Entr'acte

Just to remind myself, I'm in the middle of a series of posts looking at universal salvation. At this point, I'm examining Scriptural support for what I'm calling "necessary universal salvation," the doctrine that every single human will necessarily be saved. The necessity is generally attributed to God's sovereignty, which would be compromised if His will that all be saved were frustrated by a man's free choice.

It's a bit uncomfortable to work through a list of Scripture verses, taking them one at a time and saying, "Nope, that's not what it means. Nope, this one doesn't mean that either." Scripture is the Word of God, and I have very little confidence in my ability to slice up the Word into individual words, piece them back together, and wind up with anything like the fullness of truth.

I think it's particularly awkward to pit different verses against each other, then choose a winning side based on total number of verses, or which verses are most quoted, or some other external measure. It must always be interpretations that are in competition, not verses -- a house divided against itself cannot stand.

But then we're faced with the fact that even the best interpretation is only a gloss atop a mystery. If the final conclusion is that perfect understanding has been reached, dump the final conclusion. Any coherent interpretation is going to leave some aspect of Scripture too lightly dealt with, and the risk an advocate of an interpretation runs is, as I suggested in the post immediately below this one, to take a passage that is particularly opaque under his interpretation and say little more than, "It obviously doesn't mean what the plain meaning of the words is."

Any truth that fits completely inside your head is too small to be God's truth.

There's one other principle that I hold, though as with all the above I'm not sure I always adhere to it: In trying to interpret Scripture, we should move from the clearer passages to the more obscure, from the straightforward to the symbolic.

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"I simply don't know the reason...

... this tendency to be so dismissive of statements from bishops and the pope has arisen in faithful, good-willed, intelligent Catholics.
-- Minute Particulars

I don't know either, but my hypothesis is that it's the same reason as always: When someone says something I agree with, he's right; when he says something I disagree with, he's wrong. And it doesn't really matter who the someone is. Most of us have a private list of Gospel sayings we know Jesus didn't really mean.

The situation between faithful, good-willed, intelligent Catholics and their bishops is probably especially bad these days because these Catholics are so well educated in their religion. (Not necessarily their faith, but their religion.) While the men who are now bishops were learning how to maintain financial records and dealing with lonely parishioners who just needed to talk to someone, lay Catholics could at their leisure pore over the records of the disputes that led to the Third Ecumenical Council and highlight favorite passages from St. Robert Bellarmine, or simply collect the tracts and magazine articles that were the fruits of other layfolks' labors.

And of course, for ten years now autodidacticism has becoming increasingly easy. Anyone who's mastered Google's search syntax can become an expert -- or at least a relatively informed debator -- on any subject in a matter of hours.

One result of all this is that the laity no longer look to the episcopacy to teach them the Faith. Bishops are still acknowledged, albeit sometimes grudgingly, as governors, and they're welcome to sanctify (principally by ordaining priests and confirming teenagers), but who needs them as teachers anymore?

And yes, the bishops have not uniformly covered themselves in glory as teachers since the Second Vatican Council, but the idea of a uniformly glorious episcopacy is one of those myths of Catholic history that should have been exploded by all the laity's study.

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You do what you see

It occurs to me that the much-lauded motto, "Give to others the fruits of your contemplation," is something of a tautology. The fruits of contemplation is what everyone gives, all the time. What else do we have to give?

To contemplate is to look upon. Those who look upon -- and I mean literally look, not just think about -- human misery caused by war and oppression give others the fruit of what misery really is, of what it means for a bomb to fall on your house. Those who look upon their children peacefully sleeping give others the fruit of the imperative to make their children's lives as safe as possible.

This is why, whatever else we look upon, we have to look upon the things of God -- and God Himself, including perhaps especially Christ on the Cross -- so that the fruits we have to give are the fruits the world needs.

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Mirror of patience

Hernan Gonzalez suggests an aspect of St. Joseph's virtue I haven't heard mentioned before: that no one has ever done so much for God's plan of salvation with so little to show for it.

If we think of the Holy Family as a symbol of the three cardinal virtues, then, it's clear that associating St. Joseph with Hope is not simply a matter of what's left after pairing Jesus with Love and Mary with Faith.

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Jubilation

Gospel Minefield has some notes on last night's talk by Fr. Giles Dimock, OP, including this:

According to Fr. Dimock, much of the ancient Gregorian chant was a joyous expression of what today's charismatics call "Singing in the Spirit." I always call it improvising in the joy of the Lord: taking off from the song you started with and, just using a few chords, singing either with or without words in joy or sorrow to the Lord.

Fr. Dimock demonstrated with a beautiful example of an old Dominican chant in honor of the Blessed Mother. This impromptu "jamming," if you will, has a name within the Church: "JUBILATION!" I was delighted to find that out!

Dominicans chant the O Lumen hymn to St. Dominic every night. Click on the link to read the music; that page also has a sound file if you want to listen to someone singing it.

In English, the first line of the hymn -- "Light of the Church" is four syllables. In Latin, with the "O," it's seven syllables. Chanted, it's twenty-one notes. The next six syllables ("doctor veritatis," "teacher of truth") take eighteen notes.

The first time I heard it, I thought, "That's, um, a lot of notes right there." Since I was trying to learn how to sing it, and since -- how shall I put it -- I am not a talented singer, I didn't find all those "extra" (not to say excessive) notes very appealing.

But now that I've learned it (after my fashion), I find that all those runs up and down the scale make it a simply joyful thing to sing (preferably alone in the car). Jubilare, indeed!

On a related note (ha!), today my copy of The Prayers of Catherine of Siena arrived, in plenty of time for Easter. The first page of the introduction says of St. Catherine, "when she prayed alone, especially in the garden, she liked to sing."

Gaudete in Domino! Rejoice in the Lord! Yes, even now, during this joyful season of Lent.

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He made him lord over His household

St. Joseph is an excellent model for Christians today who want to do God's will. Notice how the idea "to do God's will" implies both activity, which culturally we're pretty good at, and reflection -- how else, after all, will we know what God's will is? -- which many of us are less accomplished at.

The Little Office of St. Joseph is one of four little offices that (last I heard) are still explicitly indulgenced. There's a version of the three daytime hours (Terce, Sext, None) of the Little Office of St. Joseph that fits on a wallet-sized accordion-folded piece of paper here.

If you really like wallet-sized pieces of paper with prayers to St. Joseph printed on them, you can find the Litany of St. Joseph here.

You probably know that devotion to St. Joseph came relatively late to the Church. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the habit of referring to him as Jesus's foster-father couldn't have helped. Personally, I invoke him simply as the father of Jesus. If it was good enough for Mary, it's good enough for me.

One of the charming things about Bl. Margaret of Castello (1287 - 1320), who may have been the first young, unmarried woman allowed to join the Dominican Third Order, was her devotion to St. Joseph. By nature, she was shy and unassuming, but when the subject turned to St. Joseph, her conversation erupted. Perhaps in part because she had one of the worst fathers in the history of Christendom, she would talk and talk and talk about St. Joseph until her listeners grew tired and excused themselves.

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A letter from Baghdad

I don't endorse everything in this letter, but I think citizens whose country is about to be invaded are allowed to say what they think.

Baghdad. To all people of good will round the world,

Love and Peace of Christ be with you.

We are addressing President Bush and all the American people as human beings, not as a president of United States. We presume that as Christians you have hearts full of love and compassion. You will pity our Iraqi children, our elderly, and our youth that have no hope in a better future and a decent life. We, Dominican sisters and brothers in Iraq, are living and sharing with our people in their sufferings. The Iraqis have been going through hard times for twenty-three years, for they have witnessed two disastrous wars. If President Bush starts another military attack against Iraq, we think this will be a catastrophe. We believe that you can feel the danger that is looming over the Iraqi civilians. That is why millions of people from different countries round the world are demonstrating, writing letters and trying to put pressure on President Bush not to initiate a new military attack.

President Bush defends the rights of animals. Have we less value than animals? He claims that he is trying to defend human rights in Iraq. He is willing to build a new Iraq. He tried to convince the people in the US and the peoples round the world that he will only bomb the army and the weapons in the country. He promises that he is not going to bring any harm to the civilians. Is he throwing flowers on people? He is going to use mass destructive weapons, which are going to result in great damage to our culture, our land, and history, and cause the death of thousands of our innocent people of all ages.

As some of you who have visited Iraq may know, the army camps are very close to people's houses. We have two convents: one at the beginning of the army camp and the other at the end. Will the bombing kill the soldiers or the people? We are living in great fright, panic, and extreme worry. We are suffering not only a military war, but also we have been suffering from very hard psychological situation since President Bush has started his inhuman threats to initiate another war on our people. The uncertain moments and the hard current times have made us wait for our death in no time. Everyday we thank God for being alive because we do not know what tomorrow has hidden for us. The nightmare of the new war is haunting us always and everywhere.

God has granted us life freedom as His precious gifts. Why Does President Bush want to take it away and deprive us of our freedom?

You cannot imagine that even our children can no longer stand these threats and can no longer bear the psychological tension and despair. They inquire, when will the war begin?

You are deceived and we are captured by your mass media, which is the biggest liar. Our children, women and people are dying of malnutrition and starvation because of the inhuman sanctions. The sanctions have caused the death of one million and a half of Iraqi people, mostly women and children. Why do you want to finish them by a new war?

We will ask the American youth, "Do they face or wait for their death every single moment? If so, will they not explode?"

Why should the American people have the right to live in peace, safety and prosperity? Is their life more valuable than the life of other people, for instance the Iraqi people?

Our university students have waved goodbye to each other on Saturday, the 15th of March and they are prepared for the war. They have no mood for study. We think they are right because they are disappointed and hope for them seems the most hopeless thing.

A couple of days ago, we could dream of safety and peace, but now we no longer know what these words mean because violence, suffering, and fear are enfolding us.

At last we would like to say that we are not cured of the Gulf war. How can we persevere the effects of the new one, which will be even worse?

The war is not only disastrous and destructive in its direct effects, but also in its lasting effects. The innocent people will not only be the victims of the bombing, but also the preys of contaminated drinking water, polluted environments, depleted uranium, inadequate medical supply, and crippled electric power.

We ask all of you who have compassionate heart and love for humanity to bring the suffering and the worry of the Iraqi people in every pulpit, every classroom, and every place where the Word of God is preached. Let everyone hear about the truth of the Iraqi people's pain. Please listen to the cries of the Iraqi children and double your efforts to stop the new war from happening. In this way only you can eliminate the anguish, calm down the cry of the Iraq Children in the midst of their sleep: "Here are they come to bomb us and bring about our death."

Is it fair to be going through all this? Is it acceptable? Is our crime that we are floating on a huge sea of black gold? What is the use of it, except to pay for our death? Why are we unable to dream of a bright future and a decent life?

We greatly appreciate your efforts on our behalf and also you prayers. Love and prayers can work miracles.

God blesses you all.

Your Dominican Sisters in Iraq

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It had to happen some time

I sent my first email message to someone I'd never met in 1986. Since then, I've met dozens of people whom I'd known from the Net, and none of them looked the way they were supposed to. (Neither do I; if you've never met me, I look younger and even less prepossessing than you think.)

Tonight, however, I was privileged to meet Kathy the Carmelite, who looks exactly like "Kathy the Carmelite" from Gospel Minefield.

She came to a talk by Fr. Giles Dimock, OP, on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I asked him which of the charismatic gifts of the Spirit he thought the Church in America was most in need of, and he answered, "Joy."

Most of us can reel off, without stopping for breath, half a dozen reasons against American Catholics feeling any sense of joy right now, which is probably evidence enough that Fr. Dimock is right.

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Judging prudential judgments

Mark at Minute Particulars wonders

if those taking comfort in the fact that a judgment doesn't require assent ... might be dismissing the opinion in part because it doesn't require assent.

I've been wondering about the dual of this, which is accepting the prudential judgment of another simply because that judgment is his to make.

It is up to my prudential judgment to determine the best way of educating my children, but that doesn't mean the Pope -- or my mother-in-law -- can't tell me he (or she) thinks I'm wrong. The fact that I use all available prudence in reaching a judgment doesn't mean that my judgment is correct, nor that it must be accepted passively by others who have an interest in the consequences of my acting on my judgment.

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More on Dominican contemplation

I know someone who, having spent a little time among Dominicans, was surprised to learn that one of the mottoes of the Order is Contemplare et contemplata aliis tradere, usually translated as "To contemplate and to give to others the fruits of contemplation." "The friars I know don't seem very contemplative to me," she said.

There is a push in the Order to "recover the contemplative dimension," to use the title of Fr. Paul Murray's talk at the 2001 General Chapter. Part of the difficulty in doing this is that it's not easy to say what this contemplative dimension is.

The blame for this lays squarely on the Carmelites, particularly Sts. Teresa and John of the Cross, whose writings sit atop the summit of mystical theology. The term "contemplation," if it means anything nowadays, means what St. Teresa said it did.

So the first point that needs to be made about Dominican contemplation -- by which I mean the thing Dominicans tell each other their supposed to give the fruits of to others -- is that it is not Teresan contemplation. When a Dominican speaks of contemplation, odds are he's using it in a way a Carmelite wouldn't.

This is somewhat comforting, because the "heights of contemplation" are, according to the Carmelite masters, attained by realtively few in this life, and only through unearned grace from God, at His pleasure and in His wisdom. If the fruits of these heights are what Dominicans distribute, it would follow that most of us are there simply to support those happy few who are actually able to harvest the fruits.

The existence of this something lower than the heights is also a challenge, since it's something o which we -- and here I mean everybody, not just non-mystical Dominicans -- can and ought to aspire. It's a cop-out to say, "I'm no one much myself and not picked by God to be one of those automatic mystics. I'll leave all that contemplation to holy people and stay on my own, plodding course." Everyone is supposed to be holy people. For that matter, I suspect the rarity of the true Teresan contemplative is not due to God's stinginess with His gifts, but to Christians' stinginess in accepting those gifts. If becoming the saint you're supposed to be isn't an exceptional and unique vocation, I don't know what is.

So what is this contemplation that Dominicans are supposed to be doing, even as Carmelites smile and murmur, "You call that contemplation?"? St. Thomas defines it this way, quoting Richard of St. Victor to distinguish it from meditation and cogitation:

"Contemplation" regards the simple act of gazing on the truth; wherefore Richard says again (De Grat. Contempl. i, 4) that "contemplation is the soul's clear and free dwelling upon the object of its gaze; meditation is the survey of the mind while occupied in searching for the truth: and cogitation is the mind's glance which is prone to wander." [ST II-II, 180, 3, ad 1]

In the body of the same article, he writes:

Accordingly, then, the contemplative life has one act wherein it is finally completed, namely the contemplation of truth, and from this act it derives its unity. Yet it has many acts whereby it arrives at this final act. Some of these pertain to the reception of principles, from which it proceeds to the contemplation of truth; others are concerned with deducing from the principles, the truth, the knowledge of which is sought; and the last and crowning act is the contemplation itself of the truth.

Maybe the way to put it is this: Dominicans aren't called to contemplation so much as to the contemplative life. The contemplative life involves "many acts" in addition to, but taken as means to the end of, the "final act" of simply "gazing on the truth." (And further, this "gazing on the truth" is experienced in various ways, the highest or Teresan form of which is, I'm told, something like having the Truth gaze on you.)

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Drawing all men to Christ

John 12:32 is the first verse whose "universalist" interpretation I can't simply deny:

"I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself."

I mean, I can say that Christ's drawing all men doesn't necessarily entail His saving all men, but I don't see, in context, why it couldn't. So if we can give it a universalist interpretation, but we don't have to, how should we interpret it?

I, obviously, do not interpret it as meaning that all men will be saved. If this were what Jesus meant, then I can't make any sense of this saying:

"If anyone hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day." [John 12:47-48]

What can this mean, if not that whoever rejects Christ will be condemned on the last day because of that rejection? But if Jesus's death, resurrection, and ascension are to draw all men into beatitude, then either the word Jesus spoke won't be our judge or no one will reject Jesus, and what would be the point of Jesus saying all this? John 5:28-29 poses a similar interpretive problem:

"Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.

Returning to John 12:32, how do I interpret it? It is through Jesus' death that man's relationship with God is restored. Moreover, through our baptism into His death we become members of His body, children of God and participants in the life of the Trinity. It is this participation for which we were created; uniting ourselves with Christ is the only means of obtaining that highest good for which every human heart yearns. Thus every human heart is drawn, consciously or not, to Jesus Crucified, Risen, and Ascendant. But that every heart is drawn to Him does not mean every heart necessarily reaches Him.

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"Never tell the Carmelites or the Jesuits, but ..."

It was Father Cahal Hutchinson, O.P., who gave a young novice the two secrets of Dominican contemplation. That novice became a priest who used Fr. Hutchinson's advice as the closing to his talk, "Recovering the Contemplative Dimension," at the 2001 General Chapter of the Order of Preachers.

Fr. Richard Woods, O.P., gave a talk the following Spring on the same subject, drawing from St. Thomas, Meister Eckhart, and St. Catherine in exploring the roots of Dominican contemplation:

What we contemplate, as Dominicans, is Truth - with a capital T - Divine Truth. And it is that Truth which we have encountered in contemplation that we hand on to others through our preaching and teaching and other ministry. William Hinnebusch pointed out long ago in this regard that the simple word "Truth" does not merely point to the object of our collective vision and mission, but expresses exactly what we mean by "contemplation."

Contemplation can be regarded, therefore, if not actually defined, as an unflinching and loving look at Reality as divine, or in Meister Eckhart's language a generation after Thomas,

"seeing God in all things and all things in God."

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War is always a disaster

Sorry, Kairos Guy, but on this one I have to go with my cardinal, my pope, and Minute Particulars. The fact that cowards say war is always a disaster doesn't make it any less true. Nor does the fact that every option other than war might be a worse disaster.

I might even be talked into accepting that, so far from being "a hideous copout from serious moral judgment," the opinion that war is always a disaster must necessarily be held by anyone who lays claim to serious moral judgment about war.

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Giving to others what you contemplate

Kathy the Carmelite is curious:

Do any of you conversants know your Myers-Briggs personality type? I think I'm either an INTP or an INFP. In perusing a book I have on the subject, Prayer and Temperament, by Rev. Chester Michael and Marie Norrissey, I wonder if the "S/N" difference is a significant factor in whether one is drawn to one type of spirituality or another (obviously, God's supernatural call trumps all natural inclinations; it is often His glory and delight to surprise people!).

My guess is that Myers-Briggs isn't a reliable indicator for spirituality -- at least not for Dominican spirituality, since no one has been able to define it.

Well, plenty of people have defined it, but they all disagree with each other. (But that's just the way we INTPs are, right, Kathy?)

This gives me an excuse to mention

The Two Secrets of Dominican Contemplation  Pray. Keep at it.

Feel free to print out a copy and carry it in your wallet.

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Where was I?

Oh, right, universalism. Specifically, whether Scripture can reasonably be read as teaching that all will necessarily be saved.

It's generally acknowledged that the answer is yes, there are verses that can be interpreted as implying universal salvation. So the real question is whether they ought to be interpreted that way.

To answer that question, we need to know which passages are being considered. I don't have Scripture memorized (though Lent is still young), so I have to go with whatever "Biblical Evidence for Universalism" lists of verses I come across. I was recently presented with this list of "universalist passages" in the New Testament:

Matthew 18:14; John 3:16; John 5:24; John 6:37; John 12:31-32; John 16:33; John 17:2; Romans 5:12-21; Romans 11:26,32; 1 Corinthians 3:11-15; 1 Corinthians 15:22-28; 2 Corinthians 5:14, 19; Ephesians 1:10; Philippians 2:10-11; Colossians 1:20; 1 Timothy 2:4-5; 1 Timothy 4:10; Titus 2:11; Hebrews 9:27-28; 2 Peter 3:9;Revelation 21:1-2

That's an impressive list, widely distributed throughout the New Testament. My first thought on seeing it was, "I didn't realize the idea of universalism has so much Scriptural support. Maybe I should be treading softer."

When I looked up the passages, though, my impression of the list changed. It seems to me that the above list is padded, and a fairer subset of passages with significant universalist implication is this:

John 12:31-32
Romans 5:18-19
1 Corinthians 15:22
Ephesians 1:10
Colossians 1:20

That's still a significant set of verses, as sets of verses in support of specific doctrine go, and I'll look more at them in a subsequent post. In the meantime, though, what happened to the rest?

Well, four of them have, as far as I can tell, nothing to do with the question of who is saved, and one of these (Revelation 21:1-2) comes just a few verses before a list of the people whose "lot is in the burning pool of fire and sulfur, which is the second death," which suggests that the author of that passage was not trying to teach universal salvation. (The other unrelated passages are Jon 3:16, John 16:33, and Philippians 2:10-11.)

Seven of the passages -- Matthew 18:14, John 5:24, John 6:37, John 17:2, Romans 11:26,32, 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, and Hebrews 9:27-28 -- I read as teaching, not that God will save everyone, but that God will save everyone whom He calls. At least of these appear in a context that, in my reading, also suggests not everyone is called by God (John 6:64-65).

(Romans 11:26 is a curious verse: "... and thus all Israel will be saved ...." Clearly, even the salvation of every individual member of Israel does not imply the salvation of every individual member of the human race, but even then we have to try to understand this statement along with Romans 11:13-14, where Paul writes, "I glory in my ministry in order to make my race jealous and thus save some of them." Will some be saved, or all of them? Deep waters.)

Finally, as I read the remaining verses (2 Corinthians 5:14,19, 1 Timothy 2:4-5. Titus 2:11, 2 Peter 3:9), they teach that God desires that all be saved. Here we are faced with the great mystery of the tension between God's sovereignty and human free will. If God desires that all be saved, doesn't that mean that all will be saved?

There are a variety of ways of attempting to understand this mystery, some better than others, but the simple answer that if God desires all be saved, then all will be saved is unacceptable. Why? Because we know that what God desires does not always happen, unless we think God desires us to sin, which is the same as saying that God wants us to do what God doesn't want us to do, which is a peculiar way of resolving a paradox.

At the same time, God remains sovereign, and there is a meaning of "desires" according to which what God desires, happens. How do we know which meaning to assign to, say, 2 Peter 3:9: "The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard 'delay,' but He is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance."

I suggest that first, the "any" and "all" most likely refer to the "you" to whom 2 Peter was written, rather than to everyone who has ever lived. That I take as the literal sense of the verse, but the full sense need not be limited to that. So I next look at 2 Peter 3:7: "The present heavens and earth have been reserved by the same word for fire, kept for the day of judgment and of destruction of the godless." This I take in a sense contrary to universal salvation. The only way to reconcile this with verse 9 is to understand by the word "wishing" the weaker sense of what God desires -- His antecedent will, rather than His consequent will, to use St. John Damascene's terms (by way of St. Thomas).

Which is probably enough for this post.

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Late have I loved Thee

It is said that God is love. Sometimes this is interpreted as implying a contrast between freedom and law, with the old Mosaic Law just around long enough to form a people from which the Messiah might come, Who taught that God loves love, not obedience, and Who set His disciples free from the law as children of God. In short, God wants us to love Him, not follow a bunch of rules.

But it occurs to me that the one is impossible without the other.

What does it mean to love God? It means to act in a certain way toward Him. But what way?

God is immortal, impassible, unbounded, unlimited. We can't actually do anything to Him or for Him. We can't make Him any happier than He already is, He has no imperfection we can remove, no hurt we can salve. He is perfect.

With what utterly gratuitous love of His own, then, did God give Moses the Law, fulfilled in Christ Jesus. By giving the Law to Israel, God made it possible for humans to love God. Loving God is the goal of human existence, so enabling that love was an act of love, a willing the good for us we could not even begin to obtain by ourselves.

As Moses said in Deuteronomy:

If you obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I enjoin on you today, loving him, and walking in his ways,
and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees, you will live and grow numerous, and the Lord, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.

The Mosaic Law gives us a way to love God as His beloved servants, and by fulfilling the Law Jesus has given us a way to love God as His very children.

Someone who thinks commandments aren't important, love is, understands neither commandments nor love.

"If you love me, keep My commandments."

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Blessed are the peacemakers

For they shall be called the children of God.

In 1571, Pope St. Pius V asked all Christendom to pray the Rosary for victory. Christendom prayed. Victory was obtained.

In 2003, Pope John Paul II asked all Christendom to pray the Rosary for peace.

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What to read

Amy Welborn has created an entire blog devoted to the question of what to read during Lent.

Gerard Serafin has a counter-cultural suggestion: Stick to the Bible. (Plus no more than two classics of Catholic spirituality.) I don't know how to argue against that -- "Well, the Bible's okay, one supposes, but for real insight one looks to Ignatius Press" -- so I'll side-step it by pretending that my non-Scriptural reading between now and April 20 doesn't count as part of my Lenten observance.

I'm not sure what I'll be reading yet, in part because I don't remember all the books I own but haven't read yet. (Which explains the two copies of To Know Christ Jesus I have. If I can find them.)

I like Fr. Tucker's idea of attending to the deficiencies of the good, the true, and the beautiful in our lives. Maybe I'll look for a book to help me with each.

That's the one good thing about being so deficient: it's so easy to improve.

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Final pre-Lenten words on Iraq

Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, recently gave an interview on the Iraq crisis to Vatican Radio. It's mostly a restatement of the position of the Pope, the Vatican, and the U.S. bishops on the matter:

Three things have to be said. Number one. We approach the situation recognizing this is a regime that is not a model democracy in any way, a regime that is really not a model government....

Now, on the other hand, the second thing that I would like to say is that we feel that war is always a disaster....

Finally, having said that, we believe there is always a possibility that war can be justified if it is ultimately a matter of self-defense....

I always use the example of the man with a knife. If he has his knife out in his hand and he's going to strike you, obviously you may kill him if necessary but you certainly can protect yourself against him. If a man is standing in front of you with a knife in his pocket, then you can't kill that person. You can't shoot that person unless you have absolute proof that he is going to pull it out and go after you. We don't have, it seems to me, and I think to the bishops of the United States, that proof right now.

Now a lot, and I mean a lot, has been written about how reasoning about Iraq is a matter of "prudential judgment," and how the U.S. government has information the U.S. bishops don't have, but I think too many people are embracing these points without noticing what they've rushed past. Let me set it by itself, separate from all questions of prudence, in the words of Cardinal McCarrick:

If a man is standing in front of you with a knife in his pocket, then you can't kill that person.

It's one thing to say, "It's a prudential judgment whether the situation with Iraq is more analagous to a man with a knife in his pocket than to a man with a knife out in his hand and he's going to strike you. The government has better information than the bishops, and therefore the government's judgment is better."

But I think I've also heard the equivalent of this: "Saddam may be like a man with a knife in his pocket, but he's got the knife in order to use it, and it would be imprudent to wait until he's pulled it out of his pocket to stop him."

The problem is that this second line of reasoning is contrary to Catholic moral teaching.

I think a lot of people don't realize this. They're focussed on how the spiritual cannot infallibly proclaim on the temporal and on how judgment rests with him who wears the crown, not him who wears the pallium. They don't even notice that, "You cannot kill a man whose knife is in his pocket," is a moral principle, not a disputed question on which people of good will can differ.

One other point: I don't think a Catholic can, strictly speaking, be undecided about the justice of an attack on Iraq. A war that is not justified is unjust. If you aren't convinced that an attack is justified, you must believe that it is not. (In this sense, at least, the just war tradition has a presumption against war.) But if a Catholic can't be undecided, I do think he can be unqualified. That is, he can say, "I, personally, am not convinced an attack is justified; therefore I can't counsel in favor of an attack, and if I were in charge I would have to decide against it. At the same time, I don't know enough to have confidence in my ability to correctly reason my way on the matter, nor to assert that those who know more than I are reasoning incorrectly."

And that, I hope, concludes my posts with the words "just war" in them until Lent is over, since I hope to spend the next several weeks on more important matters than these academic disputes. (Unless someone in a decision-making position is reading this, in which case please contact me at my new email address.)

Pray the Rosary for peace. Not just for victory, nor just for avoidance of war, but for peace.

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Metablogging: New email

My email address has been harvested, so now my inbox is looking too much like spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam. Which means a new email address for me, and more work for anyone who wants to email me (changing the "_amphora_" to "@"), but what are you gonna do.

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Woohoo!


How evil are you?

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Some real numerology

So I order my cheesesteak (with, if you're interested), in honor of St. Kate of Philly. Total for my lunch at a pricey cafeteria: $6.97. I pay with a sawbuck, which means that my change is...

Three dollars and three cents.

Now if that isn't a heavenly reminder that today is March 3, I don't know what is.

(On the other hand, if I'd had it with celery along with onions and peppers, and the total had been $6.67, then maybe those other guys would have had a point.)

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Right intention

Am I the only one who shifts uncomfortably in his seat when he hears the anti-anti-war argument that concerns over civilian casualties are not worth worrying about because the U.S. doesn't target civilians and hey, people die anyway?

Of course, the group Catholics for a Just War (did anyone run that name past a canon lawyer?) used more nuanced language in its "Open Letter from Lay Catholics to President Bush":

Norms governing the conduct of war. Here again the focus of Bishop Gregory's attention is on the very important question of harm to the civilian population of Iraq. And, again, we urge you to take this consideration very seriously, but also to consider the likely harm to innocent people of failing to deter aggression by the Iraqi regime, as well as the possibility of restoring to the Iraqi people freedom from the merciless tyranny of Saddam Hussein.

Maybe I've spent too much time disputing war with Iraq, but I find this, and pretty much the entire letter, to be laughably simple-minded. "Harming civilians is a very serious and important issue, but Saddam Hussein is evil and we aren't, so you can fill in that box on the Just War Checklist."

It seems to me there are two points that have been raised time and again by the Roman Catholic hierarchy that any group of Catholics arguing that a war against Iraq would be just must address: whether the current circumstances meet the "lasting, grave, and certain damage" standard of the just cause principle; and what role the U.N. must play for a war to be declared according to the legitimate authority.

Both of these points are brushed off in the CfJW letter:

"No 'expansion' of traditional moral and legal limits is necessary or being called for."

Ah, well that settles that question.

"We also endorse your efforts to enlist United Nations support, though any failure of the United Nations to live up to its own responsibilities should not deter you from acting with those nations that are prepared to join with the United States to prevent aggression."

Perhaps someone should notify the Pope of this moral fact.

It's not that no argument can be made to support either of these assertions, it's that no argument was made. "Prudential judgment" is a term that's been thrown around a lot recently, but too often it seems to be used as though it means "personal judgment."

More curiously, the letter seems to step all over itself on the one principle I'd have thought would have been settled by now: right intention. But in order to know whether the intention in fighting a war is right, we have to know what the intention is. Is it to defend Israel? To defend the U.S. against terrorist attacks? To destroy all Iraqi WMDs and its capacity to manufacture more? To depose Saddam? To stop Saddam from blackmailing the world into concessions? To enforce the U.N. resolutions? To free the Iraqis from an oppressive regime? To prevent Iraq from taking over the Middle East as Hitler did Europe?

These really aren't fungible matters, and the intentions really don't add up algebraically. Determining whether force is being used in a truly just cause, and only in such a cause, is not like determining who was the greatest running back in NFL history according to whose list of accomplishments is longest.

That's a frivolous comparison, but I have a hard time taking this letter seriously. Is this really the best case lay Catholics can make in favor of a military attack against Iraq?

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Is universal salvation really necessary?

The Bible doesn't contain a verse that can be paraphrased as, "At the instant of death, everyone who doesn't possess salvific grace will be given an irresistable vision of God's majesty, causing them to have faith in Christ and thereby be saved." So where does the idea of "necessary universal salvation" come from?

I think every idea in Christian theology that isn't a literal quotation from Scripture or statement of Tradition has one of the following three sources: a particular interpretation of Scripture; theological speculation ultimately founded upon Revelation; somebody just makes it up.

Of the three, the last is the easiest to reject but the hardest to overcome. If, for example, someone is convinced that communing directly with God in His glory is inadequate for eternal happiness in a heaven without Whiskers the cat, nothing anyone can say or do will dislodge this conviction, even if, "Is too!" suffices for the counter-argument from a rational perspective. So I'll leave alone the arguments from folk theology for necessary universal salvation.

What about more proper theological arguments? Here is where the "not an expert on the state of the question" aspect comes in. I don't know any of the proper theological arguments that attempt to demonstrate we can know hell is empty well enough to critique them precisely. I can only respond to the few arguments I do know as well as I understand them.

It seems to me such arguments take one of two related approaches. One is to appeal to God as Love, in Whom mercy triumphs over judgment. According to this position, it is unthinkable for God to create a person only to damn him eternally for some finite act. Damnation is not an act of love, and mercy cannot triumph over an eternal judgment.

The other approach appeals to God's justice as being one that seeks correction rather than punishment. Some argue that it is unthinkable for God to sustain a person in existence eternally simply to punish him eternally. After some point, punishment for any wrong becomes cruel and excessive.

I think such arguments are fairly persuasive, and I'm not sure how to answer them on their own terms. The love and mercy I can conceive God having for the damned is dry and academic when contemplated before a crucifix, and a punishment that literally cannot be conceived of by the wrongdoer doesn't sound like perfect justice when you put it that way.

But these arguments don't have to be answered on their own terms; we can use the Church's terms instead. What an "It's unthinkable for God to do X." statement really means is "it's unthinkable for humans of this time and place to think of God doing X."

Now, theologians have long used "unthinkable for God" type arguments, but they are only sound when the thing it is unthinkable for God to do is a contradiction to some known truth. It is unthinkable for God to break His promise, because God is truth. It's unthinkable for God to act contrary to His nature, because He is His nature.

The arguments for necessary universal salvation, though, are not based on contradiction, but on paradox. We don't know how to reconcile perfect love and mercy with perfect judgment and justice. Such things are beyond us; it's not just a failure of human language but of human intellect.

So what do we know? For one thing, we know this:

It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that makes the [fallen] angels' sin unforgivable. "There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death." [CCC 393, quoting St. John Damascene On the Orthodox Faith 2, 4]

So however mercy and justice are reconciled in God, this reconciliation is consistent with the eternal damnation of the fallen angels. It is evidently not unthinkable for God to damn the demons. Is it really unthinkable for Him to damn a human?

Then too there are the words of the creed: Jesus "will come again to judge the living and the dead." The Catholic faith is defined in terms of a God who judges between the living and the dead. What sense can we give these words if we insist that God by His nature cannot judge someone to be dead?

In the end, then, despite its appeal in a soft-hearted age, the idea that God's nature cannot encompass a plan in which men are eternally damned is itself contradicted by what we know of God.

Which brings me to the first source of the idea that everyone is necessarily saved: a particular interpretation of Scripture. If Scripture teaches it, then it is true, whatever the Catechism might say. What Scripture says, and how to interpret it, will be the focus of my next post on universalism, Deo volente.

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Feast of St. Katharine Drexel

Monday, March 3, is the feast of St. Katharine Drexel, a woman worthy of much better than this:

Higgledy piggledy
Katharine Drexel was
Richer than Midas and
Orphaned while young.

Who won the hand of this
Deca-millionheiress?
Jesus the Lord to Whom
Praises be sung.

St. Katharine Drexel, friend to the poor, pray for us.

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Preparing for Lent

I don't feel well this evening. I've been preparing for Lent since Wednesday, which works out to 3 1/7 boxes of Girl Scout cookies a day to empty the house by midnight of Fat Tuesday.

Which reminds me of pie, and that doesn't help.

In addition to pleasure, for Lent I'm also giving up telling others how to live their lives, so I've spent a very busy weekend giving family and friends their 40 day plans. It's worth the effort though; all that's left is for me to email Kathy Shaidle tomorrow, to tell her to throw away all her bulging files and rename her site Relaxed Catholic, at least through Pentecost.

Word has it that over on New Gasparian (which should really be called "Now Gasping Again" if he doesn't cut back on all the travel), Fr. Keyes is offering a Lenten On-Line Retreat from the letters of St. Gaspar.

I'm looking forward to other Lenten programs on other Catholic blogs, too, but I don't expect there to be anything special here at Disputations. Maybe more mention of Jesus Christ and less of the United Nations; we'll see.

Other than all the sugar, the week before Lent is one of my favorite times of the year, because it's the one time when I feel like I have an excuse for not improving. Reversing the backsliding since Candlemas is plenty of progress for the first half-week of Lent.

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If they were serious about it...

... they'd be praying at 3:33 a.m.

(Link from Disordered Affections.)

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  Lenten lecture series in Silver Spring, MD

The Bishop Fenwick Chapter of the Dominican Laity, in conjunction with the parish of St. Andrew Apostle, is sponsoring its third Lenten lecture series at St. Andrew Apostle Catholic Church in Silver Spring, MD.

Every Tuesday evening, from March 11 through April 8, the Soup and Scripture program will run as follows:

• 6 pm: homemade soup served in the parish community room.
• 6:45 pm: Rosary in the church.
• 7:30 pm: Mass in the church.
• 8 pm: A one-hour presentation by a guest Dominican friar.

The speakers and their topics are:

• March 11: Very Rev. Peter Batts, O.P., "American Catholic and Citizen: Challenge and Opportunity"
• March 18: Rev. Giles Dimock, O.P., "The Holy Spirit: The Lord, the Giver of Life"
• March 25: Rev. James Sullivan, O.P., "New Beginnings for an Old Church: Seven Steps for Renewal"
• April 1: Rev. Laurence Donohoo, O.P., "Called by Our Desires: The Personal Path to Holiness"
• April 8: Rev. Albert Paretsky, O.P., "From Transfiguration to Cross: Journeying with Jesus on the Road to Calvary"

Don't be put off by the semi-colons in the topics. I've heard most of these men speak before, and they are preachers, not lecturers.

I know there are a lot of Washington area bloghounds; I hope some of you all can make it for at least one night. Wear a big funny hat so I can recognize you.

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Three versions

I'm going to distinguish three forms of universal salvation, making no claim that they are the only, or even most important, ones.

The first is apocatastasis. Per the All Greek to Me Protocol, I must admit this isn't a word that I keep in my head, nor have I ever tried to pronounce it out loud. It refers to the doctrine that, ultimately, all creatures will be saved, including those demons and condemned humans in hell.

This was taught by such heavy hitters as Origen, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory Nazianzen (even St. Jerome, in some form, at one point), which suggests that it's falsehood is by no means transparently evident. And it is false, as several ecumenical councils later pronounced. This dogma, that the demons and any humans who are damned are damned for eternity, is one of the points of Revelation that any consideration of universal salvation must treat.

The second form of universal salvation is one I'll call "necessary universal salvation." According to this idea, God in some way irresistably manifests Himself to each person such that each person necessarily makes whatever act of will is required for them to be saved. A necessary universalist probably stresses how unknowable what happens in the instant of death is, because for a lot of people it seems evident that at no time prior to their instant of death did they make any salvific act of will.

The third form I'll call "contingent universal salvation," according to which, while each person has a real choice of refusing salvation, in the event no one actually does. This is similar to the position of many non-double-predestination non-universalists -- those who think salvation is possible for everyone, but that not everyone is saved -- except that the former believe everyone freely chooses salvation, while the latter believe at least some don't.

I'm not entirely satisfied with these terms, since "necessary universal salvation" is consistent with each person freely (i.e., contingently) choosing salvation, and I'd be happy to use something else if anyone has a better suggestion, but I think they'll do to represent the difference between the forms of universal salvation.

Just to show where I stand, I don't think necessary universal salvation is very sensible, and I don't think contingent universal salvation is very likely. It may not be very likely that I'll be able to show that either of these thoughts of mine is very sensible, but I hope to try.

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The peace of the dead

I was feeling proud of myself for thinking that one of the reasons the Vatican seems so keen on a UN-based solution to the Iraq crisis is the relative success of the UN-based solution to the East Timor crisis -- East Timor being, of course, one of the most Catholic countries in the world.

Now I read Nobel Peace Prize laureate José Ramos-Horta arguing that the threat of force is the only answer to the despotism of Saddam. Although he thinks the U.S. should give inspections more time, he also writes:

But if the antiwar movement dissuades the United States and its allies from going to war with Iraq, it will have contributed to the peace of the dead.

The dead in this case being the Iraqis killed by Saddam's regime.

He observes that in the anti-war demonstrations he "did not see one single banner or hear one speech calling for the end of human rights abuses in Iraq." The Vatican has, at least, made numerous statements indicating that Iraq has unfulfilled responsibilities for peace to be possible, but it has to date seemed reluctant to admit that only the threat of force inclines Saddam to even begin to act to fulfill them.

My guess is the reason for this is that the threat of force is only legitimate if the use of the force threatened is legitimate, and the Vatican doesn't think a U.S.-led use of force is legitimate. The Holy See tells Iraq that it has responsibilities, and warns the U.S. against overstepping its authority. What I think I'm missing is the part where the Vatican tells the U.N. to assume its responsibilities.

(Thanks to Karen Hall for mentioning the existence of Ramos-Horta's comments.)

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A universal question

Elsewhere the Great Wheel of Catholic Debate has stopped once more on the topic of universal salvation. [The inescapability of the Great Wheel of Catholic Debate, the fact that every subject has its canonical discussion that repeats itself again and again through time, is what will eventually doom all blogs with functioning archives; they are destined to become like the comedians' club in the joke, where people tell jokes by number.]

I want to look at the subject of universal salvation in somewhat more depth (which is to say, with fewer interruptions) than is usually manageable on a mailing list.

It would seem that I shouldn't look at the subject of universal salvation here. For I am no expert on the state of the question, and haven't even read the regrettably-titled Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"?. (The title is regrettable, since it sounds like a question submitted to an "Ask the Pastor" forum, to which the answer would be, "Sure, knock yourself out.")

Further, the Church has not pronounced infallibly on the matter, and the Apostle cautions, "be not puffed up against the other for another, above that which is written."

Further, my concern is not universal salvation, but my own salvation, which I am to work out "in fear and trembling."

On the contrary, I'm going to anyway.

I answer that, the relations between God and humanity, God and all creation, humanity and the Church, and those outside the Church and Jesus Christ are among the most significant issues being discussed in the Church today -- far more important, in my judgment, than many livelier issues that fill Catholic journals and websites. One's beliefs about universal salvation necessarily affects one's beliefs about the nature of God's relationship with mankind and of the relationships between each pair of human persons. Universal salvation, then, isn't a sterile or academic question, but one to which different answers can and do give rise to different ways of living the Christian life. It is therefore worth considering the question carefully.

I am not an expert, but then I don't propose to give an expert treatment. I will do what I can do, and I hope to reveal and uncover true and false in public and charitable disputation.

While the Church has not definitively settled all aspects of the question of universal salvation, she has made certain authoritative declarations, and there are also non-definitive traditions to which I can refer. With these as guidelines, various opinions become more or less probable, and it is not going above what the Church declares as true to come to a personal judgment on these opinions.

While I am responsible for my own salvation, I am also commanded to preach the Good News to all creation. To the extent that my beliefs regarding universal salvation affect what and how and to whom I should preach, I should examine and test those beliefs.

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Sorry, Kairos Guy...

... but wine recommendations are per se snottum.

We can distinguish, however, between recommendations and guidelines, such as, "No screwtops after Labor Day."

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Matthew 5:44

Amy Welborn quotes St. Augustine on Matthew 5:44 -- which reminded me of a habit I'm trying to develop, of checking the Catena Aurea when discussions of specific Gospel verses come up. (Well, specific verses from Matthew and Mark, the other two not being on-line and I not having broken down and bought the books.)

The Fathers had some interesting thoughts about our Lord's call to love our enemies. Pseudo-Chrysostom has some balming words for those who hate their enemies with a passion: "the flesh indeed is not able to love its enemy, but the spirit is able; for the love and hate of the flesh is in the sense, but of the spirit is in the understanding. If then we feel hate to one who has wronged us, and yet will not to act upon that feeling, know that our flesh hates our enemy, but our soul loves him."

St. Gregory makes a point I hadn't considered at all before, at the end of this excerpt:

Love to an enemy is then observed when we are not sorrowful at his success, or rejoice in his fall.... Yet it may often happen that without any sacrifice of charity, the fall of an enemy may gladden us, and again his exaltation make us sorrowful without any suspicion of envy; when, namely, by his fall any deserving man is raised up, or by his success any undeservedly depressed.

But herein a strict measure of discernment must be observed, lest in following out our own hates, we hide it from ourselves under the specious pretence of others' benefit. We should balance how much we owe to the fall of the sinner, how much to the justice of the Judge. For when the Almighty has struck any hardened sinner, we must at once magnify His justice as Judge, and feel with the other's suffering who perishes.

St. Augustine calls Matthew 5:44 the "rule by which we may at once hate our enemy for the evil's sake that is in him, that is, his iniquity, and love him for the good's sake that is in him, that is, his rational part." He also compares it with 1 John 5:16, "There is such a thing as deadly sin, about which I do not say that you should pray.":

This question can only be resolved, if we admit that there are some sins in brethren more grievous than the sin of persecution in our enemies. For thus Stephen prays for those that stoned him, because they had not yet believed on Christ; but the Apostle Paul does not pray for Alexander though he was a brother, but had sinned by attacking the brotherhood through jealousy.

But for whom you pray not, you do not therein pray against him. What must we say then of those against whom we know that the saints have prayed, and that not that they should be corrected, (for that would be rather to have prayed for them), but for their eternal damnation; not as that prayer of the Prophet against the Lord's betrayer, for that is a prophecy of the future, not an imprecation of punishment; but as when we read in the Apocalypse the Martyrs' prayer that they may be avenged.

But we ought not to let this affect us. For who may dare to affirm that they prayed against those persons themselves, and not against the kingdom of sin? For that would be both a just and a merciful avenging of the Martyrs, to overthrow that kingdom of sin, under the continuance of which they endured all those evils. And it is overthrown by correction of some, and damnation of such as abide in sin. Does not Paul seem to you to have avenged Stephen on his own body, as he speaks, "I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection."

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Substance and legitimacy

Eric at the ecumenical blog Christus Victor has a question for Catholics:

how it can be that Rome requires its faithful to assent to the doctrine of transubstantiation and yet recognize the legitimacy of the Eastern Orthodox Eucharist? The Orthodox Church rejects Aquinas' Aristotelian framework. It seems to me that either the Roman Catholic Church teaches a superflous dogma or the Pope has recognized the legitimacy of a sacrament the Roman Catholic Church teaches is deficient.

I think his blog-mate Conor is right when he points out that "the efficacy of the sacraments does not depend on a perfect understanding of the Sacrament." Certainly a non-denominational Bible church has a deficient understanding of the sacrament of baptism -- I doubt its members would agree it creates a bond of unity with the Catholic Church, for example -- but that doesn't make its baptism invalid.

But there's another point, too. Here is the Council of Trent's definition:

... by the consecration of the bread and wine a change is brought about of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood. This change the holy Catholic Church properly and appropriately calls transubstantiation.

This is essentially a description of the consecration of the Eucharist in Aristotelian terms. I think there are three ways to reject it.

First, you can reject any sort of real mystery in the Eucharist; the bread and wine remain bread and wine and are merely symbolic of Jesus' Body and Blood.

Second, you can accept accept the mystery and accept the terminology but deny that the latter is a true description of the former, as consubstantiationists do.

Third, you can accept the mystery but reject the terminology, saying that all this "substance" stuff is guff and possibly offering another description using different language. I think the Orthodox generally take this route.

But given the philosophical difficulty of the definition -- how can a whole substance change into another substance when it doesn't become that substance? -- I don't think rejecting all that Aristotelian guff necessarily amounts to a rejection of the dogma of transubstantiation. (I've even seen an argument, by a respected Thomist, that affirms Trent except for the part about "transubstantiation" being a proper and appropriate term, since it's basically a nonsense word from Aristotle's perspective.)

Finally, I will add that the degree to which the idea of a "superfluous dogma" appeals to one strikes me as a good measure of where one falls on the Catholic-Protestant scale. Catholics like lots of truths out of which to weave their lives, Protestants like a few sturdy truths upon which to build their lives. Where a Protestant sees accretions and encroachments on disputable matters, a Catholic sees the expression of the fullness of truth.

Although if we use Chesterton's definition of a dogma as a disputed truth, in a sense all dogma is regrettable, since it is a product of the rejection of truth. Bringing this back to transubstantiation, we should remember that Trent offered its definition against certain errors of the Reformation, not against anything the Orthodox taught.

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"He started it!"

JACK at Integrity risks flames by asking

does just war theory support a preemptive strike by Saddam in order to protect his country from attack by the United States?

If so, does it support a pre-pre-pre-emptive strike by the U.S.? &etc.?

The just war criteria cannot be met, objectively, by both sides in a war. If two countries are fighting a war, at least one of them is doing so unjustly.

But, as we're often reminded, the evaluation of the conditions for moral legitimacy of a war belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good. So it is in principle possible for both sides to be fighting what their respective governments each believe to be a just war.

This isn't just a bold argument that there are some wars in which everyone thinks God is on his side. Since just war theory by its very nature relies upon the prudence of the decision maker, it is possible for two decision makers of good will but poor prudence to go to war against each other, each in all honesty following the just war tradition to the fullest.

In the particular case of Iraq and the U.S., though, I don't think we need to worry about whether Saddam is reasoning according to the just war tradition.

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Cum grano salis

Karen Hall stridently rejects calls to pray for bin Laden and Saddam:

Having spent an insane amount of time studying possession and exorcism (for the book that I wrote, and because I find it fascinating in general), I believe that someone like Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler is "perfectly possessed", meaning they are the embodiment of evil. Any exorcist worth his salt will tell you there is no amount of praying that will help that person.

Well, I wouldn't pray for an embodiment of evil either, but since I know essentially nothing about possession and exorcism, I cannot myself judge which enemies are the Enemy's.

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An evident sign of a lack of humility

The idea that blogging is an act of pride is revisited at Flos Carmeli, which features St. Josemaria Escriva's list of signs you aren't very humble, including this:

Giving your opinion without being asked for it, when charity does not demand you to do so.

In my opinion, any joke I made in this sentence would risk being too subtle to be noticed if I didn't point it out, which would be contrary to the second-to-the-last sign of letting drop words that might show your wit.

But does a blogger really give his opinion, or does he rather trade it in exchange for a little time and trouble of the reader's? If I'm tapping away at my personal blog without forcing it on others, am I not merely making my opinion available, and doesn't surfing to my blog amount to asking for my opinion?

Well, maybe, although a blog still affords ample opportunities for offending against humility, and against greater virtues, even if all the opinions given are explicitly requested. If a blogger doesn't love his readers -- in the transitive sense -- then he will sin against them and against God. He might give them the slurry of chatter or the gravel of paltriness, maybe even the big round stones of slander and detraction, but he won't give them the bread of charity and the wine of cheerfulness that a host ought to provide his guests.

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It's the theology, stupid

In the February 2003 First Things, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus reports on an interesting theory of Fr. Robert W. Crooker of the University of St. Thomas:

What was wrong with the moral theology conventionally taught [before the Second Vatican Council] is that it had very little to do with theology. Moral theology was mainly a matter of learning the list of duties and prohibitions necessary for hearing confessions. At stake was access to the sacraments and therefore a soul’s salvation. It follows that a certain leniency, if not laxity, is in order, and that resulted in a garden variety of “probabilism.” Meaning the confessor would not insist on an obligation that “approved authors” held to be doubtful. What the confessor must insist upon is not the good but the tolerable....

Following the lead of the Council, the new Catechism of the Catholic Church begins with theology—the human person made in the image of God and called to share in the life of the Trinity. The Catechism goes on from there to treat the beatitudes, the virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and only then takes up the prescriptions and proscriptions of the Decalogue.... But on this score, as on many others, the Council was not understood or implemented. For most priests, “moral theology” continued to mean probabilistic casuistry, with the very big difference that, after the Council, there was no limit to the number of “approved authors” offering probable opinions.

Perhaps resulting predictably in Fr. Philip Kaufman's Why You Can Disagree and Remain a Faithful Catholic.

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A contemporary paradox

At the same time reality television advances the case that humans exist merely for each other's entertainment and therefore there is no ethical basis for forbidding human cloning, it also raises the question of why anyone would want to clone such creatures.


"I hate and detest that animal called man."
Jonathan Swift

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Divinity and directors

I don't expect to see Gods and Generals, in a theater or anywhere else, soon or ever. I watch maybe ten non-children's movies a year, including video rentals, and somehow a three hour spectacle of Calvinists at prayer doesn't sound like one that will make the short list. (As you may know, I am not sympathetic to the CSA cause. When I hear "It was about states' rights," I say, "State's rights to do what?" The CSA was pro-choice.)

Mark at Minute Particulars thinks it's wrong to tell this story without admitting "that slavery was the issue":

Why try to justify one iota of a culture that had slavery at its core? How can folks who admit slavery was a great evil talk about honor, nobility, and goodness in those who fought to allow it to continue?

I think this goes too far in the direction away from romanticizing the CSA.

"People are complex," as they say, and complexity makes for both good story-telling and fruitful meditation. How can honor and nobility co-exist with a willingness to kill to preserve slavery? That's an important question without a simple answer.

I like to say that people are compound, made up of many parts, in contrast to the simplicity of God. A person of integrity is a person who has integrated his many parts into a unified whole. He remains complex and multi-parted -- that's his nature as a human -- but he manifests God's simplicity in his life by directing all of himself toward God.

I don't think we can resolve the paradox of an honorable man fighting for slavery (or, if you prefer, for the right of a state to make slavery legal) by relaxing one or the other aspect. Lee wasn't immoral, and he was fighting in the cause of an objective evil. It's a problem many of us can recognize in our own lives, as we do bad and don't do good. What I think is required is honesty, that we see and admit to ourselves how various facets of our lives are opposed to each other, and then prayer, for the grace to unite these facets in the service of Jesus Christ.

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Which Bible translation?

"Which translation or edition of the Bible should I buy?" is a common question among people who are ready to get serious about their faith.

There are a lot of answers, from "The one you'll read" to "Everything but X         is the work of the devil."

My answer is, "One of each." Unless you're going to sea or to space, you probably have enough room for more than one book where you live, and if you are reading this you can probably manage to set aside ten dollars a year to buy the translations you can't get for free.

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