But first a note from Robert Royal: Fr. Scalia reminds us that the Devil divides: us from others and us from ourselves. And, because yesterday was the 225th anniversary of Saint John Henry Newman's birth, Amy Fahey pays tribute to that great saint and those saints and martyrs who may have made him possible.

Now for The Limits of Salvation

by Fr. Paul D. Scalia

If God didn't want them to eat of the tree, why did He put it there? That question is not as adolescent and petulant as it might sound. God is not haphazard in His Creation. He must have had a reason to place that one forbidden tree in the garden. The Catechism explains it nicely: that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil "evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust." (CCC 396)

Now, to "freely recognize and respect with trust" is one thing the Devil just cannot do. He wants his created gifts on his own, without a Creator or Giver. He refuses to recognize or respect his creaturely limits. Non serviam, he boasts. I will not serve. . . .I will not observe limits.

Misery loves company, so the Devil wants to reproduce his mindset in others. His first victims are Adam and Eve. (Genesis 3:1-7) He asks, "Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?" He's not asking to get an answer. He's suggesting that limits are absurd and anyone who sets them is hostile. God is against you because He's limited you. Adam and Eve take the bait. They reach beyond their appointed place, and in their very grasping, they fall.

The Devil has the same game plan when he approaches Jesus in the desert. (Matthew 4:1-11) Now, if the Devil cannot understand the blessings of creatureliness, then the limitations of the Incarnation are absolutely impenetrable to him. The Incarnation is not a fiction or make-believe. God really did confine and limit Himself to our human nature – to be born of a woman, to experience exhaustion, hunger, thirst, and sorrow. Even to be tempted.

The Devil cannot grasp the eternal Son's joyful dependence on the Father: "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord. . . .I can do nothing on my own authority." (John 5:19, 30) Nor can he understand the Son's joyful embrace of our created human nature. For Satan, divine power means doing whatever you want – not serving anybody. It certainly doesn't mean setting limits for yourself by humility.

So he nudges Jesus beyond the limits. If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread. Jesus experiences hunger in His human nature and joyfully trusts His Father to sustain Him. Nor will He use His divine power to create a shortcut in His ministry, to provide physical instead of spiritual nourishment. His response points to dependence, limits, and trust in God: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.

Someday, Jesus will feed people miraculously with loaves of bread. Indeed, He will give Himself as the Bread of Life. Adam was deceived by a false hunger and grasped for the fruit of the tree. Hung on the tree of the Cross, the New Adam nourishes us with the Eucharist, His own Body and Blood. He does so not for Himself but in obedience to the Father's will for our good.

Then the second temptation. The Devil proposes a daring display, that Jesus cast Himself from the parapet of the temple and presume that the Father will save Him. If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. In effect, Prove it.

Jesus' divine power is boundless, but not pointless. It is, in a sense, confined by reason and purpose. He will one day work miracles. He will exorcize and heal, walk on water and multiply loaves of bread. But these miracles are not parlor games. He doesn't perform them to prove Himself. Indeed, He rebukes those who (like the Devil) demand signs. (Matthew 16:4; 12:39) His divine power is not wielded capriciously, but for our good – to reveal, instruct, and i...

By Eduard Habsburg

When it comes to the joys of large families, there's more than just an ocean between Europe and the United States. This is what I discovered when I began to regularly travel between the two continents and give talks on the topic of the family.

A full disclaimer first: I believe family is the greatest thing, and by family, I mean a large family. My wife and I were blessed with six children, and that experience has been life-changing, the greatest thing that ever happened to me (besides my faith, of course). So, naturally, I enjoy speaking about having many children.

It will not surprise you to learn that being happily married and having a bunch of children is not the rule in old Europe. People are often shocked when I mention six kids. It is literally unheard of. It's considered unreasonable even among more traditionally-minded families.

In Italy, where I lived for ten years until recently, it took me three years of driving a car through the streets of Rome until I saw a pregnant woman crossing the road. And this was supposed to be the Catholic country, the land of bambini.

But then something very interesting happened a few years ago, when I crossed the pond to speak at an event in the United States. Before the talk, I was a guest at a dinner, where I was introduced to a lot of young Catholics. I spoke of being married and of my six children. Nobody was shocked. In fact, two young women who greeted me told me they had seven and eight kids respectively, and how great it was to have a large family.

They looked at me with something approaching pity, and you could almost hear them thinking: "Well, perhaps the Lord will give him some more children." And I have to admit that, now, I was the one who was slightly shocked.

The funny thing was, these were not super well-off families. They couldn't "easily afford" lots of children. No, I had the impression they were Catholics with a deep conviction that large families are what God loves and encourages in a marriage.

As these testimonies multiplied, I discovered a whole world that would be very hard to find in Western Europe. I encountered dozens of families (with lots of children) queuing up at talks about faith and especially about Blessed Emperor Karl, the last ruler of my Habsburg family. He, of course, had eight children and was a pillar of the faith. Remarkably, he seems to be very inspiring to a fair number of people in the United States.

It was this experience (and our own family history) that led me to write my second book, Building a Wholesome Family in a Broken World, which is a strong encouragement to having large families.

Yes, I am very much aware that large families are not the norm, even in the United States. But in America, it seems at least possible to speak about that subject. In large parts of Europe, that is quite unthinkable.

And sometimes I worry what will happen when my book will be translated into, say, German. What Americans can understand or at least respect may lead to outright hostility in the German-speaking world: a large family is not reasonable, it's not affordable, it kills my personal freedom, it ties women to the kitchen and turns back the wheel of progress (or it's bad for the environment).

In such a climate (no pun intended), even someone as enthusiastic as I am has to choose his words carefully when speaking about the family.

The worst part is that many Catholic pastors (and unfortunately also some bishops) play along with the secular game. They encourage couples not to have children too soon, to take their time, to "enjoy each other," to put off having children until you can afford them, etc.

While I can understand that such Catholic leaders fear being labelled "radical", they should consider their responsibilities. Because – and this is my main contention here – I believe that you won't fully embark on the adventure of having a large family without faith.

And if even your faith leaders discourage you, from where, then, should ...

By David Warren

The founder of worldly Christendom, by Christianizing the Roman Empire, and ending at least for a moment the persecution of Christians in his realm, was famously a pagan until he finally converted on his deathbed.

To the end, long after his victory under the Sign of the Cross in the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine was careful to maintain the secular signs of his power.

In Eusebius of Caesarea, we read that the (self-appointed) Emperor of the West witnessed the Sign of the Cross, above the sun, on that battlefield, and the words τούτῳ νίκα – "By this, conquer" – radiating from it. That Christianity should spread by conquest was a (divine) paradox.

In our liberal, modern worldview, it appears even more of a paradox than it did to Constantine's contemporaries. It is in conflict with our abstract Christianity, which cannot confess anything as vulgar and physical as military conquest.

Balancing this, the modern is also unhappy with accounts of the physical persecution, which reached its peak under Diocletian.

In his later Vita Constantini, Eusebius reported that in the night after, Christ appeared to Constantine in a dream, and told him to make a copy of what he had seen in the sky; and that this Cross would protect him against very physical attacks.

Again, I look at this through eyes that are modern. The Church to which we belong owes its historical existence to events that are purported to have happened in the world.

But then, adding to our perplexity, the Church of the very First Century also formed from an event that happened in the real world. For we acknowledge that Christ came down from Heaven, and ascended to Heaven conspicuously AFTER His death in the world.

Mind touches matter in these matters, and is recorded in the annals of the world. And so long as we live in the world, we are compelled to acknowledge the acknowledgement, even if we deny or dispute the truth of what happened.

That I neither deny nor dispute is, like faith in general, unlikely to convince anybody, after the passage of so many centuries, though the fact it is still plausible to many millions may seem at least startling. But when it is considered that the same argument can be made for Islam, and several dozen other "belief systems," we satisfy by dissatisfying the modern mind.

I count "modern science" as one of those belief systems, or rather among them, for no two modern scientists will subscribe to exactly the same thing, even if what the propagandists say is true – that 97 percent of them subscribe to anthropogenic global warming. And men such as Richard Dawkins compare the Christian God to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and do this quite glibly.

For modern Disbelief does not feel the obligation to be serious, which Christians and other sincere believers were constrained by, through this vast interval of time.

It is the combination of a belief in casual, changeable things (like constantly updated "science"), with easy retreat into disbelief in anything, that characterizes our modern view.

Not belief or faith, but a settled attitude of radical cynicism and skepticism has brought about an era in which the very existence of a fact is ground for methodical rejection in the academy and elsewhere. Our children are taught that nothing can be true, except what they choose to believe, or "my truth" specifically.

Use the word "truth," and one is immediately at a disadvantage in most discussions I have had with moderns throughout my adult life, and, curiously, I quit high school when I realized that this was the attitude they were inculcating.

Only in classics, math, and physics was this ever relaxed. The ancient Sophists were not so settled in their own rejections of reality, and tended to accept what they could see and taste.

And so, the Constantinian miracle tends to be neglected, or actually mocked, when it must be confronted.

For we are not Christians by philosophical abstraction, but in an historical frame; just as Christ must also...

By Anthony Esolen

"It is good for the man to be alone," said the Spirit of the Age. "I will take this helpmeet from him and set her up by herself." So he cast the man into a deep sleep, and took the woman apart, instructing her in the way things ought to be, so that when the man awoke, he would find himself alone and unnecessary.

Then Jesus and his disciples came to the coasts of Judea beyond the Jordan, and no one brought to Him any little children, because there were none to bring.

And Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah was tender-eyed, but Rachel was beautiful and well-favored. But Jacob did not care.

And Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a certain king, who arranged a marriage for his son, and he sent forth his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come." Then Peter said, "Lord, perhaps they had better wine at home already." And they all agreed.

Wives, do not obey your husbands, and if they will not follow the Word, leave them. For so did the powerful women of old, adorning themselves in pride, as did Jezebel, whose daughter you are.

Husbands, love not your wives as Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it. They are sanctified and cleansed enough, and so are you.

And do not love them as you love your own bodies. For the body is all that you are, and no man can love anyone as he loves his own body. For this cause, a man shall leave his mother, or perhaps his father, and shall take up with his woman, and they two shall be two bodies. This is no great mystery.

And Miriam and Aaron said, "Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not also spoken through us?" Now Moses was very meek, more than all men on the face of the earth. So he resigned himself to Miriam and Aaron, and then to all the people in the congregation. And whatsoever the Lord had commanded them through Moses, they set before the people to approve or not, and whatsoever they approved, that very same became law for the Lord, and whatsoever they did not approve, the Lord forgot.

And these three remain: self-confidence, ambition, and malice; and the greatest of these is malice.

And the serpent said to the woman, "You shall not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of this fruit, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant for the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit, and did eat, and she gave it also to her husband, and he also ate. And their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked. So they made love to one another, and all was well.

And they called unto Lot, and said, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so we may know them." But Lot went out to them, shutting the door behind him, and said, "Please, brothers, do not do this wicked thing. They are my guests. Behold, I have some manservants who are well favored, and I shall bring them out to you." And Lot did so, and all were pleased, and the Lord smiled on their city.

The Pharisees came to him to tempt him, and said, "Is it lawful for a man to put away his woman for any cause?" And Jesus said to them, "Have you not read that God made them in the beginning neither male nor female, but like the angels? Therefore what God has not joined together, either person may put asunder." But his disciples said to him, "If this is so, then it is not good to marry." And Jesus replied, "You have said it."

O how I love thy law! I break it every day.

Whoever smites your neighbor on the right cheek, turn to him your neighbor's left cheek as well. And if any man takes your neighbor to court for his coat, give him his cloak as well. And whoever would compel your neighbor to walk a mile with him, let him have the man for two.

Say to your brother, "Let ...

By Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy.

The second Creation story in the Book of Genesis states that "the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." Although man was formed bodily from the dust of the earth, it was by God's divine breath that he became a living being. This conjoining of the dust of the earth and the divine breath is what made man a rational animal. The whole man, body and soul, is created in the image and likeness of God.

Although man was created good along with the rest of Creation, he, in his rationality, had free will. It's the sinful use of that free will, eating of the fruit in the middle of the garden, that Adam and Eve lost their innocence and tarnished their divine image. Because of their sin, God informed Adam: "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till your return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust and to dust you shall return."

These passages are the Scriptural and theological basis for Ash Wednesday – the initiatory day that begins the season of Lent. On this day, our foreheads are signed with ashes from the previous year's palms. Upon receiving the cruciform sign, the priest declares: "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return." We are sinful children of Adam, and so, like him, we will return to dust.

Now, there is a rather humorous oddity here. Growing up, I and all my Catholic classmates loved Ash Wednesday. We all hoped that the priest would make a huge Sign of the Cross on our foreheads with so much ash that it would last the entire day. We were proud of our ashes and, if we had to wash our faces, we would make sure that we did not wash our foreheads – the ashes were sacrosanct.

But it is not only children who are proud of their ashes, but adults also. They, too, having received their ashes, go to work or back home, proudly wearing their ashes for all to see.

The irony is that what is supposed to be a sign of sinfulness, repentance, and humility became a badge of pride. But I do not think that this is entirely bad, for we are proudly bearing witness to the world that all human beings are Adam's sinful children, all of whom are in need of redemption.

Our ashes became billboards of evangelization – a means of proclaiming the Gospel. Only in and through Jesus Christ can the ashes of sin and death be washed and wiped away. Thus, Ash Wednesday contains within it a looking forward to Holy Week and Easter. Only through Jesus' sacrificial death could our sins be forgiven and only in His Resurrection comes newness of life.

St. Paul was never signed with ashes, but he, too, recognized that we were of the sinful race of Adam in need of being re-created. In condemning those who denied a resurrection, he forthrightly declared its soteriological importance.

Our first body may have become perishable, but that is not now the case.

Thus, it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being;" the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not spiritual which is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was of dust, so are those who are of the dust. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall bear the image of the man of heaven. (1Corinthians 15:45-47)

God breathed his life-giving breath into the first Adam, but the risen Jesus, the second Adam, has now breathed into the man of dust his life-giving spirit, thus making him heavenly. We may have been born in the image of the man of dust, but now we have been born anew in the image and likeness of the man of heaven. "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." We have become new creations in Christ.

Paul concludes that when the risen Jesus comes at the end of time we will be transform...

By Luis Lugo

In his recent review on this site of Daniel Kuebler's book on the compatibility of Catholicism and evolutionary theory, Casey Chalk refers to the catechesis on creationism he received during his Evangelical upbringing. He points specifically to the way his church relied on a hyper-literalist interpretation of the Book of Genesis to refute popular conceptions of Darwinian evolution.

I had a similar experience to Chalk's during my own Evangelical sojourn and witnessed first-hand the phenomenon he describes. I'd like to press the issue a bit further, though, and suggest that an even larger problem lurks behind this hyper-literalist exegesis. Call it the fallacy of Biblicism.

This fallacy involves not only a hyper-literalist reading of the Bible but also a basic misunderstanding of its very nature. Biblicist reasoning goes something like this: the Bible touches on many topics (historical events, the natural world, politics, the arts, etc.); the Bible is divinely inspired; therefore, the Bible provides us with infallible information on all these topics.

This line of reasoning leads many to view the Scriptures as a kind of encyclopedia of knowledge that, in the case of Genesis, provides us with an entry on how God created the world. For those who take this stance, to believe otherwise is to call into question the veracity of Scripture and betray a "low view" of the Bible. But this lays an unnecessary burden on sincere believers.

One can only speculate as to why Biblicism has found such fertile soil in some (though by no means all) conservative Evangelical circles. Perhaps it's because, having rejected the normative role of Tradition and an authoritative Magisterium, these Christians have become accustomed to turning to the only thing they have left – the Bible – for answers to every question.

Still, one would think that a strong belief in sola scriptura would prompt them to ask what the Bible itself has to say. Did God really intend the Holy Scriptures to serve as a kind of encyclopedia of knowledge, or is its purpose more specific than that?

Ironically, the very passage of Scripture to which these Christians appeal to justify their belief in its divine inspiration also expresses its main purpose and, by so doing, undercuts their encyclopedic assumptions. I refer, of course, to the locus classicus: 2 Timothy 3:15-17.

There, the Apostle Paul declares that all Scripture is divinely inspired (literally: God-breathed). But that bold assertion, with which no orthodox Christian would disagree, is prefaced by a clear statement of purpose: to make us "wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus."

Moreover, the declaration is followed by clear instructions on the legitimate uses of Scripture – "for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness" – and these toward a very specific end: "so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." Is it not clear that, by its own account, the Bible's purpose is uniquely redemptive?

That's the reason the Bible's human authors use language that ordinary people can understand. The Bible contains various literary genres, to be sure, but nowhere does it offer scientific descriptions of any kind (which would be an anachronism in any case).

To this day, we still say that "tomorrow the sun will rise at 6:30 a.m.," even though we now know that it's the combination of the earth's rotation on its axis and its revolution around the sun that accounts for the cyclical nature of day and night. Is there any reason to suppose that the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis do not employ similarly non-technical language?

As with many subjects, C.S. Lewis, who is quite popular among Evangelicals, proves to be a trustworthy source on this question as well. Now, it should be noted that no one was more critical of the misuse of science than Lewis. For him, scientism smuggles into genuine scientific inquiry naturalistic or materialistic assumptions that result in ...

by Randall Smith

My beloved alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, has gotten itself tied up in a knot by elevating a pro-abortion faculty member to a position of leadership over a center whose goal is fostering "integral human development," which the Church has repeatedly insisted depends on respect for life at all stages.

The details have been widely circulated in the media, so I won't rehash them here. The best statement on the issue, to my mind, has been by Bishop Kevin Rhoades, the bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend and the local ordinary in whose diocese the University of Notre Dame sits. He notes of the faculty member in question:

She wrote that the pro-life position has "its roots in white supremacy and racism," and has misogyny "embedded" in the movement. She has attacked pregnancy resource centers as deceptive "anti-abortion propaganda sites" that harm women. She also argued that the Catholic social doctrine of "integral human development" supports abortion because it enhances freedom and flourishing for women.

Bishop Rhoades rightly counters: "These are all outrageous claims that should disqualify her from an administrative and leadership role at a Catholic university." There is no need to say more about this case; Bishop Rhoades has said what needs to be said. I would like to come at the issue from a rather different angle.

Before I do, though, let me take a moment to insist on something that should be obvious. This is a free country, and this professor is free to have any position on controversial issues she thinks best. Anyone upset by that position has a right to disagree civilly. But no one should contact her or send her threatening messages. She should be left alone, period, end of discussion.

Anyone who would violate her privacy and threaten her safety should not claim to be Catholic or pro-life or an ally in the battle for a culture of life. I'm sorry, but in the modern world, it seems that such things need to be stated clearly and unequivocally.

In the final analysis, the issue goes beyond this particular professor. I don't know how Notre Dame is going to cut the Gordian Knot they've tied for themselves, but there is a wider set of problems involved.

Consider this. Let's assume that it became known that a person promoted to a position of authority over a major center at the university had written social media posts and op-ed articles deemed racist or that spoke out against open immigration. Or let's say he or she publicly signaled agreement with the Church's teaching on homosexuality. I think we all know that there would be no question: such a person would be dismissed instantly.

But what does this say? It means that the administrators involved think that racism (which is absolutely a bad thing) is worse than abortion. The one earns immediate disapproval and dismissal; the other causes some questioning and mild concern.

This gives rise to the sense that the people involved don't really appreciate how grave an evil abortion is. If they did, would they be having a hard time deciding whether this was an appropriate appointment or not? Whatever they say about abortion, their actions betray their true convictions.

Consider the problem the administration faces now. If they keep this professor in her current position, it will alienate and offend their Catholic alumni, students, and faculty. If they remove her, given how much it has become a flash point, they will make themselves look bad among their secular peers at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford.

My guess would be that the approval of the latter group is more important to them than the disapproval of the former. But we can always pray that wisdom and goodwill prevail.

Please understand, there are many truly great people at Notre Dame. And the students are glorious. But at some point, someone might want to ask who got the university tied up in knots with so much horrible media coverage and earned them a scolding from their bishop.

The larger issue is t...

By David G Bonagura, Jr.

Each December, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff publishes what I call his "Can I be Christian without believing in Christ?" interview with a notable Christian figure. This year's guest was New Testament scholar and prolific author Bart Ehrman, whose interpretations of the Bible traverse territory that even the Prodigal Son might think a bit far afield.

Those looking for an uplifting Christmas message from Ehrman quickly realized they had stumbled onto the wrong page. "The idea that [Jesus] was a pre-existent divine being," he said, "who came into the world as a newborn is not found in any of his own teachings in our earliest Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and I think he would be flabbergasted to hear it."

When Kristoff asked how we should seek inspiration on December 25, Ehrman replied, "The Gospels are stories intended to convey important messages. I find the message of Christmas to be very moving. It's about God bringing salvation into a needy world through an impoverished child. This is a child who will grow up and give his life for others. I don't think this is historical. But I believe stories can be true, meaningful and powerful even if they didn't actually happen." (Emphasis added.)

For decades, scholars who share Ehrman's perspective have, inexplicably, been teaching at Catholic schools and universities throughout the country. It took my wife fifteen years to recover from her Catholic college's "Introduction to the New Testament" course, which would have been more accurately titled Debunking the New Testament. Though she survived, many other Catholic students were lost along the way. Unlike Ehrman, they found neither meaning nor point in a fake story. So they found other things to do with their Sunday mornings – and, by extension, with their Saturday nights.

Believing Catholics often pine for the Church to censor, remove, and denounce such Biblical charlatans who, as modern-day Pharisees, lengthen the tassels on their academic regalia by denigrating Jesus. But history teaches that heretics will always be with us. From Jesus' own time until today, many have spread false reports about Him to undermine His authority over us.

The Church refutes them, yet they stubbornly survive and sow their seeds of doubt. The Council of Nicaea, for example, roundly condemned Arianism in 325. Did the Arians suddenly all quit, disappear, or convert? Not a chance – the heresy survived another 300 years, thanks, in part, to its adoption by some Roman emperors and Visigoth kings.

What, then, is the Church to do if she can't extinguish these heresies outright? She has to persuade anyone who has ears to hear that the Jesus Christ of the Bible, the same one the Church has taught for 2,000 years, is the One in whom they should put their faith. This is the true challenge of evangelization: to present the eternal truths of revelation in a compelling manner that poignantly addresses the current moment.

In recent years, many outstanding thinkers have made cogent pitches: Fr. Roch Kereszty, Fr. Thomas Weinandy, Edward Sri, to name only a few whose work I have incorporated into my own academic courses. There is one book, though, that I keep revisiting because of how beautifully it describes Jesus, anchoring Him in His identity as the Son of the Father, and how it challenges the sillier interpretations of Jesus without getting bogged down with them.

This book – actually three books – is Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth trilogy, of which the first volume, which covers Jesus' public ministry, stands as a tremendous contribution to convincing the world that the Church's understanding of Jesus is right and best.

Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth successfully balances erudition with popular appeal, academic rigor with spiritual insight. If you would like to incorporate his insights into your intellectual and spiritual lives, I invite you to join me and fellow TCT readers soon in a four-week series digging into Bened...

By John M. Grondelski

Each year, February 7-14 is designated as "National Marriage Week," an opportunity individually, socially, and culturally to recommit ourselves to the institution of marriage. I choose the term "institution" of marriage deliberately because, in the polemics of the Reformation, whether marriage was a sacrament (i.e., a privileged locus of divine grace connected to salvation) or an institution (i.e., a divinely-sanctioned event marking a change in civil, not spiritual status) was a point of contention.

Protestant reductionism of marriage to a civil institution, however, has suffered further secular reductionism. What the civil law in many Western countries brands as "marriage" shares but a name with what Christians – and certainly Catholics – understood by that name.

The Protestant "estate" of marriage, although primarily a civil thing, enjoyed divine sanction: what society today calls marriage neither acknowledges its author nor necessarily even appeals to Him.

Marriage traditionally took place before a religious minister, in recognition of the origins of marriage and in appeal to the support of Him who makes its yoke easier and burden lighter. Today, it occurs in many jurisdictions before an "officiant" whose authority depends on Form 123A and a fee. In some places, one doesn't even need a separate officiant: the parties can simply exchange vows to each other.

Lest revisionist Catholic theologians announce this reflects Catholic teaching (that the parties themselves minister the sacrament to each other), let us not forget that the whole reason the Church required marriage before a priest and witnesses as a condition for validity was to end the abuse of clandestine marriage. Today, some might just call it "privacy."

Speaking of vows, the ritual "I A., take thee B., to be my lawful wedded husband/wife," is but one variant among many. There's a whole sub-industry within the Wedding Industrial Complex now that will write your vows for you, based on the effect you want: romantic, nostalgic, quirky, funny, or prenuptial legalese.

Self-made vows reflect a deeper problem: the relativization of marriage. In many ways, contemporary marriage has become a shell, a mere label to be attached to whatever two people want. The consequence of that move has been that marriage is increasingly a form without content.

The civil law still has a few guardrails left. Divorce is not yet as easy as telling her "I divorce you" three times, although no-fault divorce essentially lets one party end a marriage regardless of what the other wants. The residue – kids and goods – might be fought over, but the overarching institution in which they existed – marriage – is dissolved.

One might argue that the major reason we have not reached unilateral divorce of the "I divorce you" kind is to protect attorneys' contingency fees.

DIY vows, however, express another aspect of this radical privatization of marriage. If vows can be reduced to a stand-up monologue, then when is any mutual binding commitment to the essential characteristics and features of marriage voiced?

The Church required vows as an expression of the parties' free consent to be married. But Pope Pius XI taught in Casti connubii that marriage involves acceptance of what marriage itself is. In other words, John is free to marry Mary or Anne, but he is not free to marry "for five years, automatically renewable if no objections are voiced."

Yet that has always been where human resistance to marriage generally strikes. It is the characteristics of marriage which the Church teaches are sine qua non to the existence of marriage that become targets. Unity, exclusivity, indissolubility, fruitfulness – these are where marriage is attacked.

Which characteristics are assaulted and where seems mostly a matter of cultural geography. "Accompanying" theologians in Africa may argue for a tolerance of polygamy that does quite (yet) cut it in America.

"Indissolubility" in America becomes the sh...

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza

Justice Antonin Scalia – who died ten years ago, February 13, 2016 – lived an expansive life that was an occasion of pride for many Catholics. His love for the faith, his large family, his friends (not determined by politics), language (English and Latin), the law, opera – was an inspiring model of the life well-lived. He was normal, but in an excellent sort of way, something too rare in the models available to young men today.

His funeral at the National Shrine in Washington was one of the great Catholic events of recent years, marked by the grandeur of the setting and the preaching of his son, Father Paul Scalia, well-known here at The Catholic Thing. It fell during the Jubilee Year of Mercy. And so, his casket was taken through the Holy Door. There was something fitting about that. The title is "Mr. Justice", not "Mr. Mercy," but our consolation in going to our judgment is that we will encounter Divine Mercy. Faith provides more than the limits of law.

Scalia did not consider himself a Catholic justice, meaning a judge who seeks to advance a distinctively Catholic vision of the common good. He understood the judge's role to apply the law as written – "originalism" regarding the Constitution, "textualism" regarding statutes. He vehemently opposed judges reading into the law what they thought should be there, even if marked by wisdom and goodwill.

He opposed Roe v. Wade as an illegitimate invention of a right that did not appear in the Constitution, and at the same time said that finding a "right to life" there would also be impermissible judicial usurpation. States had the capacity to regulate abortion as they saw fit, even if that meant abortion-on-demand. On many cases, from abortion to the death penalty to flag-burning to criminal justice, the law required of him, as a judge, a ruling that he may not prefer as a citizen – or a Catholic.

What if the text of the law permits, or even commands, the morally impermissible? What then is a judge to do? Should he substitute his own just judgment? Scalia was clear enough about that over his long career. No, the judge must read the law, not read into it. And if the law requires him to be complicit in an injustice, then he must resign.

The question of judicial fidelity to unjust statutes was most painfully posed by the greatest legal wickedness of Scalia's lifetime, the exquisitely legal Nazi apparatus of death. Even at Auschwitz, just steps away from the wall where summary executions were carried out, a few minutes were devoted to "trials."

Scalia recalled visiting Dachau and Auschwitz in a 1987 address on Holocaust remembrance in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. He quoted St. John Henry Newman:

Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility. Liberal Education makes the gentleman. It is well to be a gentleman, it is well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable, dispassionate mind, a noble and courteous bearing in the conduct of life. These are the natural qualities of a large knowledge, they are the objects of a university. But they are no guarantee for sanctity of even for conscientiousness; they may attach to the man of the world, to the profligate, to the heartless.

One might substitute "law" for "knowledge" and arrive at the heart of the matter. Laws, duly passed and properly interpreted, can serve the heartless, including the lethally heartless.

Scalia's remedy was a return to the "absolute and uncompromisable standards of human conduct. . .found in the Decalogue." The Ten Commandments – the natural law given expression by God – is what should inform a constitution or statutory law. But once written, that constitution, that statute is to be applied by judges without external considerations – such as the natural law revealed by God. In case of conflict, the faithful Christian judge must resign.

Scalia's hero, it should be remembered, was Thomas More, the lawyer, the judge, ...