I was a pro-life atheist A guest post by STEVE KELLMEYER
Pro-life atheism? Most people would call that a contradiction in terms. But it isn’t. I was one, and there are more.
Although I was raised Catholic, Catholic grade school and high school filled me with an enormous disdain for the Faith. As a teenager, I realized that none of my teachers were able to answer any serious questions about the Faith.
“It’s a mystery!” they would say, which I soon realized simply meant "Shut up, please."
“You just have to believe!” they would say. “No, actually, I don’t,” I would think.
I noticed that only old women taught school, only old women and children went to church. The schools were no better. Apart from a couple of sterling examples, most of the men teaching in the Catholic high school were just on the make for female students. Apart from those same few sterling examples, most of the teachers were rejects from public schools. As for the Catholic theology I was taught, I have never liked glitter, glue sticks or collages. I wasn't impressed.
“I could just put away the things of children and become a man.”
So I did.
I wanted to be a scientist, be someone important, discover something new, be an adult. But, as number four in a family of eight children, my mother had taught me something very important very early on: babies were wonderful. Throughout my studies into genetics, biology, chemistry, I never knew if there was a God in heaven, but I knew there was a baby in the womb.
Atheists are not renowned for their logical consistency, and as a pro-life atheist, I certainly missed some points early on. At first, I was fine with fornication and contraception, but opposed to abortion, except in cases of rape, incest and fetal abnormality. I argued the points with others constantly.
An atheist history professor whom I greatly admired, and who had been trained by Jesuits as a teen, pointed out the inconsistency in my position. If a child exists from conception, then what difference should rape, incest or abnormality make?
He thought he had me.
He did.
Three days later, after long thought, I told him that I agreed with him. I couldn’t hold both positions at the same time. “So,” I concluded, “abortion for rape, incest or fetal abnormality is also unacceptable, and I now oppose that as well.” He wasn’t pleased.
As I argued the abortion position, I became aware of many other logical inconsistencies as well.
For instance, I began to realize that the assertion, “I can have sex without wanting a child” was logically absurd. It’s like saying, “I can eat ice cream all day without wanting to get fat.” Sure, you can. But what does your "want" have to do with it? The biological reality was going to hit you either way.
I thought it was a good analogy, but I quickly discovered a flaw. Having sex was different from eating cupcakes all day. Every time I ate a cupcake, I added calories to my body. Every time. But it is not the case that every act of sex creates a child. The analogy wasn’t perfect.
I gnawed on that for awhile.
And I began to see… something
Something I didn’t expect.
Ultimately, it was this point - the point that sex does not always create children – that converted me back to the Faith.
This is what I saw.
Precisely because sex does not always create children, yet it always holds the promise of creating children, that sex stands for something greater than itself. Because sex is designed to produce children, yet does not always produce them, the act is transformed from a simple biological action into… there was no other word for it… poetry.
Because sex contains not a hard reality, but only a future promise, it becomes a promise, the promise of the man to the woman "I will be with you always, even if this does produce that for which it is designed."
And by this act, the man gives himself not just to the woman, he gives himself primarily to the not-yet-conceived child.
It was the poetic biology of the thing that snared me.
Because I had some medical training, I knew the biology of sexual intercourse pretty well. The man doesn't become a father in the instant of orgasm. Indeed, it may not be for several days, he may not be in the country, he may not even be on the same side of the world when it happens. He becomes a father, but he does so long after the act is completed.
Precisely because the act of sex itself does not create anything, the act itself becomes its own symbol.
It is a commitment towards a future that the two participants don't even know will ever come into existence. If every act of sex always produced a child, it would have a much different meaning. But precisely because it does not, sex is transformed into a commitment to hope that such a future does come into existence, or at least not to hope that it does not.
This was the beautiful thing, the marvelous image of the human person, I saw hidden behind the veil of the sexual act. This both intrigued me and frightened me. It intrigued me because it was beautiful and it was true, and I had never heard tell of this explanation before this moment, when I explained it to myself. It frightened me because I knew there was only one organization in the world that taught about a promise to generations yet unborn.
When I answered my history professor, he didn’t like it, and I knew he wouldn’t, but I had to go where the logic took me. I had no choice.
Now, I had found an answer that sent me somewhere I didn’t like, but I had the answer, and I had to go where the logic took me. I had no choice.
I went to confession.
I received Jesus in the Eucharist.
I returned to the Faith.
Steve Kellmeyer is the author of numerous works of Catholic apologetics and is webmaster of CultureWarNotes.com. The above essay is edited from a talk he gave that is available on CD from Bridegroom Press.
'They took offense at him' A guest homily by the REV. JOHN JAY HUGHESHomily for 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B. Ezek. 2:2-5; 2 Cor. 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6. AIM: To challenge the hearers to respond to Jesus Christ as we encounter him in his Church.
On Independence Day we celebrate more than two centuries of national history. We Americans have a reputation in the world for optimism. Our nation’s history has made us optimists. The earliest settlers all came from Europe. They needed huge amounts of optimism to build a new nation in the wilderness, and to push its frontier westward until it spanned the continent. Despite all the blood, sweat, tears and treasure which this nation-building involved, until the Vietnam war it seemed that just about every major problem confronting us was soluble. From small beginnings, and protected by two oceans, we became the richest and most powerful nation on earth. If you’re rich and powerful, you cannot expect to be universally loved. Confronted today with hatred and terrorism, our troops the daily target of sniper and guerilla attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a worldwide economic crisis, we wonder anxiously how long the American success story can continue.
Today’s readings are not about success and power, however, but about rejection and weakness. In the first reading God warns Ezekiel that he is sending him to a rebellious people, who will reject the prophet’s message. The second reading records Paul’s prayer for deliverance from what he called “a thorn in the flesh.”
Some biblical scholars think this was a psychic or physical ailment. Others think it may have been the same opposition from within his own community which faced Ezekiel. Whatever it was, Paul says that God answered his prayer not by taking away the thorn, but by giving him strength to bear it. Through this experience of personal weakness, Paul writes, he learned to rely not on himself, but only on God. “For when I am weak,” he writes, “then I am strong.”
The gospel tells us of Jesus’ rejection by his own community. “They took offense at him,” the gospel says. Jesus offended people in three ways. For some he was too ordinary: “Is he not the carpenter?” they ask. What makes him so special? Others were offended because Jesus was not ordinary. “Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands!” Others still were offended because Jesus seemed so weak. This was the judgment of the bystanders at Calvary, who jeered: “So you were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days! Save yourself now by coming down from that cross.” (Mk 15:29f). Such taunts were the final judgment of Jesus’ contemporaries on this man who seemed to make himself equal with God, yet who, when the chips were down, was unable to save himself from a criminal’s death.
By any normal worldly standards Jesus’ life was anything but a success story. Most of those who knew him remained quite unimpressed. Many took offense at him. That was true then. It is no different today. True, Jesus no longer comes to people in his human body. Today he comes through his mystical body, the Church. People encounter and judge Jesus Christ today through those who have become members of his body in baptism — in other words, through us. We have been made eyes, ears, hands, feet, and voice for Jesus Christ. He has no other.
Many people today say that they accept Jesus Christ, but want nothing to do with the Church. For some the Church is too ordinary. The Church is full of hypocrites, they say, people who are no better than anyone else. Others are offended because the Church is not ordinary. They find us remote, hopelessly out of date. The Church, they complain, preaches irrelevant dogmas to people who need practical help coping with life’s daily problems. They are offended because the Church — and that means us — lacks compassion for people who cannot live up to the Church’s unrealistically high moral standards. Still others are offended because the Church seems so weak. Why doesn’t the Church do something, they ask, about the terrible problems of society: urban poverty and blight in the richest country on earth, crime and terrorism, injustice, greed, and the rape of the environment?
People today, in short, are offended by the Church for reasons very similar to those that caused Jesus’ contemporaries to be offended at him. Many seek a “pure” Church: one that is not ordinary, not remote, not weak. Some — including many Catholics who are no longer with us — think they have found this pure Church in a community of “born again Christians” who exclude the lax and the lukewarm. Others find the pure Church they are seeking on television. The worshipers you’ll see there on Sunday morning are all squeaky clean. The preacher always has a polished and uplifting message. The singing is always fervent and on key. How many Catholic parishes can compete with that?
The Catholic Church doesn’t even try to compete. Like its Lord, the Catholic Church is, most of the time, very ordinary and quite unimpressive. It is the Church of saints, yes. Yet it is also the Church of sinners — and never more obviously so than right now, when the media still bombard us with lurid stories of priestly failings and sins. The Catholic Church is and will always remain the Church of sinners for one simple reason. It stubbornly insists on making room for people who slip and fall and compromise; who are weak in faith — whose faith, in not a few cases, is difficult to distinguish from superstition. Who are these people? We are! If the Church were as pure as we would all like it to be, would there be room in it for ordinary weak sinners like ourselves?
The Catholic Church, in short, is human, as Jesus was human. It is ordinary, as he was ordinary. It can be remote, as Jesus was sometimes remote. And it is often weak, as Jesus was weak. Hidden behind this ordinariness and remoteness and weakness, however, is all the power of God; all the compassion of his Son Jesus; and all the strength of his Holy Spirit, who came in flaming tongues on the first Pentecost to kindle a fire that is still burning; and to sweep people off their feet with a rushing might wind that is still blowing.
Most of Jesus’ contemporaries took offense at him. As another translation of our gospel has it, “They found him too much for them.” What about you?
Prayer request from a Catholic missionary in Honduras
Received this morning via e-mail:
Dear Friends,
I realize that the current political instability in Honduras may not seem like a big deal, and maybe to the rest of the world, it isn't a big deal - but what happens over this weekend will determine the fate of this small country, and more specifically, the fate of the Church in this country, and the fate of our mission here in Comayagua.
Over the past ten months, I've put down roots here, which is why when I was faced this week with the choice of whether to stay or to go (back to the States), I chose to stay. I'm writing to ask all of you to please, please pray for the mission here in Comayagua, especially over the next couple of days.
I cannot emphasize enough the great need for prayer in this difficult situation. If Hugo Chavez makes good on his threats to the Honduran government, his actions in the coming days (and the subsequent reactions of the Honduran people) could be disastrous. If you can commit to being a prayer warrior for us until this conflict is resolved, please leave a comment on my latest blog post with your prayers, sacrifices and words of encouragement. Whether it's a single prayer, a Mass or a Rosary - we would be so grateful. (As a community, we will be praying anovena to Our Lady Help of Christians - posted on our Community Blog - starting tomorrow.) If I am able, I will share your comments with the rest of the missionaries. It helps to know that we’re not in this alone!
If you still don't have any idea what's been happening down here, I've tried to summarize the events of the past week on my blog. Please stay close in prayer - I will post updates when I can!
"If it were I, I would appeal to God; I would lay my cause before him... He saves the needy from the sword... He saves them from the clutches of the powerful. So the poor have hope, and injustice shuts her mouth." - Job 5: 8,15-16 3:29 PM |
Friday, July 3, 2009
Secret plots, Catholic heroes: The truth about Pope Pius XII
A guest post by WILLIAM DOINO JR.
Ten years ago this fall, British author John Cornwell published Hitler's Pope, a strident attack against Pius XII, depicting him as an unwitting tool of the Nazis. Cornwell argued that Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) was among the most dangerous men of the twentieth century, whose political machinations assisted Hitler's rise to power, helping seal the fate of European Jewry.
The book caused a sensation. Vanity Fair ran long excerpts; it was serialized in the Times of London, and Cornwell appeared on "60 Minutes" to expand upon his thesis. The moniker "Hitler's Pope" became synonomous with Pius XII, and was invoked at every turn, by the Church's enemies, to deride the moral authority of the papacy.
As is so often the case, however, God uses an attack on the Church to highlight important truths. In this case, Cornwell provided an opportunity for Pius's supporters to highlight his accomplishments. Shortly after Hitler's Pope appeared, the L'Osservatore Romano exposed the falsehood of Cornwell's claims about the Vatican archives, which in fact offer ample proof of Pius XII's good deed, and Fr. Peter Gumpel, S.J., who oversees the wartime pontiff's cause, published a point-by-point rebuttal. Prof. Ronald Rychlak, employing far better sources than Cornwell, followed with Hitler, the War and the Pope, an acclaimed defense of Pius; The Pius War: Responses to the Citics of Pius XII, a major anthology, appeared; and Rabbi David Dalin completed the counter-attack with The Myth of Hitler's Pope. Cornwell has been in retreat ever since.
Unfortunately, once a myth gets started, its very difficult to contain. Even though reputable historians, and an increasing amount of laymen, now know the truth about Pius, the Hitler's Pope mythology persists. As Cambridge historian Owen Chadwick lamented: "It is still believed by many people that Pope Pius XII was a friend of the Nazis, or that he said nothing at all against racial murder during the war, or that he was so frightened for his own skin or his own palace that he was too timid to say anything whatever, or that he arranged Vatican money to help monsters like Eichmann to escape to South America." These claims are "fables," said Chadwick.
Contrary to Cornwell, Pacelli's time as papal nuncio to Germany (1917-1929) and Cardinal Secretary of State to Pius XI (1930-1939), was marked by a fierce and principled opposition to Nazism, a policy he continued into his pontificate (1939-1958). In the years leading up to World War II, Pacelli foresaw impending doom, at a time when many others remained blind.
"In March 1935," writes Rabbi Dalin, "in an open letter to the bishop of Cologne, Pacelli called the Nazis 'false prophets with the pride of Lucifer.' That same year, speaking to an enormous crowd of pilgrims at Lourdes, he assailed ideologies 'possessed by the superstition of race and blood.' At the Cathedral of Notre Dame two years later he named Germany 'that noble and powerful nation whom bad shepherds woud lead astray into an ideology of race.' The Nazis were 'diabolical,' he told friends. Hitler is 'completely obsessed,' he said to his longtime secretary, Sister Pascalina. 'All that is not of use to him, he destroys...this man is capable of trampling on corpses.' Meeting with the heroic anti-Nazi Dietrich von Hildebrand, he declared: 'There can be no possible reconciliation' between Christianity and Nazi racism; they were like 'fire and water.'"
In 1937, Cardinal Pacelli drafted Pius XI's famous anti-Nazi encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge ("With Burning Anxiety"). That same year, he told the American diplomat A.W. Klieforth that Hitler was not only untrustworthy, but "a fundamentally wicked person." Pacelli, recorded Klieforth, "did not believe that Hitler was capable of moderation" and so "opposed unalterably every compromise with National Socialism."
Little wonder then, that when Pacelli succeeded Pius XI as pope, on March 2, 1939, the Nazi press denounced his election; Germany was the only major power that did not send a representative to the coronation.
Pius XII's pontificate was, as John Paul II and Benedict have said, a "great" one, highlighted by his courageous leadership during World War II. His first encyclical letter, Summi Pontificatus, issued just months after his election, was a scorching condemnation of racism and warmongering, and recognized as an attack upon the Third Reich. His public condemnations of the Holocaust, open embrace of Jews, and active support for Catholic rescue, earned the enmity of the Nazis -- who branded Pius "a mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals--" but won him praise throughout the civilized world.
When I asked Sir Martin Gilbert, the renowned historian, if he agreed with the Vatican's assessment, in its 1998 document on the Holocaust, that the Church under Pius saved "hundreds of thousands" of Jews, he replied: "Yes, that is certainly correct. Hundreds of thousands of Jews saved by the entire Catholic Church, under the leadership and with the support of Pope Pius XII, would, to my mind, be absolutely correct." These are facts which no amount of propaganda, or anti-papal polemics, can erase.
Perhaps the most dramatic act of Pius XII's papacy is one that remains the least known: his assistance in a plot to overthrow Hitler. The most famous attempt to oust Hitler was led by Claus, Count von Stauffenberg (a Catholic Colonel) in 1944--a story recently told in the remarkable film "Valkyrie," starring Tom Cruise. But there were earlier, equally daring, plots, including one initiated in 1939, the same year Pius XII became pope. At the end of that year, shortly after World War II began, elements of the anti-Nazi resistance contacted the Vatican in hopes of garnering Pius XII's support to remove Hitler, with sought-for cooperation from Britain. The magnitude of that initiative is described by Chadwick: "The Pope was being invited to engage in a conspiracy to overthrow a tyrant, and incidentally to put himself and his aides into those dire risks which attend conspirators....Never in all history had a Pope engaged so delicately in a conspiracy to overthrow a tyrant by force."
Despite these extraordinary dangers, Pius XII agreed to act as a middleman, declaring, "The German opposition must be heard in Britain." Alas, because of events outside the pope's control, the plot wasn't carried out that year, but Pius won the confidence of the German Resistance, with whom he maintained relations-- right up until Stauffenberg's heroic (but unsuccessful) effort, on July 20, 1944, after which Hitler arrested and executed the leading resisters. In fact there is evidence linking Pius to that plot, too: a German report to Hitler, prepared by SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunner, dated November 29, 1944, outlines the backround of the July plot, and specifically names Pope Pius XII as a co-conspirator.
These weren't the only high-stake plots involving the pope. There was another conspiracy, a kind of malevolent reverse of the noble ones against Hitler: a plot to kidnap or kill Pope Pius XII.
Many authors have long maintained that Adolf Hitler targetted Pius, as he was a major obstacle to the Fuehrer's plans for world domination. But some historians have questioned such a plot ever existed, because much of the evidence about it comes from General Karl Wolff (the SS Commander in Italy), and Rudolf Rahn (German ambassador to Italy) -- two highly controversial wartime figures. Recently, however, new testimony has emerged revealing that, at least on this issue, Wolff and Rahn were correct.
On June 16, Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops, recounted the testimony of Niki Freytag Loringhoven, whose father, Wessel, was an anti-Nazi German Colonel, who learned of Hitler's intentions soon after they materialized. According to Niki, days after Hitler's ally, Benito Mussolini, had been arrested, Hitler, in retaliation, ordered his main security office to punish the Italian people by kidnapping or murdering the leader they respected most: Pope Pius XII. Learning of the plot, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German counterintelligence service, met with his Italian Counterpart, General Cesare Ame, secretly in Venice, on July 29-30, 1943. Also present at the meeting were the aforementioned Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven, and Erwin von Lahousen--all members of the anti-Nazi resistance. Upon returning to Rome, Ame spread word about the pending plans against the pope, and the anti-papal plot was narrowly averted. According to Avvenire, all this coincides with the deposition given by von Lahousen, at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, on Feb. 1, 1946.
These revelations, coupled with other new discoveries and testimonies, are gradually reversing the Hitler's Pope mythology, even as sporadic attacks against Pius and the Church continue. (Caretakers of the myth -- ranging from Communists to Catholic dissenters -- have ideological reasons for keeping these falsehoods alive). The so-called "Pius War" is not only advancing, but advancing in the right direction. It's only a matter of time before all fair-minded people, not just the Church, will recognize Pius XII as the man he really was: not "Hitler's Pope," but one of Hitler's greatest enemies -- who may yet be proclaimed a saint. Pius XII is a pontiff of whom all Catholics can be proud.
Pope Benedict prays at Pius XII's tomb.
William Doino Jr. writes for Inside the Vatican and other publications. His 80,000-word annotated bibliography on Pius XII appears in The Pius War (Lexington Books, 2004), He has appeared on EWTN and many radio programs to speak about the Church's record during the Holocaust; and was part of a three-day Pius XII symposium, last September, in Rome, hosted by the Pave the Way Foundation. The conference ended with a private meeting with Pope Benedict at Castelgandolfo, where the Holy Father delivered a major address praising Pius XII.
Tour of the chaste Come hear me speak at Patrick Madrid's Envoy Institute
A reminder: I will be one of the featured speakers at the 2009 Summer Conference of Patrick Madrid's Envoy Institute: "Answering Atheism and the Culture of Doubt," July 10-12 at Belmont Abbey College, just outside Charlotte, N.C.
'His oeuvre's in the Louvre' Classic power-pop tribute to Cezanne re-emerges on YouTube
What a joy it is to see this again after so many years—the Special Guests' 1985 classic "Paul Cezanne."
Singer and songwriter Tom Meltzer (the one wearing glasses) kept his day job at the Princeton Review—that's the collegiate-testing empire—and now puts his love for the Beatles and Beach Boys into songs about SAT words.
The yoke's on you Download Archbishop Sheen's advice for surviving marital tensions
I have discovered that many readers of Christian blogs are people who are in particular need of fellowship because they are married to someone who does not share their faith.
If you are one of those readers, or if you are simply in need of some inspiration to keep going in the face of marital tension, I highly recommend listening to a talk by then-Bishop (later Archbishop) Fulton J. Sheen called "Marriage Problems." You can download it for free from the "Life Is Worth Living" page of the American Catholic Truth Society's site. The page is, incidentally, a real goldmine for Sheen fans, containing dozens of recorded instructions in the Faith, in high-quality audio.