Catholic Practices And Recapturing The Sacred

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CATHOLIC PRACTICES AND RECAPTURING THE SACRED

(Delivered at the Twelfth Convention of the Fellowship of
Catholic Scholars in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this paper is
printed here with permission.)

Catholic practices can provide invaluable assistance to contemporary
society in recovering a sense of the sacred. I am keenly aware of how
effective they can be even though I was not raised a Catholic and was never
taught Catholic practices. If anything, there was a certain aversion to
Catholic practices in our Protestant household. My father would mildly
complain of Catholic "ritualism" even though he did not seem the least bit
uncomfortable with working into the arcane intricacies of Masonic
ceremonies. And there would be the predictable charges that Catholics
prayed more to Mary than to God when one inadvertently picked up the
recitation of the rosary on the radio.

Yet Catholic practices still had a way of impinging on our Protestant
lives. For some strange reason, my Scottish Presbyterian mother was always
very strict about not having meat on Good Friday, although I have never
heard of that being characteristic of her own religious tradition. It must
have derived from Catholic sources.

Although I often viewed them as superstitious as a youth, I could not help
but be struck, even impressed, by many of the Catholic practices which I
witnessed. There was the kid on the basketball court who made the sign of
the cross before attempting the foul shot. There were the men on the
streetcar in Pittsburgh who would tip their hats or cross themselves as we
rode by a Catholic church. There were the Catholic secretaries and lunch
room employees who would show up for work at our public school once a year
with smudges of black ash on their foreheards, a most strange custom, we
non-Catholics thought, but certainly an unforgettable one.

As a youth on my way to a camp in New Mexico, our entire busload of boy
scouts had the opportunity to visit with the archbishop of Santa Fe. His
Excellency received us cordially in the garden of his residence in cassock,
purple sash and gold cross. He talked with us in a most congenial, pleasant
way, almost as one of the guys, when the tone of the meeting suddenly
changed. The scoutmaster barked out, "Okay, everybody on their knees--
Protestant boys, too! The archbishop is going to give us his blessing." I
remember how unspeakably odd it seemed that we would kneel down outside--
right there on the grass and the dirt and the gravel. But it was a moment
I've never forgotten as the archbishop held his left hand on his chest and
traced the sign of the cross in the air with his right.

Later, as a boy scout counselor, I remember our camp being visited by a
group of women religious. The camp director, himself a non-Catholic, called
us together to give us the ground rules. Shirts were to be worn all day.
The women were to be addressed, "Yes, Sister, and no, Sister," and under no
circumstances were we to turn our back on them. We were all aware that
there were going to be in our midst people who were out of the ordinary,
yet in such a way that not only did they not engender ridicule, they
engendered reverence and respect.

In our neighborhood there was a man who had been a farmer and later became
the foreman of a gas company road crew. He was a powerful man with an
enormous chest and forearms like thighs. His hands were so large he could
barely hold a pencil and his fingers so lacking in suppleness he could
write only with great difficulty. On one occasion he invited me to a
function at his church. I don't remember what it was, but the rosary was a
part of it. The rosary was, frankly, incomprehensible to me; but I do
remember the interminable recitation of Hail Mary's. "Just as my parents
said," I thought. "They pray more to Mary than to God." Yet the incident
left a very strong impression. Millworkers, ditch diggers, pipe fitters,
some with work clothes on, others with perspiration rolling down their
faces and spreading across the backs of their shirts. I remember to this
day how strange and how incredibly small the rosary looked hanging down
from those massive, dirt-cracked hands.

Upon reflection it is remarkable the extent to which I as a Protestant
growing up in Protestant America was exposed to Catholic practices. When I
began to travel to Catholic cultures, the impact was all the greater:
statues of the Virgin over the doors of houses, adorning the outside walls
of shops, tucked in niches on random street corners; wooden and wrought-
iron crucifixes on country lanes, and tiny chapels in farmers' fields.

When I was living in Fribourg, Switzerland, I was startled from sleep one
morning at six-thirty with cannons exploding from the hills surrounding the
old city. I discovered that it was the Feast of Corpus Christi, and the
entire town was being roused for the festivities. Along the route to be
taken by the Blessed Sacrament, residents of homes and proprietors of
businesses had lashed green sapling trees to the fronts of the buildings.
Colorful tapestries were hung from windows and flowers were heaped around
outdoor altars along the route from which the Eucharistic blessings would
be given.

Mass was celebrated by the bishop in one of the principal squares in town
in front of the large Dominican residence. At Mass, as the consecrated Host
was elevated, soldiers on the top of a neighboring building with binoculars
and field radio notified the artillery on a nearby hill who fired the
cannons in salute. When the chalice containing the Precious Blood was
raised, the cannons acknowledged Our Lord again. When the Blessed Sacrament
in its glistening monstrance and under its huge canopy was carried by in
the bishop's hands, Swiss guards would snap to attention with their
halberds, and modern infantrymen would do the same with their assault
rifles.

The mayor and other town dignitaries marched in procession with their gold
chains of office hung proudly over shoulder and on chest. Men and women in
religious habit marched with members of their orders. All the children who
had received their first Communion in the preceding year marched in
procession. All children confirmed in the preceding year marched in
procession. All adults received into the Church in the preceding year
marched in procession. Marching bands playing solemn, dignified music
swayed slowly back and forth as they proceeded with great dignity along the
route. Young girls in white dresses spread flower petals in the path of the
approaching Sacrament while two altar boys carrying thuribles alternated
walking backwards as they incensed the Sacred Host without interruption.
This was no expression of private belief. This was the profession of faith
of a people, of a culture.

My first visit to Mexico fell between the 8th and the 12th of December; in
other words, between the great Marian feasts of the Immaculate Conception
and Our Lady of Guadalupe. As I was being driven to the Basilica of Our
Lady of Guadalupe, I was amazed to see literally thousands of people
streaming along the tree-lined boulevard between the streets leading up to
and away from the church grounds. People were carrying colorful banners and
huge floral depictions of the Virgin. Others had arms full of flowers. Many
of them sang hymns as they went.

As I witnessed this I remembered the terrible persecution of the Church in
Mexico sixty years earlier and the anti-Catholic laws still on the books
which stripped priests and religious of their civil rights and which
forbade the Church from owning property. Aware of the incongruity of the
scene before my eyes with the political reality of Mexico, I said to the
driver, "I thought there was a law in Mexico against public manifestations
of religion." "Oh, si, senor. There is still a law against it." "Well,
then," I asked, "how is it that these processions are permitted?" He seemed
incredulous at my question. "But, senor, this is all for Our Lady of
Guadalupe!", as though, because of her great importance, she and the
present activities fell entirely outside the parameters of the law.

Even after twelve years of being a Catholic, I encounter practices which
are totally new to me. After my recent move to Philadelphia, two ladies in
our office were telling me of their trip to the New Jersey shore the
preceding day, August 15. They were laughing about their stroll along the
beach and of their struggles to remove shoes and stockings to wade in the
ocean up to their ankles. Once they had made it into the water, the one
expressed her dismay that, after all their efforts, the water may not have
been blessed yet. Not to worry, responded the other. Surely by then some
priest along the shore had blessed the water. When I inquired what in the
world they were referring to, they were dumfounded that I did not know
about the blessing of the ocean every year on "the holy day." Never having
heard of the practice I asked a local priest about it who assured me that
it was a custom of long-standing. He had an elderly aunt who spent every
summer at the shore, but who never went in the water except on August 15.
"There is," he said, "a cure in the waters on that day." I have no idea of
the origin of the custom. It may be linked to Mary's title of "Stella
Maris." But Catholic practices have a way of becoming incorporated into
virtually every aspect of public and private life, touching light and even
silly moments as well as profound and agonizing ones.

In his autobiography Josef Pieper tells of the dismay of his family when
his school teacher father was called up for military service during the
First World War. It was a time of considerable apprehension for the family,
and the moment was solemnized with Catholic practice. As Pieper himself
recounts it:

"...after supper, we children were summoned to the parents'
bedroom. Ordinarily we never went there, but on this day the
house was full of strangers. The only thing I remember of what
took place then, is this: father blessed each one of us in turn,
with a great sign of the cross from forehead to breast and from
shoulder to shoulder. He had never done that before. Mother
leaned against his shoulder and said, in tears: "And what if you
don't come back?!" Of course, she spoke in Low German; one does
not say such things in a foreign language. This too was
bafflingly new to us children; we had never before witnessed
expressions of emotion between our parents--and we never saw it
happen again." ("No One Could Ever Have Known," p. 31).

The family of Josef Pieper was helped through one of the most difficult
and emotion-charged moments of his childhood by adverting to a simple,
ancient Catholic practice.

A number of years ago I worked for a large Mexican bank and was privileged
to be immersed in a thorough-going Catholic culture. One of the bank
executives with whom I worked was intrigued with the emerging mini-
technologies. He would wear a couple of digital watches showing the time in
different parts of the world. He always carried a tiny clock which could be
set up on a desk or table and which had a built-in alarm. Another similar
one was simply a pocket watch. One day we were racing along the freeway in
San Diego, California, late for an eleven o'clock appointment. All of a
sudden, at eleven, this banker goes off with five different time-pieces
beeping, ringing and buzzing. Strapped in with his seat belt and speeding
along the highway, he could do nothing to turn himself off, and we had to
endure the racket until he was able to pull over. Obviously he felt an
explanation was in order and with some embarrassment pointed out that it
was time for the Angelus in Mexico City, and he had set the time-pieces to
remind himself to say it!

On another occasion I had eaten at the Bankers' Club in Mexico City with
this same gentleman. On the way back to the office we were discussing
Mexico's external debt. Virtually in the middle of a sentence he slipped
through a door on the narrow street into a darkened 16th century church
where he went down on both his knees for several minutes before the Blessed
Sacrament exposed on the altar. He then rose, walked out the door and, once
on the street, picked up the discussion about Latin American debt as though
nothing whatsoever had interrupted our conversation.

Catholic practices all. And other Catholics could surely add innumerable
other ones: some silly, some profound, some a source of comfort, others the
source of light-hearted humor. Catholic practices make up the daily life of
a Catholic individual and a Catholic society. The morning offering, the
invocation of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the sprinkling of holy water on
children at bedtime, the incantation to Saint Anthony ("Tony, Tony, come
around; something's lost and can't be found"), the pleas to Saint Jude to
prevent a bankruptcy, the novenas for a sick spouse. All of these many
practices fill the lives of the faithful, enrich, comfort and orient them.
Often it is difficult to trace their origin. Often the ones which seem most
intimate and natural to a people were never even introduced by
ecclesiastical authority. They emerged as natural, faith-filled expressions
of love or joy or thanksgiving or grief or desperation.

The one characteristic these Catholic practices all seem to share is their
ability to turn people away from the mundane, the worldly, the everyday,
and direct them toward the sacred, the transcendent, the eternal. One could
be travelling on the streetcar in Pittsburgh thinking about how to make new
sales contacts or how to position oneself to meet the new girl in the
office when suddenly, on the part of a half-dozen people, there was an
adverting to another reality, another dimension, not separate from this
realm, but permeating it, leavening it, making sense of it. Perhaps the
adverting to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament by those on the street car
was only fleeting, with virtually no break in the train of thought
regarding increasing sales or meeting the new girl. But the adverting took
place; Our Lord was acknowledged; and implicitly at least, the statement
was made that increased sales was no end in itself and any future wife
would, one would hope, be married in the Lord.

The sign of the cross made before the attempted foul shot was an
expression of the intensity of desire to succeed, an acknowledgement that,
no matter how great a basketball player he was, he still needed help, he
was not self-sufficient. Of course, the gesture should not be presented as
more than it was either, sometimes touched with a healthy amount of
superstition. But it was the sign of the cross, the instrument of our
salvation, our only hope for immortality. Though on the basketball court,
it was the sign of the same cross raised high on cathedrals and kissed
before a martyr's death.

Granted, these outward Catholic practices are not enough. As the sixteenth
century Theatine, Lorenzo Scupoli, writes in his classic, "The Spiritual
Combat," "Since exterior works are nothing more than dispositions for
achieving true piety, or the effects of real piety, it cannot be said that
Christian perfection and true piety consists in them." (New York: Paulist
Press, 1978, p. 2.) Indeed, the practices can sometimes be little more than
superstition or thoughtless habit. Leopold Mozart, father of Wolfgang,
wrote that he and his prodigious young son had attended all three Masses in
the court chapel of Louis XV on Christmas Day during their visit to Paris.
Yet we know that the king of France who attended the services in his chapel
was not in any manner a paragon of Christian moral living. We know that
even the magnificence and beauty of a Corpus Christi procession can be
repugnant to the Lord if it is not an expression of holy, righteous lives.
"I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn
assemblies...but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like
an everflowing stream." (Amos 5: 21, 24.)

Of course, the Lord wants justice and righteousness and abhors empty,
hypocritical practices. But feasts and solemn assemblies are in no way evil
of themselves as the Puritan supposes. Our Blessed Lord Himself went in
procession up to the temple, chanted the psalms of David, observed the
ritual laws, fasted and feasted. He denounced only the insincere
religiously-observant of his day.

The host of Catholic practices, which have developed over the centuries
and in such a variety of cultures, has arisen from a living out of the
faith. They arose from the admonitions of men like Saint Benedict who told
his monks to treat the tools in the workshop with the same reverence they
would the sacred vessels of the altar with the result that all of creation
came to be viewed with a certain reverence and awe.

In many respects we might say that it is virtually impossible to have the
faith without having Catholic practices. Catholicism is a sacramental
religion and naturally finds expression in fingering wooden beads, wading
in water along the ocean shore, tracing the sign of the cross over the
bodies of one's children. Catholic practices are as natural as the mother
stroking her child's cheek or the father throwing his arms around the
returning soldier-son, or the patriot raising his hand to his heart at the
national anthem, or the lover slipping a ring onto the beloved's finger. In
fact, were external practices missing in Catholicism one would have to
question whether one were dealing with a true religion.

A Calvinist woman in Switzerland one time recounted to me her visit to a
Catholic church as a child. She had been awed by the dark, soaring arches,
by the shadowy figures of saints high in niches, by the eerie, living
flames of flickering votive candles. She could not forget the sight. It
haunted and enticed her for years. The woman had been confronted by the
"mysterium tremendum et fascinans." The words of Genesis (28:17) came to
mind, "How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the house of
Elohim."

The Lutheran theologian and phenomenologist of religion, Rudolf Otto, who
thought Catholicism to be in error on a number of theological points,
nonetheless felt compelled to write rather admiringly of our faith:

"In Catholicism the feeling of the numinous (the sacred) is to
be found as a living factor of singular power. It is seen in
Catholic forms of worship and sacramental symbolism, in the less
authentic forms assumed by legend and miracle, in the paradoxes
and mysteries of Catholic dogma, in the Platonic and
neo-Platonic strands woven into the fabric of its religious
conceptions, in the solemnity of churches and ceremonies, and
especially in the intimate rapport of Catholic piety with
mysticism." ("The Idea of the Holy." London: Oxford University
Press, 1923, p. 94.)

It must be said that the attempt to eliminate many devotional Catholic
practices by certain theologians and liturgists today is to diminish the
character of Catholicism as a religion and to lessen its effectiveness in
pointing to the transcendent in our midst. And there are schools of thought
influenced by secularism or feminism or Marxism which want to accomplish
that very thing. But we see it in other, less likely, places as well. The
radical Calvinism of a Karl Barth with its characteristic Puritan
repugnance for what is naturally human and sensual wanted to deny that
Christianity was even a religion, for religion was expressive of a human
attempt to reach out to God and save oneself, something repugnant to the
"Neo-orthodox."

The followers of Barth at the University of Marburg used to ridicule
Rudolf Otto because of his studies of the phenomenon of world religion. All
that mattered to them was the relationship of faith between God and the
individual. What they called for was a "religionless Christianity" since
religion was a human product of sinful persons, according to their
interpretation of the classical Protestant doctrine of the total depravity
of man.

What they received some thirty or forty years later, however, was a
religionless Christianity with a vengeance. We had the secular city of
Harvey Cox and the secular gospel of Paul Van Buren and the situation
ethics of Joseph Fletcher and the whole "death of God" movement in the
major Protestant denominations. The result of the rejection of the place of
religious practices was first an unnatural Christianity and finally the
replacement of Christianity altogether with secularism. We now live in a
world which, publicly at least, is devoid of the transcendent, the sacred,
the holy.

We now have the world which Immanuel Kant called for in his "Religion
without the Bounds of Reason Alone": Immanuel Kant, who said a man should
be ashamed to be caught on his knees alone in prayer. And it is a brutish
and brutal world which we have inherited in which even human life has lost
its sacred quality and, therefore, its claim to inviolability, a world in
which the attempted slaughter of entire peoples has been adopted as
government policy, a world in which nations have disappeared from the face
of the earth, in which centuries-old Catholic dynasties have been snuffed
out, a world in which more children have perished at the hands of men than
were ever offered whrough the fire to the bloodthirsty god, Moloch. Once
human life lost its sacred character, once it was no longer the "imago
Dei," it became merely more "stuff," more material, to be used in the
building of the secular city.

Catholic practices which permeate the lives of individuals and nations,
"even in their degeneracy," acknowledge the transcendent source of our
being and of our ultimate destiny. Catholic practices point to the Source
of our inestimable worth. They even allow the worldly to be properly
worldly by constantly adverting to the sacred and not allowing the world to
be confused with it. They enable the natural to be truly natural, for, as
we know, without the supernatural the natural degenerates into the
unnatural. Catholic practices remind the world in ways large and small,
silly and profound, that it is under judgment, that it has an unavoidable
and prearranged destiny.

Emile Durkheim, the Frenchman of the last century whom some call the
father of sociology, was no Catholic. Yet he maintained that the greatest
distinction of which the mind was capable was that between the sacred and
the profane. Indeed, such a distinction was necessary for the integration
and ordering of society.

Mircea Eliade, another non-Catholic and a phenomenologist of religion,
made a similar point. It was sacred practices which put society in touch
with the "really real," with the unchanging in a world of flux, with the
divine axis around which reality and society could be ordered. In other
words, Catholic religious practices have a very important sociological
function to perform, and at a time of social disintegration should be
emphasized more rather than de-emphasized. But these practices cannot be
forced. Even to serve their social function they must be authentic. They
must arise naturally from the piety of a people.

There were various attempts in the recent past in this country to inject
salutary Catholic practices from elsewhere. For example, some tried to
promote the observance of the saints days of family members rather than
birthdays. Or the attempt was made to develop a devotion to Saint Nicholas
rather than Santa Claus to be observed on December 6 rather than December
25. However, many of these attempts were rather forced within the American
context and were frequently the expressions of another culture as much as
an expression of the one faith. Devotional Catholic practices indigenous to
the United States will arise. And with their full flowering, there will be
distinctively American public manifestations of the faith as grand as a
Corpus Christi procession in Germany or a Holy Week procession in Mexico or
Guatemala. But this will occur only when the piety and devotion of the
Catholic faithful are deepened through a living relationship with God in
Jesus Christ.

There are many practices which have long been proved to be effective in
fostering piety and deepening faith, and they should be taught and
encouraged at every turn. They are fundamentally private, but in time--and
time may be generations or centuries--they will blossom culturally as the
most characteristic expression of a people. Some of the more basic are: the
rosary, the morning offering, the recitation of the angelus, spiritual
reading, weekday Mass attendance, daily meditation and examination of
conscience. There is nothing extraordinary about any of these practices.
And that, I believe, is one reason for their efficacy and for the social
hope they can provide for the future. They are ordinary; they require no
heroic effort; they should be as much a part of our daily routine as our
practices of physical hygiene or expressions of spousal or parental love.

But these practices must become once more a part of our lives to have
their beneficial effect. Two incidents concerning the angelus might
illustrate this. On the grounds of a seminary a workman was driving his
tractor to the garage for his lunch break. When he heard the noon angelus
begin to chime, he turned off the tractor, bowed his head and quietly
offered his prayers. A salesman on campus saw the workman sitting on the
tractor with his chin on his chest and feared he had lost consciousness or
was suffering from a seizure. Thinking he was going to the workman's
assistance, he actually found himself learning of an ancient Catholic
practice--the recitation of the angelus at noon.

On another occasion a cardinal was visitng with a group of seminarians who
were gathered around him like chicks about a hen. The angelus suddenly
began to ring, but there was no acknowledgement of it whatsoever as the
chatter continued. What an edifying moment that might have been had the
cardinal simply led the men in the ancient prayers. Indeed, it would have
also been a pedagogical moment since it was later learned that a number of
the seminarians did not even know what the angelus was.

Such practices will, of course, have no effect if they are but vague
memories of a distant past or become the precious practices of the effete
or sentimentalist in the present. Catholic practices will not shape a new
culture in the future unless the faith is alive and informing them.

There are some things I believe church authorities themselves could do to
advance such practices. One would be to adopt some standard translations
for many of our traditional devotional prayers so that Catholics could
offer them more easily and more spontaneously together. How many different
versions of the morning offering are floating around? Obviously, there
should be no intention to discourage spontaneous prayer. Quite the
opposite. The fact is that it would be helpful if there were some standard
translations so that Catholics might on occasion be able to pray
spontaneously "together." When the new universal catechism is published,
perhaps there could be appended to it a section of devotional prayers and
practices so that we would have standard translations.

When the Holy Father made his first pastoral visit to the United States,
my family and I were privileged to attend his Mass in Washington. Friends
had travelled a great distance to be there and stayed with us. When we
returned from the Mass, one of our friends remarked that it was unfortunate
that there were no Catholic hymns which were so familiar to us as Americans
that we could have spontaneously broken into song together on such a joyous
occasion. He had been struck by the way in which Catholics in other
countries the pope visited would freely begin serenading him with Catholic
hymnns and songs. Such a thing was impossible in this country.

Another example. Our eight children have had to memorize three or four
different versions of the ten commandments with the result that they could
not say them together if they wanted. This came to my attention when one of
our older children was helping a young sibling with her religion homework.
She was chastising the younger for not having memorized the commandments
properly when it was discovered that her sister had learned a different
translation--or better, paraphrase--than she had. The King James version of
the bible helped to shape an entire culture. The endless and often insipid
versions arising today will, I believe, have considerably less impact
because the very variety prevents the scriptures from becoming a shared
treasure.

Catholic practices do not arise only spontaneously, of course.
Ecclesiastical law can have a profound effect on their development. Laws on
fasting, on forbidden times for marriages, on holy days of obligation can
have a tremendous impact on fostering Catholic practices.

Although I do not believe that popular Catholic practices can be forced on
a people, I do believe that a strong and effective institutional expression
of the faith can be tremendously beneficial. Truth be told, and we all know
it, we no longer have a Eucharistic fast in any real sense. Also, I believe
that absolutely nothing has been gained by transferring the observance of
Corpus Christi and the Epiphany from their traditional dates to Sundays.
First of all, most Sunday celebrations in this country are so homogenized
and pedestrian that one Sunday virtually has no significance over another.
Easter is usually about the only Sunday which manages to stand out in the
course of the year in the United States. Consequently, the significance of
those feasts is hardly enhanced. And secondly, the traditional dates for
those feasts are themselves so weighted with significance and continue to
be observed in the rest of the universal Church that, again, little or
nothing is gained by the transfer and much is lost.

Catholics are the largest religious body in the United States today. We
number 54 million; Episcopalians, a mere 2.5 million. Indeed the entire
nation of Switzerland numbers only around 8 million. If the feasts of
Corpus Christi and the Epiphany were celebrated in this country, under the
leadership of the bishops, with a solemnity which even approached their
significance, it could not help but make a profound cultural impact. If
this were done, a great deal might actually be gained rather than lost by
transferring the celebration to a Sunday from the traditional date. City
authorities will not infrequently permit the rerouting of traffic from
prominent downtown streets on a Saturday or a Sunday for ethnic or cultural
festivities. One could imagine, for example, a public celebration of Corpus
Christi in an American city on a Sunday with the cooperation of civil
authorities which would be impossible on a Thursday.

Individual Catholics should deepen their spiritual lives by drawing on
those well-established practices which sacralize their days and sanctify
their work. They should try the ancient and new practices for themselves
and their families and make them a regular part of their lives. The
institutional Church can adopt certain policies to foster Catholic
practices so that the faithful can work as leaven within the social body
helping to remind it that its Author and Judge is the Lord God and that all
its acts must be measured against the standard of His justice.

We live in a world cut off from its spiritual roots, and as a consequence
cultural life is disintegrating before our very eyes. Inconceivably,
mothers by the million cooperate in having their children cut and scraped
and suctioned from their wombs. Divorces equal marriages in some areas of
the country. Innocent non-combatants are gassed to death in regional
conflicts or blown from the sky by terrorists. Drug abuse shreds the fabric
of nations and undermines hope for international peace.

Christopher Dawson saw the malady clearly:

"We have a secularized scientific world culture which is a body
without a soul; while on the other hand religion maintains its
separate existence as a spirit without a body. This situation
was tolerable as long as secular culture was dominated by the
old liberal humanist idology which had an intelligible relation
with the western Christian tradition, but it becomes unendurable
as soon as this connection is lost and the destructive
implications of a completely secularized order have ben made
plain." ("Religion and Culture," New York: Meridian Books, 1958,
pp. 216-217.)

We have lost our bearings. We do not know "where we are." The Catholic
player on the basketball court and the office workers wading in the
Atlantic on the feast of the Assumption knew where they were, of course,
but more and more modern men and women have no idea where they are. And
small wonder. The human person was once the crown of God's creation,
touched with the sacred. But what assaults we have suffered since the onset
of modernity! Sigmund Freud spoke of the cosmic insult to man's pride when
Copernicus showed that we lived on a mere speck in a vast universe rather
than at the center of the cosmos. Darwin delivered another insult when he
showed us, not as a crown of creation, but as a chance product of
biological process, a cousin of the ape. Freud called this the biological
insult. Marx claimed to show that all our greatest cultural and artistic
and political achievements are really nothing but the product of economic
factors. This might be called the cultural insult. And Freud himself
delivered a devastating blow to the pride man has always had in the vaunted
faculty of reason. In the words of the psychoanalyst Karl Stern, "human
reason, royal and autonomous, became a mere surface ripple over an ocean of
dark mysterious currents which seem to be guided by blind, irrational
forces. This was the psychological insult." ("The Third Revolution," Garden
City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1954, p. 190.)

But that kid on the basketball floor tracing the sign of the cross before
the foul shot tells a different story. He declares that we are indeed the
center of the universe, that even in our natural state, we are "higher than
the animals and a little lower than the angels," and that in our
supernatural state we are higher even than the angels and have become as
gods. That gesture made in a moment's time with little or no thought, over
a sweaty body in the heat and excitement of athletic competition before
shouting fans, declares what has been proclaimed in untold ways throughout
the whole of the Christian dispensation--that each one of us is so precious
in God's sight that the Father sent His only Son to shed the last drop of
His life's blood so that we might reign with Him forever in glory.

JOHN M. HAAS

[Sojourner]

That IS really good, Cmom. Thank you for posting it.

[Mickey's_Girl]

That is a GREAT article! It makes total sense to me. Thanks for posting, Cmom!

MG

[drewmeister2]

Thank you for posting, cmom!