The Catholic faith is utterly unique—because it is so much like so many other religious and philosophical traditions. Many people get confused by this paradox but the strenuous efforts of the debunkers to reduce Jesus to the level of every other religious figure is itself the firmest testimony to that fact. That’s why, while you constantly run across books and news articles that Jesus is “nothing but” a rehash of Osiris or Mithra, you never see excited news stories announcing that Zeus is very much the same sort of thing as Janus or Athena is pretty much the same thing as Isis. Nobody wastes time trying to prove that Greek legends of an afterlife were like Egyptian legends of an afterlife. It is only in the… what’s the word I’m looking for?… unique case of Jesus that massive amounts of energy are spent trying to prove that there is nothing unique about Jesus.
Yet Jesus remains Himself and the relationship of Jesus to the other religious traditions of the world is unique because Jesus is, in fact, unique. The best human teachers of wisdom are, at their best, like him, but He is like nobody else, because he is both true man and true God. All that is truly human is, to that degree, rooted in Jesus who is truly human. Indeed, there is no thing that does not come from God. Even the devil himself, insofar as he possesses existence, will and power owes those good things to God. He can never achieve total independence from God because he would thereby cease to exist. Evil always depends on God. God never depends on evil.
This is reflected in the way the Catholic faith relates to all the other religious and philosophical traditions in the world. Since all truth is God’s truth, it follows that any truth and any goodness to be found anywhere in creation owes its existence to God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This means that there is no such thing as a religious or philosophical tradition that cannot, somehow, find some commonality with the Catholic faith—though that commonality in no way implies indifferentism—the bogus notion that one religious tradition is the same as another and all are pretty much the same as the Catholic faith. This popular lie of modernity is precisely what the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the Catholic faith offends—and it is why so many different voices in our culture are constantly laboring to deny that uniqueness of Jesus and his one holy Catholic and apostolic Church. For the truth is, the Catholic faith, like Jesus Christ, makes unique claims about itself. It is, in a word, the Church in which the fullness of the deposit of faith subsists.
So how do we reconcile the seemingly contradictory notions that the Church shares something in common with all the religions and philosophies of the world and that the Church is like nothing else in the world?
By recognizing that these claims are complementary, not contradictory. In fact, they are rooted in two sayings of Jesus:
1. Matthew 12:30: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (which the Church, the body of Christ, has always understood to imply that “Outside the Church, there is no salvation”), and;This leads to two things. The first is the practical command of Jesus to not judge others. That command does not mean “Be a moral imbecile and pretend that nobody ever says, thinks or does evil.” Rather, it means “Don’t pretend you know somebody’s soul or eternal destiny.” You know neither. So fight crime and jail criminals. But also pray and hope for the salvation of the sinner, and work toward that end.
2. Mark 9:40: “He who is not against us is for us” (which the Church has always wisely understood to mean “We don’t know where ‘outside the Church’ is).
Six hours of driving each week while receiving dialysis three times a week to bring the sacraments to the people of Broadus. That is a man who understood the value of his priesthood and the sacraments.Homily for the Funeral of Chester Poppa, OFM Cap.
June 20, 2011
St. David Parish, Broadus, Montana
Wisdom 3: 1-6, 9; Psalm 23; Romans 6:3-9; John 12:23-26
When a person is in end-stage renal failure and has lost 85 to 90 percent of his kidney function, he has three choices: get a kidney transplant, undergo kidney dialysis for the rest of his life, or die. Several years ago our brother Chester faced those choices. As we all know, he chose dialysis — three days a week.
Undergoing dialysis can be a strain under any circumstances, but doing so in your late 70s and early 80s and three times a week ... that's a lot to deal with. When Randolph Graczyk and I visited Chet at his apartment in Billings last month, he admitted that the process was taking its toll on him. It often left him without much energy to do much else.
Yet for several years, Chester was not only faithful to his course of treatment, he was equally faithful to his ministry here at St. David's. Each week, after undergoing dialysis on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he would make the three-hour drive from Billings to Broadus for the weekend Masses. It was his way of remaining faithful to a community he would serve as pastor for 35 years. It's amazing and humbling for me to consider that he began his ministry in Broadus when I was only an eighth grader at Ss. Peter & Paul School in Milwaukee and just beginning to learn about this order of priests and brothers called the Capuchins.
May Father Poppa rest in eternal peace.
"A new book always sounds like a good idea at the time. After all, 'it will practically write itself.' Later, during the author's long trek across the desert of aggravation and regret, it becomes hard to remember what the good part of the idea was."
- Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Render Unto Caesar.
Yesterday morning, for example, we we were sitting at the wooden dining table - you were eating "pop cereal" while I drank my coffee, a little bowl of blueberries between us, when you flung your head back and suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, Mudder - you're so kind to your daughters!" I smiled and told you I did try to be kind.
You put down your spoon and your eyes widened, a look of sincere puzzlement on your face. "Mudder,” you said, “you don't have to try!"
“Really?” I asked. “Why not?”
“Be-cause,” you said. “You're just kind. You don’t have to try."
While I struggled to suppress the bubble of laughter welling up inside me, you went on breathlessly, as if something even more extraordinary had just occurred to you: “And, Mudder," you said panting, "you have your king – Daddy, he’s your king - and you're the queen, and you have your precious daughters. So you don't have to worry!”
Then I did laugh, but it was a welcoming, appreciative laugh, and you sat back in your chair and beamed at me with pleasure. "How is it," I said, "that you, my little not-yet-four-year-old daughter, can speak to me so incisively?"
You shrugged and said you didn't know. I shook my head and said I didn't know either; and then we both laughed heartily.
She leaned her head back - her wet hair slicked back like a little golden helmet atop her elfin shoulders - gazed out the window, and sighed. The moonlight streamed in from outside, lighting up her face and forehead and I saw what looked like little white stars dancing in the brown oceans of her eyes. “O,” she said, to no one in particular, “this is my favorite day.”
My heart swelled; suddenly it was my favorite day, too.
You've got to breathe her, really taste her,
Til' you can feel her in your blood.
And when you can see her unborn children in your eyes
You know you really love a woman.
LarryD has something fun:
I saw this over at Defend Us In Battle - Joe posted about an Internet time-wasting diversion called "The Wikipedia Game".
Here's how it works: Go to any Wikipedia (major topic, usually) and click on the first blue link that is NOT italicized and NOT in parentheses and you will eventually end up on the Philosophy page.
Naturally, I chose Dr. Who, and here's how it went:
Dr Who--->science fiction television--->science fiction--->genre--->literature--->fiction--->narrative--->story--->
sequence--->mathematics--->quantity--->property--->modern philosophy--->PHILOSOPHY
There you go. Now you try.
Do I need to point out that — absent some wild, anthropomorphizing projection in which my old BlackBerry felt sad about the waning of my love for it — our relationship was entirely one-sided? Let me point it out anyway.
Let me further point out how ubiquitously the word “sexy” is used to describe late-model gadgets; and how the extremely cool things that we can do now with these gadgets — like impelling them to action with voice commands, or doing that spreading-the-fingers iPhone thing that makes images get bigger — would have looked, to people a hundred years ago, like a magician’s incantations, a magician’s hand gestures; and how, when we want to describe an erotic relationship that’s working perfectly, we speak, indeed, of magic.
Let me toss out the idea that, as our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel all powerful, and doesn’t throw terrible scenes when it’s replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer.
To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self.
Let me suggest, finally, that the world of techno-consumerism is therefore troubled by real love, and that it has no choice but to trouble love in turn.
May she who experienced the cares and hardships of earthly life, the weariness of daily toil, the hardships and trials of poverty, and the sorrows of Calvary, come to aid the needs of the Church and the human race. May she graciously lend an ear to the devout pleas of those all over the world who beg her for peace. May she enlighten the minds of those who rule nations. And finally, may she prevail on God, who rules the winds and storms, to calm the tempests in men's warring hearts and grant us peace in our day. What we seek is true peace grounded on the sturdy foundations of justice and love—on a justice which recognizes the legitimate rights of the weak as well as those of the strong; on a love which keeps men from falling into error through excessive concern for their own interests. Thus each person's rights may be safeguarded without the rights of others being forgotten or violated.
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