The Catholic Thing

by Michael Pakaluk

What is the meaning of life? I shall tell you.

That life should have "meaning" is a distinctively modern concern. In the classical world, it was enough if a life were good, successful, and reasonable. We all strive for happiness, it was said: what could "meaning" possibly add?

In the classical outlook, however, it was taken for granted that any natural reality, such as human life, inherently has a telos (i.e., an inherent end towards which it tends). Take away that telos and one looks for a meaning distinct from that thing. In a Christian culture, testimony to the truth becomes paramount, and therefore signs, such as the crucifix.

We must define terms. Let us say that if something is such that it should point to something, then that to which it points, when it points as it should, is its "meaning." The question of whether a human life has meaning is therefore the question of whether it is such as to point.

An example may clarify. A working weathervane points in the direction of the wind. A weathervane, then, by our definition has a meaning: its meaning is the wind's direction. That is "the point of a weathervane."

It is necessary to qualify and say that something has meaning "if it is such that it should point," because a weathervane might be broken, or impeded. In such cases, it still has a point, indeed, but it does not succeed in pointing.

Human life is such that it should point, but we through sin and ignorance ruin it and impede it from pointing. Christ, however, is the Savior of life's meaning as well. Christ makes even a life of sin and death a life that can point. And Christ endows us with new ways of pointing, too, in the "order of grace."

A human life can point, and therefore it can have meaning, in each of the three ways that anything at all can point to something else.

First, something which is tending towards another points to that towards which it tends. An arrow, for instance, points to that towards which it was set flying. That is why an arrow on a sign means the direction to which the arrow would be flying, if it were a real arrow.

We were made such that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. In creating us, God let us loose towards Himself. Therefore, by nature a human life is such as to point to that which gives it rest. But more than this, through deliberate choice we can make this fact about ourselves salient, by living in such a way that it is clear that we take our final home to be union with God and the peaceable communion of angels and saints.

The clearest way of showing that a life tends to this goal, is by making sacrifices which would make no sense except for this goal. Newman calls these "ventures of faith." We might call them "pointers." Those who sacrifice their very lives in this way are called "witnesses" by the Church, "martyrs." A martyr is someone who by deliberate choice has saliently made Christ the meaning of his life.

Second, a part points to the whole of which it is a part. One vertebra found by a clever paleontologist signifies to him the whole dinosaur. An American in Paris stands for and represents his country, whether he wishes to or not. A footnote completes the meaning of a cited sentence by giving its full context.

A human life can acquire meaning in this second way insofar it shows itself to be a part of, and therefore it points to, each of the three institutions of which it is meant to be a part. These are the natural institutions of country, family, and the supernatural institution of the Church. That is why an unchurched atheist, who conceives of himself as belonging to a global network mainly - and who is childless besides, and alienated from his parents - has completely deprived his life of this second kind of meaning.

Third, that which resembles something, points to that which it resembles. A life of imitation is, to that extent, a life with meaning, since it points to what it imitates. We moderns searching for meaning have gotten it complet...

By Francis X. Maier

When an ambitious man is young, his thinking is a race car. It runs full throttle toward the target of success, however he imagines it. Men of more senior years, with fewer ticks left on the clock, think differently. The mind turns to making sense of things; to getting to the heart of the matter of one's time in the world. The task becomes ordering a riot of random memories into a coherent story; the fabric of a life that has meaning.

What's needed is an experience that, like a needle, sews the past and present together, because seemingly unconnected things often aren't. Here's an example.

I've been a C.S. Lewis fan for more than fifty years. I've read nearly everything he wrote. But the Christian heart of the man himself was at least as interesting as his work.

In 1993, Anthony Hopkins played the longtime bachelor Lewis in the film Shadowlands. It's the story of Lewis's late-in-life friendship with, then love for, and then marriage to, the American poet and convert Joy Davidman Gresham. Joy died of cancer barely four years after they married, and Hopkins does a masterful job of capturing Lewis's intense suffering at her loss. It's a beautiful film. But an even better telling of the same story preceded it by nearly a decade.

In 1985, BBC Wales produced the television film C.S. Lewis Through the Shadowlands (available on Amazon Prime), starring Joss Ackland. On his death in 2023, age 95, Britain's The Guardian newspaper described Ackland as "a beacon of power" as an actor, "part of the backbone" of British drama, and a man of "modest goodness."

His career spanned more than 130 stage, film, and radio roles from Shakespeare to Evita to Lethal Weapon 2. But the special force of his role as a tender and suffering C.S. Lewis grew from two not-so-obvious roots. Unlike so many others in his profession, Ackland was married for fifty-one years, until her death, to the love of his life; and with her, he fathered seven children. He was also a believing Christian, and not shy about his faith.

This made his role all the more memorable as a senior demon in the HarperAudio version of Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. Ackland gives a brilliantly devilish performance precisely because his Screwtape is simultaneously so urbane, bureaucratic, condescending - and cruel. Ackland brings an exquisite purity, a relentless logic, and an ingenious, unsleeping tactical mind to the demon's loathing of "the human vermin" and "hairless bipeds."

Screwtape's contempt for God in debasing the "high dignity" of the spiritual world, by polluting it with half-breed creatures of the flesh, is equally fierce. And Ackland delivers it with icy clarity. God sees humans as sons and daughters destined to share in his joy. Screwtape sees them as cattle for food.

The reader can, of course, sense all of these things on the story's original printed page. But when Ackland gives them voice, they take on a new and vivid reality.

What lives acutely in my memory is the moment when Ackland's Screwtape - in counseling a junior devil - stresses that good intentions in a human target's soul should never be feared. Quite the contrary. Hell is full of the amusingly desperate damned who intended well in life, but never did anything about it; never took the smallest step to make their fellow-feelings real.

That's the goal of a really accomplished tempter: a well-meaning paralysis in the human heart. Intentions are reassuring, but they have the substance of a mist. An unselfish act in the service of another, and the inconvenience it costs, has weight.

Christianity, as C.S. Lewis himself learned, is more than a matter of intellect. It's a matter of love. It's concrete. It sanctifies the world. Which is why the Epistle of James urges Christians to "be doers of the Word and not hearers only."

So what's the point of mentioning any of the above? Just this. I suggested at the start that sometimes an experience, like a needle, can sew together the past and the present; memor...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza

The floodplains of the Guadalupe River in Texas seem to be a place of elevated Biblical literacy. I imagine then that when the raging waters brought death and destruction, more than a few turned to Psalm 69:

I am sunk in the abysmal swamp

where there is no foothold;

I have reached the watery depths;

the flood overwhelms me.

But I pray to you, O LORD,

for the time of your favor, O God!

In your great kindness answer me

with your constant help.

That psalm will be prayed at daily Mass today. And more than a few congregants, and perhaps a few preachers, will think about those who were overwhelmed by the floods in Texas.

The twentieth anniversary of the Sumatra tsunami of 2004 fell last Christmas, a reminder of the ferocity of the waters, which killed more than 225,000 people, displaced millions more and ravaged coastal towns for hundreds of miles in fourteen countries.

Floodwaters remind us that the prevailing Biblical view of the waters is one of chaos, disorder, danger, and death. That's hard to appreciate in an affluent 21st-century country.

The waters have been domesticated. In the summer, they are for recreation, sailboats, and jet skis; in winter, floating hotels cruise the oceans. Year round, unimaginable quantities of freight are shipped serenely downriver - and upriver - and across the oceans.

In the ancient world, contrariwise, there was fishing and transport and gentle rains to soften the fields, but always in the context of waters that could kill. The Biblical view is obscured when waters are yet another part of nature conquered by human ingenuity.

A typical Catholic couple, asked about the symbolism of water in the Sacrament of Baptism, say it means that their baby will be washed spiritually clean. A good answer in a culture where daily bathing is the norm. It's also a true answer, for baptism washes away all sin, original and actual.

Few parents will recall St. Paul: "When we were baptized into his death, we were placed into the tomb with him." (Romans 6:4) Who thinks of the baptismal font as a tomb? What parents would lay their newborn in same?

Baptism by immersion makes "the tomb" clearer. We die if held underwater long enough; even a short time can be fearful and anxious. A priest who performs baptisms by immersion takes care precisely to avoid such fear and anxiety. The baby (or adult) is only under water briefly.

When St. Paul wrote of the waters of baptism as a tomb, it would have resonated. A watery death was not rare. Paul himself knew the mortal danger of shipwreck. When the late Pope Francis would refer to the Mediterranean Sea as a vast "cemetery" for migrants, he was evoking ancient Biblical imagery.

The response to the flash floods on the Guadalupe River illustrated the dominant view now: that the waters should be domesticated, under our control. Leave aside the particulars of what should or should not have been done by whomever, the premise is that we can control the waters. Or at least we think we can.

There are implications for baptism as the ordinary path to salvation. If, in the natural order, we can and ought to save ourselves, is there need any longer to pray Psalm 69? If we can tame the natural waters, do we need saving from supernatural perils?

Today's Old Testament reading introduces us to Moses. (Exodus 2:1-15) A Levite woman puts her three-month-old son into a papyrus basket and leaves him among the reeds at the riverbank. The mother would have chosen a safe place, where the basket could easily be found, rather than setting the baby hurtling along the main current.

The animated film, Prince of Egypt, imagines something different. Baby Moses was threatened by crocodiles and hippopotami and the churning oars of Pharaoh's ships. The animators knew that the Biblical waters were fraught with dangers.

In due course, Pharaoh's daughter discovers the baby-laden basket when she comes to bathe and decides to adopt the child, calling him "Moses, for she said, 'I drew him ou...

by R.J. Snell.

Elon Musk recently promised to improve his version of an AI chatbot, nicknamed Grok. The fix did not go well, to put it mildly. In one description, Grok was intentionally designed to be "an 'anti-woke' competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT." But Grok seemed indistinguishable from its competitors. The fix, as was widely noted in recent days, whatever else it was, certainly was "anti-woke," with Grok turning into a holocaust denier, casting aspersions against Jews, threatening the Turkish president, and Grok giving itself the new nickname of "MechaHitler."

More than anything, the episode reveals, as sober-minded people know, that artificial intelligence is not intelligent. Large language models scour pre-existing texts and are highly efficient at pattern recognition. But they entirely lack the capacity for judgment or an experience of reality allowing them to engage in those second-order reflections typical of rational entities to see if a statement corresponds in any meaningful sense with primary reality as reality presents itself for our understanding and judgment. The so-called "hallucinations" of AI are good indicators of this fact.

Even more importantly, the failure of AI to exhibit intelligence provides an opportunity to tackle the actual elephant in the room. It isn't so much that AI is failing, but that the materialist, physicalist, and reductive visions of intelligence, which guide and govern AI boosters and coders, fail as an account of consciousness and intelligence.

As Adam Frank notes, "the current discussion about consciousness has a singular fatal flaw" infecting not only AI but most of the relevant disciplines, namely, it has overlooked "our experience." Modern science, he argues, has swiveled between two competing accounts of consciousness - physicalism or idealism - with physicalism reducing consciousness to the "physical mechanics occurring in the neurons" that (supposedly) generate consciousness itself. Idealism, on the other hand, attempts to free mind from matter and allow it a free-floating existence.

For anyone formed in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, these are not, and cannot be, live options. As rational animals we are entirely animal and entirely rational; we are not two distinct substances of body and self, nor do we simply have bodies or have minds. Instead, we are one being with two distinct principles, body and soul. And while the soul is the form and act of the body, it isn't a distinct entity from the body, and certainly the body cannot explain its own existence, operations, or life.

So, when a philosopher like Thomas Nagel suggests that our experience of subjectivity defies attempts to reduce it, or when Frank insists that experience, or "what it is like to exist," surpasses thinking of the mind as if it were an electromagnet, we are not surprised.

"The soul is the form of the body," but the soul is embodied. The soul does not hover above the body, nor is it a ghost haunting the machine somehow. The brain does, in fact, function when we think, and this is not at all odd or surprising. What would be surprising is if an MRI showed no brain activity while we were thinking.

At the same time, the brain does not explain the experience we have of ourselves as thinking, or feeling, or imagining, or tasting. Whatever the MRI notes does not even attempt to explain the experience. It points to something other than the experience, namely, the material substrate conditioning the experience. But the operations of the intelligence are not reducible to that substrate, and certainly consciousness of those operations - what we call self-consciousness - isn't what a material explanation even tries to articulate.

In the 1930s, Edmund Husserl was already exploring the crisis in science, where the contents of consciousness were thoroughly misunderstood and treated as if they were equivalent to the empirical objects of modern science, and thus reduced to what could be treated as measurable, quantifi...

by Msgr. Robert J. Batule.

When I was ordained a priest in 1985, my first pastor was about to turn 50 years old; he was a member of the Ordination Class of 1962. He saw himself and others saw him too as a "Vatican II" priest. There were meetings galore, a lot of "co-ministry" with women Religious, and, in discussions, frequent references to the marginalized and minorities of various kinds. But I don't recall that we had a single Holy Hour in the Presence of the Blessed Sacrament in my five-year assignment there, nor do I remember hearing a word against co-habitation in the parish Pre-kayne-ah program. Moreover, I have no memory of any notices in the weekly bulletin announcing seminars on the topic of natural family planning.

There are always going to be different pastoral emphases, even in what might be regarded as not particularly ideological parishes. What developed, however, in many post-conciliar parishes are what we now call "safe spaces," meaning places you could go and not be reminded of words and ideas you don't like. When the "safe space" is breached after decades in some cases, you can well imagine the displeasure in certain quarters. But it was bound to happen at some point.

Over the last few years, men ordained priests in the 1970s have been marking their fiftieth anniversaries and are retiring from the active ministry. They are being replaced by men who weren't even alive in the 1970s! Indeed, the men in the cohort of younger priests now were only ordained in the last two decades. These younger priests are doctrinally more conservative than the priests they are replacing. This is not just anecdotal; the survey research bears this out too.

This has produced not a little bit of friction as the "spaces," to use the parlance invoked above, have gone from "safe" to "unsafe." Again, not in every instance, but changes are apparent in the pulpit, at the altar and in the Confessional, and in the classroom where there are parishes with elementary and high schools. In contradistinction to the examples I used from my first assignment, Holy Hours are regular occurrences in many parishes now, Pre-kayne-ah presentations are more apt to point out not just the incongruity but the sinfulness in cohabitation, and, relatedly, that marital chastity is not attained so long as contraception is practiced.

We always have to be careful with the words we place immediately before "Catholicism" in our speech or in our writing. We are, after all, referring to our faith, which is not, taxonomically, a political phenomenon. Nevertheless, there is a clear pertinence to conservatism since faith has attributes that most definitely tend in the direction of preserving whole and undiminished what is being "handed on." In this sense, then, there are distinctive biblical and ecclesial correlatives with conservatism.

Bishop Robert Barron, in the aftermath of the National Eucharistic Congress last year, commented that "liberal Catholicism could never have pulled off what happened in Indianapolis." What impressed him the most about the Congress was the sight of the outdoor procession with the Blessed Sacrament throughout the city streets of the Indiana capital.

Seeing so many thousands and thousands of Catholics take part in this devotion, along with their reverence and piety was deeply moving to Bishop Barron and no doubt countless others who saw what he saw. This caused Bishop Barron to observe that against the reverence and piety for the Eucharistic Lord, liberalism in religion tends "to reduce the supernatural to the natural."

If the Eucharist is merely a symbol, as a majority of Catholics think and believe it is, what you would want to do is re-define the meaning of the Real Presence and transubstantiation. For the transcendent and ontological character of these terms would need to be re-interpreted so that they focus on ourselves and not on the Lord.

That, unfortunately, is the trend that got started decades ago. It began with catechesis in the 1...

By Jeffrey Dirk Wilson.

Across hundreds of miles in Poland, the land is flat. Likewise, Częstochowa, though the monastery which houses the miraculous icon of the Black Madonna sits atop a hill. The choice of the site probably had much to do with its defensibility. It's the only monastery that I have visited which has ramparts.

The one hundred Pauline monks - named for St. Paul the Hermit c. A.D. 345 - who live there, as well as an extensive cadre of sisters, staff the premises. The monks are responsible for the many Masses each day. The sisters mind the museums and the tourist souvenir booths. How does one resist an elderly sister who looks you straight in the eye and smiles her very sweetest smile when she asks, "Would you like to buy something?"

There is a large church, but the icon, which is the centerpiece here, is in a smaller chapel. A Pole might consider it heresy to hear that as icons go, this one is not especially remarkable. In fact, one sees very little of the icon itself, only the faces and hands of Our Lady and her infant son. She is called the "Black" Madonna because of the darkness of the image. Centuries ago, before a million candles had been burnt in her presence, the tone might have been lighter.

The reason that one sees so little of the actual icon is that she is dressed in elaborate, even spectacular clothes.

The official guidebook says that there are two stories of the icon's origin, one of pious legend, the other of the art historians. The guidebook only tells the first of these stories. The board on which the icon is painted was (supposedly) taken from the table used by the Holy Family when they were at home in Nazareth. St. Luke got hold of it, cut out sections and painted portraits of Mother and Child. One hangs in Florence; the other is the Black Madonna.

Empress Mother Helena (c A.D. 246-330) - who went to the Holy Land, then under the rule of her son, Constantine (c. A.D. 227-337), the Roman Emperor - had it brought to Constantinople.

Meanwhile, in A.D. 476 the Roman Empire fell in the West but continued in the East with Constantinople as its capital until A.D. 1453. During that millennium, the emperors felt little but disdain for the rulers in the West, where once their predecessors had ruled. But occasionally, circumstances constrained emperors to seek help from rulers they despised.

In such a moment, the Black Madonna left Constantinople. Through the several hands of Eastern European rulers, she arrived in Częstochowa, where she has remained ever since.

It is nearly certain that St. Luke did not paint the icon. Art historians suggest it dates back to the ninth century, at least. In any event, the veneration of the faithful has hallowed this icon for a thousand years - and perhaps for a few centuries more.

The Poles - the ones whom I have met anyway - can recite their history over the past thousand years. They might slight the Lithuanians, though for some centuries, the Poles and Lithuanians formed the Commonwealth, sometimes just called, with great pride, "The Republic." But Polish lands, too, exchanged hands multiple times over the centuries.

Whatever importance Our Lady of Częstochowa has had for Polish national awareness before the sundering by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the centrality of her shrine for Polish nationhood increased with every year from the tripartite division of Poland in A.D. 1795 through the period of Soviet hegemony.

Cardinal Karol Wojtyła (later as Pope John Paul II) underscored that importance as he plotted and philosophized over modern Polish freedom.

Poland is basically a conservative, Catholic country. Crucifixes hang in train stations. At this holiest of Polish Catholic shrines, the reverence is profound.

There is a brass railing around the edge of the chapel where the icon hangs over the altar. People queue behind that railing. When they come to the altar area, they kneel and then walk on their knees behind the altar. Only when they emerge from the altar area ...

By Joseph R. Wood

My summer philosophical reading includes two Thomases: St. Thomas Aquinas, who needs no introduction here, and Thomas Nagel, New York University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus. He is an atheist of Jewish descent.

Whatever you read in the next few paragraphs, don't believe that Nagel is a quasi-Catholic philosopher. His book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, has to be enjoyed on his own terms.

Nagel succinctly rejects the "reductive materialism" - the notion that all of reality can be explained by material processes moving through time with no given end (telos) - that is "widely assumed to be the only serious possibility."

The natural sciences are dominated by the insistence that "the physical sciences could in principle provide a theory of everything." Under this view (often acting as an ideology), all reality can be reduced to matter and the principles by which its interactions unfold.

Nagel admires the physical sciences as they seek to understand reality within their domains. But he rejects the possibility that material causes alone could bring into being animals with consciousness and reason. He labels such theories "causal" explanations of what is.

He sees in the universe a place where "mind is not just an afterthought or an accident or an add-on, but a basic aspect of nature." Consciousness and reason are not outcomes of strictly material Darwinian evolution. Rather, they point to a telos in the order of things that guides or directs evolution and the development of the universe.

This is a "teleological" explanation of reality. One kind of teleological view is theist, with God invoked as the propagator of the telos, or as the telos Himself.

Nagel is sympathetic to the arguments of those theists who, accepting an intelligent design of creation, point out logical and evidential flaws of materialist reduction theories. These arguments are often dismissed as unworthy of consideration merely because they are religious.

The reigning material Darwinists "are armed to the teeth against arguments from religion." The objections to material reductionism are, says Nagel, worthy of consideration on logical and philosophical grounds. But the materialists close their ears for no sound reason.

Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems these iconoclasts [critics of materialist reductionism] pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair.

When I see an atheist philosopher referring to the "orthodox scientific consensus" as an icon and its religious critics as unfairly maligned "iconoclasts," I know I'm reading an interesting book. I'd like to have listened to Nagel chat with Chesterton.

Nagel says a great deal about why the materialist explanations fail to explain consciousness and reason. But he's circumspect about why the theist teleological explanation - God - doesn't convince him. He comments that he lacks "the sensus divinitatis that enables - indeed compels - so many people to see in the world the expression of divine purposes as naturally as they see in a smiling face the expression of human feeling." He himself is even "strongly averse to the idea" of theism.

That is one example of what a lovely book this is. Nagel writes with clarity, occasional humor, and generosity. He treats those of different views seriously and respectfully, often having interesting arguments. He acknowledges the importance of individual inclinations in how we see the world. The book moves along with charity and humility.

His penchant for common sense is welcome.

If causal and theist explanations of reality don't work for Nagel, what explains "what is"? He is drawn to a natural (versus supernatural) teleology in which the telos of the universe is embedded within nature itself (but not put the...

By Stephen P. White

Human beings, having a rational nature, are free to choose between good and evil. This freedom constitutes, in the words of Pope Leo XIII, "the highest of natural endowments." We are not only free to choose between good and evil, but we are also responsible for those choices. We are responsible for the intentions by which we act, for the actions themselves, and, to some degree, for the consequences of those actions.

Our laws account for all three of these facets of moral action, which is why we distinguish, for example, between murder and manslaughter in criminal cases, and sometimes award damages in wrongful death cases even if no criminal offense was proven.

Even outside of the legal context, we Christians often think of moral actions in terms of culpability, that is, in terms of guilt or innocence. And there is good reason for this. We know that we will be judged by our actions and judged by One who knows not just our outward actions but our very hearts: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

There is much more, however, to our moral actions than culpability. Our free choice to do good or to do evil does much more than impute guilt or innocence on account of which we are liable to judgment.

Our moral choices, in a limited but crucial way, make us who we are. Man is not only capable of choosing between good and evil, he is capable of choosing to make himself good or evil.

God does not change, though we do. We are never simply static. Of course, we change physically over time. Our bodies grow, age, and die. Some changes are irreversible: our coming into being as a unique and immortal creation, for example, is irrevocable (though not of our own choosing). Grace changes us, too. Some sacraments even bring about a permanent change in the very nature of the one who receives them, what the Church calls an "ontological" change. Baptism accomplishes this. So does Holy Orders.

But we change in mind and spirit, too. We learn (and forget) things. We change in our moral habits as well, growing in virtue or chaining ourselves to vice. These are changes within ourselves that we do choose. Grace aids us, of course, but by the free choices we make, we become more and more (or less and less, as the case may be) the men and women we were created to be.

The whole drama of every human life plays out between the person one is and the person one is becoming. Human freedom is precisely that gift by which, through obedience to the truth and with the assistance of grace, man is able to act in such a way as to grow in the excellence for which he was made.

This teleological understanding of moral action and human freedom lies at the very heart of the Church's teaching about the human person and her understanding of the vocation of every person. As Pope St. John Paul II wrote in Veritatis Splendor:

Human acts are moral acts because they express and determine the goodness or evil of the individual who performs them. They do not produce a change merely in the state of affairs outside of man but, to the extent that they are deliberate choices, they give moral definition to the very person who performs them, determining his profound spiritual traits.

This understanding of moral action is hardly new. The ancient Greeks understood it. The Church Fathers understood it. In fact, to underscore his earlier point, Pope John Paul II cites the great 4th-century saint, Gregory of Nyssa:

All things subject to change and to becoming never remain constant, but continually pass from one state to another, for better or worse. . . .Now, human life is always subject to change; it needs to be born ever anew. . . .But here birth does not come about by a foreign intervention, as is the case with bodily beings. . .it is the result of a free choice. Thus we are in a certain way our own parents, creating ourselves as...

By Robert Royal

Pope Leo will have celebrated the new Mass for the Common Home (or Care of Creation, Missa pro custodia creationis) in Rome by the time this appears today. It isn't a radical recasting of the liturgy - on paper. It mostly just introduces several prayers reminding believers that God created the world and placed us here within the Garden "to cultivate and care for it."(Genesis 2:15) As with the controversies over the Traditional Latin Mass, however, the significance of the Creation Mass goes far beyond the bare words to deep questions.

This Mass clearly has been long in preparation, maybe ever since Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical Laudato si' ("Care for Our Common Home"), though it was only announced, unexpectedly, on July 3, as was the first celebration only six days later. As with that encyclical, controversy is inevitable.

In the Christian tradition, Creation (not mere "nature," much less the reductive term "the environment") has often been described as God's second book of revelation, alongside the Bible, the first book, which gives us fuller understanding of precisely what it is that God made.

It's only very vaguely a "common home," at least since the Fall. We have here now "no abiding city." (Heb.13:14) Several recent popes have rightly emphasized our responsibility to care for what God has given. They less often have recognized the mortal struggle with nature that our forebears experienced. And we still do today. Floods (like the one that just carried off over a hundred people in Texas), droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, wild animals, crop failures, diseases, and more.

As God said to Adam:

Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake;

in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. . .(Genesis 3:17-19)

As farmers and even gardeners know, weeds, insects, and other pests proliferate in the "natural" state now. Fruits and vegetables take careful and constant attention, including wise and strong measures against what is otherwise "natural." This perpetual human struggle usually gets lost in current "environmental" debates, even within the Church.

It's easier to ignore such truths now than in the past because the whole world today benefits from technological inventions, which have brought us great improvements in the availability of food, shelter, energy, and health. These gains have also brought considerable losses in harm to the land, oceans, air, and our very sense of our own bodies as part of God's world. (Being "born in the wrong body" makes no sense to anyone with a Biblical perspective.)

We've recently become more aware of the downside of the "progress" of recent centuries and less aware of the benefits. Pope Francis rightly wrote of how the loss of a sense of Creation makes us into rationalists and technologists, mere "masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters." (Laudato Si 11) He and other Churchmen, however, have tended to neglect the role of inventors, manufacturers, and entrepreneurs in producing goods and the means to distribute them.

At the Royal Portal to the Cathedral in Chartres, the arts and sciences are presented as repairing the damage done to Creation by the Fall. We would do well to recover that medieval perspective, alongside proper attention to technological harm, today.

At the same time, in a fallen world, populated by fallen human beings, all we can ever achieve is a precarious balance, amidst various tradeoffs. We live longer and physically better than in the past, but also more precariously. All it would take in our time is the failure of the electric grid or the disruption of the Internet or interruption of the flow of food and other goods from farm to city to produce chaos and death on a glo...

By Randall Smith.

Many of us know that we're supposed to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, and follow Christ. We might also know that Christ, although He is the Son of God and the Son of Man, the great messianic figure prophesied in Daniel (7:13-14), is also the "Suffering Servant," whose sufferings bring about our redemption, described in four "servant songs" in Isaiah. (42:1 - 53:12)

Knowing all this, we might still wonder: Why must we suffer? The large number of dead in the flash-flooding in Texas, where I live, for instance, raises the question anew. Why?

We don't want to turn Christianity into a cult of suffering - suffering for its own sake in a church for those "tough enough to take it." There are many things admirable about the Stoics, but a theology based on a Savior who weeps at the death of a friend and whose chief act is called "the Passion" is not, at heart, Stoic.

In Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities, Jerry Cruncher wants his wife to stop "flopping" - going down on her knees to pray - because he thinks it will just bring more suffering and poverty, and he has enough of that already! Don't we all? So why does suffering play such a large part in Christian spirituality, given that suffering isn't something we naturally incline to, but painstakingly try to avoid?

The first thing we might point out is that, in St. Paul's letters, suffering is part of the "death to self" that is necessary because of our sinful selfishness. But our goal is to "rise with Christ." Still, let's not soft-pedal it. Putting others first before ourselves isn't easy. It's like a little "death," a death of the sinful self so that a selfless "self" can arise.

Consider how hard it is to go to someone you know you've violated or betrayed and say: "I am truly sorry." We like to feel big and confident, but saying "I'm sorry" can make one feel very small. What a jerk I was! It's hard. But necessary.

So too, in a fallen world filled with fallen people like you, other people will disappoint you. Before long, they'll screw up, and you will need to "take it" and not "pay it forward" to others. You may have experienced this when you get yelled at by your boss, so you go home and yell at your spouse, who then yells at the kids, who then go out and yell at their friends, who go home and kick the dog.

It just keeps rippling outward. Christians are called upon to be "circuit breakers" - to interrupt that vicious cycle of anger and abuse. But becoming a circuit breaker involves sacrifice and suffering. You have to take it without dishing it out. It can make you feel small - like a nobody - in a world of people who enjoy "lording it over" others.

Things will disappoint us. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes you get the great job, sometimes you don't. If there were no chance of losing, there would be no challenge, no excitement, and no sense of attaining something significant. But there's no sugar coating it: losing hurts.

If you're not ready for that suffering, you'll probably just quit. One of the best things we can teach young people is not only how to set goals for themselves, but also how to react when they fail. Because in this world, they certainly will fail, probably a lot. They need to learn to embrace that suffering if they're ever going to rise again.

Sometimes suffering results from putting our hopes in the wrong things. In any state of existence shy of the Beatific Vision, nothing can fully satisfy us. The sooner we recognize that this is a source of our dissatisfaction, the sooner we can look for things that will truly satisfy and fulfill us. Suffering caused by the insufficiency of the world is often God's way of calling us back to Him, who alone can fulfill us.

There are other reasons we suffer. In this fallen world, being just or bringing about justice for others is rarely easy, nor are the sacrifices needed for temperance and courage. If justice were easy, everyone would be doing it. As it is, people who work for justi...