Great News from Pope Benedict: Agapic Love is Erotic; Erotic is Agapic!

This news is better than good, better even than great, it is FANTASTIC! Agapic love is erotic; erotic love is agapic. Pope Benedict, and Dietrick von Hildebrand, are our teachers here. God, in his generous, overflowing, creative, redemptive and sanctifying love does not only give to us, but he desires us. From the cross, Jesus thirsted. Blessed Mother Theresa understood that he desires us, thirsts for our love, yearns for our own delighted and desiring response. His absolutely agapic-generous love is also erotic-desirous. And the inverse is also true: our erotic- needy love is also, in seed, agapic and generous. When we seek God, appreciate Him, and abide joyfully in Him, we satisfy his desire; we are ourselves generous. What this means concretely for me is that the check-out line in the supermarket is much more than a near occasion of sin; it is an occasion of grace. As I view the desireable faces and figures on the magazines and am aroused with restless desire, I recognize not only my own need and longing, but the seed of generosity. And so, renouncing lust and covetousness, I move through the emptiness into an act of giving: praying for Angelina, Jennifer, or Penelope I recognize my own poverty as well as theirs; I offer us to God; my need becomes absorbed into the surpassing fatherly-spousal-inspiring love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and I become myself a Lover, of these lovely creatures and of our Creator Himself!

Catholic Politics: Mortal and Venial Issues

The mortal/venial polarity is a familiar one for Catholics. A mortal sin, of course, is a grave, lethal offense that kills the life of God in the soul; a venial one is slight, pardonable, and harms without destroying the life of God in the soul. With regard to the Church's social teaching and political judgment this distinction may be helpful. Here "venial" might refer to issues about which there is no defined Church teaching, which allow for a diversity or catholicity of opinions, in which essential evil is not engaged, in which prudential judgment, involving subjectivity and indeterminacy, is involved. We Catholic can, will and must disagree and argue about these issues without breaking the bond of love, faith and truth that unites us. These include most political and economic issues: immigration, health care, taxation, size of government, gun control, global warming, warfare and the death penalty. There are, however, a very few issues about which the Catholic view is absolutely clear, about which all of us must agree, about which prudential calculation and subjective values do not pertain. In the current situation there are precisely three such mortal issues: the protection of innocent life, the sanctity of marriage and family, and religious liberty. A Catholic vote for the party of abortion, gay marriage and mandatory financing of contraception is a mortal act: it strikes a dagger in the heart of the Church, it kills the sanctifying life we share, it tears apart the Body of Christ.

Liberal Dogmatism

Religious dogmas are accepted by faith; scientific theories are tested by reason. So, as Catholic I accept that Mary was assumed physically into heaven; I do not seek to test that truth. Liberals have contempt for conservatives as anti-reason or anti-science because they themselves accept, on faith as dogmatic creed, a network of scientific theories which are entirely problematic and unproved: We humans evolved from apes; man-made global warming presents a clear and imminent danger to human flourishing; there are too many people on the earth; people are born homosexual; oral contraceptives are very good for women; masturbation is healthy and normal; humans need sex; men and women are alike in intellect and all important ways; parenting by a homosexual couple is equivalent to that by a man and a woman; the unborn fetus is not human; liberals care about the poor and conservatives do not; gender is a cultural construct subject to personal choice and social experimentation. These twelve dogmas are accepted, uncritically, as absolutes by liberals. To express reasonable, scientific doubt about them is to be stigmatized as dogmatic, ignorant, bigoted, and irrational.The shoe is on the other foot. The deep human need for certitude, for firmness in truth and faith, for dogma, when denied and repressed, will re-express itself as violence. We Catholics are self-aware that are belief in dogma, say the Assumption, is an act of faith in a supernatural revelation. As a result, we understand that many are not given that gift so we do not despise them for that. Additionally, we can consider scientific theories (say, climate change or the origins of homosexuality) with a certain lightness. The liberal, by contrast, unaware of his dogmatism, can only view dissent and skepticism about such issues as hatred and ignorance.

Eucharistic Appetite or Anorexia?

The wedding banquet has been prepared by the King, but the guests are disinterested and apathetic or even hostile and homicidal to his agents. (Today's gospel: Matt 22.) There is one person I know who would have gone, enthusiastically, to the feast: Marylynn my wife. She loves good wine and food, she loves to dance and to dress up, and she loves to go to Church, especially for a wedding. "She has a good appetite. God bless her!" This old saying has frequently been applied to her. It recognizes appetite as a gift from God, a marker of vitality, of zest for life, and of appreciation for Creation in all its splendor and desireabilty. The opposite of appetite is anorexia, a mysterious and devastating condition. It's origin is understandable as an obsession with thinness on the part of an adolescent woman, uncertain of her value, bombarded by the media-and-peer message that only thin is beautiful. But at the advanced stage it becomes diabolical: a disgust for food, for the feminine body, and for life itself. Consider this contrast between appetite and anorexia as an analogue for our participation in the Eucharist. Jesus was clear: "If you do not eat my body and drink my blood, you will not have life within you." The word for "eat" used in this text was not the one normally used for human dining, but for animals as they bite, gnaw and devour flesh. By Catholic custom we speak of consuming, not eating the host as we distinguish from normal digestion in that we do not devour God, but are ourselves assumed into His life. Such language is important. We do not take communion, but receive it...as a gift from the One who initiates and accomplishes the entire Act. Likewise, it is NOT bread and wine that we receive, but body and blood. Actually! Literally! This is NOT metaphor or symbol or poetry. Jesus' choice of words, so different from our pious custom, indicates that He wants us to devour him, aggressively, desperately, passionately. Here there is no room for passivity, apathy or indifference. I think of my sons or my old buddies from UPS in a Portuguese restaurant, downneck Newark, being served Rodesia (a smorgaboard of meats): a glint in the eyes, saliva flows, hormones are exploding, the teeth tear into the flesh, stomach chemicals are percolating to receve the feast, there is laughter and good cheer. Now that is appetite, not anorexia. And so I have little use for Catholicism Lite: a piety of effete, non-gendered, under-sexed, apathetic, skeptical, unaggressive, anorexic gentility. If we are to be Cathlic, let's really be Catholic: as aggressive, meat-eating, blood drinking, passionate lovers, enflamed with desire! Let us hunger and thirst, desperately, for Christ in the Eucharist!

The Queenship of Mary: Influence, Not Control

Mary, whose regal dominion we honor today, is not in control. Instead, she exercises influence. Control implies domination, a lessening or even elimination of the freedom of the other. Influence, by contrast, enhances freedom. Contrast: "He controls her" with "She is having a good influence on him." The male has a penchant for control: possession of of the TV remote; power struggles; competition. The business world exalts control: the controller has controls in place. Technology is the exercise of control over nature. The female is more facile in the emanation of an influence that attracts and yet respects the inner liberty of the other. But anxiety often traps women into the compulsion to control, out of concern for the other. Mary our Lady was not in control: not of her son, not of her husband Joseph, and certainly not of the Father and the Holy Spirit. She allowed herself to be under their influence, all of them. In turn, she exercised influence. May we today, release control, and surrender to her influence. After that, may we influence each other: awakening love, enhancing freedom, inspiring zeal and magnanimity.

Saved by Deep Loveliness

Miguel Manara, the protagonist of a short play of that title by Oscar Milosz, is a notorious womanizer, bored and sated with vice, whose life is completely changed by the love of Girolama, an innocent-but-wise 16-year old whose striking physical beauty is excelled by her inner goodness. She knows and yet loves Miguel, in all his sinfulness, and he in turn conceives a heart-changing love for her in her feminine splendor. He is converted...saved by her deep loveliness. Under her influence, he goes on to become a saint. Our lust-plagued world will be saved, this play suggests to me, by Beauty, by deep, feminine loveliness. Charles DeFocault was similarly converted by the chaste love of his lovely,prayerful woman cousin. St. Augustine was saved by the prayer of his mother. Our Guys, the story of the horrendous Glen Ridge rape, noted that boys who had sisters were disinclined to cooperate with the assault. Recall that Jesus, in his own passion, was comforted and supported almost entirely by women: those at the foot of the cross; the wife of Pilate who was the only one to advocate for him; and the three encounters we recall in the Stations including Veronica, Mary and the women of Jerusalem. If he received and welcomed this feminine touch at Golgotha, so much more may we, who suffer a different kind of passion, seek and relish the healing touch of womanly beauty. With Dostoevsky, we know that we will be saved by Beauty: specifically the radiant femininity of our wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, family and friends.

Companions in Holiness; Sinners' Support Group

There are a lot of people who pray for me: my Mom, wife, family and friends. I have a decent laundry list for intercessory prayer myself. At least 2 or 3 times daily I pray spontaneously with a prayer partner. So, I, gratefully, find myself immersed in a web of holy relationships: we pray with and for each other; we encourage each other with thoughts from scripture, the saints or the Church; and we share our weakness and sin. It could be called a "sinners' support group" or a "sanctity circle" or even a "saints-in-the-making workshop." It parallels our liturgical participation as an informal analogue but the two interpenetrate each other so the formal and the informal flow into each other forming a single Christian life pattern. This web of holy relationships is miraculously powerful as a synergy is released in the interchange: the resulting energy is far greater than the total of all our efforts. It is the work of the Holy Spirit! It pulls us deeply into the Kingdom of God, in disregard for our blatant sinfulness and weakness. It effortlessly overcomes evil, temptation and guilt. It spreads with a mimetic contagion. It is glorious!