“I See You”: From Augustine to Avatar

By: Christopher West

green earth

In 2010, when Avatar  became the top grossing movie of all time, I thought I should see what all the hype was about.   Reluctantly, I went.   And I was pleasantly surprised.  Yes, I agree with much of what has been said about it’s unoriginal plot (Dances with Wolves  in space).   And there’s certainly plenty to criticize from a theological point of view (besides the overt eco-religion it espouses, the plot itself rests on a dangerous body-soul dualism that imagines one’s “consciousness” can be transferred to another body).

Still, I think there is much to like about this film.   Beyond its breath-taking visuals and awe-inspiring special effects (it’s as much a game-changer as Star Wars was in its day), I was especially taken in by the three simple words with which the Na’vi people greet one another: I see you.   As the movie explains, it means more than seeing the other physically with your eyes.   It means seeing into  the other, understanding the other, embracing the other.   It means seeing the other person’s heart, the other person’s person.  And here James Cameron, the movie’s writer and director, may well be drawing directly from St. Augustine (in the film, Sigourney Weaver’s character is named Grace Augustine — hmmm).   It was the Catholic “Doctor of Grace” who said that the deepest desire of the human heart is to see another and be seen by that other’s loving look (see Sermon 69, c. 2, 3).

Intamacy:  In-to-me-see

This yearning to see and be seen, like the beauty of the distant planet Pandora itself, harkens back to Eden, to the original way of “seeing” upon which John Paul II reflected in his Theology of the Body (for more on how Avatar points to Eden, see Bill Donaghy’s excellent article on catholicexchange.com).   As the late Pope expressed it, the first man and the woman “see each other more fully and clearly than through the sense of sight itself.”   They see each other with an “interior gaze” (see TOB 13:1) — a gaze that sees “into” the other, creating a profound bond of peace and intimacy (or shall we say “in-to-me-see”?).

An “interior gaze” is precisely what the Na’vi express when they say, “I see you.”   And that, I believe, is one of the appeals of Avatar: it calls us to a different way of seeing one another, and the world around us.   Unfortunately, Avatar’s  green agenda pushes the limits of honoring creation over the edge into a kind of nature worship, as if creation itself were a goddess.   But isn’t this error simply the twisting of a truth?   What is the truth that “nature worship” distorts?  As I was pondering this question, I was reminded of a remarkable statement of St. Louis de Montfort in True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin.   There he writes of how St. Denis was so taken by the “wondrous charms” and “incomparable beauty” of the Blessed Virgin that “he would have taken her for a goddess . . . had not his well-grounded faith taught him otherwise” (True Devotion 49).

Revealing the “unknown gods”

I’m speculating here, but I wonder if it just might be that some of the goddess worship of various cultures throughout history is a universal sense of the mystery of Mary, or even a kind of Marian encounter — but they mistake her “incomparable beauty” for a goddess because they don’t know the true faith.   And perhaps rather than dismissing such goddess worshipers as “pagans” we should show such people the same compassion that St. Paul showed the Athenians with their famous altar “To an Unknown God.”   Instead of dismissing them, Paul yearned to tell them who this unknown God really was (see Acts 17:22-23).

In this same spirit, shouldn’t we say to all the “earth-goddess” worshipers of history: “Let me tell you the name of this mysterious and beautiful feminine presence you feel. She is not divine, she is one of us.   But she is so beautiful, and we are indeed tempted to mistake her for a goddess, because she has been divinized by God.   And this is a testimony of what the true God wants to do with each and every one of us (see Catechism  460).   Do not worship her!   But do let her beauty awaken the hope in you of participating in the divine life which is the source of her beauty.”  In this way, rather than condemning those misguided by nature worship and eco-religion, we would be lovingly leading them to true worship.   And at the same time, we’d be saying, “I see you.”

The Amazing Grace of U2

By: Christopher West

Heaven w:sun

A new book called The Gospel According to U2 captures two of my great loves in life — Jesus and the music of these four men from Ireland: Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr.   Most people who follow popular music know about the Christian roots of the biggest rock band in the world.   But many of the Christians who followed U2’s career in the 1980’s thought they “lost it” in the 1990’s.   I was one of them.   And I was wrong.

Had U2 Lost It?  

Truth be told, I wasn’t much of a Christian in the 80’s.   I was a rebellious teenager pursuing the pleasures of the world, and, because of it, I was empty.   In no small measure, it was the music of U2 that kept me alive during those tumultuous times.   With these guys, it wasn’t your typical “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.”   They sang about dying for love and yearning for heaven.   Anthems like “Pride” and “Where the Streets Have No Name”  got in my blood and became hymns of hope.   They stirred a voice in me that sometimes whispered and at other times screamed: Keep searching!  I was new to faith in the early 90’s, and it seemed the band that had inspired me to pursue belief had now gone off the deep end.   I couldn’t help but love the Achtung Baby  album, but what was one to make of Bono appearing on stage dressed as the devil?   It seemed he had flipped completely to the “other side.”   With tinges of self-righteousness, I decided to “pray for him.”

In 2000, a friend and fellow fan of the “earlier U2” called me with great delight having just listened to their latest album All That You Can’t Leave Behind.   He said two simple words: “They’re back . . .”   They were indeed — as was my enthusiasm for their gift.   In fact, I became a bigger fan of U2 in my thirties then when I was a teen.   And I was also put to shame for how judgmental I was of them during the 90’s.   As Greg Garrett, author of The Gospel According to U2 put it, “What those in panic mode did not understand [about their approach in the 90’s] was that U2 had not completely lost their minds; they had merely changed their methods.”   With deliberateness, they had exchanged their sincerity for satire and irony.

Screwtape & Amazing Grace

It was a big gamble that took incredible chutzpa to pull off — indeed, they would have to (and did) put their musical career on the line for the chance to make at least two critical points to their vast, but divergent audience.   First, by appearing — quite convincingly! — to have bought into the debauched excesses of “rock stardom,” they knew a large segment of their fan base would not even begin to understand what they were up to, and would write them off (guilty!).   But in the very process they would be demonstrating just how superficial, “uptight,” and judgmental believers can be at times (guilty!).   Imagine my surprise when I learned that Bono was actually acting out scenes from C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters when he dawned that devil costume.

The second point they were trying to make was aimed at a different segment of their audience — those who thought the excesses of “rock stardom” were the be-all and end-all of life.   As with all effective satire, the joke was on those who believed the ruse.   By appearing utterly self-absorbed and full of himself in front of stadiums full of screaming fans, Bono was saying: Don’t you see how ridiculous it is for you to think I’m as great as you think I am!?

Bono and the gang are certainly not saints.   But nor are they your typical debauched rock stars.   Those with eyes to see it can recognize that grace is at work in these four men and their craft — amazing grace.   This was confirmed all the more for me at a recent U2 concert in New York City.   The pinnacle of any U2 show is when the band transitions artfully into “Where the Streets Have No Name,” a song about heaven.   On this night, it happened as Bono was singing “Amazing Grace” — yes, “Amazing Grace” — with eighty thousand people singing along.   Then, behind Bono’s voice I heard the familiar organ swell that signals the beginning of “Streets.”   I was pierced by beauty, utterly overwhelmed.   And it seemed that, together, eighty-thousand people were tasting a bit of heaven.  What an amazing grace indeed . . .   I was filled with such gratitude for these four men and what their music has meant to me over the years.   And I hope this brief article gives you the permission   to “claim the comfort,” as Garrett says, that your favorite music has offered you.

Everyday Mysticism

By: Christopher West

sunrise

For nearly two years I’ve been reflecting on something I read in an article by Father Raniero Cantalamessa.   I can’t get it out of my head.   The article was provocatively titled “The ‘Atheism’ of Mother Theresa” (National Catholic Register Sep 9-15, 2007). Read the article in it’s entirety here. It explored the meaning of   Mother Theresa’s extended “dark night” (a period of intense spiritual loneliness and separation from God’s consolation) of union with Christ in his cry of abandonment from the cross.

Cantalamessa wrote of a modern phenomenon he called “atheists in good faith” — people who feel abandoned by God.   Perhaps they would believe if they encountered God, but they encounter only “the silence of God.”   And he observed that the mystics, like Mother Theresa, “exist above all for them; they are their travel and table companions. Like Jesus, they ‘sat down at the table of sinners and ate with them’ (see Luke 15:2).”   In other words, Mother Theresa lived in solidarity with those who don’t believe.   All the while believing, she “felt” in her own heart what the atheists feel — abandonment by God.

Christianity  Must  Be Mystical  

As Cantalamessa says, “This explains the passion in which certain atheists, once converted, pore over the writings of the mystics…There they find again the same scenery that they had left, but this time illuminated by the sun….Because of this the mystics are the ideal evangelizers in the post-modern world….They remind the honest atheists that they are not ‘far from the Kingdom of God’; that it would be enough for them to jump to find themselves on the side of the mystics, passing from nothingness to the All.”

All of this I find utterly fascinating.   But I still haven’t gotten to the line I’ve been pondering for two years now.   Here it is: “Karl Rahner was right to say: ‘Christianity of the future will either be mystical or it will not be at all.’”  What does this mean?   Are all Christians called to be mystics?   We tend to think of mystics as those “far-out” saints who levitate or bleed with the wounds of Christ.   Certainly we are not all called to that.   But we are all called to an “every day” kind of mysticism.  As the Catechism  puts it: “Spiritual progress tends toward ever more intimate union with Christ.   This union is called ‘mystical’ because it participates in the mystery of Christ through the sacraments … and, in him, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity.   God calls us all to this intimate union with him, even if the special graces or extraordinary signs of this mystical life are granted only to some for the sake of manifesting the gratuitous gift given to all” (CCC 2014).

Mystics are not dreamy believers out of touch with reality; they, in fact, are the ones potently in touch  with Reality.   They are men and women madly in love with God and burning to know him ever more deeply.   They are men and women who have heard the divine love song (the Song of Songs!) and learned, through many purifying trials and tribulations, to sing back and harmonize with the Trinity.   And, precisely because of their deep union with God, they feel a deep unity with and love for all of humanity.   They are ready and willing to suffer for and with others, drawing them through such love into Love itself — or, rather, Love Himself.

Closer to Christ than Expected?

Without such love there is no future for Christianity.   This, I believe, is what Rahner’s statement means.   This also, I believe, shines a light on the importance of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body at this historical moment.   John Paul II’s catechesis on the body is mysticism for the modern world.   It brings John of the Cross’s “spousal mysticism” to the whole Church, proposing it in some sense as the “normal” Christian life, the normal way for Christians to view reality.

Could it be that, just like the “good atheists,” there are those who have been swept away by our sex-obsessed culture who are not “far from the Kingdom of God”?   Could it be that they only need to “jump” as Cantalamessa says, to find themselves on the side of the mystics?   Afer all, it’s the mystics who saw the union of man and woman as the key for understanding divine love.   Who knows, maybe one day those now caught up in society’s sex obsession may “pore” over John Paul II’s TOB, finding “the same scenery that they had left, but this time illuminated by the sun.”   Oh, let it be, Lord!   Let it be!

Fatima and the Theology of the Body

By: Christopher West

fatima statue

May is a month that Catholics traditionally devote to honoring the Blessed Mother.   One of my favorite Marian memorials falls in the middle of the month, May 13, when we honor Mary under her title “Our Lady of Fatima.”   I’m not a big devotee of Marian apparations, but because of my work promoting John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (TOB), I have gained a great interest in Fatima.   What’s the connection?   I could write a doctoral dissertation on it, but I’ll provide the short version in the next two articles.

The Assassination Attempt

As many Catholics know, between May 13 and October 13, 1917, Mary appeared to three peasant children in Fatima, Portugal delivering a three-part message — the “three secrets” of Fatima, as they’ve come to be known.   The first secret presented a horrifying vision of hell.   The second involved a prophecy of World War II and the warning that “Russia would spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church.”   However, Mary assured the children, “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”

Mary also told the children that “the Holy Father will have much to suffer.”   This brings us to the “third secret” of Fatima, which was not publicly revealed until the year 2000.   In 1917, the children saw a vision of bullets and arrows   fired at “a bishop dressed in white.”   Sixty-four years later, while driving through the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, a “bishop dressed in white” was gunned down by Turkish assassin Ali Agca … on the memorial of Our Lady of Fatima: May 13, 1981.  Many years later John Paul II reflected: “Agca knew how to shoot, and he certainly shot to kill.   Yet it was as if someone was guiding and deflecting that bullet.”   That “someone,” John Paul believed, was the Woman of Fatima.   “Could I forget that the event in St. Peter’s Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of the Mother of Christ … has been remembered … at Fatima in Portugal?   For in everything that happened to me on that very day, I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet” (Memory and Identity pp. 159, 163).

The fact that John Paul was shot on the memorial of Fatima is well known.   What few people know is that the Pope was planning to announce the establishment of his Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family on that fateful afternoon.   This was to be his main arm for disseminating his teaching on man, woman, marriage, and sexual love around the globe.   Could it be that there were forces at work that didn’t want John Paul II’s teaching to spread around the world?   (In fact, by May 13, 1981, John Paul II was only about half way through delivering the 129 addresses of his TOB.   Had he died, obviously, the full teaching never would have been presented.)   And could it be that, by saving his life, the Woman of Fatima was pointing to the importance of his teaching reaching the world?

The Theology of the Body & Fatima

It would be over a year later that John Paul officially established his Institute (of which I’m a proud graduate). On that day, October 7, 1982 — not coincidentally the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary — John Paul II entrusted the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family to the care and protection of Our Lady of Fatima. By doing so, it seems he himself was drawing a connection, at least indirectly, between his miraculous survival and the importance of the Theology of the Body.

Digging deeper, the precise link, I believe, between John Paul II’s TOB and Fatima lies in Mary’s mysterious words about the “errors of Russia” and the promised “triumph” of her Immaculate Heart.   John Paul II’s TOB is like weed-killer applied to the deepest roots of the “errors of Russia” that have spread throughout the world.   As such, the spread of the TOB throughout the world is a sign, I believe, that Mary is preparing us for her triumph.  But what does it mean to speak of “the triumph of the Immaculate Heart”?   What are the “errors of Russia” and how does John Paul II’s TOB combat them?

Marx’s Deep Seed of Destruction

Part of Mary’s message in Fatima was that “Russia would spread her errors throughout the world.”   However, “In the end,” she said, “my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”   When we hear of the errors of Russia, we rightly think of the spread of communism.   But communism has roots that go deeper than Marxist economic theory.  As most of us learned in school, Marx considered class struggle to be the defining factor of history.   But digging deeper, Marx also believed that the fundamental “class struggle” was found in monogamous marriage and, indeed, in the sexual difference itself. “The first division of labor,” Marx co-wrote with Frederick Engels, “is that between man and woman for the propagation of children.”   In turn, Engels affirmed that Marxist theory “demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society” (see  The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State).

It seems the deeper revolution — and, I would contend, the deeper “error of Russia” — is the one aimed at destroying marriage and the family.   Indeed, those who seek to deconstruct sexuality in the modern world often draw straight from Marx.   As feminist author Shulamith Firestone wrote in  The Dialectic of Sex: “[J]ust as the end goal of socialist revolution was … the elimination of the … economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be … the elimination of … the sex distinction itself [so that] genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.”   Welcome to the deep-seated sexual confusion in which we’re now immersed.

The Triumph of the Divine Bridegroom  

But here’s the good news: Just as John Paul II’s vision of the human person inaugurated a new kind of revolution that led to the fall of communism, his TOB has also inaugurated a new kind of revolution that will, I believe, lead to the collapse of the dominant sexual ideology.  In his book  The Last Secret of Fatima, Cardinal Bertone wrote: “The Communist system seemed invincible, and it looked as if it were going to endure for centuries.   But then the whole thing collapsed like a house of cards.”   Perhaps we can expect the same with the deeper “error of Russia.”   Indeed, in the Book of Revelation, the “whore of Babylon” — that mysterious feminine figure who mocks the Bride of the Lamb — is brought to ruin in “one hour.”   And as she collapses, all the merchants who “gained their wealth from her” (think the porn industry, Planned Parenthood, etc., etc.) “weep and mourn”   (Rev 18).

And then comes the triumph of the New Jerusalem, the Bride who has “made herself ready” for her Bridegroom.   She is dressed in “fine linen, bright and  immaculate” (Rev 19:7-8).   She is “clothed with the sun” (Rev 12:1).   This radiant Bride, of course, is personified in Mary.   “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”   What does this mean?   In short, it means that  purity of heart  will triumph.   Somehow the pornographic lies will be  redeemed.   All of “Babylon’s” distortions will be untwisted and we will come to see the human body as it really is — as a glorious sign of “the mystery hidden from eternity in God” (TOB 19:4).

By showing us the path to authentic purity (never to be confused with puritanism or prudishness!), John Paul II’s TOB paves the way for Mary’s triumph.   Is it a coincidence that John Paul began writing his TOB on the feast of the Immaculate Conception?   Is it a coincidence that he devoted the entire work to “Mary, all beautiful”?   Is it a coincidence that she saved his life on the memorial of Fatima so that his teaching could reach the world?  Let us pray for the triumph of the Immaculate Heart.   It may be closer than we realize.   Already in 1994, John Paul wrote that Mary’s words spoken in Fatima “seem to be close to their fulfillment” (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 221).   Let it be, Lord, according to your word.

Susan Boyle and the Communion of Saints

By: Christopher West

british flag

If you don’t yet know who Susan Boyle is, type her name into YouTube and watch her April 11 appearance on Britain’s Got Talent.   At the time this article is being posted, this performance has been watched almost 200,000,000 times collectively (between the different video accounts posted on YouTube).   A few days after the show, her performance had already been viewed over 3 million times.   Less than two weeks later, it was close to 50 million.  Let me briefly paint the picture.   A middle aged “frumpy” woman walks out on stage to the glaringly cynical response of the audience and the judges.   Simon Cowell, well known in the U.S. for his merciless treatment of American Idol contestants, asks her:

“What’s the dream?”

Susan: I’m trying to be a professional singer.

Simon: (cynically) And why hasn’t it worked out so far, Susan?

Susan: I’ve never been given the chance before.   But here’s hoping it’ll change.

Simon: Okay, and who would you like to be as successful as?

Susan: Elaine Paige or somebody like that.

As Robert Canfield, a professor of anthropology at Washington University, wrote on his blog: “It was easy to regard this woman as tragically unaware of her own limitations, with aspirations that surpassed her ability. And she was now on stage, on TV. Before a huge audience. Here was a disaster in the making. This would be difficult to watch. …[But] her first note changed everything. The audience was electrified.”

So why am I writing about this in an article pertaining to the Theology of the Body?   First, reading her “body language” — her unkempt look, her double chin, her frizzy graying hair, her strange hip swinging dance in response to Simon Cowell — is precisely what made people so dubious.   We were definitely reading this book by its cover.   But I also think John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (TOB) shines a light on why millions around the world have been moved to tears by her performance.   When this seemingly unappealing “book” opened up and the audience saw how beautiful the inner story really was, we all experienced a little foretaste of heaven.

A Foretaste of Heaven

Paraphrasing some dense teaching from his TOB, John Paul taught that in the afterlife we will be totally liberated from all that weighed us down in this life.   All the fears and insecurities, all the wounds and all the shame that kept us in “hiding” here on earth will be completely wiped away.   In total freedom and confidence, we will emerge from our shells, sharing the unique gift we are with each and everyone else.  Somehow, we will all have our “moment on stage,” so to speak — just like Susan Boyle.   And all those gathered in the heavenly banquet will see us — truly see  us shining in the totally unique way God made each of us to shine.   And we will marvel at the beauty, the unique and unrepeatable beauty, of each and everyone for all eternity.  When you watch (or rewatch) the clip on YouTube, pay attention to the facial expressions of the judges throughout her performance — they tell the whole story.   Towards the end, we even catch a glimpse of Simon Cowell’s “inner beauty” as his face spontaneously lights up and he sighs in a kind of dazzled wonder.   Priceless.

Countless bloggers and commentators have tried to explain why these seven minutes on YouTube move us so profoundly.   Again, I think Robert Canfield expresses it well: “Buried within the human psyche are feelings, yearnings, anxieties too deep for words, usually. Only sometimes do we see it in ourselves. Always it is something outside ourselves that touches us, somehow, where we feel most deeply. At such moments we remember that we are humans —   not mere living creatures, but human beings, profoundly and deeply shaped by a moral sensibility so powerful that it breaks through our inhibitions; it can burst out, explode into public view, to our own astonishment. And sometimes that objective form — a person, an event, an object, a song —   embodies deeply felt sensibilities for a lot of us at once, so that we discover how much we share in our private worlds, worlds otherwise inaccessible to anyone else. It becomes a social event, so we can all rejoice, and weep, together.”   Yep.   That’s it.  In Catholic-speak it’s called the communion of saints.   A little foretaste of heaven.

I Am Legend-Cimena & the Catholic Church

By: Christopher West

danger sign

A year after it’s release, a friend of mine turned me on to the 2007 blockbuster I Am Legend with Will Smith. I watched it four times in two weeks.   I was mesmerized by it.  In this apocalyptic tale, based on the 1954 science fiction novel by Richard Matheson, Dr. Alice Kripin’s “once hailed miracle cure for cancer” turns out to be a virus that very quickly wipes out 90% of mankind.   Only 1% was immune.   The other 9% morphed into the so-called “dark seekers” — rabid, violent, hungry human animals who emerge at night (light kills them) to hunt down and eat the remaining, healthy 1%.

A Post-Apocalyptic Look at Western Culture

Will Smith’s character, Dr. Robert Neville, is part of that 1%.   He’s also a virologist devoted to finding a cure and saving the human race from extinction. As I reflect on the film’s relation to the 40th anniversary of Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, I can’t help but be draw it out in some length.   I know I just devoted a whole series of columns to this topic, but allow me one more indulgence.  I believe that sometime in the not too distant future, the evening news will be speaking openly about the “once hailed miracle pill” that promised liberation and happiness, but has led unwittingly (but not un-forewarned) to today’s “culture of death.”

The haunting picture of our future painted by I Am Legend is obviously science fiction.   But, allegorically speaking, it offers much food for thought.   The idea of “dark seekers” feeding on the flesh of other human beings is not that far off from the many horrid forms of sexual abuse that are sweeping through our pornified culture like a virus.   Just a cursory knowledge of what’s happening today with internet porn leads a person to conclude, as Dr. Neville does in the movie, that “social de-evolution appears complete; typical human behavior is now entirely absent.”  It’s time to take an honest look at how “the once hailed” technology of contraception has played a major role in this “de-evolution.”   Social re-engineers do not like to admit this fact, but when we let the data speak, it’s clear: civilization rests on the family — that is, on the committed union of a man and a woman and their naturally resulting offspring.   What would happen to the human family if a majority of us bought into the idea that sterilized sex is “better” than the natural family-building kind?   Where would society veer?

The Fallout of the Sexual Revolution

Insert contraception into the sexual-societal equation and the basic goal of sex becomes pleasure rather than the establishment of those relationships that bind families and civilization together.   Sexual pleasure is a great blessing of God — in its proper context.   When pleasure becomes the main goal of sex, however, society becomes utilitarian.   You are valued if you are useful.   And, in this case, you are “useful” if you are sexually stimulating.   If you are not, or if you get in the way of my pleasure, you will be ignored, discarded, maybe even exterminated.  When pleasure is the main goal of sex, people (mostly women) become the means and babies become the obstacle.   So we take our pleasure and we kill our offspring.   This is not some dire prediction of the future.   This is the world we live in now.

As a culture, we are desperately in need of recovering what should be an obvious and celebrated truth: sex leads to babies.   Who, then, should be having sex?   Wise men and women throughout history — not just Christians — have concluded that only those who have committed themselves to embracing and raising the most natural fruit of the sexual act should be having sex.   That commitment is called … marriage.  But there’s more.   Not only does sex lead to babies.   When we allow the data to speak, we also recognize what, once again, should be an obvious and celebrated truth: women are the ones who carry them.   When we forget this truth or reject it, the abortion industry capitalizes on it, the state taxes us to provide what delinquent men won’t (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) and the basic infrastructure of civilization eventually collapses.

In I Am Legend, it seemed that science had discovered the cure for cancer.   Imagine the scorn and derision that would have been aimed at anyone who tried to warn the world that this “cure” was actually a deadly poison.   That’s what Pope Paul VI endured almost fifty years ago.  Few even bothered to read Humanae Vitae.   But it has proved prophetic. Google Humanae Vitae  and give it a read.   Then (if you have the stomach) watch I Am Legend … and “light up the darkness.”

Can Science Explain Morality?

By: Christopher West

morality

Time Magazine recently printed an article by Jeffery Kluger called “What Makes Us Moral” (see Dec 3, 2007 issue).   The tag line reads: “Morality and empathy are writ deep in our genes.   Alas, so are savagery and bloodlust.   Science is now learning what makes us both noble and terrible — and perhaps what can make us better.”

Materialism

I thought Kluger had several very interesting things to say and I commend this secular magazine for venturing into a discussion about morality.   The whole approach of the article, however, betrays two interrelated diseases plaguing the modern view of man and the universe: materialism and positivism.   Both views ultimately leave us with a terribly impoverished view of ourselves and the universe.   Let me explain.  Materialism is the idea that everything can be explained by material processes.   There is no such thing as the spiritual realm.   Rather than being an integral union of body and soul, the materialist sees the human being as merely a physical body like all the other animals of the planet.   Both empathy and savagery are merely the result of our genes, as Kluger says.   Love, rather than being something spiritual, is just an electrical firing of brain waves.

The fact that scientists can link brain waives with various emotions does not mean that things like love and anger are merely brain waves.   If one has an integral view of the body and the soul, one would expect spiritual realities to have physical manifestations.   When the materialist says, “See those brain waves?   There’s nothing spiritual going on here,” an educated Catholic might   say, “See those brain waves?   That demonstrates the inherent link of the body and the soul.”  As I once wrote in a previous article, so often behind the modern push to equate human beings with animals lies the subtle or not-so-subtle agenda of moral relativism, the rejection of a moral order to which all are accountable.   And so often behind the agenda of moral relativism lies the desire to indulge libido without any restraint — that is, the desire to behave like animals when it comes to sex.

Positivism

The strange thing about Kluger’s article is that he acknowledges some kind of moral order, that good and bad exist (although any application to sex is copiously absent from his discussion), but he’s looking to explain it materialistically.   As such, his search is doomed from the start.   Morality is rooted in the spiritual dimension of the human being.   Ultimately, it can only be explained philosophically and theologically.   But if one is a true materialist, those sources of knowledge are dismissed out of hand.   The positive sciences are the only way to know anything.   Hence, if one is a materialist, he will also be a positivist.  Positivism (or scientism) is the idea that the positive sciences are able — or, at least, will eventually be able — to explain everything.   “Where do [moral] intuitions come from?” Kluger asks.   “And why are we so inconsistent about following where they lead us?”   Kluger admits, “Scientists can’t yet answer those questions….”   That little word “yet” betrays the modern world’s unbounded faith in Almighty Science.

Science, without a doubt, can tell us and has told us a great deal about the human being in as far as he is a body.   Thank God for all the wonderful benefits that come from that knowledge!   But there is something more to each human being — an inner life, something spiritual — that isn’t contained in the concept “individual member of the species homo sapiens.”   That “something more” is a realm that science, by its very nature, cannot explain.  It’s because of our inner life that we experience wonder, recognize beauty, yearn for love, search for meaning, desire knowledge, and seek understanding.   It’s because of our inner life that we long for truth and goodness and are pained by evil and injustice.   In other words, if Kluger really wants to know “what makes us moral” he’s going to have to have faith in more than just science.

The Redemption of Rock Music?

By: Christopher West

rock guitar

John Paul II warned that if chastity is lived in a repressive way, it’s only a matter of time before sexual desires explode (see Love and Responsibility, pp. 170-171).   I think we find here a key for understanding the sexual revolution of the twentieth century.   It was a ticking time bomb waiting to detonate in response to the prudery and repressiveness of the previous era.  If a culture’s music provides a window into the soul of that culture, I think the rise of rock music in the 1950’s is very telling.

The Roots of Rock N’ Roll

Rock music seems to be an artistic expression of the explosion of all that pent-up desire.   The very term “rock and roll” — coined by DJ Alan Freed in the early 50’s — came, some say, from a slang term for sexual (mis)behavior.  Before you get the wrong impression, I’m actually writing as a fan of rock music — a big  fan (of much of it, anyway).   It’s in my blood.   It’s “my” music.   I can still remember my first “favorite song” from the radio.   “Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…” by David Bowie.   It was 1972 and I wasn’t even three years old.  Not all rock music glorifies lust and indulgence.   Much of it expresses an earnest search for meaning.   Neil Young “keeps on searchin’ for a heart of gold…” and Bono has “climbed the highest mountains” lookin’ for that thing he’s lookin’ for.   Rock music for me has always expressed an interior longing, a search.   It’s been a way of “getting out” what’s going on “within” — the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly.

As a rock drummer, myself, I can’t tell you the number of times I have pounded those skins as a form of therapy.   We’ve all got bottled up “stuff” that needs an outlet.   Drumming has been a great one for me.   A good, driving beat not only rattles the walls, it shakes-up the soul as well.   “Gimme the beat boys and free my soul, I wanna get lost in your rock ‘n roll and drift away….”  If rock and roll can generally be understood as the musical expression of the sexual revolution, then I predict that as a new sexual revolution unfolds — and it is slowly unfolding with the spread of John Paul II’s theology of the body — so, too, will a new form of popular music. There are many signs, in fact, that a positive musical transformation is already quietly underway.

The Rock Music of the  New Sexual Revolution

I want to point you to two of those signs: Mike Mangione and Vince Scheuerman.   These two artists, whom I know personally, are part of a new breed of rock musician: both grew up on rock music; both, through hard times, came to love their Catholic faith; and both are working their tails off to make a difference in the secular world with their music.  Mike Mangione’s latest CD called Tenebrae (Latin for “shadows”) has received great reviews from critics across the country and was selected as New York Magazine’s pick of the week in September of 2007.   Mangione’s rock-folk-acoustic-indie sound includes haunting cello and violin.   His lyrics dig deep into the human experience, expressing an eros yearning for redemption in songs like “First Time: Please Forgive Me” and hope for a culture of life in the midst of a culture of death in songs like “The Killing Floor.”   You can learn more and order his CD at mikemangione.com.   Also, search for his name on You Tube to see him perform “It’s Me, Not You.”

Vince Scheuerman is the lead singer/songwriter for the band Army of Me.   This past summer they toured with the Dave Matthews Band promoting their new album Citizen.   Their video “Going Through Changes” has been a regular on MTV.   While their sound is harder than Mangione’s, the lyrics come from that same place in the soul.   They express a hunger for wholeness and communion in “Two into One” and the hope of rebirth in “Rise,” a song inspired by the tsunami of December 2005.   Learn more and order Citizen at Armyofmeonline.com and see their video for “Going Through Changes” on You Tube.   Look closely and you’ll even see this MTV rock star wearing a scapular.  If rock music was born from the explosion of sexual repression, who knows — when John Paul II’s “theological time bomb” detonates, Madonna might really and truly sing “like a virgin.”

Lessons from Spiderman 3

By: Christopher West

 

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I distinctly remember my experience of taking my two older boys to see Spiderman 3 a few years back.   Watching all that jam-packed action had the same effect on them as would a 2-liter bottle of Coke.   After their “sugar-high” subsided and they could actually speak, we had some great father-son chats about the movie’s many moral lessons. Doc Oc, the eight-armed supervillain from that installment, was an image of the passions gone wild.   When our passions are out of control, humanity — as the movie memorably demonstrated — is on a train bound for destruction. Only Spiderman, here a Christ-figure sacrificing himself in cruciform, can save us.

I had been milking the moral lessons from Spiderman 2 from the time of it’s release until the release of it’s successor.  Now with the release of Spidey 3, I had lots of new material to draw from with my kids.   It’s a multi-layered morality tale.   One of the main questions this movie addresses is what do we do with the hurt we feel when other people cause us pain?   “Revenge,” Aunt May tells Peter, “is like a poison.   Before you know it, it can turn you into something ugly.”   And it does.   When the man who murdered Peter’s uncle escapes from prison, Peter chooses revenge and Spidey’s alter ego emerges, overtaken by black-alien-parasitic goo.   These nasty symbiotes, Peter learns from his college professor, bind to their host, and “when they bind, they can be hard to unbind.”   Uh-huh.

The Chains of Lustful Revenge

It is very rare to see lust portrayed as something evil in a Hollywood movie.   But here, Peter Parker’s lusty prance down main street is a clear indication that he is no longer “your friendly neighborhood Spiderman.”   His respect for women has gone out the window.   Peter only wises up when he sees how he has wounded his beloved Mary Jane.   “I hurt her, Aunt May.   I don’t know what to do.”   “You start by doing the hardest thing,” she says.   “You forgive yourself.”

Peter, in a fit of merciless rage, had already told a fellow-photographer who had cheated him out of a job at the Daily Bugle, “You want forgiveness?   Get religion.”   It was a sign of things to come.   Where does Peter go to do battle with that diabolic goop that had overtaken him?   To a church — a Catholic church.   The cross atop the spire offers Spidey — and the audience — hope.   In a grand image of what battling with sin often feels like, Parker breaks free from his oppression with the help of the victorious tones of the church-bell.   In the next scene, we see Peter washed clean in a (baptismal) shower.

The Freedom of Forgiveness

From then on, Peter learns how to forgive himself — and others.   For three movies now we’ve been feeling Peter’s rage toward his Uncle’s murderer. [If you haven’t yet seen this movie, and don’t want to hear the ending of the movie, stop reading now].   At the end of this installment, having tried unsuccessfully to avenge his Uncle’s death earlier in the movie, Peter faces his Uncle’s killer.   The killer tries to excuse himself, “I had no choice,” he insists.   Peter calmly replies, “We always have a choice.”   Then, as the murderer confesses what happened that fateful night, Peter shows compassion and utters those liberating words, “I forgive you.”

The movie ends with this bit of wisdom: “Whatever comes our way, whatever battle, we always have a choice.   It’s our choices that make us who we are and we can always choose what’s right.”   When others have hurt us, we can always choose forgiveness.   As the Catechism  teaches, “It is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense; but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession” (CCC 2843).  In it’s own way, this is the message of Spiderman 3: hurt can be transformed into something positive.   Forgiveness is the only path that brings true resolution to our pain.   The alternative is to be possessed by the black-parasitic goo of bitterness and revenge.   It’s our choice.

Nursing a Sexually Wounded Culture

By: Christopher West

breastfeeding

There have been various stories in the news lately about breast-feeding mothers being escorted off airplanes or out of shopping malls for “indecent exposure.”   In a similar vein, a few months ago a well-known parenting magazine caused a stir because its front cover pictured a baby at the breast.   Letters to the magazine varied from “how beautiful,” to “that’s gross,” to “that’s pornographic.”  In conversations I’ve had with Catholics about the issue, I’ve received varying responses as well.   Most Catholics, having a deep sense of the sacredness of a mother’s love, would not respond by concluding that breast-feeding is “gross” or “pornographic” (thank God!).   Still, others get more than a bit uncomfortable with the idea of breast-feeding in public. I’m not advocating that nursing mother’s should indiscretely expose themselves in public places.   But I do think it could be a good exercise to ask why something as innocent as breast-feeding can cause such discomfort in us. Why should women be made to feel as if they were doing something shameful — even criminal — when they feed their babies at the breast?   This is not the case in other parts of the world.

Why Is It So Unbearable?

I remember attending the Second World Meeting of John Paul II with Families in Brazil in 1997.   Nursing mothers were a common sight at this international gathering. What I found intriguing, however, was that women from “first-world” nations tended to drape themselves and sit off in a corner, while women from other nations seemed to have no qualms whatsoever about feeding their babies in full view of others. I remember one woman unabashedly roaming the crowd passing all manner of bishops and cardinals with her breast fully exposed while her child held on to it with both hands happily feeding. The only people flinching seemed to be those from the northern hemisphere.

Isn’t it interesting that the part of the world producing the most pornography and exporting it to the rest of the globe has seemed to lose all sense of the true meaning of the human breast? What a commentary on the sad state of our sexually wounded culture!   Breasts have been so “pornified” that we can fall into thinking that even their proper use is shameful.   In other words, we have been so conditioned to see a woman’s body through the prism of lust that we find it very difficult to recognize the purity and innocence of breast-feeding.

St. Paul hit the nail on the head when he said, “To the pure all things are pure, but to the impure nothing is pure” (Titus 1:15).   It is a tragically impure world that labels the purity of a baby at the breast as “gross.” For those with the purity to see it, a nursing mother is one of the most precious, most beautiful, and most holy of all possible images of woman. It is an image that should inspire — and throughout Christian history has inspired — the most lofty of sentiments.   In fact, it is a heavenly image.   Isaiah 66 describes heaven as that place where we will all drink from the abundant breast of the new Jerusalem and find comfort in her overflowing milk.

The Revered Image of Motherhood

John Paul II observed in his theology of the body that the “whole exterior constitution of woman’s body, its particular look [is] in strict union with motherhood.” Since the body reveals the person, John Paul believes that this speaks volumes, not only about feminine biology, but about the dignity and nature of woman as a person. This is why he takes special care to note that “the Bible (and the liturgy following it) honors and praises throughout the centuries ‘the womb that bore you and the breasts from which you sucked milk’ (Lk 11:27). These words,” he continues, “are a eulogy of motherhood, of femininity, of the feminine body in its typical expression of creative love” (TOB 21:5).

Sweet Jesus, please free us from the pornographic lies that distort the true meaning of our bodies! And Mary, Mother of God, pray for us that we would see in every nursing mother an image of you feeding the Christ child.