What I've been saying


Meaning what? As Fr. Tucker puts it,

ask yourself what we mean when we say that something is illegal. Then ask yourself what it means to apply that adjective to a human being.

This is a moral principle, not a political position. But if a political position follows from the moral principle, so be it.

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His hour came, too

I just noticed unimportant Simon Peter is.

In the Gospel According to St. John, I mean. Before the Last Supper.

Unless I missed a reference, he is only mentioned by name twice before Chapter 13. In Chapter 1, he meets Jesus:

Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard John and followed Jesus. He first found his own brother Simon and told him, "We have found the Messiah" (which is translated Anointed).

Then he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon the son of John; you will be called Kephas" (which is translated Peter).

Rather passive, is Peter, particularly when compared to Philip and Nathaniel, whom Jesus meets in the next few verses. Of the four Apostles, Peter is the only one whose words aren't recorded here. In fact, Chapter 6 contains the only pre-Last Supper words of Peter recorded in this Gospel:

Jesus then said to the Twelve, "Do you also want to leave?"

Simon Peter answered him, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God."

Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you twelve? Yet is not one of you a devil?"

That certainly is a beautiful speech Peter gives, especially coming after verse 66, which states that "many [of Jesus'] disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him." But Jesus' reaction is not that of Matthew 16:18; in this Gospel, Jesus has already given Simon the name Peter, and Peter's confession is no cause to bless him or praise the Father. For that matter, Simon Peter is largely elaborating on what his brother told him even before he met Jesus.

Considering just this Gospel to this point, there is no reason to think of Simon Peter as in any way distinguished from the rest of the Twelve. There is none of the "And Jesus took Peter, James, and John with Him" in John, no list of Apostles naming Peter "first." The only hint that his future career will be worth following closely is that Andrew is introduced as "the brother of Simon Peter."

But with the Last Supper discourse, Simon Peter comes into his own. He refuses to have his feet washed, then asks that his hands and head be washed as well; he tells John to ask who Jesus' betrayer is; he questions Jesus; he boasts of his fidelity to Him.

And, of course, he denies Jesus, after cutting off Malchus's right ear and following Jesus after His arrest and letting John ask the gatekeeper to let him in.

From the time "Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father," Peter steps forward and becomes the key Apostle. He takes the lead, and even when the disciple whom Jesus loved runs ahead of him, Peter still enters first.

And of course it is precisely Jesus' passion, death, and resurrection that change Simon Peter from an unimportant fisherman to the chief servant of the Good Shepherd. The Gospel according to St. John conceals the figure of St. Peter almost entirely prior to Christ's hour, to an extent none of the other Gospels attempt, as though to say that it is only the light of the Passion that can illuminate Peter for the sheep of Christ whom he feeds. (A similar point can be made about "the disciple whom Jesus loved," as though the fact Jesus loved him is unimportant apart from the fact that Jesus died for him.)

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The universal indulgence

Fra Ephraem has come up with perhaps the only angle on the various rumors of an impending universal indult for the Old Mass that would draw my interest. I expect to have a recipe by tomorrow.

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The pitchfork point

A comment below suggests that it is possible to assert that someone made a poor decision without asserting culpability for grave sin, "and God help him on judgment day."

Sure, it's possible, but where's the payoff?

Imagine listening to a wide-ranging conversation between two philosophers. At one point, they might be discussing how best to butter a slice of toast. At another, how to determine whether a tax code is just. At any given point in time, you will be more or less interested in what they're saying, depending on the topic and the ways they present their arguments.

Now suppose you leave the room for a minute, return, and, in trying to pick up the thread of conversation, realize they're debating whether pitchforking babies is ever appropriate in a free society, and if so under what conditions.

At this point, you may well find yourself saying, "Wait a minute! You're debating pitchforking babies!??!!"

If you judge that a conversation has reached the point of pitchforks, then you judge there's no point left to that conversation. You say, "God help him on judgment day," let his poor decision follow as a corollary, and there's not much left to say.

There are some answers that ought to be self-evident, some matters that don't require debate. But it seems that which matters aren't debatable is debatable. In other words, the point at which a debate amounts to whether pitchforking babies is appropriate -- the point at which "God help him on judgment day" is easier to say than "He made a poor decision" -- varies from person to person.

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Room to grow

Construction on the new monastery for the nine nuns of St. Dominic's Monastery in Washington, DC, is about to begin in Front Royal, Virginia.

By building a new monastery, [their attorney Greg] Granitto said, the nuns are building new life for their community and reinforcing that the call to religious life is still being heard by young women. The new monastery will house up to 24 nuns...

The community of nuns is not building only for themselves, but for future groups of their order. For this reason, they are using masonry for the bulk of the building.

"Monasteries traditionally have been built of stone and we want it to last," Sister Mary Paul [Murphy, the prioress,] said.

Granitto said that their determination to build a lasting structure has made the nuns very patient. The monastery will be built in a phased approach -- they will postpone what they can -- instead of substituting quality materials for cheaper materials.

The best line is from the architect:

"Usually, I put a lot of emphasis on entrance design," he said. "The entrance doesn't matter on this because you only go in one time."

Link via man with black hat.

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Well, why not?

Turns out it's not just Latinists, but Pig Latinists, too.

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A university's co-op program

Much has already been written on St. Blog's about the statement of the president of Notre Dame, Fr. John Jenkins, C.S.C., on academic freedom and Catholic character. I wasn't surprised that the majority of comments condemn the statement, nor by whom I've seen approve it. (My favorite comment, by far, was written by an open book reader: "Weren't the Jesuits 'Catholic' once?" I think that says so much about so much of what's been said.)

I suppose, though, I am a little surprised there haven't been more opinions that admitted more uncertainty. Maybe I just haven't come across them; maybe opinions that admit more uncertainty are less likely to be posted.

Or maybe there isn't much uncertainty involved. If we grant that a certain activity that occurs at a Catholic university supports a position clearly and egregiously contrary to certain central values of Catholicism, and that the president of the university could in principle stop that activity, why wouldn't the president be morally obligated to prevent it?

Let's look at that question: Is the president, in such circumstances, categorically morally obligated to prevent it? This question seems to me to be convertible to, Is the president's failure to prevent it formal or proximate material cooperation with evil? (Here I'll take for granted that the activity itself is evil.)

Generally speaking, it could be formal cooperation; that is, the president could himself personally support the evil. But he may well not, in which case it's not formal cooperation.

It's an understandable impulse to want to answer, "Of course it's proximate material cooperation! The activity occurs if and only if he lets it. He could stop it with the stroke of a pen." This impulse, however, should probably be tempered by a couple of other considerations.

First, it somewhat misrepresents the position of president of a university. There are very few university activities that require his explicit approval. Unless the particular evil activity is one of the few activities that truly can't happen without his explicit approval, his material cooperation is not obviously proximate.

More generally, the power to prevent something does not necessarily imply proximate material cooperation when it is not prevented. Recall St. Thomas's principle that "human law rightly allows some vices, by not repressing them."

It would seem, then, that a university president is not categorically obligated to prevent an evil activity from occurring at his university. We would need to look at the circumstances of each such activity to determine whether the lack of prevention constitutes formal cooperation, proximate material cooperation, or remote material cooperation. The first two cases are not as easily made as some may think.

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Videtur quod beatitudo non est parvis canis calidis

Last week, I wrote:

For a person to be happy, the patterns according to which he lives his life must themselves form some sort of integrated pattern.

Confidently asserted, but can I offer a compelling argument that it's true?

That depends, obviously, on what people find compelling -- and also, in this instance, on what people think happiness is. So let me first propose, as a most general an unrefined definition, that happiness is having what you want and wanting what you have.

I think this is in the ballpark of what people mean when they say they're happy. They might have everything they want and want everything they have with respect to some certain limited context (e.g., "I'm happy with my dinner."), or they might have mostly everything they reasonably want and mostly want most of what they have (e.g., "I'm happy with the way my life is going these days.").

So what does living according to patterns that form an integrated pattern have to do with having what you want and wanting what you have?

Well, I mean "an integrated pattern" to suggest that the various desires, choices, values, and so forth that compose the pattern are all mutually compatible. If they aren't compatible, then they are somehow in conflict, and if I value two things that are in conflict I won't be able to have everything I want, so by definition I won't be happy.

There's a difference, by the way, between two things being in conflict and two things being in tension. In the former, the two things relate to each other only through the conflict, so to speak; they are independent of each other and can be considered apart from each other. When two things are in tension, they have a natural and essential relation to each other, and neither can be considered in an absolute sense without also considering the other.

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Discussion questions on Deus Caritas Est, Part II and Conclusion

And last:

1. What happened to eros and agape? (The word "agape" appears twice in Part II, once in a reference to Ignatius of Antioch describing "the Church of Rome as 'presiding in charity (agape)'," once in the construct "caritas-agape"; the word "eros" is absent.)
2. Why the history lesson from Acts through Julian, etc.?
3. n. 25: "The Church's deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia), and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable."
   • Would we have gotten this right on a test?
4. 28a: "Faith by its specific nature is an encounter with the living God.... But it is also a purifying force for reason itself."
   • Do Catholics believe this? Do we live this?
5. n 29: "The Church has an indirect duty [in the formation of just structures], in that she is called to contribute to the purification of reason and to the reawakening of those moral forces without which just structures are neither established nor prove effective in the long run.
   The direct duty to work for a just ordering of society, on the other hand, is proper to the lay faithful."
   • How are the Church's indirect duty and the lay faithful's direct duty to work for a just ordering of society playing out these days?
6. n. 31b: "Christian charitable activity must be independent of parties and ideologies."
   • How do we manage that?
7. n. 31c: "A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and to let love alone speak."
   • Do we know? How?
8. n. 36: "When we consider the immensity of others' needs, we can, on the one hand, be driven towards an ideology that would aim at doing what God's governance of the world apparently cannot: fully resolving every problem. Or we can be tempted to give in to inertia, since it would seem that in any event nothing can be accomplished. At such times, a living relationship with Christ is decisive if we are to keep on the right path...."
   • Is "fully resolving every problem" or "to give in to inertia" a temptation for you?
9. n. 37: “"t is time to reaffirm the importance of prayer in the face of the activism and the growing secularism of many Christians engaged in charitable work."
   • How can we do this?
10. n. 41: "[Mary] speaks and thinks with the Word of God; the Word of God becomes her word, and her word issues from the Word of God."
    • What can Mary teach us about eros, agape, and caritas?

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A nonstarter

Catholics who believe that no humans will be damned should realize that their belief is, technically, an opinion. That is, it's an intellectual judgment expressing more or less confidence that something is true. We can't now know whether no humans will be damned; we can't have faith that no humans will be damned, since that proposition is not part of the Faith. (We can have faith in someone else's judgment, but that ultimately boils down to an opinion that someone else's opinion is correct.)

The same can be said for any other opinion someone might have about the proportion of the saved. For that matter, introducing an opinion with the words, "I believe," is commonplace whatever the subject, religious or not.

If all these beliefs are actually intellectual judgments, then there's some sort of reasoning that led up to them, reasoning that is more or less sound and that others will find more or less persuasive.

One sort of reasoning that must be ruled out from the start is the sort that depends on or produces a position that contradicts the Faith. Stated baldly, it seems obvious, but sometimes it's hard to derail a train of thought once it starts to roll.

In the context of universal salvation, for example, I think I have often seen reasoning that effectively denies the possibility -- or at least that denied the effective possibility -- of damnation. When someone starts saying things like, "God must reveal Himself irresistibly to everyone," that pretty much makes nonsense of damnation being a "real" possibility.

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A puzzle

As Chris Sullivan points out, the Catechism states:

God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end.

I'm not sure what to make of this, in particular of the parenthetical, because that's not what I understood to be Catholic doctrine. As it stands, it makes salvation the "default" destiny of mankind, and that doesn't seem to quite square with the doctrine of original sin.

In fact, the Council of Florence taught, in Session 6:

But the souls of those who depart this life in actual mortal sin, or in original sin alone, go down straightaway to hell to be punished, but with unequal pains.

The emphasized phrase is missing from the Catechism's statement. What's even more puzzling is that the first statement apparently isn't consistent with this third statement, which is also in the Catechism:

Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children which caused him to say: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them," allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism.

If, in fact, a mortal sin as usually understood is necessary to go to hell, then (since mortal sin requires the use of reason) we wouldn't merely hope there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism, we would know there is no way they aren't saved. (Clearly, the children in question are understood to have not yet reached the age of reason.)

Having copied the three statements into this post, I was surprised to realize the statement about hope for unbaptized children is actually more consistent with the rather dire claim made by the medieval council. The way of salvation for which we are allowed to hope would simply need to be one that includes forgiveness of original sin. ("Simply" in the sense that it's simple to make the statements consistent, not in the sense that it's simple to work out the theology much beyond "God is not bound by the sacraments.")

I think, though, that nowadays a lot of people don't take original sin quite seriously enough, treating it as more a matter of therapy (e.g., references to our "brokenness") than of the death of the soul.

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Wild about curling

Disney has a new animated movie coming out called The Wild (pronounced ""ma-d&-'gas-k&r") with, of all things, a curling scene.

Meanwhile, Team USA (a.k.a., Team Fenson, bronze medalists from the Olympics) is at the top of the standings at the World Men's Championships, with a 6-1 record.

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You can't wait for an eternity

In a comment below, Steven Riddle writes:

I have said time and again that Hell cannot be eternal in the same way God is eternal because that would imply the existence of Hell-in-God.

It's true enough that hell isn't eternal in the same way God is eternal. I think you can even say hell isn't eternal at all.

As St. John puts it,

Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.

Hell exists pretty much specifically for people who don't know the only true God and the One Whom He sent. By definition, the damned don't have eternal life. And, as Rob pointed out, there isn't some dualistic or indifferent Eternity, part of which is God and heaven and goodness and life and part of which is Satan and hell and evil and death.

As I understand it, what this means is that human life in the "new earth" will be both everlasting -- in the sense of unending -- and eternal, insofar as it will be a participation in the Divine Life of the Trinity.

The damned, on the other hand, will not participate in the Divine Life, and therefore will not experience eternity, though their existence will be everlasting.

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A couple of things on the last things

I had promised Steven Riddle a post explaining why, in his musings on salvation, he was getting things exactly backward by writing such things as this:

...to lose a majority of those you claim to love bespeaks either a failing love or an impotent will.

And this:

It would not seem to matter what words or actions I use to reject the majority of my offspring--either condition would suggest either a defect in love or a defect in strength.

And this:

What I did say was that it was rather a poor or impotent Almighty Father that would have a majority of His offspring reject Him. Not much of a sovereign will if you can't rein in the troops. Not really much omnipotence if all you can reclaim is 2% of your flock.

That is the point I am making. It is hard to conceive of an Almighty God with an ultimately loving intent unable to save 98% of those He would save. Doesn't speak well for omnipotence or for love.

There's not much point in my taking this up, since it's clear Steven has made up his mind. It might even be bad form to try to get him to change his mind, since he says his current opinion allows him to love God more.

So I will just propose two points, and leave it at that.

1. To treat damnation as signifying some sort of failure on God's part is to mistreat damnation about as completely as possible. For that matter, to treat damnation as something God does is to mistreat damnation no little.
2. There is no "mostly" in God. Any argument about His nature that holds if one person is damned holds if all but one persons are damned.

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The invitations is extended

"...to prayer and fasting this coming Monday the 3rd and Tuesday the 4th of April, so that the Lord will restore peace, tranquility and security to Iraq, country of our beloved Abraham."

And I mean extended.

Two days, a day and a half, one day: it won't go to waste.

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It's been a long month

But at last it's here.

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More con than pro

As the Crunchy Con blogsite winds up, I can say that my opinion about the project has evolved from one of curiosity -- I am generally sympathetic to romantic calls to traditional life -- to frustration -- it wasn't at all clear just what they were really advocating (the manifesto? a place at the G.O.P. table? a reflection on an interesting cultural phenomenon?) -- and is settling into disappointment.

I am more convinced than ever that "Crunchy Conservatism" isn't so much "a sensibility" as Rod Dreher's sensibility, and that Rod Dreher's sensibility is essentially driven by his emotions. Although he has in the past shown a willingness to pass moral judgment on those who fail to share his emotions, "What Would Rod Feel?" is not a sound guiding principle for living a virtuous life.

I had held out some hope that, as the discussion reached the book's final chapter, "Waiting for Benedict," it would finally move beyond raising personal preferences to virtues, which seemed to constitute the bulk of the nonanecdotal discussion. Unfortunately, what Rod calls "the St. Benedict Option" consists in giving up society as a lost cause and constructing "new forms of community within which the moral life [can] be sustained." (The quoted words are from Alisdair MacIntyre.)

This is unfortunate for several reasons, not least being that, once again, Rod is thinking along these lines because that's where his emotions take him. 9/11, Katrina, EMPs, suitcase nukes: recent tough history convinces him tougher history is just around the corner. His concerns appear less philosophical than MacIntyre's, and more practical. Sustaining the moral life would be great, but the primary benefit of new forms of community would be sustaining physical life, when (today? next Thursday?) the United States goes feral.

Certainly your prudential judgment on how to achieve the good life will adopt a distinct character if you feel "the wheels are coming off." But if that's really where we're headed, then maybe now isn't the time to discuss whether the Republican mainstream sufficiently appreciates the humanizing qualities of the Arts and Crafts movement.

The attempt to present Crunchy Conservatism as something broader than Rod's sensibility wasn't helped by the fact that the other bloggers were generally reluctant to self-identify as Crunchy Cons. It may also be noted that the one most eager, Caleb Stegall, was also most critical of Rod's own positions, often posting to agree with points raised in critical emails.

In Caleb's case, I think it can be said, the problem is that Rod isn't countercultural enough -- and in fact, it takes a lot more than wearing Birkenstocks and opposing factory farming to make a man who works eleven hour days as an editor at the tenth largest newspaper in the country "countercultural" in any real sense.

The book and the blog seem to have caught Rod in motion. He feels very strongly that certain things are right and certain things are wrong, but he has not yet worked out and accepted all the implications. Hence the back-and-forth, "suburbs are bad, except when they're not," "I'm not saying it's wrong to do these things I've said are dehumanizing" kind of thing.

Caleb, who seems to have spent a lot more time thinking about his principles, is far more willing to issue blanket condemnations. Whether Rod will continue to move in that direction, winding up as Director of Propaganda for the Agrarian Monarchist Party for the 2016 election, remains to be seen.

To put all this in the context of my posts this week on tradition, I was hoping to find in the Crunchy Con discussion an argument that it constitutes an integrated pattern for living a good life. The discussion, though, was noticeably dis-integrated, the more so the closer it kept to the book's outline.

This is not to say the people interviewed in the book, or who have otherwise responded positively to it, have not formed for themselves integrated patterns for living good lives. But the attempt to synthesize these personal patterns into some larger cultural pattern has failed, as far as I can see.

The failure shows whenever something is declared "crunchy" simply because it is virtuous. The "Crunchy Con Manifesto" doesn't manifest crunchiness, particularly, and if as they sometimes say they really mean "traditionalism," they're left with a choice between the Scylla of traditionalism narrowly defined -- leading them to condemn many perfectly fine traditions -- and the Charybdis of traditionalism broadly defined -- making all the fuss over organic farming and liturgical cities irrelevant.

Can I write a post this long without making note of the, at time stunningly high, level of self-justified moralizing that attended the discussion from start to finish? Not quite.

Finally, I'll repeat that I am not a political conservative, and so I leave it to others to take up the question of what "true conservatism" is, and whether Rod's characterizations of "mainstream conservatives" are accurate, and the degree to which the Republican Party sacrifices families to the free market.

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Quarantine

This post is here just to provide a comment link where anyone who wants to can debate the heretical, blasphemous, and contra-Biblical belief that the Old Testament has value only to Christians whose faith is too weak to accept the New Testament straight up, and related heretical, blasphemous, and contra-Biblical beliefs. Attempts to introduce such debate in other comment threads are unlikely to prove enduring.

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A pattern of argument

You might note that, in the posts on tradition, I have so far kept things very general, following the dictionary definition of "tradition" as a kind of "pattern of thought, action, or behavior." I haven't written anything specific to religion, much less to Christianity, yet.

This approach of saying as much as I can before bringing religion into it is something I've used before, notably in the warmly received "Graph Theology of Faith" series of posts from this past Christmastide. It's not an original approach, of course, but I think it offers certain benefits that repay the effort of not jumping the gun. Let me suggest three of them.

One benefit to discussing what can be discussed without reference to religion is that it delays the inevitable religious disagreements. There are certain aspects of certain topics that a Catholic and a Calvinist are simply going to disagree on, and the longer they stay away from these aspects the more they may find aspects they do agree on. The experience of agreement -- by which the parties learn that they can learn from each other -- may make the eventual disagreement a better experience for all.

Another, related benefit is that it may reveal disagreements that are usually expressed in religious terms but turn out to have a more general basis. Two Christians may find that their doctrinal differences arise from their philosophical differences, and see that debating doctrinal conclusions directly will be fruitless, since they accept mutually incompatible philosophical premises. An atheist may discover there's more to refuting a Christian than flat rejection of his appeal to authority; the appeal may be very different for the two because, say, they have very different ideas about what human knowledge really is.

Finally, I think putting off the religious aspects of a question as long as possible helps broaden the thinking of the one who does it. With tradition, for example, you can explore questions without immediately placing them into the stock contemporary positions. Reject a tradition from your patrimony? You contemptible heretic. Not look to import a tradition? You hidebound blockhead.

In other words, it forces you to think of the subject in general human terms, not specific political terms. That, in turn, can help you understand general human nature in a way you wouldn't have considered if you started with a specifically religious context. (E.g., what are the similarities and differences between my faith in my friend and my faith in my God?) And that can help you understand how the Faith relates to all human experiences.

[None of this is to suggest that what we say outside of an explicitly religious context is unaffected by our faith. There's almost nothing I can say about anthropology, for example, that isn't ultimately grounded in what the Faith says man is, and my confidence in making the bold statement Brandon noticed in the previous post also comes from faith. But the above benefits may still obtain in such cases.]

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A pattern of patterns

In a comment below, Rob offers a nice segue into this post:

Our problem is not being without tradition. Our problem is simultaneously hosting multiple traditions, which mostly do not communicate with each other, leaving us without real intellectual integrity.

I see integrity, in the literal sense of an integrated whole, as the key concept in the whole process I diagrammed yesterday. Somehow, from the sources of patrimony, dead tradition, foreign tradition, and invention, each generation -- again, considered as an individual, a community, or a culture -- should form for itself a unified, coherent way of life.

How to do that is certainly an open question, but I think it's important to start with and to keep in mind the reason for worrying about it at all. One way or another, everyone winds up with a way of life. For a person to be happy, the patterns according to which he lives his life must themselves form some sort of integrated pattern.

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What if it were easy?

Eve Tushnet has some questions about forgiveness. Like most of us. One of her scattered thoughts:

What if it were easy? There is probably at least one person in your life whom you find it very easy to forgive. This is a person you love: a spouse, a friend, a parent, a child, somebody. If this person goes around being horrible to others and to you, you don't just sit there and take it--for her sake, you tell her why what she's doing is wrong. You do your best to stop her from acting wrongly. This even though she's the person you forgive quicker than anyone else.

From this experience we learn one important thing: Challenge isn't separate from love. You adore her, therefore you try to stop her when you think she might harm herself or others. Love doesn't mean, "Okay honey, do whatever you want, I don't care."

Okay... so try to apply this, analogously, to people you don't immediately love. What if you loved them? What if it were easy to forgive them?

You still wouldn't pretend like they had never done anything wrong. Forgiveness doesn't mean pretending the wrong never happened. It doesn't mean that you can't take the wrongdoing into account when trying to figure out if you should trust the other person with a confidence, or a $20 bill.

This sort of fits in with something that came up in a recent conversation, in which it was pointed out that we know how it is that God can forgive someone -- all sin is sin against God -- but it's less clear what it means for one human to forgive another. When God forgives, there's a change in the one forgiven. When we forgive, what really happens?

There's a lot that can be said about that, but we might pause for a moment to consider the words "we know how it is that God can forgive someone." How God forgives is through the crucifixion and death of His Son. So perhaps, sometimes, forgiveness can't be easy, no matter how holy the person is. Perhaps, sometimes, when forgiveness is easy, we aren't forgiving so much as declaring our indifference. Perhaps, sometimes, when we say, "I forgive you," we really mean, "You did not injure me."

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Fasting, please

Two days? In a row?

Well, okay. It's for a good cause: "that the Lord will restore peace, tranquility and security to Iraq."

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Stating the case

Camassia's post on how a traditionless person relates to tradition prompted me to try to clarify my own thinking on the meaning and value of tradition.

The word "tradition" comes from the Latin traditio, the act of handing over (and so is etymologically related to "treason," a handing over in the sense of betrayal). In a general sense, a tradition is some pattern of behavior that is handed over from one generation to the next.

I've put together a state transition model of how this handing over occurs:



According to the model, each generation (be it an individual or a culture) has two kinds of behavioral patterns: "living traditions," which are received from the previous generation; and "personal patterns," which have a source other than the previous generation. A personal pattern can be created by the generation, reclaimed from an ancestral generation, or imported from an unrelated source.

Each living tradition is either handed on by the generation, in which case it becomes part of the cultural patrimony, or it is not, in which case it becomes a dead tradition. Personal patterns that are handed on also join the patrimony (and if a personal pattern isn't handed on, it just quietly disappears).

Each element of the patrimony is either accepted, in which case it becomes or continues as part of the living tradition, or rejected, in which case it joins the other dead traditions.

What's particularly significant about this diagram, in terms of how people relate to traditions that aren't handed down to them, is how dynamic it is. Tradition is often represented as an ossified system, from patrimony to living tradition and back. But a little thought shows that a lot more can be going on, even in relatively static cultures, and the diagram doesn't even represent the way a living tradition can evolve across generations or be adapted or understood by a particular part of a particular generation.

Creating personal patterns, then, is an inherent aspect of tradition, and shouldn't be regarded as unique to our modern, deracinated culture. Nor, for that matter, should our modern, deracinated culture be seen as altogether traditionless.

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Too sharp a distinction

In the introduction to Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI writes:

...I wish in my first Encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others. That, in essence, is what the two main parts of this Letter are about, and they are profoundly interconnected. The first part is more speculative.... The second part is more concrete....

It would be a mistake to read him as meaning the first part is merely speculative, that it deals with ideas without practical application.

I don't know that anyone has made that mistake, but it's easy to do, I think. Reading something like, "God loves, and his love may certainly be called eros, yet it is also totally agape," a body might be excused for thinking, "Oh, ah?" Theology, especially when written by a theologian, can seem awfully abstract and removed from the practical questions of what should be done. Heck, we even distinguish between fundamental theology -- the stuff no one understands -- and moral theology -- the stuff no one wants to hear.

Still, a measured reading of the first part of the encyclical will show that you don't have to wait till the second part to be faced with practical matters. Consider this passage:

The Eucharist draws us into Jesus' act of self-oblation. More than just statically receiving the incarnate Logos, we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving... [T]his sacramental "mysticism" is social in character, for in sacramental communion I become one with the Lord, like all the other communicants... Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. [13-14]

Is there a term more likely to convince someone that what he's reading has no practical application than "sacramental 'mysticism'"? Yet "I can belong to Christ only in union with all who belong to Christ" is not just a theological observation, it's a fact against which we must measure our own commitment to union with all who belong to Christ.

What the Pope writes about the Eucharist in the first part of his encyclical yields a number of quite practical results. So too with marriage, so too with love as we do or should experience it. These results are evident if we consciously seek both meanings of the meaning of his words: the conceptual content and the implications for our lives.

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Discussion questions for Deus Caritas Est, nn. 9-18

These are the questions I armed myself with to discuss the second part of the first part of Deus Caritas Est at my parish.

1. "The one God in whom Israel believes, on the other hand, loves with a personal love. His love, moreover, is an elective love: among all the nations he chooses Israel and loves her -- but he does so precisely with a view to healing the whole human race. God loves, and his love may certainly be called eros, yet it is also totally agape." [9]
• Can we make sense of calling God's love eros?

2. "We have seen that God's eros for man is also totally agape. This is not only because it is bestowed in a completely gratuitous manner, without any previous merit, but also because it is love which forgives." [10]
• Does a love bestowed without any previous merit and which forgives describe how we love? Is it even possible for us?

3. "God's passionate love for his people -- for humanity -- is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice." [10]
• Can we make sense of a love "so great that it turns God against himself"?

4. "First, eros is somehow rooted in man's very nature; Adam is a seeker, who 'abandons his mother and father' in order to find woman; only together do the two represent complete humanity and become 'one flesh.' The second aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of creation, eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, dofulfillfulfil its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love." [11]
• Any thoughts on how this encyclical can be used to prepare for or support Christian marriages?

5. "The real novelty of the New Testament lies not so much in new ideas as in the figure of Christ himself, who gives flesh and blood to those concepts -- an unprecedented realism." [12]
• Is there real novelty in the ideas of the New Testament? Which ones?

6. "By contemplating the pierced side of Christ (cf. 19:37), we can understand the starting-point of this Encyclical Letter: 'God is love' (1 Jn 4:8). It is there that this truth can be contemplated. It is from there that our definition of love must begin. In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path along which his life and love must move." [12]
• How can we bring this contemplation of the pierced side of Christ into our definition of love?

7. "[T]his sacramental 'mysticism' is social in character, for in sacramental communion I become one with the Lord, like all the other communicants.... Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians." [14]
• Do we find that Communion draws us out of ourselves toward unity with all Christians?

8. "Faith, worship and ethos are interwoven as a single reality which takes shape in our encounter with God's agape. Here the usual contraposition between worship and ethics simply falls apart.... A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented." [14]
• "Does my Communion pass over into the concrete practice of love?": Is this a question we use when examining our consciences?

9. "The Church has the duty to interpret ever anew this relationship between near and far with regard to the actual daily life of her members." [15]
• How do we interpret the relationship between near and far with regard to our actual daily life?

10. "'If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen' (1 Jn 4:20)... Saint John's words should ... be interpreted to mean that love of neighbor is a path that leads to the encounter with God, and that closing our eyes to our neighbor also blinds us to God." [16]
• Can we function day to day without closing our eyes to our neighbor?

11. "He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has 'loved us first', love can also blossom as a response within us." [17]
• Whom do we love first?

12. "Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave." [18]
• What can we do for those who don't know they crave a look of love?

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At long last

Kathy Shaidle begreep me!

Ik denk zij laatste, ook begreep.

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Friday confession

I hadn't known that popes held the title "Patriarch of the West." I don't care that Pope Benedict XVI dropped it. I don't care why he did.

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The third kind of lie

In yesterday's post, I broke several cardinal rules of quoting statistics. I didn't quote the sampling error, I didn't provide a link to the full report, I didn't double-check the figures. In short, I quoted a quotation of the statistics, which means who knows how the data should be interpreted?

And that, of course, is key. We can grant that the statistics are perfectly sound, but all that means is that if you asked everyone in the population, you'd get about the same distribution you got by asking only a tiny sample of the population. Statistics tell us nothing about what statistics actually mean.

I don't know if I used too many words in my "essay or multiple choice" bit, or what. Maybe my main point can be summed up, and understood, in these words: Giving one response rather than another to a question in a telephone poll does not constitute an act of Christian love.

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Essay or multiple choice

On dotCommonweal, mention is made of a recent Pew Research poll (whose results were published in the National Catholic Reporter) that suggests Catholics are disproportionately pro-torture. To the question, "Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?", the results were:

	Total Public	Total Catholic	White Protestant	White Evangelical	Secular
Often	15%	21%	15%	13%	10%
Sometimes	31%	35%	34%	36%	25%
Rarely	17%	16%	16%	16%	16%
Never	32%	26%	31%	31%	41%
Don't Know/Refused	5%	4%	4%	4%	4%

One in four Catholics surveyed gave the answer of the Church. No one who reads Mark Shea's blog can be wholly surprised by this, though I would have guessed somewhat more than half would have answered at least "Rarely."

On dotCommonweal, Grant Gallicho writes:

How did this happen? U.S. Catholic bishops have been anything but silent on the issue.

Which, as excerpted, is an amusing little non sequitur, considering the encouragement and celebration of ignoring U.S. bishops that exists in many corners of the Church that otherwise have little in common. (And yes, his broader point is, "This is a teaching moment that must be seized." But then, so is every moment.)

Apart from the sheer pleasure of ignoring the bishops, though, I would guess that the approval of torture by the Church hierarchy in the past accounts for a significant amount of the Catholic shift away from "Never." It's far easier to say the former practices were moral than to say exactly how immoral practices could exist within an infallible Church. (The disproportionate number of Catholics who answered "Often" is more puzzling to me; perhaps Catholics are more likely to assume those wielding the sword know what they're doing.)

It has also been noted that four in ten "seculars" gave the correct answer, leading one dotCommonweal commenter to remark:

Sadly it is has been clear for a while that many humanists are so much more charitable than Christians.

I am not sanguine about this conclusion. Your answer to a multiple-choice poll is hardly evidence of your charity. Opposition to torture can be based on many things other than a genuine love of neighbor -- to say nothing of love in Christ of neighbor, which is the fullness of Christian charity.

It is possible for a person to choose the charitable thing without possessing the virtue of charity. A "secular" may oppose torture because he thinks that evil is an illusion, or that no one is responsible for his actions, or that the U.S. is the source of all evil in the world, or that if torture isn't opposed today the theocrats will be torturing seculars tomorrow, or that physical suffering is the greatest possible evil.

It is also possible for a person to choose against charity while yet possessing, albeit imperfectly, charity as a virtue. One may mistakenly believe justice demands torture when it might save lives, or that not torturing in that situation would be to fail to love those whose lives would be lost. One may regard torture as just punishment, perhaps even a sort of tough love toward the victim, who can thereby atone (whether he wants to or not) for his involvement in whatever crime led to his torture.

I suspect, then, that had the poll respondents written essays defending their answers, the picture would not have been quite as stark as the reported statistics paint. Not altogether heartwarming, maybe, but not as stark.

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Midterm pining

With the midterm elections in the U.S. a little over half a year away, and the 2008 presidential campaigns revving up, it's about time for the biennial discussion among American Catholics about political homelessness.

This time around, I'm thinking about a fresh break with the "one from column R and one from column D" approach to constructing the ideal political party. What do you think of an Agrarian Monarchist Party?

I'm neither an agrarian nor a monarchist, and I think both groups are overrepresented by folks touched in the head, but I have to think the food (raised and prepared by the agrarians) and drink (imported and decanted by the monarchists) at the party meetings would be fantastic.

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An invitation to decline

There's something fundamentally screwy about any conversation that all but requires, as the price of participation, a Homeric boast of one's own personal virtues. It seems to me two such conversations are occurring at the Crunch Con blog and at dotCommonweal.

Something about the way the whole Crunchy Con debate has been formulated invites people to testify on such matters as whether they love their children and whether they think of anything other than their material possessions.

Something about the whole "Commonweal Catholic" discussion (which is by no means all of the discussion at dotCommonweal) invites people to preen over their intellects; they're thinking Catholics, you see.

I suppose that invitation exists whenever the topic is (or is taken to be) whether a particular group is superior to everyone else. Those who belong to the group are inclined to demonstrate membership in terms of their own superiority; those who do not belong are inclined to prove the thesis false by example of their superiority.

The results are often not very edifying.

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The crowd there heard it and said it was thunder

What can those who have eyes to see -- which ought to include everyone who is baptized -- actually see these days?

Can they see the literally blind literally regain their sight, the literally lame literally walk?

Well, maybe, sometimes. I've met the woman whose eyesight recovery is being considered for the canonization of Bl. Margaret of Castello. Most people probably know someone who knows someone who experienced a medically inexplicable recovery.

Of course, materialists will be quick to point out that "medically inexplicable" refers to what the medical community happens to know today, not to what actually does have a material cause. And almost anything can happen to happen; it has to happen to happen often enough before it's something science can say something about.

Far more often, I suspect, those with eyes to see see things that leave materialists, not sputtering about what Science might learn in the next decade, but chuckling over the enduring superstitions of the simple-minded. All the little coincidences, ironies, synchronicities, and irruptions that come your way and remind you that God exists, that He is with you, that He loves you, that He calls you to Him: what will the materialist make of these things?

What do we make of them, when the pious old ladies at church tell us how, after a novena to St. Anthony, they've never had a problem finding a parking spot? What, for that matter, do we make of such things when our New Age sister-in-law starts talking about meeting the reincarnation of someone or other, or lucidly dreaming about a car crash that actually happened?

There's a scale of credulity, and everyone believes he occupies just the right spot between blind superstition and blind incredulity. But how do the incredulous tell us from the superstitious, and vice versa?

Let me make three suggestions.

First, we see by faith, which opens us to seeing a lot that science can't quite make out, and which prevents us from falling for certain superstitious traps. We might keep in mind, though, that with a faith-enhanced vision we can't prove we're seeing what is really there.

Second, I may not be shown everything you see, nor you everything I see. The subtle messages, the gentle whisper God so often speaks to us in, may not be intended to be overheard.

Third, we should not become attached to seeing God, even as our vision of Him becomes more acute, or we might be caught blind in a dark night.

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Discussion Questions for Deus Caritas Est, nn. 2-8

Here are my notes for a discussion of the first part of the first part of Deus Caritas Est. The numbers in brackets refer to the section number of the encyclical containing the quotation.

1. "...we cannot simply prescind from the meaning of the word in the different cultures and in present-day usage." [2]
• What other words do the Church and the world use differently? (E.g., "tempting," "sinful," "truth")

2. "The Greeks -- not unlike other cultures -- considered eros principally as a kind of intoxication, the overpowering of reason by a 'divine madness' which tears man away from his finite existence and enables him, in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power, to experience supreme happiness." [4]
• Does our culture think of love as intoxication or "divine madness"?
• What does the culture say love enables man to do?

3. "An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in 'ecstasy' towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man. Evidently, eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns." [4]
• What does the concept of "a degredation of man" imply?
• What happens when we don’t acknowledge that there is a beatitude for which our whole being yearns?

4. "... love promises infinity, eternity -- a reality far greater and totally other than our everyday existence." [5]
• What else in our culture makes such a promise?

5. "Purification and growth in maturity are called for; and these also pass through the path of renunciation." [5]
• What does "the path of renunciation" mean?

6. "... man is a being made up of body and soul... Should he aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness." [5]
• Why is this true, and how can we know it is true?

7. "Eros, reduced to pure 'sex', has become a commodity, a mere 'thing' to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great 'yes' to the body." [5]
• Can the culture see the truth of this?

8. In the Song of Songs, "Love now becomes concern and care for the other. No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice." [6]
• Do we desire to love in this way?
• What would make us desire to love sacrificially?

9. As it grows, love "seeks to become definitive... both in the sense of exclusivity (this particular person alone) and in the sense of being 'for ever'." [6]
• What has happened to our concept of love?

10. "Love is indeed 'ecstasy', not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward -- looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God." [6]
• Does this mean we can take 1 John 4:7b -- "everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God" -- literally?

11. "Yet eros and agape -- ascending love and descending love -- can never be completely separated. The more the two, in their different aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized." [7]
• Is this a new idea for you?
• How is this teaching lived in the Church?
• What might happen if the Church taught this clearly enough to the world?

12. Man "cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift." [7]
• How important is it that love be received as a gift?

13.To "become a source from which rivers of living water flow... one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God." [7]
• What does it tell us, about love and about our faith, that Pope Benedict identifies "the love of God" with the water (of baptism) and blood (that washes away sin) that flowed from Jesus' side?

14. "We have thus come to an initial, albeit still somewhat generic response to the two questions raised earlier." [8]
• What are the two questions, and what are the answers?
i. "[A]re all ... forms of love basically one"? [2]
ii. "Did Christianity really destroy eros?" [4]
• What does all this mean for us this Lent?

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Allergies



God's little way of reminding you that physical beauty can co-exist with moral evil.

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St. Patrick's Day Trivia

If you tell a child who attends a Catholic elementary school that, whenever St. Patrick's Day falls on a Friday, the celebration of St. Joseph's Day is transferred to the following Monday, which makes it like a four day weekend, except he has school on two of the days, the child will not be impressed.

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Helpful distinctions

Recent discussions call to mind two distinctions that are sometimes helpful.

One is the distinction between distinction and separability. That two things are not separable -- that you can't have one without the other -- does not mean that they cannot be distinguished. The two sides of a coin, for example, cannot be separated¹, but they can certainly be distinguished.

The other is the distinction between two meanings of the question, "What does this mean?" One meaning, which you might call the proximate meaning, is simply the literal sense of whatever the "this" is; the second (remote) meaning is what follows from the truth of the literal sense. You've seen, perhaps, the "Far Side" cartoon of the two fishermen on a lake, with mushroom clouds rising from beyond the mountains. The proximate meaning of those clouds is that a nuclear war has destroyed civilization. The remote meaning is expressed by one of the fishermen: "I'll tell you what this means, Norm -- no size restrictions and screw the limit!"

The first distinction would apply when discussing the names of God. In His simplicity, God is His essence and His existence (on a good day, I can make some sense out of that). Not only are God's justice and mercy inseparable, God is both His justice and His mercy. Nonetheless, we can distinguish between His justice and His mercy², and still more between justice and mercy as creation participates in them.

The second distinction would apply in the ongoing look at the question, "What does 'God is love' mean?" The proximate metaphysical and theological meaning of the statement, "God is love," is definitely one worth exploring. But it's perhaps noteworthy that in the encyclical called "God is Love," Pope Benedict XVI is not much concerned with this proximate meaning. The letter is really about what follows from what follows from the fact that God is love, which is to say, it's about what follows from the fact that God loves.

Certainly our understanding of the remote meaning reflects back on our understanding of the proximate meaning, but love more than any other matter for reflection is something that must end in action. In bumper sticker terms, love is act, not fact.

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1. Yes, you could get a precision saw and cut the coin in half, but that effectively destroys the coin, and even then you'd be left with two coins, each with two sides.

2. You can even oppose God's justice and mercy, as Pope Benedict does in Deus Caritas Est 10: "God's passionate love for his people—for humanity—is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice." But such opposition is conceptual; the Pope continues, "Here Christians can see a dim prefigurement of the mystery of the Cross: so great is God's love for man that by becoming man he follows him even into death, and so reconciles justice and love."

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Simply, love

In a comment below, Steven Riddle brings up a subject I've been sort of poking at in my own mind:

Let's talk about the implications of St. Thomas's assertion (which I believe to be true) that God is simple, not composed of parts, and unite that to the concept that God is Love, without making love simplicity and without reducing God merely to the human notion of love, because although God is simple and God is Love, God is uniate and a lot more things than love. As with a diamond, we can choose to view the whole or look at a single facet and call that the whole.

I've been intrigued by the implications of the encyclical and aspects of Thomistic philosophy since the encyclical came out.

By "poking at it," I mean "telling myself there's are some implications I have no clue at all about." That said:

Brandon Field replied to Steven:

When I read what St. Thomas wrote about God's simplicity, I recalled a reflection that you wrote a while ago about the fractaline nature of the Eucharist: any part contains the whole. This is what I understand St. Thomas' concept of simplicity to mean. So, could it follow that any act of love -- no matter how "small" -- contains some sort of fullness of love? At least in as much as we mean agape love, this might be related to the Little Way of St. Therese. Perhaps any act of sacrificial love contains God, not just a part of God -- since He can not in His simplicity be subdivided -- but God.

I'll buy that, except for that verb "contains." Though we know what we mean (or at least what we mean to mean), the Eucharistic species doesn't really "contain" Christ's Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, in the ordinary meaning of the word. Or even in an extraordinary meaning of the word.

Instead, we talk about Christ's "presence in" the Eucharist, or that the Eucharist "is" Christ's Body and Blood, for some sacramental sense of "presence" and "being."

So we might say that God -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- is somehow wholly present in every act of sacrificial love, and adopt an understanding of the Scriptural formula, "if we love one another, God remains in us," that is broad (i.e., not limiting the "love" to some sort of super-refined act only bilocating saints perform), non-tautological (i.e., not defining the "love" as "the sort of love through which God remains in us"), and literal (i.e., our loving one another, in and of itself, really and for true, means that God remains in us; no conditionals or exceptions necessary).

Now, to fold it back toward Steven's point that God is a lot more things than love, we might ask whether God's presence in an act of love is somehow essentially different from God's presence in any other act. As I've been mentioning, we read that "God is light" in the same epistle that gives us "God is love," so there's reason to be cautious about making theological claims based on grammatical data. For that matter, isn't "God Is" even more fundamental than "God is love"?

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Discussion Guide for Deus Caritas Est

For what it's worth, here's the outline I used for a parish discussion introducing the papal encyclical:

1. A Surprising Theme
   • Everyone knows God is love
   • Doesn't sound very Grand Inquisitorish
   • Doesn’t sound very meaty theologically
   • Why did he choose it?
   
   
2. "God is Love"
   • What does "God is love" mean?
   • What does it mean to you?
   • Read selections from 1 John 4:

     Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.
     
     We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. In this is love brought to perfection among us, that we have confidence on the day of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world.
     
     We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

   • What's the difference between "God loves" and "God is love"?
   
   
3. St. Augustine
   • "God is Love"/"Love is God": draws a parallel between 1 John 4:7-8, "love is of God... God is love" and John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
   • Read from Homilies on the First Epistle of John, VII:

     "Love is God." What more could be said, brothers? If nothing were said in praise of love throughout the pages of this epistle, if nothing whatever throughout the other pages of the Scriptures, and this one only thing were all we were told by the voice of the Spirit of God, "For Love is God;" nothing more ought we to require.
     
     Now see that to act against love is to act against God. Let no man say, "I sin against man when I do not love my brother... and sin against man is a thing to be taken easily; only let me not sin against God. How do you not sin against God, when you sin against love?

   • Does "God is Love" mean "Love is God"?
   • What do you think of St. Augustine’s argument that sinning against man is sinning against God?
   • Read from Homily VIII:

     Love could not be more exceedingly commended to you than that it should be called God.

   • How is love commended to us today, and how do we commend it to others?
   
   
4. The Catechism on "God is Love"
   • Read from the CCC:

     218 In the course of its history, Israel was able to discover that God had only one reason to reveal himself to them, a single motive for choosing them from among all peoples as his special possession: his sheer gratuitous love. And thanks to the prophets Israel understood that it was again out of love that God never stopped saving them and pardoning their unfaithfulness and sins.
     
     221 But St. John goes even further when he affirms that "God is love": God's very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.

   • How do we share God's "innermost secret" with each other and with the world?
   
   
5. Pope Benedict, in a letter to Famiglia Cristiana
   • Read selections:

     Initially, in fact, the text might seem a bit difficult and theoretical. However, when one begins to read it, it becomes evident that I only wished to respond to a couple of very concrete questions for Christian life.
     
     The first question is the following: Is it possible to love God?; more than that: Can love be something that is obligatory? Is it not a feeling that one has or does not have? ...
     
     The second question is the following: Can we really love our "neighbor" when he is strange or even disagreeable? ...
     
     Finally, this question is also posed: With her commandments and prohibitions, does not the Church embitter the joy of "eros," of feeling ourselves loved, which pushes us toward the other and seeks to be transformed into union? ...
     
     In the second part there is talk of charity, in the service of the communal love of the Church toward all who suffer in body or soul and are in need of the gift of love. Two questions arise here above all: Can the Church leave this service to other philanthropic organizations?
     
     The second question: Would it not be better to promote an order of justice in which there are no needy, and charity would become something superfluous?

   • Do we already know the answers?
   
   
6. The Introduction itself
   • Note backward procession of Scriptural references, from 1 John to John to Deuteronomy
   • "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person": recall the question, "Do you think of yourself as a disciple of Christ or a Catholic?"
   • Christianity is an encounter with love, so Christians must "speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others."
   • Can we speak of our own experiences in such rich terms as "lavishes"?
   
   
7. Things to look for in the encyclical
   • The essentially "ecumenical" character of the Gospel of Love; what non-Catholics, non-Christians, and non-theists might agree with
   • Historical development in Revelation – "The real novelty of the New Testament lies not so much in new ideas as in the figure of Christ himself, who gives flesh and blood to those concepts" from the Old Testament (n. 12)
   • The twofold "response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us" that goes all the way back to the Garden

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The Irish Eating Song

Fans of Whose Line is it, Anyway? will know the tune:

Ooooh,
Ai de di de di de di de di de di de di!

This year finds St. Patrick's Day
Falling on a Friday,
Which, it being Lent in March,
Ye'd think 'twas a fish-fry day.

Are we dispensed from abstinence?
Well, here's a little clue:
Me bishop's named McCarrick.
Tell me what you guess he'd do?

Ooooh,
Ai de di de di de di de di de di de di!

Lyrics may (but probably won't) be continued in the comments, one line at a time.

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