Blogposts

Most people are familiar with the name Frankenstein most probably from the movies that have been made with this title. The caption above is a famous scene from the Frankenstein movie after Dr. Victor Frankenstein “creates” life by piecing together bodyparts from dead cadavers and “juicing” them with electricity. Part of the caption was censured in the 1930’s. The audience only heard: “It’s alive. It’s alive. The rest was eliminated because it was thought to be blasphemous.

1. What is the importance of marriage today? Marriage is the fundamental building block for all other human relationships. If there is a single cause for most of today’s evils, both religious and secular, it is the weakening of marriages and family.

2. What kind of marriage will succeed today? Only a counter-cultural marriage. The present culture is often alien and hostile to marriage. It exalts the individual before the good of a spouse or family or children. It is an environment of selfishness and materialism. Only couples with strong values based on the things of God will thrive in this culture.

A talk years ago by a Dominican friar called Hell: You Better Believe It addressed a pastoral problem in the Church that some (many?) ignore or deny the teaching on Hell and think everyone is going to heaven. Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote an essay in the magazine First Things called “The Population of Hell,” noting a complaint that no one preaches about Hell anymore. St. Jose Escriva writes in The Way#747: Worldly souls are very fond of thinking of God's mercy. And so they are encouraged to persist in their follies. It is true that God our Lord is infinitely merciful, but he is also infinitely just: and there is a judgment, and he is the Judge.

Lt. (Rev.) Thomas M. Conway, a 37-year-old Navy Chaplain from Buffalo, New York, was sleeping soundly on July 31, 1945, on board the USS Indianapolis, a heavy cruiser. At 12:14 a.m. the first torpedo from the Japanese submarine, I-58, blew away the bow of the ship. An instant later the second struck near mid ship on the starboard side, the resulting explosion split the ship to the keel, knocking out all electric power. Within 12 minutes the unescorted cruiser slipped beneath the surface of the Philippine Sea, midway between Guam and Leyte Gulf. Of 1,196 men on board, approximately 900 men made it into the water. Few life rafts were released; the majority of the survivors wore the standard kapok life jacket and life belts. The ship was never missed, and by the time the survivors were spotted by accident four days later, only 316 men were still alive.

Back in 1968, did anyone forecast that we would soon be talking about a general breakdown in ordinary family life? Yes, someone did. Some 30 years ago, Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae an encyclical letter which upheld the time-tested Christian teaching that artificial contraception is morally wrong. In 1968, Pope Paul worried that:

Father Michel Schooyans S.J. died May 3, at the age of ninety-two. He was a Jesuit from Belgium, a philosopher, and theologian who taught at Louvain University and in many other academic institutions throughout the world. He was especially relied on and esteemed by Pope John Paul II. Indicative of the current climate in Rome his death was passed over in silence. Here are some bullet points which appeared in a long article on the life of Father Schooyans at the website, La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, (the Daily Compass):

Actor Jon Voight in a conversation was describing his life and his upbringing and he said that he did not have that connection that his mother had and he didn’t feel that sense of God. He had spiritual experience which he described which changed that but why didn’t he have that connection as he described it until then? He was raised Catholic, received the sacraments, instructed in the Catholic Faith. Easter season is an especially good time to think about the closeness of God to us.

There are those who say that little importance should be given to the frequent confession of venial sins. Far more important, they say, is that general confession which the Church, surrounded by her children in the Lord at Mass makes during the penitential rite of the Mass the “I confess” is offered and the “Lord have mercy.”

To live well is nothing other than to love God will all one’s heart, with all one’s soul and with all one’s efforts; from this it comes that love is kept whole and uncorrupted (through temperance). No misfortune can disturb it (and this is fortitude). It obeys only [God] (and this is justice), and is careful in discerning things, so as not to be surprised by deceit or trickery (and this is prudence)

— St. Augustine De moribus ecclesiae 1,25,46
Catechism of the Catholic Church: #1809

One time several young American Catholics were interviewed about their relationship with the Church. With Saint Peter’s Basilica in the background, one guy, said something to the effect that “I have a relationship with God and I don’t really need the Church to come in between that.” In other words, “I can live however I want, still love Jesus, call myself ‘Catholic’, and no pope, bishop or priest is going to tell me otherwise.” Most of you I am sure have heard a variation on this line before. Pope Benedict addressed this attitude in a reflection on Christ and the Church in 2006. Here are excerpts from that reflection:

We are placed between the things of this world, and spiritual goods from which eternal happiness consists: so that the more we cleave to the one, the more we withdraw from the other, and vice versa. Wherefore whoever cleaves wholly to the things of this world, so as to make them his reason for living, and to look upon them as the reason and rule of all he does, falls away altogether from spiritual goods. Hence this disorder is removed by the commandments.

Pope Benedict before he was Pope as Cardinal Ratzinger expressed himself on the title of this essay in a book called The Ratzinger Report. He said: It (the saying about Mary you can never say enough) seemed exaggerated to me. So it was difficult for me to understand the true meaning of another famous expression… the declaration that designated the Virgin Mary as the “conqueror of all heresies.” Now in this confused period where truly every type of heretical aberration seems to be pressing upon the doors of the authentic faith-now I understand that it was not a matter of pious exaggerations, but of truths that today are more valid than ever.