Perhaps this is why many inactive Catholics are so resentful of their upbringing in the Church.   For them, religion means frustration, failure, and guilt.

Somehow they, and I, missed the good news about Pentecost.  OK, we Catholics celebrate the feast every year and mention it in Confirmation class, but lots of us evidently didn’t “get it.”

Because if we “got it,” we’d be different . . . bold instead of timid, energetic instead of anemic, fascinated instead of bored.   Compare the apostles before and after Pentecost and you’ll see the difference the Spirit makes.

The gospel is Good News not just because we’re going to heaven, but because we’ve been empowered to become new people, here and now.  Vatican II insisted that each of us is called to the heights of holiness (Lumen Gentium, chapter V).  Not by will-power, mind you.  But by Holy Spirit power. Holiness consists in faith, hope, and especially divine love.  These are “virtues,” literally “powers,” given by the Spirit.  To top it off, the Spirit gives us seven further gifts which perfect faith, hope, and love, making it possible for us to live a supernatural, charismatic life.  Some think this is only for the chosen few, “the mystics.”  Thomas Aquinas taught to the contrary that the gifts of Isaiah 11:1-3 (wisdom, knowledge, understanding, counsel, piety, fortitude, and fear of the Lord) are standard equipment given in baptism, that all are called to be “mystics.”

Vatican II also taught that every Christian has a vocation to serve.  We need power for this too.  And so the Spirit distributes other gifts, called “charisms.”  These, teachesSt. Thomas, are not so much for our own sanctification as for service to others.  There is no exhaustive list of charisms, though St. Paul mentions a few (I Corinthians 12:7-10, Romans 12:6-8) ranging from tongues to Christian marriage (1 Corinthians7: 7).  Charisms are not doled out by the pastors; but are given directly by the Spirit through baptism and confirmation, even sometimes outside of the sacraments (Acts 10:44-48).

Do I sound Pentecostal?  That’s because I belong to the largest Pentecostal Church in the world.  Correcting the mistaken notion that the charisms were just for the apostolic church, Vatican II had this to say: “Allotting His gifts “to everyone according as he will” (1 Cor. 12:11), He [the Holy Spirit] distributes special graces among the faithful of every rank. . . . These charismatic gifts, whether they be the most outstanding or the more simple and widely diffused, are to be received with thanksgiving and consolation, for they are exceedingly suitable and useful for the needs of the Church” (LG12).

Powerful gifts, freely given to all.  Sounds like a recipe for chaos.  But the Lord also imparted to the apostles and their successors a unifying charism of headship.  The role of the ordained is not to do everything themselves.  Rather, they are to discern, shepherd, and coordinate the charisms of the laity so that they mature and work together for the greater glory of God (LG 30).

So what if you, like me, did not quite “get it” when you were confirmed?   I’ve got good news for you.  You actually did get the Spirit and his gifts.   Have you ever received a new credit card with a sticker saying “Must call to activate before using?”  The Spirit and his gifts are the same way.  You have to call in and activate them.   Do it today and every day, and especially every time you attend Mass.  Because every sacramental celebration is a New Pentecost where the Spirit and his gifts are poured out anew (CCC 739, 1106).

That’s why the Christian Life is an adventure.  There will always be new surprises of the Spirit!

Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio writes from Texas.  For his resources on Confirmation, the Holy Spirit and his gifts, or for information on his Holy Land Pilgrimage, call 800.803.0118 or visit www.crossroadsinitiative.com

At the burial of a farm animal

Most gracious, good Lord, we are the people of your pasture and the sheep of your hand: We thank you for placing among us the beasts of the field and allowing us to care for them, and to receive from them food and clothing to meet our necessities. We grieve this day the death of A., and we return to you a creature of your own making, one who served as an effective sign of the generosity of your love for us; through Jesus Christ our Good Shepherd, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

At the death of a wild animal

Almighty God, who make the beasts of the wild move in beauty and show forth the glory of your Name: We grieve the death of this creature, in whose living and dying the power of your Spirit was made manifest. We reverence the loss of that which was never ours to claim but only to behold with wonder; through Jesus Christ our Redeemer, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A former Vatican official known for his prowess with a deer rifle commented on the latter: “I have my own prayer at the death of a wild animal. It begins, ‘Bless, O Lord, and these thy gifts . . .’” Another priest, seeing this, said “There’s plenty of room for all of God’s creatures . . . next to the mashed potatoes.” To which Former Vatican Official replied, “Don’t forget the gravy.”

As all but the most dour of PETA people will agree, some of us have far too much fun online.

On a more serious note, however, this exchange coincided with an email from a Canadian theologian, noting that the New Age transhumanist Barbara Marx Hubbard is the designated keynote speaker at the August general assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which the Vatican has taken into ecclesiastical receivership. My Canadian colleague did some digging and found the following, instructive excerpt from the collected works of Ms. Marx Hubbard:

Although we may never know what really happened, we do know that the story told in the Gospels is that Jesus’ resurrection was a first demonstration of what I call the post-human universal person. We are told that he did not die. He made his transition, released his animal body, and reappeared in a new body at the next level of physicality to tell all of us that we would do what he did. The new person that he became had continuity of consciousness with his life as Jesus of Nazareth, an earthly life in which he had become fully human and fully divine. Jesus’ life stands as a model of the transition from Homo sapiens to Homo universalis.

Irrespective of the insight that this remarkable passage gives us into the cast of mind at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Marx Hubbard’s blundering through Scripture and Christology does suggest one path to which the Episcopal critter prayers can lead. When the biblical metaphors used by the Lord (“people of your pasture” and “sheep of your hand”) are taken to imply that there is no substantial difference between human beings and the animal kingdom, then the temptation to transhumanism—the deliberate manipulation of the human condition through biotechnology—intensifies. As we can “improve” beef cattle, chickens and turkeys by manipulating breeding, we can make “better” human beings: transhumanized human beings, cyberhuman hybrids who are immortal. Prometheus, call your office. Aldous Huxley, how did you see this coming 80 years ago, when you were finishing Brave New World?

Babe was a great movie, but animatronics is not theology. Under today’s technological and cultural circumstances, confusing animals with human beings often leads to serious weirdness and deep trouble.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

There may be a sunny side to the Obama mandate on contraception and abortion drugs. Consider:

When President Obama’s decree first came down, you probably thought to yourself: Ah, no worry. Democrats are liberals, and liberals could never support such a blatant violation of conscience and religious freedom. And Democrats who are Catholics would never advocate this.

Quite the contrary: Catholic Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Kathleen Sebelius unwaveringly defend President Obama’s actions in the most aggressive ways. One Democrat, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, called Republican opponents “demons.”

In the face of this, one is tempted to anger and despair.

But I offer a glimmer of hope. There is good news here: This “Obama mandate,” and the horrific statements from Democrats advancing Obama’s position, exposes them and their party to the larger population, including to your Catholic grandmother who votes Democrat merely because that’s what she has always done. Alas, this is not your grandparents’ Democratic Party. JFK and Harry Truman would not recognize this Democratic Party.

And so, there may be a saving grace at work here: This political/ideological madness on display, compliments of partisan Democrats, should have a powerful effect in permanently driving people away from a party that has embraced the Death Culture and does not deserve the votes of committed Catholics.

Many younger Catholics realize this. I was recently shown some eye-opening data on voter registration among priests in their 20s and 30s. They are Republicans by huge margins. The data also shows that older priests are registered Democrats, but haven’t been voting Democrat. They’ve been torched on life issues.

Now, I know I’ll be accused of carrying water for the Republican Party. However, I’m first and foremost an orthodox Roman Catholic. And Catholic Republicans should never blindly sacrifice their faith to their party in the way Catholic Democrats have dutifully done for decades.

But I definitely know I can’t be a Democrat. And many Catholics are right now learning the same—thanks to President Obama’s mandate and his devout defenders.

For Catholic Exchange and Ave Maria Radio, I’m Paul Kengor.

I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; lo, I have not restrained my lips, as thou knowest, O LORD.  (Psalms 40:9)

Let the children come to me; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. (Mark 10:14)

Some years back I joined a committee formed to save our local Catholic elementary school. Our school suffered from declining enrollment, poor morale, and, most critically, from insufficient funds to finish the school year. The reasons justifying this abject state of affairs were many.  They ranged from the vague assertion that times have changed, to the broad justification that our Catholic communities simply could no longer afford Catholic schools, and, more narrowly,  to specific charges implying simple mismanagement.  I suspect this scenario is not unique but repeats itself with minor variations throughout many of our Catholic school systems.

The committee formed to save our school acknowledged these reasons, but looked deeper. Why did Catholic schools once thrive when people were actually poorer than they are today, when people didn’t have wide screen televisions, when entertainment piped into our homes through cable networks was not considered an essential utility, when our children did not each have personal phones they carried everywhere, and when even our cars, like our lives were much simpler?  Our community is a small city in a rural area with a population that is largely Catholic. At the time of my initial involvement there were four parishes within an easy driving distance of no more than three miles from our one regional school.  If even one quarter of the Catholic population put their children in our school it would have thrived.

What the committee saw was that the Catholic community, neither pastor nor parishioner, no longer took ownership of its schools. The churches reluctantly contributed what the diocese demanded. The pastors begged off further support, financial or moral, claiming that the school was just a private academy benefiting few. They pointed to many problems, problems that ranged from financial need, to administrative incompetence, and even to students who did not know how to behave in Mass. Parishioners shared these views and saw the school as something solely for the parents of the students enrolled.  Parishioners believed that the schools had nothing to do with them.  Both parishioners and pastors were correct in their assessments. When we no longer see our schools as integral to our faith, they become orphans lost in the wilderness of the secular world, taking direction from wherever they can find it.  Our school had a financial crisis compounded by poor business practices, but the real problem, and one I believe is endemic to many of our Catholic schools, was and is a crisis of faith.

In our attempts to find the best business model for our Catholic schools we have forgotten that our schools are a faith based business.  Our capital is the faith we put into them. When that capital dries up, our schools wither and become something other than what they should be.  Our student population declines, our funds dry up, and parishioners and pastors see little reason to support the schools.  Even more tragically, our schools lose their way in the morass of academic excellence at the expense of their evangelical mission. We should know we have reached a crisis of faith when we seek guidance from marketing experts singing a siren’s song assuring us that our faith belongs in them. We should know we have reached a crisis of faith when we see the salvation of our schools in the wealthy donor rather than in the body of faithful who comprise our church. We should know we have a crisis of faith when our eyes no longer focus on Jesus as the sole purpose for our schools.  But we don’t, because to do so will require us to change.

I believe that the beginning to the end of our problems with our Catholic schools begins when we see the problem as a crisis of faith and we respond to it as a community of faith.  Our response will not only change our schools.  It will change us.  It will change both parishioner and pastor. It will require our pastors to see that God responds to their faith through their parishioners. It will require parishioners to see that their faith reveals resources previously unseen.  It will require all to see that our schools are an expression of our faith and a gift, both to our children and to ourselves as a community. And it requires all to see that it is the faith of the community that is the anchor that keeps our schools truly Catholic, where we see Jesus as “the truth, the way and the life.”

The call to faith in our communities must be mirrored with a call to faith in our schools. We must be able to answer the following questions; Why should we have Catholic schools? Why should Catholics support our Catholic schools? Why should our pastors justify our Catholic schools to their parishioners? Why should Catholic parents, or parents of any faith, send their children to Catholic schools? The answer to all of these questions is that our schools are integral to our Catholic faith. They are one of the tools the Church uses to bring Christ’s message of salvation to all.  Our schools are a simple reflection of the Church’s very reason to be. But we can only answer in this way if they are truly Christ centered and truly evangelical.

In a school so centered, academic excellence is necessarily correlative to the evangelical goal of the school, but it cannot be its guiding principle. The goal of the school is to lead students to Christ. To see their talents as given by God is to see that they must be returned to God fully developed.

This requires the highest academic standards.  To accept less than excellence would not be Catholic. But leading with academic excellence as our primary appeal pushes Christ aside. We will find ourselves conveying an ambivalent message to prospective parent and student, “Yes, we are Catholic.  But you don’t need to worry about that.”  Or as one marketing expert assured us, “You don’t need to mention Catholic in your marketing. People already know that.” The clear implication was that we don’t want to scare anybody away.  The pursuit of academic excellence, rather than the formation of saints, as the product we need in order to sell our schools in today’s marketplace will compel compromise. To think that we can bait with academics and then switch in Christ diminishes both the school and Christ.  Such an appeal is a reflection not on the faith of our potential clients but on our own faith. When we think our schools can be Christ-centered on the inside and worldly-wise on the outside, we will be serving two masters.  Jesus, himself, made it clear this was not possible. When we don’t lead with our faith we will find ourselves hiding Christ behind one door after another.  We will be serving the wrong master. Despite our best intentions, like the ever well-intended St. Peter, we will deny Christ.

When we fear an open proclamation of the message of Jesus Christ, we truly have entered a crisis of faith.  If the apostles had shown such reticence the church would have died with Jesus on the cross. Our faith is evident when we lead with Jesus Christ, not furtively, not stealthily, not even quietly but with the compelling confidence of a people who have been given the truth and understand that to spread that truth is to truly love your neighbor, whoever he or she may be and from whatever background they come. This is the mission of the church, to bring the message of salvation to all, not just those who won’t take offense. This should be the mission of our schools. When we try to hide this we become like Jonah, we run, we hide, or we board a ship going anywhere but where we have been called to go. We think that God couldn’t really have chosen us to spread his message.

We look on our neighbors as either undeserving of the truth or simply unready to receive the truth we hold. I believe we have become like Jonah with our Catholic schools. We won’t trumpet our faith because we believe it will turn people off. We think we need something slicker, something more comfortable, something that doesn’t call for real change. Like Jonah, we think others either don’t deserve the Word passed on to us or are simply not ready for it. When we hide our message, we hide our faith.  Faith hidden is no faith at all. We cannot rally our communities in faith to a message they cannot see.  Like pastor and parishioner, our schools must change in faith. They must become what we should be.

To see the problem is to realize that the solution is not an easy one. Where we are comfortable we must become uncomfortable. To see the problem as a crisis of faith is to see that the solution is a changed life. This is not an easy sell for either pastor, parishioner or our schools.  I believe the solution begins with an honest discussion within our Catholic communities of who we are as Catholics and how our schools must reflect that vision. We might begin those discussions with a book by Archbishop Miller, CSB, entitled The Holy See’s Teaching on Catholic Schools.  If our local schools are failing and we simply continue to point our fingers at them as responsible for their own fate, rather than at ourselves, then we have missed something important. If we don’t claim personal and communal responsibility our schools will continue to fail or they will become something no longer truly Catholic.

The mission statement guiding the schools of the Diocese of Wichita is unequivocal and provides an example that clearly leads the way:

“Together with the family, the parish and each other, we will FORM EACH STUDENT INTO A DISCIPLE OF JESUS CHRIST Who seeks the Truth, grows to love It, And learns to live It.” [Their caps, not mine.]

Pentecost Sunday, May 27, 2012

Gospel (Read Jn 20:19-23)

Today’s Gospel tells us that Jesus surprised the disciples “on the evening of that first day of the week” by appearing in their midst without using a door (locked “for fear of the Jews”).  We wonder if He had to calm them down a bit, because He said, twice, “Peace be with you.”  We can imagine how startled they were.  He showed them His wounds, in case they thought He was a ghost.  Then, Jesus gave the apostles an astonishing commission:  “As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.”  What had begun three years earlier with a call to “Follow Me” (Mt 4:19) culminated in a sending out.  Their work was to be a continuation of the divine apostleship of Jesus (“apostle” means “one sent”; see Heb. 3:1).  If we have paid attention to the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ companionship with these men, we have seen clear indications that He intended to give the apostles authority to build His Church and do His work.  We are impressed by the scope of their mission but not really surprised by it.  However, after announcing His directive to them, Jesus steps out of the expected with an action that can only be described as strange:  “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”  Don’t let familiarity with this verse rob it of its shock value.  Why on earth did Jesus breathe on His apostles?

To understand this moment, so different from anything we’ve yet seen in any Gospel account, we have to go back to the beginning, to the first time divinity breathed on humanity.  At Creation, “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” (Gen 2:7).  There is no clearer image than this of God’s desire to impart His own life into man, who is made in His image and likeness.  Adam and Eve’s fall into sin robbed them (and us) of their inheritance as God’s children, but the entire story of salvation reveals God’s plan to restore and renew His life in us.  So vivid is this image of God’s breath in man that it appears again at the time of the prophet, Ezekiel.  God’s people, Israel, were in exile in Babylon; they had been ravaged by their enemies as punishment for their covenant unfaithfulness.  They represent all of us who are spiritually dead and entirely helpless.  However, in His unrelenting determination to restore His people, God says to Ezekiel (whom He called “son of man”):  “’Son of man, can these bones live?’  And I answered, ‘O LORD God, Thou knowest.’  Again He said, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD…Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live…and you shall know that I am the LORD’” (Ez 36:3-6).

When we know this Old Testament history, Jesus breathing on the apostles on Resurrection Day no longer seems so odd, does it?  In this gesture, He begins the divinization of man, always God’s intention for His children.  The renewal of humanity begins, once again, with the breath of God.  For the apostles, this unique action enabled them to truly be Jesus’ continuing presence on earth.  They will forgive or retain sins, an action reserved for Divinity.  What about the rest of us?  Will the breath of God blow on us, too?  The other readings will help answer this question.

Possible response:  Father, thank You for loving us enough to share Your own breath with us—a marvel beyond description.

First Reading (Read Acts 2:1-11)

At His Ascension, Jesus told the apostles not to start on their mission of making disciples of all nations until they received “power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8).  This helps us see that Jesus’ action of breathing on them on Resurrection Day was an initiation into the Holy Spirit, not the fullness they were meant to have.   For that, Jesus had them wait for the Jewish feast of Pentecost, nine days later.  Pentecost originally had been a harvest festival in the Jewish liturgical calendar; gradually it also became associated with a memorial celebration of God’s giving of the Law to His people at Mt. Sinai, when they had been delivered from slavery in Egypt.  The Law, or Torah, gave the people a way of life that would distinguish them from all other peoples on earth.  To seal the covenant, God actually came down on top of Mt.  Sinai, manifested in fire, smoke, thunder, an earthquake, and the loud sound of a trumpet (see Ex 19:16-19).  It was quite the fireworks show!

We need to know this history, because it helps us understand why Jesus waited until Pentecost to send the Holy Spirit on His Church.  Drawing on all the parallels with God’s visit to Mt. Sinai, the Jews gathered there in Jerusalem that day could comprehend this action as the “harvest” of God’s people, ready now, because of Jesus’ accomplished work, to receive God’s new Law of Love, to be written not on stone tablets but in the hearts of men by the Holy Spirit.  Just as God’s descent on Sinai meant the formation of Israel as a nation, the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost meant the formation of Jews and Gentiles into the Church, the new Israel.

Of course, the events on Pentecost evoke the deep symbolism of wind and fire throughout the Old Testament, not just at the Mt. Sinai covenant.  At Creation, “the wind” of God (literally, God’s “breath”) hovered over the waters of the earth, ready to do God’s bidding as He brought forth life (Gen 1:2).  The “wind” of God also blew apart the waters of the Red Sea so God’s people could escape from their enemies, the Egyptians.  As for fire, recall that God first appeared to Moses, the deliverer of His people, in a fiery bush.  Also, the people had to follow a pillar of fire to make their way home to the Promised Land.

The more we know of the imagery representing God in the Old Testament, the more we understand the Descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost as an explosion of fulfilled promises!  See that the tongues of fire rested over each of the apostles.  They will now be God’s presence in His Church, leading His people on their journey home to heaven.  To this day, the bishops of the Church, who are successors of these apostles, wear hats (mitres) in the shape of a flame of fire.  They are marked out as our pillars of fire, leading us on our pilgrim journey home to heaven.

What about the effects of all this amazing action?  The apostles were miraculously able to communicate the Gospel in the foreign tongues of the Jews assembled there.  All male Jews were required to make a yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem for this feast; that explains why “there were devout Jews from every nation” there.  This immediately evokes the history of Babel (see Gen 11:1-9).  There human pride made a grab at heaven by building a tower up to God.  The solidarity of men (made possible by one language) was perverted to accomplish an evil end.  God broke it by confusing the one language into many.  Now, in the fullness of time, God grants the human solidarity for which man longs (because he is made for that) but which he cannot naturally achieve.  The Holy Spirit creates supernatural solidarity, represented here by all men being able to hear, in their own language, the mighty works of God.  This time, God reaches down to man rather than man trying to climb up to God.

So, now that we understand something of the background of Pentecost, we can ask whether all the rest of us who aren’t apostles will also have a share in this breath of God.  The answer is YES.  In verses not included in today’s reading, Peter answers the “what about us?” question:  “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:28).  Jesus wants to breathe on all of us and thus renew the face of the earth.

Possible response:  Lord Jesus, may Your Church always live in the joy of Pentecost, in awe of Your power and presence.

Psalm (Read Ps 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34)

Today’s psalm celebrates the life-giving power of God’s Spirit.  Written long before the Day of Pentecost, it nevertheless summarizes both the past and the future.  “If you take away their breath, they perish and return to their dust” (Ps 104:29) reminds us of the Fall, at the beginning of man’s story.  Disobedience led to death:  “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19b).  “When You send forth Your Spirit, they are created, and You renew the face of the earth” (Ps 104:30) describes our celebration today.  The world, weary in sin, is in dire need of refreshment and renewal.  Maybe we are, too.  The psalm response is the perfect Pentecost prayer:  “Lord, send out Your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.”

Possible response: The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings.  Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.

Second Reading (Read 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13)

The Gospel showed us God’s desire to once again breathe His life into man.  The Book of Acts showed us that the gift of God’s breath, the Holy Spirit, entered the stream of human history on the Day of Pentecost, producing miraculous results.  In the epistle, St. Paul gives us a theological reflection on the meaning of all this history.  He explains that none of us can confess Jesus as Lord without the Holy Spirit.  Our Christian faith is, itself, a work of God’s breath, the Spirit, in us.  That Spirit gives to believers a wide variety of spiritual gifts, creating diversity of service in His Church.  However, because it is “the same God” Who produces this diversity, we are “one body.”  St. Paul’s emphasis here is on the unity created by the Holy Spirit.  Let’s consider this for a moment.

Unity is the distinguishing characteristic of the Trinity—three Persons in One.  Man, created in the image and likeness of God, is hard-wired for unity, for communion with both God and others.  Sin shattered this unity (recall the immediate fracture of Adam and Eve’s relationship with God and each other in the Garden).  Babel showed us that when men actually cobble together unity, their pride bends them towards a perverse use of it.  God’s descent on Mt. Sinai was for the purpose of forming one nation for Himself out of many tribes.  He gave them one way to worship and one law to live by.  In time, that nation fractured, and a large part of it completely disappeared.  Men cannot create unity for themselves, although their hearts long for it.  Fittingly, unity in His Church was the one thing for which Jesus prayed as He faced His Passion:  “I…pray…that they may all be one…so that the world may believe that You have sent Me” (Jn 17:20-21).

On Pentecost, God sent His breath to create supernatural unity.  It was experienced immediately among the first converts, and it is a constant manifestation of God’s breath in His Church, 2000 years later.  The life of Jesus in us, the Holy Spirit, holds us in His one Body.  Unity at last—alleluia!

Possible response:  Lord Jesus, forgive me when I rebel against unity—wanting my own way, isolating myself.  Let Your Spirit lead me to the unity for which my heart longs.

Constitutional scholar and lawyer Robert P. George recently presented an oral argument in one of the cases considering the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which allows each state to determine for itself the definition of marriage. The text of his argument follows this note. In an unusual move, the Obama Department of Justice declined to defend DOMA, even as Obama has stated (for example, in a May 9 interview with ABC news) that he favors allowing states to decide the definition of marriage for themselves. The case in which George presented the oral argument (which was in support of a written brief he filed together with Sherif Girgis and Ryan Anderson) is Cozen O’Connor, P.C. v. Tobits, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. –ed.

A key question, perhaps the key question, this Court is being called on to address is whether the Constitution of the United States chooses between competing moral understandings of the nature, value, and social purposes of marriage, thus settling the question of how marriage is to be defined. On reflection, I believe your honor will see that it does not. Rather, the Constitution leaves the matter, as it leaves most matters of substantive law where choices between competing moral understandings must be made, for resolution in the forums of democratic deliberation and decision-making, including, in the case of federal law, the Congress of the United States.

Laws characteristically embody and reflect moral judgments. This is true of the law of contract and the law of murder, and it is no less true of the law of marriage. Laws should be made carefully so that they embody sound understandings of good and bad, right and wrong, justice and injustice; but as careful thinkers about law from Aristotle in ancient Greece to Dr. Martin Luther King in our own time have made clear, laws cannot be morally neutral, nor should we try to make them so. Efforts to mask the moral judgments embodied and expressed in our laws have no effect other than to wrap those judgments in a cloak of obscurity—creating a mere illusion of neutrality.

The historic law of marriage reaffirmed in the Defense of Marriage Act embodies the moral judgment that marriage is the conjugal union of husband and wife united in a form of relationship—a comprehensive sharing of life at every level, including the bodily-biological level—that is in principle apt for, and would naturally be fulfilled by, procreation and the rearing of children. This distinctive type of union is, and has always been understood to be, distinguishable from ordinary friendships and even from sexual-romantic domestic partnerships in its social function of binding men and women together in a way that, overall, best serves the interests of children who are born as a result of their sexual union, and serves society as a whole, which vitally depends on the marriage-based family for its stability. The conjugal conception of marriage is, to be sure, articulated in the scriptures of Judaism and Christianity as well as other faiths, but it was also articulated and defended by thinkers such as Plato and Plutarch in the ancient traditions of Greek and Roman thought with no reliance on the concept of divine revelation.

Of course, the conjugal understanding of marriage, though by far the dominant one not only in our own culture but in cultures generally, is not the only possible one. Insert a different moral understanding, and marriage could be defined, as it has been in some cultures, to accommodate polygamous partnerships and even, as some wish to define it today, to include multiple partners in polyamorous sexual unions of more than two persons.

In the case currently before your honor, the Court is being invited to replace the moral understanding at the heart of the historic conjugal conception of marriage with a competing moral understanding according to which marriage would be redefined as sexual-romantic domestic partnership—thus rendering sexual-reproductive complementarity unnecessary and irrelevant. Marriage, on the new moral understanding, would be an emotional union—a union of hearts and minds—but not a bodily union of the type made possible by the biological complementarity of husband and wife.

There are many good arguments for favoring the conjugal conception of marriage over the revisionist conception being proposed. The former moral conception can, and the latter moral conception cannot, provide an intelligible basis for the belief that marriage is, foundationally, a sexual partnership, as opposed to a partnership that could as well be integrated around any of a number of shared interests having nothing to do with sexuality. By the same token, the conjugal conception can provide an objective moral basis for norms of exclusivity, fidelity, and permanence of commitments—norms that on the revisionist conception can be affirmed, if at all, only on the basis of subjective sentiment, not moral principle.

However, this Court should not choose between the competing moral understandings on offer from supporters of the conjugal conception of marriage and the revisionist conception. This is because nothing in the Constitution settles the issue between them. It is left, rather, to the people acting on their own in referenda and initiatives in states that provide for those decision-making procedures, and through their elected representatives in the state legislatures and the Congress. It is up to the democratic process, not the courts purporting to act in the name of the Constitution, to make the moral judgment that marriage should be retained as a conjugal partnership, or to make the competing moral judgments that would redefine marriage, whether to accommodate polygamous, polyamorous, or same sex partnerships.

Robert P. George is McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and a member of the First Things advisory council.

If Americans wish to see the inevitable results of such government patronage in our everyday lives, we need look no further than to our northern neighbor Canada, where the Supreme Court is being asked to give doctors the authority to decide if and when to remove life-sustaining medical care from patients, even if those patients are deemed to be conscious and even against their family’s objections.  From an article published in the British Medical Journal:

Canada’s Supreme Court will next week consider an appeal from two Canadian doctors who seek, against a family’s objections, to withdraw life sustaining treatment from a patient they originally diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state, but whom they now describe as minimally conscious.  Hassan Rasouli, 60, a retired Iranian born engineer, contracted bacterial meningitis in late 2010 after surgery to remove a brain tumour, and has since been on mechanical ventilation at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.  All parties agree, however, that he is no longer in a vegetative state and has repeatedly given the thumbs up at his wife’s request. . . .  Given the change in the patient’s diagnosis, the family has submitted a motion to dismiss the case as moot, to be heard on 17 May.  But the doctors argue that the full case should still be heard in December, citing in court documents “a great need for guidance from this Court . . . when the law is unsettled.”  “The Court of Appeal misapplied the law of informed consent in order to confer upon patients a right to insist upon the continuation of a particular treatment when the medical standard of care requires it to be withdrawn,” they argue.

In essence, as Wesley J. Smith recently observed on his bioethics blog “Secondhand Smoke,” the doctors aren’t petitioning to remove life support from Rasouli now, but they are arguing that they should have had the authority to do so back when they “had the chance,” before the patient showed signs of consciousness.  “What does that tell us,” Smith wonders, “about permitting bureaucratic ‘standards of care’ guidelines to become mandatory rules of medical practice?”

To answer Smith’s question, this case highlights the primary problem with government-controlled healthcare.  Quite simply, when the government pays the bills, it has the right to call the shots.  The one that pays the piper, as they say, is the one who calls the tune.  In the case of critical healthcare decisions, individualized care based on patient needs and responses goes by the boards, and cookbook medicine becomes the norm.  Bureaucrats are masters at crafting “policy” after all, and they approach healthcare in the same way they’d approach any other policy issue: gather a panel of so-called “experts” to craft a broad-based, generalized set of guidelines designed to achieve the “greatest good for the greatest number” based on the latest cost-benefit analyses and ratios (yes, in the end, it’s really all about money), and then follow these guidelines to the letter even when they aren’t applicable or don’t make sense given the particular situation at hand.

This approach may work out okay for many people much of the time, but in life or death cases, or in situations where the government’s values come into conflict with the values of a patient and his or her family, there is potential for huge problems as this story illustrates.  “Futile” care is a matter of definition.  In this case, the doctor’s felt that continuing treatment for a patient whom they mistakenly diagnosed as merely “vegetative”  was a waste of resources, even though  his family wasn’t ready to give up on him.  If the doctors had had their way they would have pulled the plug on what turned out to be a conscious human being.  This will inevitably occur more often if the Canadian Supreme Court decides in favor of the government in this case.

There’s no doubt that the concept of universal health care has its appeal, but at the end of the day what individuals must consider is who they want making decisions for them in the event of a serious or life-threatening medical situation.  Do they want the liberty to decide what care is best for them based on their individual circumstances and the opinion of their doctor, or do they want a bureaucrat in a faraway government office making these decisions based on manual of “cookbook medicine”?  If you prefer the former, then you must be prepared to assume responsibility for securing your own health care coverage.  Nothing’s free in this world, after all, and if the government is going to assume the cost of your medical care then you can bet that it will assume the power to make decisions about that health care on your behalf.  Which do you prefer?

This is easier for me to say since I have never been the father of a teenager, and there are those who curiously and inexplicably list this among the sacrifices a priest must make. A pastor, of a parish, though, is entrusted with the care of a flock as a father, and the Pope himself has a very large flock and is to them not a Holy King or Holy President, but a Holy Father. In the singular economy of the Church, a man may be a father to those older than himself and as old as himself, as well as to those younger. In the confessional, no one has to calculate one’s age in relation to the confessor before saying, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” And when the rod must be used, those who need to be tapped into moral consciousness may object at first, but on the Last Day they will be thankful if it saved them from going off a cliff.

So we have the maxim, “Spare the rod,  spoil the child.”  Those who quote the Bible without reading it, often assume that the line is scriptural, though it was coined by the seventeenth century Cavalier satirist Samuel Butler in his narrative poem, “Hudbibras” which mocks the Roundheads, Presbyterians and Puritans.  The line is perfectly consistent with the Book of Proverbs which speaks of ‘rod discipline’ six times, and the New Testament is in concord: “My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him: for who the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges” (Hebrew 12:5-6).

In the politicized diction of gender neutral translations, we would say sons and daughters:  “If you are without discipline, in which all have shared, you are not sons (and daughters) but bastards.” (Hebrews  12:8)

On occasion, our present pope has been required by the One whose Vicar he is, to wield the rod according the demands of his lofty office, and must take heroic virtue when it is not instinctive to his gentle nature. Had discipline been more evident in the practice of mercy in previous decades, the rod would be lighter now. Instead, a world of spoiled children, even among consecrated Religious,  rallies the perpetual adolescents in the media to support them in their crusade against reality.   The rod without the staff would certainly be a battle-axe, but the staff without the rod would be a weak crutch. St. Paul was not the father of a child, quite in radical departure from the rabbinical code in which he was reared, but he became a father of many churches, and as such seems to be speaking to himself when hewrites: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up with the training and instructions of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:4)

The Good Shepherd says that “the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his sheep by name” (John 10:3). Like the father excommunicated from his son by the iPod, God Himself can be blocked out of our consciousness if we hear only our own voice, living in a “virtual reality” sustained by the imaginings of the ego. Jesus told Peter “Tend my lambs. . . Feed my sheep . . . Feed my sheep” (John 21: 15-17).  The sheep are those who hear God but need encouragement. The lambs are those who seem to have blocked out God, Who continues to call to them. Once they have been brought to consciousness, sometimes by the shock of crises in life, which can strike like a rod, then God leads them with His shepherd’s staff into green pastures and“restores my soul” (Psalm 23:3).

Spiritual mortification is our inner attempt at contacting God without the interference of disorderly passions. There will always be outward distractions when we pray, but there are also willful distractions rooted in self-absorption, that can only be overcome by discipline, and the spoiled soul has lost the art of such self-control.  Just to take a domestic example,  it is not unknown that someone will actually answer a cell phone during Mass. Unless God is on the other end, this is inverted prayer. The personality type that lets a machine interrupt worship  has excommunicated its self through the agency of self-uncontrol.

Now prayer is conversation with God, and it is often difficult for us because, by misuse of free will, we can “put Him on hold.” When we do not answer, God leaves us a recorded message through the words of the Scriptures, the pulse of the saints and the songs of Liturgy. The Latin word for deaf issurdus, and man does become an absurdity to his very self when he willfully listens only to himself.  Aquinas hymned “Sedauditu solo tuto creditur,” as Gerard Manley Hopkins translated: “How says trusty hearing? That shall be believed…” When the dying St. Stephen said he could see the Son seated at the right hand of the Father, the mob covered their ears in a simulation people listening to iPods.  But one of them listened.  Later on the Damascus road, he was dazzled by what Stephen had seen.  When St. Paul was converted, he said: “You also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” (Ephesians1:13).

Cover Image Credit: www.fromi2us.com

Now, without any fanfare, he has changed his mind. In an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC News, Fox announced that other avenues of research are more promising:

“I’m glad that I put the effort into promoting it. My quest in that regard was really about research freedom and not shutting down avenues of research because of ideological reasons that were countered by the majority opinion of whether it was worthwhile doing. Hopefully stem cell research will result in something. I’m glad we found for it and the right to do it  but there’s other areas that we are pursuing…

“Stem cells are an avenue of research that we’ve pursued and continue to pursue but it’s part of a broad portfolio of things that we look at. There have been some issues with stem cells, some problems along the way…

“It’s not so much that [stem cell research has] diminished in its prospects for breakthroughs as much as it’s the other avenues of research have grown and multiplied and become as much or more promising. So, an answer may come from stem cell research but it’s more than likely to come from another area.”

Fox’s foundation, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, is the largest private funder of Parkinson’s disease research in the world. It recently launched an on-line initiative to encourage participation in clinical trials of drugs, not stem cells.

Having grossed over a billion dollars since its release, the comic-book movie The Avengers (Avengers Assemble in the UK) is on track to becoming one of the most successful films in history. The US$220-million picture tells the story of six superheroes who, brought together to face an alien invasion, must resolve their own differences before being able to work as a team.

Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film was directed by Joss Whedon, who also wrote its screenplay and co-wrote its story. Whedon is perhaps best known for TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and its spin-off series Angel (1999-2004). Outside a cult following, however, most of Whedon’s other work is little known. His series Firefly (2002) and Dollhouse (2009-10) were canceled after one and two seasons respectively, while his endearingly silly Internet musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (2008) was produced on a shoestring and almost as a diversion during a Hollywood Writer’s Guild strike. Though Whedon has written for comic books and comic-book movies before, his captaincy of The Avengers is a major public promotion, one that ensures massive attention for his next project.

It could reasonably be argued that The Avengers was guaranteed success. Audiences had been expecting the film for more than five years, and as the Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America films gradually built its roster. Big-budget superhero films have also become increasingly profitable for studios, the current leader—though it will likely soon fall—being The Dark Knight, which also brought the genre prestige with a posthumous Academy Award for Australian actor Heath Ledger.

For a film to break financial records, however, it needs something special, and what makes The Avengers special is, quite simply, Joss Whedon. A lifelong fan of comics who also happens to be an accomplished screenwriter and director, Whedon is that rare combination of fan and architect who knew what people wanted and how to produce it well. Clear-cut good guys and bad guys, flashy costumes, witty rejoinders, non-stop action, and bloodless violence: these are the hallmarks of comics’ Golden and Silver Ages, before the hats turned gray and the narratives indulged in self-conscious symbolism.

Unlike writer-directors Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight) and Bryan Singer (X-Men, X-Men 2, and Superman Returns), Whedon has not used his franchise as a sociological pulpit, but rather has demonstrated his mastery of the traditional genre. Superhero fans and families alike can feel safe with The Avengers.

It is interesting to note, however, that Whedon helped to release another, much different film only a month earlier, a horror picture whose manipulation of genre stands in stark contrast to The Avengers.

With The Avengers, Whedon has put on a clinic for making a big-budget superhero film. It is an energizing story about believing in teamwork and putting faith and trust in heroes. It also, and like DC’s Justice League opposite which Marvel’s Avengers were invented, attempts the alchemy of uniting many separate modes and figures of heroic fiction—those of science fiction (Iron Man and Hulk), fantasy (Thor), war propaganda (Captain America), and spy fiction (Black Widow and Nicholas Fury), for example.

Because earlier films have established its characters, The Avengers also avoids the standard psychological conflicts of origin and self-discovery and gets down to the true business of heroism—exemplifying admirable deeds—in every case interrupting those who attempt to compromise it by making high-winded monologues. Its heroes are consummate individuals, each with demons as distinct as their costumes, but their conflicts with themselves and each other do not indulge in professional delinquency or despair. The film is about saving humanity from enslavement by alien invaders, against whom we are “hopelessly, hilariously outgunned.” Clearly, with such an occasion, there is no room for relativism.

The Avengers are superheroes, and Whedon has clearly read and written enough comics to recognize exactly what that means. Nicholas Fury defies a direct order to launch a nuclear strike against still-inhabited Manhattan Island; when the missile is launched surreptitiously, even the egomaniacal Tony Stark (Iron Man) prepares to sacrifice himself—for a second time in the film—to save the lives involved. Though terrified of himself and presented with the opportunity to run, Bruce Banner (Hulk)—played with intense feeling by character actor Mark Ruffalo—harnesses his monstrous nature in order to wield it against Earth’s invaders.

One of the most remarkable characters is Captain America. Having been frozen since the Second World War, he worries whether the stars and stripes (of his uniform but also, implicitly, in general) are too old-fashioned. He is reassured that, with what people are about to learn, they will want “a little old-fashioned.” The comment recognizes people’s need for traditional values in times of crisis, as when church attendance rose after 9/11. When Captain America is warned that Thor and Loki  “are basically gods,” he replies “there’s only one God now. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.”

Because Whedon is a professed atheist—perhaps unsurprising considering some of his other work—it is a striking comment for him to have put in the mouths of one of his characters. Audiences should understand that superhero films never explicitly involve religious faith, even when the characters themselves are devout Christians. In the comic books, the X-Man Nightcrawler even aspired to Catholic priesthood; in the film X-Men 2, all the script will suffer is to have him point at a shadowy statue of Christ and declare, “I think He is testing me.” Whedon has bucked a trend, and it has paid off in record numbers.

Whedon did not invent the Avengers, of course; like almost everything for which Marvel Comics is famous, that distinction falls largely to Stan Lee. When one considers Whedon’s ability to wield the heroic genre so well, one might assume that he is a strictly a writer of heroic themes and values. This is not at all the case, as evidenced by The Cabin in the Woods, a horror film which was released on April 12^th, and which Whedon produced and co-wrote. Completed in 2009 and shelved for three years due to MGM Studios’ financial problems, the film also features Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor in both The Avengers and the precedingThor.

Combining aspects of Scream and The Truman Show, The Cabin in the Woods represents an attempt to revitalize the horror genre by wresting it back from the voguish ‘torture porn’ franchises such as Saw and Hostel. As admirable as this might sound, it is in many ways a cure worse than the disease. The film includes nudity, gory violence, and coarse language, as well as scenes of intense emotional suffering. The movie poster for The Cabin in the Woods is of a log cabin segmented and twisted to resemble a Rubik’s Cube. The true puzzle is not what exactly is going on, however, but why it is, and whether the five college students vacationing at the cabin will discover what is being done to them before they are killed. The most disturbing secrets are waiting at the end; those readers who actually plan to watch the film and wish to be surprised by its revelations are advised that this article will serve as a spoiler. The greater surprise for some, however, may be to learn that the writer of The Avengers managed to create something so hideous. To be fair, The Avengers is much more typical of Whedon’s work; The Cabin in the Woods, as his first true horror film, is more of an experiment. What the two films demonstrate, however, is that Whedon clearly has his feet in two rooms at once, and that audiences should not presume to know where is taking them before he drops them off.

Future horror films that do not take The Cabin in the Woods into account risk falling into its framework—its exhaustion of convention might be described as scorched-earth storytelling. The film begins in an underground corporate facility, with two technicians preparing for some sort of multi-national initiative. It turns out that the cabin and its environs are an artificially controlled, sacrificial altar in which at least four young people are to be slaughtered annually.

The ritual—conducted in a theatrical manner consistent with a horror film—is to sate the bloodlust of the “Ancient Ones,” a secret race of deific and primordial beings reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. So long as this ritual succeeds, the Ancient Ones will not rise to destroy Earth; the cabin, as it turns out, is one of numerous sites around the world intended to fill their need. When every other site fails to deliver on its victims, however, the future of the planet and the human race rests on the successful slaughter of these five particular people—or, more precisely, on the death of one of the remaining two, who survive above all odds to learn the truth. The film’s final scene is a misanthropic nightmare, with one of the characters declaring in essence that the human race doesn’t deserve to exist.

Whether this film should serve as a warning remains to be argued. Whedon has said, however, that he wants the sequel to The Avengers to be “more personal. More painful”—more in line, in other words, with the upcoming Dark Knight Risesand many other superhero films audiences have already seen. Will The Avengers 2be more like The Cabin in the Woods? Probably not, though the heroes will likely indulge in a little relativistic maundering. What is clear nonetheless is that Whedon is master of a genres and of the expectations audiences have for them. And the world just gave him a billion-dollar booster shot.

Harley J. Sims is a writer and independent scholar living in Ottawa, Canada. He can be reached on his website at www.harleyjsims.webs.com