"A Woman Has a Right to Do with Her Body as She Wishes"

Be sure to store the following tidbit regarding a common objection in defense of abortion in your "memory palace" for future retrieval if ever needed:

The common objection tends to arise: “But a woman has a right to do with her body as she wishes.” Yes, a woman—and in this she is no different from a man—has freedom and the ability to do what she wishes with her body. But this freedom and right is not absolute, and is rather a limited freedom or a conditional right. The just limits of that right include not causing harm to another innocent human being when exercising one’s bodily freedom. So while a woman can do with her body as she sees fit, she cannot do whatever she wants to another human being’s body without his or her free consent. Since the embryonic or fetal human being is a member of the human species, she cannot justly cause harm to that child. As the popular retort to this objection goes, “Her rights end where another person’s body begins.” Ultimately this objection is both a red herring and non sequitur.

Source: Arland K. Nichols, "Birth of Twins Highlights Evil of Abortion," Crisis Magazine, February 12, 2014, accessed March 19, 2014, http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/birth-of-twins-highlights-evil-of-abortion.

Making a Big Deal Out of Everything

There's a certain sense in which for the Christian everything is a BIG deal. Yet on the other hand, there's another sense in which everything is, in the big scheme of things, pretty inconsequential. Christianity super-focuses our inherent sense of wonder and curiosity; it sensitizes us to the smallest "flickerings." But it also gives us a broad perspective of things, a deep tranquility in the trust that all things are guided by Providence, that "the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18).

My suffering at the hands of another was a big enough deal for God to die for me, to suffer with me. At the same time, my suffering is something quite small, "not worthy to be compared" to what awaits me. It is something to be faced honestly, but in facing it honestly, we find that it's not really a big deal. Pride wants to puff it up, which is what pride does. Pride wants the slight to turn into a vendetta, ending in streets flowing with blood. Acknowledging the pain in honesty allows us to actually deal with the pain and to realize its smallness and be content with that.

My tendency to make things a big deal flows from my pride, my unwillingness to accept that I am a creature, dust. I want to be more than that, and in trying to be more, I cause chaos. It is only when I give up trying to be more and accepting what I am that God shines through in His full splendor. The humble creature is actually more.

The Rejection of Love

Aren't all the manifestations of sin in the world manifold ways of saying, "It is absurd that there could be a God of infinite love Who would go to such lengths to save us from ourselves"? How could it be that I'm loved, especially when I don't feel it or notice it in any tangible way? Modern life is much more palpable, and can I really trust the promise of the mystics who say that the love they experience is so real that they would even suffer the worst torture rather than betray it? That promise seems so distant and ethereal.

I'm hoping for some vigorous surge of emotion to accompany this realization that God loves me, but there isn't any there. And why is it that the only way for me to embrace this love, to let it enter into my life fully, and to reciprocate it feels like a burden, an obligation dropped unfairly on me? It's simply easier to believe that there is no such thing as a God of infinite love; it's easier to give mere lip service ("I'm devout!"; "I'm a real Catholic!"); or rather it's easier to live as if God never existed at all.

Tattoos, Labels, and Social Identities

Leviticus 19:28: "You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD."

Why are tattoos wrong? Because they originate from, form, and encourage a self-imposed social identity, placed by the hand of man on the the body, which belongs not to ourselves but to the Holy Ghost. 

On the other hand, the Lord put a mark on Cain (Genesis 4:15); He had those who lamented over the sins of Israel marked with the Thau to protect them from destruction (Ezekiel 9:4); and He marks the redeemed with a seal on their foreheads (Revelation 7:3-8). In Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders, the soul is signed with an indelible mark, placed there by God, establishing an unbreakable relation to God that did not exist beforehand, the relation of being a son of God. These are sealed in the Holy Ghost (Ephesians 1:13; 4:30). It is by the hand of God that this mark is placed, not on the body, but on the soul. God alone gives us our true identity, individual and social, and death, so showed the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, reveals the fraud of all human-created social identities.

The image in human constructs goes out to the Other so as to attract the gaze of the Other back to the image. It is fundamentally egoistic. It matters not what the image is; that is besides the point. The psychological function of the image transcends the image and the intention of the Subject, which in Lacan's terminology is mostly unconscious of itself and of its actions (I capitalize "Subject" simply as a reminder of its specialized usage here). This psychological function of the image, we can say, establishes a relation between the Subject and the Other, a relation existing suprasubjectively. 

So too does the relation between God and the soul marked by the hand of God. In the former case, we establish the relation; in the latter, God is the initiator and terminus of the relation, the Alpha and the Omega. In the former case, there is a kind of unconscious attempt at salvation by human hands ("the work of human hands"), an attempt to "prove" that I am God's—"see? I even put this image on me to show you—to show them—to show God—to show myself." And what does it really prove? Once the body rots and has been resurrected, will the tattoo be there? What has been accomplished? In the end, it's like the Tower of Babel, doomed to failure, for there is an infinite chasm between us and God.

Then we like to find justifications, even the smallest, for our actions; it is always a matter of whether this action is "OK" in the eyes of God. We like to think that if it's a "small" tattoo, then that's all right—as though God would become more upset by consideration of size! This is being a Pharisee. No, we offend God through sin, which is an act of the spiritual will working through our physical bodies; size is irrelevant—it's the fact that we willed to do something that was wrong.

But the Church's vast tradition of spiritual and mystical teaching shows us that we clearly hear God's voice in our lives only on the condition and to the extent that we are detached from our own wills and committed to doing the will of God. So if you want to know whether getting a tattoo would be "favorable" in God's sight, ask yourself, after detaching yourself from all creaturely loves according to the teachings of the Saints, whether you discerned God was telling you to get a tattoo or whether you just want to have one.

But God gives us some "labels" by which He desires us to be identified: sons and daughters of God, the people of God, the mystical Body, the Church, Christians, saints, co-heirs, and all the other Biblical images. 

But everything that is said about a tattoo, even a so-called "devotional tattoo," applies just as well to self-imposed lingual identities—with the significant difference being lingual identities do not leave a mark on the body.

Here we find the crucial difference between being called (something) and calling myself (something). Our vocation is precisely where God calls us and, then, concretely calls us what our state in life is: cleric, religious, lay, consecrated, but foundational to all of these, holy. (As an aside, notice how religious habits are given and worn as a sign. Our uniform, although in itself meaningless, ought to be a truthful representation of what we are and hence what we do, but our uniform is determined by our state in life and, due to fashion, open to a certain amount of variety at least for layfolk.) We do not "call ourselves"; we accept our calling and hence what we are called. Our action is cooperative, not initiative. Anything else in the order of salvation is futile and arrogant. To prove this, simply imagine trying to defend on your judgment day in front of Christ that your label somehow aided in your sanctification and in being a disciple of Christ. See where it gets you...

Whatever label I may use to describe my faith is ultimately meaningless and in a radical way inspired by the pride of the Fall—the grasping of a forbidden fruit, an identity that I take on for myself rather than what is given to me by grace, i.e. by gift from God. It may be convenient during a conversation, for a survey, or for debate, but it is meaningless for my salvation. After all, Christ said, "Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 7:21). Those who cooperate with grace enter the Kingdom. Anyone who cooperates with grace will fulfill the commandments, will serve Christ in "one of these my least brethren" (Matthew 25:40), will be like those "that heareth these my words, and doth them, [and] shall be likened to a wise man" (Matthew 7:24).

St. Thomas Aquinas on Christ's Presence Among Us

Christ is with us in many ways. 

(1) First as a brother by his participation in our nature, (Cant. 8:1) "O that you were like a brother to me, that nursed at my mother’s breast! If I met you outside, I would kiss you."

(2) Second as a spouse by the bond of love, (Jn 14:15) "If you love me, you will keep my commandments."

(3) Third as a shepherd by the comfort of interior consolation, (Rev 3:20) "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and him with me."

(4) Fourth as a savior by the help of his defense (Jer. 30:10) "Then fear not, O Jacob my servant, says the Lord, nor be dismayed, O Israel: for lo, I will save you from afar."

(5) Fifth as a leader by the example of his works (Ex. 32:12) "The Lord alone did lead him."

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Source: St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Prophet Isaiah, 7.2.

Hypocrisy and the Grounds for Belief

Many (you can find examples all over the place if you're paying attention) remark that they will not come back to the Church, that they will leave the Church, etc., if the Church doesn't change its position on this or that issue. This attitude measures the grounds of faith against a political agenda, reducing faith to the natural from the supernatural. It is very similar to attributing to the demonic the works of the Holy Ghost (something Christ called an "unforgivable sin" (Mt 12:31-32; Mk 3:28-29)) because God Himself proposes to us faith as the means of salvation, and we must believe Him on His authority. Hence to reduce faith to anything else is to reject Him and His authority, at least implicitly (i.e. without full awareness of what one is rejecting or doing).

This basic reason of rejecting the faith also is used in relation to the sex-abuse scandal of the Church. It is claimed that because the (priests/bishops of the) Church has committed grievous evils not only in the abuse itself but also in its systematic cover-up, therefore faith is rendered impossible. This twist is interesting because it often mixes psychological reasons under an intellectual-political guise. Usually it is unclear what is impossible to accept—the object of faith, namely, God and all that He has revealed; or faith's corollaries, such as the dogmatic, teaching authority of the Church (usually this one especially and all that it applies to). Either way, faith is measured by man's standards, and not even man as man but man as fallen.

There is a certain incongruity in most peoples' minds between the claim to hold the fullness of God's self-revelation, the "fullness of truth" however it may apply but especially in the area of morality, and the fact that most in the Church do not live in accordance with that revealed fullness. But this was Plato's error, namely, that the cause of moral evil is ignorance and that once we know what is right and how to do it, we will do the right thing.

But what is there left to the intuition that people who claim to have the fullness of moral truth should at least live in a noticeably more morally-upright manner than those around them? I think that the intuition should point us not to the falsity of revelation but to the deep extent of sin's influence on the human condition, an influence far deeper than anyone usually suspects. It is why we are hardly ever really scandalized by the Crucifixion—sin has numbed and hardened our hearts to the point where what should be the most heart-wrenching sight possible in human experience is simply placed as decoration between women's breasts ("crucifix cleavage" is a sacrilege).

And this blindness to the depths of sin is to be expected, especially in first-world living, where daily comfort very conveniently hides the ugliness of the rest of the world and even the evil in our midst—in sports, politics, entertainment, academics, science, religion, etc.

Instead of thinking that this intuition proves the falsity of revelation or the falsity of the Church's claim to the fullness of truth or the nonexistence of moral absolutes or the impossibility of our being able to discover and know those moral principles, this intuition should rather remind us more and more clearly of the ease with which we deceive ourselves on a daily basis from the truth that is right in front of our faces most of the time.

Debate and contradiction on what is moral does not in itself prove that there are no moral absolutes nor that we cannot know them (to prove such should require much more philosophical argumentation than what can be condensed into a slogan supporting relativism). It simply proves that it's difficult for humans to adjudicate the false from the true when left to ourselves. St. Thomas Aquinas made this same point: divine revelation was necessary because without it, a few alone could come to a knowledge of the truth but only through great argument, over a long span of time, and with the admixture of many errors (cf. Summa Theologiæ 1.1.1).

Hypocrisy doesn't prove the falsity of (the object of) belief; it merely proves the falsity of adherence to that belief.

A Brief History of "Morning Has Broken"

[Originally written in an email to some seminarian friends who were interested.]

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Here are the details on the hymn "Morning Has Broken" that I said I would look up for you.

The hymn melody "BUNESSAN" comes from a village on the Scottish island of Mull. Mary Macdougal Macdonald (1789-1872), who was born near Bunessan, a composer, and was the daughter of a Baptist cleric, wrote Gaelic lyrics for a Christmas carol using a local traditional tune, which would be the original melody that would eventually become what we now have.

Lachlan Macbean (also McBean), another composer, translated Macdonald's hymn from Gaelic to English (it's called "Child in the Manger") and published it in a Scottish hymnal in 1888, called Songs and Hymns of the Gael.

The English author Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965), who was relatively well established during her literary career, was asked by the Anglican priest and composer Percy Dearmer to write a "poem to fit the lovely Scottish tune" because there was need for a children's thanksgiving hymn suitable for each day of the year. The melody had been discovered in Macbean's hymnal, and Dearmer, along with a few others, including the noted Ralph Vaughn Williams, were compiling a new hymnal to supplement the popular English Hymnal (1906) used in Anglican churches. This new hymnal, the editors hoped, would be popular for "Low Church" services and especially among children (Farjeon wrote poetry and literature for children as well, which was probably why she was asked to collaborate on the hymn). This new hymnal was published as Songs of Praise (1925), which quickly became popular and well used, but the actual hymn with the text "Morning Has Broken" and the Gaelic tune would not appear until the second edition in 1931. The hymn itself was written for children.

English (i.e. British) Roman Catholic hymnals shortly after used the tune for some alternative lyrics from popular hymns by the well-known Anglican composer Charles Stanford. Eventually the Scottish Jesuit James Quinn would write "This day God gives me," inspired by Charles Stanford's famous arrangement of the St. Patrick's Breastplate in a hymn called "I bind unto myself today" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxA2zOSAuxc).

As an aside, Farjeon became a Catholic in 1951.

The song "Morning Has Broken" became popularized in society when the folk singer Cat Stevens did a rendition in the early '70s. Since then the song has been unfortunately associated with the hippy culture and has become interpreted in a blandly pluralistic way (as evidenced in some of the comments of this video of Stevens's rendition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5sSEkZ86ts; Stevens would shortly afterwards infamously become a Muslim, named Yusuf Islam), but originally it appeared in a relatively reverent context (Low Church services, especially used for children, and soon after found suitable for adoption by Catholic hymnals). Here's a nice performance of the piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbWcREDW0Jc.