Bible aficionado, spiritual force in the parish.  He is one of the five presenters who lead a session in the six weeks of this particular period.
The Adult Faith Formation program that we (Belle and Paul) have spearheaded, constructed and support is well received by the church-going faithful of the parish.  We took a survey of the parish in order to find out what adults wanted to learn about.  That was a good start.  The faithful, when invited to a series that they had requested to begin with, showed up and participated. These people will become more and more able and willing to teach their children the truths of our faith.  They tell us as much.  We are grateful to God for guiding us through the maze of material and human obstacles it took to get this up and going.  We pray  that He will help us to keep it going.  This is indubitably a good thought...or is it an idea?

"ANYONE IS FREE TO CONTRADICT ME"

Yup, that is a quote.  It comes from the introduction to Jesus of Nazareth written by the Pope, Benedict XVI whose picture appears right here, to the immediate right.


When this guy was elected, it made me happy.  When I read the above quote it made me happy.  this guy knows his place.  He knows that he is in charge, in some ways.  He also knows that God is in charge in ALL ways.  He knows that he can be contradicted in the matter of condoms that he brought up in his new book.  He knows that he can be contradicted in the matter of offering the traditionalist Anglicans a safe corner in the Roman Catholic Church.  He knows that he can be contradicted in the matter of giving so many concessions to the "Latin only" traditionalists of the Roman Catholic Church.  He knows that he can be contradicted in the matter of kneeling to receive communion and to receive on the tongue.  He knows that he can be contradicted on a lot of matters a lot more technical and theologically profound than those I just mentioned.  He not only knows it, he invites it.  He loves the intellectual give and take of discussions that take off from different points of view.  He loves to engage in that kind of tension because he is convinced that it is in this atmosphere that the Holy Spirit enlightens the world.  He is also confident enough in his own convictions, intellectual, emotional and spiritual to know that he can control the debate.  I made a comment about this a while back after what he said about the Muslims in Regensburg.


In this area, I agree with him.  My thought is that what is important is not the departure point of the discussion that is important, it is the destination that is used to define its value.  My thought continues to say that the optimum destination is right in the middle, right where the tension is the hottest and where the new truth caused by the clash is created.  It is the middle that is the furnace that forms and burnishes the clearer understanding of the one Eternal guiding Truth.  Benedict "ex-vee-eye", more than anyone, has planted the seed for that thought in my mind.


Now ain't that something?  Quite a thought, don't ya think?