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Daily Scripture Reflection for 2/5/12

cnl — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:00:31 +0000

Scripture: Lectionary #75, Sunday, Feb.5/12: Job 7:1-4.6-7. Psalm 147:1-2.3-4.5-6. I Corinthians 9:16-19.22-23. Mark 1:29-39

Sunday’s Readings

Mark is always to the point and is brief and clear about the scenes in Jesus’ life. He rapidly moves ahead like a cameraman as he develops his Gospel dedicated to Jesus Christ Son and Son of God (Mark 1:1). In this Sunday reading from chapter one, Mark summarizes quickly the ministry of Jesus which will help us keep in mind the whole of Jesus work among his people especially among the disciples and the “crowd.” Mark is a skilled narrator who makes it easy for us to follow Jesus and to become one of his reader disciples.

The description of Jesus’ mission includes a few mentions of his need for solitude to pray and to be in union with God, his only Father. The Gospel contrasts with the dour and self-introspection of Job who is filled with sorrow and has a rather negative outlook. Jesus brings hope at once when he heals and preaches.

In the Psalm and its response we see Jesus as a wounded healer among us who pays more attention to our wounds and heals them before realizing how intense his own suffering is and how horrific it will be in his passion, death and then suddenly glorious in his resurrection. The parallels with Job fade away quickly as we read the Psalm just before the Gospel. The Psalm is a good prayer for the rest of this day, “Praise, the Lord who heals the broken hearted.” Jesus knows who he is and relates that to us through the writings of Mark and the other evangelists.

Paul has caught the entire message of Jesus through his conversion experience and has assimilated what the Gospels say about Jesus without citing them. Paul is transformed into a Christ-like model and disciple. Paul is the Apostle to our ancestors who are simply called the “nations.” He like Simeon in the Temple realizes that Jesus is our light and is at the same time the glory of his people Israel. (Luke 2:29-32). Thus in the epistle to the Corinthians he is not only preaching and teaching the Good News about Jesus, he is living it out. Amen.

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"Where's Mary?"

cnl — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:20:58 +0000

We were at Mass last weekend, at the "other" parish in our area. We have been there quite a bit in the past few months, so it wasn't an unfamiliar venue for our just-turned-2yo daughter, my Valiant Little Queen.

Shortly after the prayers of Consecration she began her "talking" which can get quite boisterous. I whispered in her ear to watch the priest, and to pray. I said, "we need to be quiet my Valiant Little Queen, Jesus is on the Altar."

She responded with one of her trademarked responses, "Oh."

Then she caught my wife and I both off guard, as she looked around seemingly concerned, she said, "Errs-Maayee?" She did her cute little upturned hand gesture which helps us recognize that she is asking a question.

We both watched her eyes scan the area where there is a painting-which-purports-to-be-an-icon, where at our parish there is a carved-'icon' of Mary, and then to the other side of the church where again at our parish there is an Our Lady of Fatima statute. Not finding anything to satisfy her search, she again queried, "Errs-Maayee?"

OH! She's asking: "Where's Mary?" I deduced her thought process was something to the tune of: She knows that Mary is Jesus' Mother, and if He is on the Altar, then she must not be far behind. But it seemed that on that day, she was no where for my daughter to find.

You see, there are no statues in that parish. The closest thing to a sacred image is the painting-purporting-to-be-an-icon, which is hardly discernible to her as Mary. (For the record, she can recognize Mary on medallions, paintings, and even semblances of Marian images.)

This incident reaffirmed in me the need for creating our churches as authentic Sacred Spaces that are conducive to our inner child. We need things that inspire our souls, we need to recognize images as signs of Heaven. We need to encounter the Sacred within our churches, if not for ourselves... for our children. We must be able to elevate our mind, through the the guidance and help of those external things which our rich tradition has entrusted to us for that very purpose. We must stop constructing "meeting halls" and start building churches.

So I too must ask, "Where is Mary?"

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Defend Us in Battle

Media Blackout?

cnl — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 09:14:57 +0000

In Miami, around 1100 people came to celebrate Mass celebrated in the Usus Antiquior for the first time since the post-conciliar changes. Now granted, it was a high Mass with the Bishop and other visiting priests, but even the secular media recognized that this was a big deal. They had Television cameras set up inside to cover the Mass, Live reports afterwards, Live at 11p, etc...

Here on the Kenai last month there was a Mass and Baptism according to the Usus Antiquior and it didn't even get noticed in the bulletin of the parish where it was held, let alone the Catholic media in the state, or any secular news sources.

Based on population, the ratio of the number of attendees at the Mass here on the Kenai to total population of the peninsula was about 1:525 people. The ratio in Miami, was about 1:4255.

That means that based on these ratios, if Miami had around 1100 people, the Mass here on the Kenai had the equivalent of 8000+.

Maybe once every 40+ years isn't enough?

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Defend Us in Battle

Religious Exemptions and the Contraception Rule

cnl — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:43:39 +0000

I’ve been declining to comment on the contraception rule, because, to be honest, I’m puzzled both by the decision to mandate contraception coverage (which strikes me as politically very tone deaf) and by the reaction to it among liberal Catholics. I’ll leave the political wisdom of the decision to others, but let me explain why I’m a little surprised by the vigor of the reaction to it by, for instance, bloggers on this site. (And my puzzlement is not rooted in my concern about the wisdom of embracing the often fatuous “religious freedom” line of attack that religious conservatives have strategically adopted as their new all-purpose refrain in the culture wars.)

Part of my uncertainty about the merits of this particular controversy is no doubt due to my own uncertainty on the question of religious exemptions generally, which stems from the difficulty I’ve been having in understanding the boundaries of appropriate demands for religious exemptions when it comes to moral claims like the Catholic hierarchy’s opposition to contraception. (A couple of clarifications. First, for the purposes of this post, I’m distinguishing “moral” claims about how one ought to act in day-to-day life from claims related to ritual obligations. Not all groups would recognize that distinction, but I don’t tend to think of Catholics as being such a group. Second, I’m talking about the entitlement to an exemption here primarily in normative, and not legal, terms.) In particular, I’ve been wondering what it is that properly qualifies a moral claim as “religious” such that the person who holds it is arguably entitled (on grounds of religious freedom) to some kind of exemption from a legal mandate to act otherwise. For reasons I’ll explain, I think this is a particularly challenging line for Catholics to draw because of our tendency to approach moral issues in terms of natural law. But the uniformity of Catholic condemnation of the Obama administration’s decision makes me feel like I’m missing something.

Let’s start with by limiting our focus to claims by an indisputably religious group (or individual) to an entitlement to an exemption from some regulatory requirement grounded in religious freedom. I know that this is not an uncontroversial starting point, since some theorists reject the notion that religion should be entitled to special solicitude when it comes to such exemptions, but since much of the criticism of the Obama decision has taken for granted that this is a question of specifically religious freedom and not merely conscientious objection in some broader sense, it seems like a fair move.

I can think of a few reasons for classifying a moral commitment as “religious” such that it would arguably trigger a claim to an exemption on religious freedom grounds. The most obvious is one where the moral commitment is understood by the believer (or group) to be derived from some explicit theological premise, e.g., some divine command. Another would be if the belief, although not rooted explicitly in such reasoning, is so bound up with a religious identity that being required to violate it would be akin to being asked to give up one’s religion. I suppose this is something like “centrality” — some moral beliefs might just be very important to a religious identity even though they are not themselves grounded in divine command (or some other explicitly religious logic) as understood by that religion. This latter category is potentially broader, but I think something like it is necessary unless every moral commitment asserted by any religious group is to count as “religious.”

The first of these categories strikes me as less problematic from a definitional point of view, at least as a starting point. But it is not without its difficulties. Nor (at first glance) does it seem very helpful for the church’s position in this instance, since the hierarchy tends to discuss the arguments about contraception in terms of natural law rather than explicit divine commands. On the other hand, the hierarchy has made both sorts of arguments about contraception. Moreover, Catholics might very plausibly claim that, as God commands them to act at all times according to what is good, any conclusion they reach about the morality of a particular situation actually counts as a “religious” obligation in some sense, and so interference with their ability to act on even their natural-law-based conclusions constitutes interference with their religious freedom.

Of course, this last argument has a “heads I win, tails you lose” quality to it when Catholics are arguing about some moral issue with someone who adheres to a secular conception of the good. The Catholic claims that it is legitimate for the Catholic to impose his moral commitments on the secular person through the democratic process, since they are not explicitly based on theological premises. But, when the democratic process reaches a conclusion contrary to the Catholic’s, the Catholic then turns around and claims an entitlement (on religious freedom grounds) to be free from the outcome of the democratic process. I’m not saying this is a logical inconsistency, but it is likely to be a tough position for the secular citizen to swallow.

This highlights the need for some limiting principle in the exemptions context. There are several potential strategies: one is to distinguish among a group’s moral commitments to determine which are so important as to give rise to a claim for an exemption (the centrality move I mentioned above). The other is to bracket that question and simply focus narrowly on the cost to the state of creating the exemption. I’ll come back to this second one.

Picking and choosing among the moral commitments of a religious group is a difficult thing to do. Groups seeking exemptions are not likely to be reliable sources. And the group itself might not be clear on the point. What are we to do, for example, if (as with contraception) most of the actual members of the group in fact reject the leadership’s claim that the position is required by the tenets of the group’s faith? Whose conception of the centrality of the belief to the group’s religious identity should prevail? This relates to the tangled question of who we understand to be the proper bearer of the exemption entitlement — the religious group, individual believers, both?

Perhaps a better way to explain the uniformity of opposition to the Obama administration’s rule — one that would avoid some of these difficult questions — would be to move away from the question of whether a moral assertion is a matter of religious conscience and towards the question of religious group autonomy. It may be that what Catholics are reacting to with the contraception rule is not an intrusion on religious freedom as it touches on conscience but rather a perceived intrusion on what they take to be the right of a group like the Catholic church to structure its affairs without interference from the state. Here, the claim would be more akin to the one raised in situations like the “ministerial exception.” But the problem with this claim in the context of the particular rule under consideration is that the rule only applies when the group steps outside of itself to employ or provide services to non-group members.

So what gives? I think at least part of the answer relates to the move I made at the beginning of this too-long post by focusing narrowly on religious conscience. I actually think that liberal Catholics, like many liberals more generally, tend to favor broader exemptions of conscience, without so much regard for the foundations of the moral beliefs in question. Although liberal Catholics do not agree with the Church’s position on contraception, they accept it as sincerely held and therefore, because they generally look favorably on broad conscientious exemptions, they would extend the same courtesy to their own hierarchy (and perhaps to private Catholic employers as well).

Related to this is the second strategy I mentioned above as a potential limiting principle — evaluating exemptions from the point of view of the cost to the state of accommodating conscience. One thing I think upsets many liberal Catholics about this rule is that it would have been a seemingly trivial task for the Obama administration to create an exemption for Catholic institutions along the lines of the Hawaii scheme. Such an exemption would have satisfied claims of conscience by the hierarchy while having only a trivial impact on access to contraception. And this point holds even if it’s the case (as I suspect it is) that, as a matter of constitutional law, the Church’s legal entitlement to an exemption is weak (or, at best, uncertain), for reasons Grant mentions in his post below.

But maybe the best explanation for the anger against the contraception rule among liberal Catholics is simpler than all of this. I perceive a very real feeling among liberal Catholics of having been hung out to dry by this decision. Having expended considerable capital within Catholic circles defending the Obama administration on a number of fronts (including this very health care law) over the past few years, Catholic liberals put their prestige on the line to advocate for an exemption from this rule. And now they are both hurt and embarrassed by their lack of apparent influence with the administration. Feeling marginal both within the Church and within the progressive movement is not much fun.

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Techreligious Tweets for 2012-02-05

cnl — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:35:00 +0000

Techreligious Tweets for 2012-02-04: RT @jbfcm: Teens migrating to Twitter – http://t.co/OsVdgW0f # Op-Ed: Real … http://t.co/Cfu3f34U #

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Techreligious

St. Agatha

cnl — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 05:30:02 +0000

As in the case of Agnes, another virgin-martyr of the early Church, almost nothing is historically certain about this saint except that she was martyred in Sicily during the persecution of Emperor Decius in 251.

Legend has it that Agatha, like Agnes, was arrested as a Christian, tortured and sent to a ...

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American Catholic - Saints

Did You Know? Feb. 5, 2012

cnl — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 05:22:58 +0000

On Feb. 5, 1958 the U.S. military LOST a hydrogen bomb that has NEVER been recovered.

LEARN MORE.

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Jimmy Akin.org

foryourmarriage: “They brought to [Jesus] all who were ill.” (Mk 1:32) How do you like to be treated when you are ill? Do you wan... http://t.co/dw88I07H

cnl — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 05:07:03 +0000

foryourmarriage: “They brought to [Jesus] all who were ill.” (Mk 1:32) How do you like to be treated when you are ill? Do you wan... http://t.co/dw88I07H

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For Your Marriage

The Healing Power of Jesus’ Word

cnl — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 05:01:40 +0000

Editor’s Note: The following is the text of a homily delivered by Father Landry at St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA on the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B (Job 7:1-4,6-7; 1Cor 9:16-19,22-23; Mk 1:29-39) Understanding Jesus’ Priorities In today’s readings, we encounter a lot of suffering. In the first reading, Job [...]

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Integrated Catholic Life

MVP

cnl — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:11:00 +0000

Aaron Rogers is the NFL's MVP of the year! He's a good man and an amazing quarterback. Here's to next season!

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The Forum