Dignitas Personae – conclusion

Posted on December 16, 2008 by Deacon Bob

Dignitas Personae concludes with several “quotable quotes”:

Section 36:  “There are those who say that the moral teaching of the Church contains too many prohibitions…..human history shows, however, how man has abused and can continue to abuse the power and capabilities which God has entrusted to him, giving rise to various forms of unjust discrimination and oppression of the weakest and most defenseless…..history has also shown real progress in the understanding and recognition of the value and dignity of every person as the foundation of the rights….by which human society has been, and continues to be structured….Thus, …there are …prohibitions of racism, slavery, unjust discrimination and marginalization of women, children, and ill and disabled people.”

In Section 37:  “Just as a century ago it was the working classes which were oppressed in their fundamental rights, and the Church courageously came to their defense by proclaiming the sacrosanct rights of the worker as person, so now, when another category of persons is being oppressed in the fundamental right to life, the Church feels in duty bound to speak out with the same courage on behalf of those who have no voice. Hers is always the evangelical cry in defense of the world’s poor, those who are threatened and despised and whose human rights are violated…..Behind every “no” in the difficult task of discerning between good and evil, there shines a great “yes” to the recognition of the dignity and inalienable value of every single and unique human being called into existence.”

Let us recommit ourselves with energy to promoting the culture of life.  I again would urge you to read the entire instruction.  You can find it on:  www.usccb.org/comm/Dignitaspersonae/index.shtml

Posted in Ethics and Morality | Comments Off on Dignitas Personae – conclusion

Cardinal Avery Dulles

Posted on December 14, 2008 by Deacon Bob

As you may have heard, Avery Dulles, SJ died this past week.  Fr. Dulles was a Cardinal of the Church, made so by Pope John Paul II in 2001.  He was a Cardinal, yet not a bishop as are nearly all other Cardinals.  He was an American, who was a stellar theologian in many areas, truly a one of the kind.  I read his book on the models of the Church a few years ago, and have read several of his articles since.  He will be sorely missed by us who love theology and the Church.

In his final lecture at Fordham, entitled “A Life in Theology”, he spoke of his illness, and how he understood it as part of the full experience of human life, and its value in light of the Gospel.  He identified with the paralyzed and the mute in the Gospels.

How well his words echo the message of Dignitas Personae, the message of the dignity of each human life regardless of circumstances.  All life reflects the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord!

Posted in General Interest | 1 Comment

John the Voice, Jesus the Word

Posted on December 14, 2008 by Deacon Bob

St. Augustine had some wonderful thoughts about John the Baptist and Jesus.  (My translation from the Italian.)

“John is the voice.  However, we say of the Lord: ‘In the beginning was the Word’ (John 1,1).   John is the voice that passes, Christ the eternal Word that was in the beginning.  If you take the word from a voice, what remains?  Where there is no intelligible sense, that which remains is simply a vague sound.  A voice without words is heard, but it doesn’t build up the heart…..When I think what I want to say, immediately in my heart a word arises.  Wanting to speak to you, I search for a way to reach you with that word that I find in me.  I give it sound, and thus, by my voice, I speak to you.  The sound of my voice carries to you the meaning of the word and after having revealed to you its significance, my voice vanishes.  The word that is brought to you by sound is already in your heart without moreover ever leaving my heart.”

As was the Baptist, we too are called to be voices in the wilderness crying out the Word of the Lord.  It is not our word, but the Word of God that we speak.  We are but voices that carry the Word that is already in our hearts.  When we have finished speaking, we fade away, but the Word, our Lord, remains and simultaneously comes to all who hear.  

We are witnesses.  We have something to say.  We have seen, and we must publicly testify to that which we have seen and heard.  The apostles died doing this very thing, as did John the Baptist.  (Did you know that the word “witness” comes from the Greek word for martyr?)  We must give voice to the wonders that God has wrought for us.  Let us look at our lives, and cry out, as witnesses, of the works and Word of God.  

The world is hungry for our voices, for the Word we carry in our hearts, a Word to be spoken to each other.

Posted in General Interest, Saints and Prophets | 1 Comment

Dignitas Personae – continued

Posted on December 13, 2008 by Deacon Bob

Toward the end of the introduction of Dignitas Personae, there is a great quote from John Paul II. I am quoting section 3:

“Life will triumph:  this is a sure hope for us.  Yes, life will triumph because truth, goodness, joy and true progress are on the side of life. God, who loves life and gives it generously, is on the side of life”.  

What a fabulous witness to Christian hope!

Later, in section 8, we find:  “By virtue of the simple fact of existing, every human being must be fully respected. The introduction of discrimination with regard to human dignity based on biological, psychological, or educational development, or based on health-related criteria, must be excluded. At every stage of his existence, man, created in the image and likeness of God, reflects “the face of his Only-begotten Son….This boundless and almost incomprehensible love of God for the human being reveals the degree to which the human person deserves to be loved in himself, independently of any other consideration – intelligence, beauty, health, youth, integrity, and so forth. In short, human life is always a good, for it ‘is a manifestation of God in the world, a sign of his presence, a trace of his glory’ (Evangelium vitae, 34)”.

The Church is drawing our renewed attention to the discrimination that exists when we devalue human life based on stage of development, health status or other criteria.  It also reaffirms the revelation of God’s love in the existence of every human life. I have seen subtle but unmistakable “discrimination” of this sort creeping into medical practice even in my own setting.  Individual lives being valued as more or less deserving of care and or attention depending on health status, income level or previous utilization of health care resources.

Dignitas Personae concludes Part One with this: “(the Church) reminds them that the ethical value of biomedical science is gauged in reference to both the unconditional respect owed to every human being at every moment of his or her existence, and the defense of the specific character of the personal act which transmits life.” (The Church is referencing here Christian marriage.)

Read the Introduction and Part One of this instruction.  There are other theological gems for thought and reflection.

More on the document in later posts.

Posted in Ethics and Morality | Comments Off on Dignitas Personae – continued

AIDS Prevention, continued

Posted on December 12, 2008 by Deacon Bob

I have read the article by Potts, et. al. in Science mentioned in my previous post on this subject.  It points out that some assumptions that underlie current HIV prevention strategies are unsupported by evidence. 

Current strategies include condom distribution, voluntary counseling and testing, and treatment of other sexually transmitted diseases, with the addition recently of USA’s global AIDS program’s promotion of abstinence.  The article asserts that there is no evidence that condom distribution has a primary role in reduction of HIV rates in generalized epidemics, that HIV testing does not result in reduction of risk of infection for those testing negative to the virus,  and that treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, while critical for public health programs, seems to have little impact on HIV transmission in generalized epidemics.  Abstinence completely prevents transmission, but HIV infections occur most often among people in the 20s or older when most are sexually active.

The article says that what does help is male circumcision, citing over 45 observational, biological and other studies in the past 20 years have shown that it significantly reduces the risk of heterosexual HIV tranmission.  It also states that reducing multiple sexual partnerships has a powerful impact in lowering HIV transmission.  Again, multiple studies are cited.

I am not sure how circumcision helps in transmission rate reduction.  I suppose some of the cited studies would explain.  If any of you happen to know, explain in a comment below.

It ends by saying that investments are being made in interventions for which evidence of large-scale effectiveness is weak.  It suggests a reassessment of how those investments are made.

Read the article for yourselves.  “Reassessing HIV Prevention”, Potts, et. al., Science, May 8, 2008, 749-750.

This article certainly lends support to the Church’s traditional teachings about fidelity in marriage and its opposition to condom use.  It is for that reason, I take the time to discuss it with you.

Posted in Ethics and Morality, General Interest | 3 Comments

Dignitas Personae

Posted on December 12, 2008 by Deacon Bob

I would encourage all of you to log on to www.usccb.org/comm/Dignitaspersonae/index.shtml and read Dignitas Personae, the Church’s recent document on the bioethics of procreation and medical research.  A great document that I hope will get a fair catechesis among the Catholic faithful and accurate reporting in the secular media

I would welcome your thoughts after having read this instruction.  It touches on delicate issues regarding accepting children in married life and how contemporary medical technology tends to lead couples into morally questionable situations.

More on this later.

Posted in Ethics and Morality | Comments Off on Dignitas Personae

Ad Ecclesiam Aeternam

Posted on December 10, 2008 by Deacon Bob

If you want to view a short memorial on the popes since Pius XII, with rather stirring background music, log on to www.youtube.com  and search for “ad ecclesiam aeternam”.  You will see a five minute video listed about the popes.

By the way, for the longest time I couldn’t figure out what language it was in.  I know Italian, and it sounded like it, but different.  With a little research, I discovered it is Corsican, a derivative of Italian.

Posted in Popes | Comments Off on Ad Ecclesiam Aeternam

More on Papa Luciani

Posted on December 10, 2008 by Deacon Bob

Here is a quote, attributed to John Paul I prior to his election as pope, as cited on www.albino-luciani.com:

“Progress with men who love one another, considering themselves brothers and sons of the one God and Father, can be a wonderful thing…Progress with men who do not recognize in God the only Father, becomes constant danger.” 

Perhaps there is more than a bit of wisdom in his words, given current state of affairs.

Posted in General Interest, Popes | Comments Off on More on Papa Luciani

AIDS prevention

Posted on December 9, 2008 by Deacon Bob

The most recent Ethics and Medics, (Vol. 33, N. 12)  a publication of the National Catholic Bioethics Center on Health Care and the Life Sciences, had some interesting and surprising comments.  It cited research that has been published in Science by Malcom Potts et al. (“Reassessing HIV Prevention”, Science 320.5877, May 9, 2008: 749-750).   Ethics and Medics reports that the article calls for more explicit emphasis on proven measures at reducing AIDS in Africa, specifically abstinence and fidelity, and male circumcision.  The article is reported to emphasize the importance of sexual behavior change in contrast to condom distribution. 

I have not read the article in Science but it reportedly indicates that in countries that have emphasized fidelity, abstinence and male circumcision, such as Uganda,  Kenya, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and  Haiti, there has been significant drops in HIV transmission in contrast to countries such as South Africa that have strongly advocated condoms use with little emphasis on abstinence and fidelty.  It also reports that three recent randomized controlled trials have proven that male circumcision confers a type of biological protection against HIV transmission among men, renders them approximately 60% less susceptible to HIV than non-circumcised men.  The article then, it is reported, calls for a shift in tactics in the global HIV prevention efforts.

I hope to be able to obtain the article in Science and report back my response to it.

Ethics and Medics near the end of its recent issue suggests that the dominant approach to HIV prevention is an impoverished philosophy that does not adhere to sound, rational principles of disease control.

Posted in Ethics and Morality, General Interest | 3 Comments

Alone at St. Peter’s

Posted on December 8, 2008 by Deacon Bob

 

If you ever get to Rome, take the opportunity to go to St. Peter’s square at night and stand in the middle of the piazza near the obelisk.  Take in what will be an experience you cannot have during the daytime hours because of the crowds.  You will feel alone and at the same time in the presence of the Church in a way that is hard to describe.  

I recall doing this several times during my year and a half residence there. I would go there when I felt particularly stressed, and would walk back to my room (about a 20 minute walk up the Janiculum hill), refreshed.  I always could be assured that the Pope’s light would be on in his apartment on the top floor of the papal palace.  I doubt he got much sleep, as the light always seemed on.

Go and see for yourselves someday.  It is worth the trip!

And pray for me as you stand there in awe.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

Posted on December 8, 2008 by Deacon Bob

The following is from Saint Anselm’s Discourses:

“God created every creature and Mary gave birth to God;  God, who had created everything made himself a creature of Mary, and recreated thus all that he had created.  And while he had created everything from nothing, after its fall, he did not want to restore it without Mary.  God, then, is the father of all creation, Mary the mother of recreation.  God is father of the foundation of the world,  Mary the mother of its reparation, since God had generated him through whom all had been made, and Mary gave birth to him who works the salvation of all these things.  God generated him without whom absolutely nothing exists, and Mary gave birth to him without whom nothing is good.”

As Saint Anselm is want to do often, his language is a bit dense, but I think the above is good for thought and meditation. It certainly speaks of the unique dignity of Mary, our Mother, and lends support to our Catholic belief of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, which we celebrate today.  By God’s singular gift to Mary alone, by the merits of his Son’s death and resurrrection, Mary was preserved from all sin from the moment of her conception.  She too was redeemed by her Son even from the moment of her conception.

Just as God wanted to “recreate” all that he had made with Mary’s fiat, so too, perhaps, God wanted to recreate humankind in some small way with the conception of each of us in our mother’s womb. Such dignity have our mothers!  Let us also remember them this day.

Posted in Prayer and Meditation, Saints and Prophets | Comments Off on Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

Second Sunday of Advent

Posted on December 7, 2008 by Deacon Bob

Pope Benedict mentioned today in his weekly Angelus message those fleeing persecution and violation of their human rights.  

My translation of the Italian:

 “To all peoples exhausted by misery and hunger, to the throngs of refugees, who suffer grave and systematic violations of their rights, the Church places herself as a sentinel on a high mountain of faith and announces:  ‘Here is your God!  Here the Lord God comes with power’ (Is 40,11)”  

He then goes on to speak of hope:  

“Christian hope exceeds the legitimate waiting for social and political liberation, because that which Jesus began is a new humanity, that comes ‘from God’, but at the same time grows in this our land, in the measure in which our land lets itself grow fertile through the Holy Spirit……Justice and peace, in fact, are gifts of God, but require men and women who are ‘good soil’, ready to receive the good seed of his Word.”

The Church always seems to hold in tension aspects of the Gospel and Christian life.

The tension between working diligently in the social and political arenas for justice and peace in our world, and the realization that any advancement in these areas is a gift of God to his people.  

The tension between expectant waiting for the Lord and actively embracing him as already present in the conditions of the poor and needy.  

The tension between prayer and work, faith and good works, the contemplative and the active.  

I have always appreciated the Pope’s messages about hope.  The lost virtue for so many years it would seem.  A needed commodity in today’s world.  A necessity for those who suffer persecution, exile and homelessness, for those who have left “home” and don’t know where they belong anymore, be it loss of shelter or loss of spiritual home.

Posted in General Interest, Popes, Prayer and Meditation | Comments Off on Second Sunday of Advent

Jesus of History — Jesus of Apostolic Witness

Posted on December 5, 2008 by Deacon Bob

I wrote a post a few days ago about the historical-critical method in Christology, specifically Hans Kung’s work. 

I have been writing, too, about Pope John Paul I in recent posts. 

I was re-reading Papa Luciani’s homily from his installation Mass (for which I was an altar server), remembering listening to him, only feet from his chair, deliver it.  He had an pertinent point when he spoke of Peter’s confession of faith.  The English translation is below:

“(Peter’s) profession of faith was not the product of the Bethsaida fisherman’s human logic or the expression of any special insight of his or the effect of some psychological impulse; it was rather the mysterious and singular result of a real revelation of the Father in heaven.”  PP John Paul I, 3 Sept 78.

I ask myself then, “How do I know Jesus best?  Most accurately?” 

Perhaps Luciani reminds us that to know Jesus intimately is a gift from the Father.  Certainly, Peter and the other Eleven knew the Jesus of history well, but only Peter, we are told, recognized him for who he was.  This he recognized by gift of the Father through the Holy Spirit.

Jesus himself told us to recognize him in the little ones, in the poor, the sick, the lame, the marginalized.  They are the Jesus of our history.

Posted in Christology, Saints and Prophets | Comments Off on Jesus of History — Jesus of Apostolic Witness

Time

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Deacon Bob

Perhaps you have read Pope Benedict’s Angelus reflection last week.  He centered it around “time”, in the context of salvation history in the Christian tradition.  Here is a quote: 

“…we all say that we do not have enough time, because the pace of daily life has become frenetic for everyone.  In this regard, the Church has ‘good news’ to bring:  God gives us his time.  We always have little time; especially for the Lord, we do not know how or, sometimes, we do not want to find it.  Well, God has time for us. …..Yes, God give us his time, because he entered into history….to open it to eternity….time is a fundamental sign of God’s love:  a gift that man, as with everything else, is able to make the most of or, on the contrary, to waste;  to take in its significance or to neglect with obtuse superficiality….there are three great ‘points’ in time….Creation…..Incarnation-Redemption….the ‘parousia'”.

Perhaps today’s reflection can be on our use of time and the thought that God gives us his time,  (a time that is unlike our own), that transcends our daily routine, into a redemptive experience that can make present even the past and future. 

Can we give to God our chronological time in exchange for his gift of eternal time?

Posted in General Interest, Prayer and Meditation | Comments Off on Time

Papa Luciani and Joy

Posted on December 2, 2008 by Deacon Bob

Upon the death of Papa Luciani in 1978, Cardinal John Wright wrote a foreward to John Paul I’s book, Illustrissimi.  In it, Wright wrote the following:  “The mood of Christian joy, I regret to say, is momentarily under a certain trauma or paralysis — an eclipse of some sort.  It cannot possibly come back too soon for the sanity of civilization and the salvation of the Church.  It was in contradiction to this negativism and defeatism, that seem to be the source of the sourness afflicting so many of this generation, that Pope John Paul’s smile takes on such significance.  He was a happy soul….” (Illustrissimi, by Albino Luciani, page X, 1978). 

Perhaps the legacy for which Papa Luciani well be remembered is the return, hopefully, of joy in Christian life.  I was thinking of this yesterday when I was listening to talk radio, and heard how much “shouting” was going on, how much “this is what is wrong with the Church” was being spouted, how much “sin” was being discussed.

I don’t think evident Christian joy is a disavowal of the reality of pain and problems in the world  but rather a sign of the presence of Christ and his conquering of sin and death.  Joy is the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Papa Luciani gave us a glimpse of that.  God loved him for it.

Posted in General Interest, Saints and Prophets | Comments Off on Papa Luciani and Joy