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THE NEWMAN FORUM (SCROLL DOWN NEWMAN THIS WEEK BACCALAUREATE MASSES HAVERFORD: Saturday, May 17 - 4:00 p.m. - Whitehead Campus Center 313 BRYN MAWR: Sunday, May 18 - 9:00 a.m. - Great Hall in Thomas SWARTHMORE: Saturday, May 31 - 6:30 p.m. - Bond Memorial Hall
UPDATING YOUR FAITH - The Sacraments in Easter Time A Fuller Understanding of “Sacrament” The word itself is simple: sacramentum...literally, to hold something in your thoughts as sacred. The Romans used the word in regular conversation for things we would call a vow or oath. Something that bound someone, not with chains but with honor or conviction. Sacraments bind us to Christ. They effect an identification by which He and we are inseparable. That is one part of the concept. The other is mysterium. Borrowed from the term for the secret cult actions of the pagan temples, and obviously giving rise to what we know in English as a ‘mystery,’ mysterium meant something deeper in the context of our Faith. It covered what was hidden, known only by faith, when a sacrament happens. Two elements then. One obvious, visible, sensible to anyone paying attention. The other known only to believers, but nonetheless real in every way. The sacramenta would include such things as water poured or running over a person , bread, wine, oil, hands laid on a head, wedding vows spoken. The mysteria would be such things as rebirth as a child of God, being filled with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, union with Christ in his Passion and Death, a consuming in body mind and soul of the fullness of Christ himself – his Body and Blood -- a relationship in sacrificial love that creates a bond with God as well as with spouse. But it gets better. Far richer in meaning that we can ever explain to children or teens in grade school or high school. Follow along: THE visible, outward manifestation of God IS His Son, Jesus Christ. Whoever sees or hears Jesus, is touched by Him or is loved by Him sees, hears, feels and knows love from God. Literally. Jesus is flesh and blood, real humanity. A sacramentum. Yet He is the very essence of the Godhead. One with the Father. Sender forth of the Holy Spirit. A mysterium. THE visible, outward manifestation of Jesus IS His Church. Whoever experiences the Church -- in the work of the Gospel, at worship, in service to the poor or the sick or the forsaken – experiences Jesus. Literally. The Church is made up of fallible, often sinful, members. A sacramentum. Yet they are Christ’s Mystical Body, in whom he lives and continues to redeem the world. A mysterium. THE visible, outward manifestation of the Church ARE her Sacraments...most especially the Eucharist...but each of them in their own way. Whoever celebrates a Sacrament experiences the Church, is bound in union with the Church, and hence with Jesus Christ, and hence with God. The Sacraments ARE salvation. Baptism - The Beginning of Christian Identity The first of three sacraments that, in effect, make us Catholic – Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist – finds its ‘externals” in our Jewish heritage. Long before Christ, Jews used ritual baths as opening gestures that placed the ‘bather’ in prayerful union with God. Washing away sins as preamble to prayer is ritual behavior that is very easily understood and needs little or no verbalizing. Nothing to say. Just wash. Even John the Baptist, despite what film makers have done with his character, probably said nothing as he poured the water of the Jordan over the heads of those who came to be baptized. He preached a lot about what his mission was and why he used washing as the symbol for what he hoped his message would do to the hearts of his audienceI. His baptizing was a ‘back to nature’ format for those washings that took place all the time at the edge of the temple area in Jerusalem. Mikvah baths were common and expected if one was to enter the precincts of the holy place. Even today, a movement to restore washing pools at the entryway to synagogues is growing. Ritual washings also occurred before Jewish ceremonial meals, such as the sabbath supper or Passover. [It’s why the priest even now washes his hands at mass.] John’s was a call to bathe that was filled with immediacy and dramatic authority. The Messiah was at hand, said John, and everyone needed to be holy to receive him properly. So, when Jesus, himself, stands before John one day, John balks. “I should be baptized by you!” Jesus has something important in mind. It goes along with the messianic title he used almost exclusively for himself Son of Man. In Hebrew that comes across as bar adam. Son of adam. Not a ‘proper’ or personal name for the first human, but the Hebrew word for ‘mankind,’ ‘everyman.’ Jesus will enter the water not as a sinner, but as the firstborn of the new order of creation... as St. Paul will call him, the New Adam. [1Cor15] He will accomplish what the first Adam did not and provide the perfect response of humanity to God’s initiative in creating us in his image. That is why we apply words to the water. Nothing about sin and repentance. Everything about our identity: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We are initiated into God. As the language of our Christmas liturgies states, again and again: He has shared our humanity, the we might share His divinity. We have kept the ritual and changed the meaning...sort of like new lyrics to an old song. ________________________________________________________________________________ Born Again In the 3rd chapter of the Gospel of John, there comes to Jesus under the dark cover of night one of the prominent leaders of Israel, Nicodemus. His is the basic quest of humanity. What must I do to be saved? What Jesus answers has become imprinted in the language we use to speak about the Sacrament that embodies salvation, Baptism. You must be born again, of water and the Holy Spirit. As happens all the time in the dialogues Jesus has with people in John’s Gospel...the Samaritan Woman in chapter 4; the crowd in chapter 6... Nicodemus is stuck on the literal meaning of the words and wonders how his mother’s womb might contain him again. Jesus speaks on a far more profound level. He compares life without Him, to the life of a baby in gestation. We know so much about what happens to us in those nine months before birth. So much growth and development. So important to give good pre-natal care to that new human life. Yet, life in the womb is so limited and can never satisfy the full potential of any human being. Once out of the womb, with light, sound, movement filling the newborn brain with information that will be processed until the moment of death at the end of life’s journey, the warm and perfect world of the womb is woefully inadequate. Life with Jesus is like that. The full potential of human growth and development lies before the ‘newborn’ in faith. In fact, the ancient (and still used) term for anyone newly baptized (no matter how old in years) is neophyte – the ‘newborn.’ The font or pool of baptismal water, then, is paralleled to the waters of the womb that burst at birth and bring forth in their flood the newborn that has been awaiting the fullness of life. It is why the Church is frequently called by the ancient Fathers, Mother Church. She is the Bride of Christ who gives birth to countless children. Here the Jewish symbol of washing away sin is overlaid by the image of birth and the baptismal waters are the waters of the womb from which is born each new Christian. Just as, in life itself, who we are and what we shall eventually become evolve over all the years of our lives, so too Baptism is a reality that is experienced not only on the christening day, but throughout life. We become Christ, not all at once, but in the course of our living in grace, in the Holy Spirit. It is very much like Marriage...a sacrament that takes a lifetime even if the great celebration of it, the Wedding, is only for a day. ________________________________________________________________________________ Baptism Beyond Words Ritual behavior enhances all our sacraments, saying, in gesture and with special items, what words alone cannot convey. How do you proclaim the concept of new life and election as a child of God that each newly baptized person needs to grasp? Beyond the primary symbol of flowing (‘living’) water, there has grown up in the Church, from the most ancient days, an array of secondary rituals that color and define what the Sacrament celebrates. When the ceremony opens, ideally at the entry to the church building, the name that will be used for the neophyte (newly baptized) is pronounced for the first time and the cross is signed on his/her forehead. By these simple gestures the neophyte is, literally, ‘called by name’ as was Abraham, Moses, Jesus and every other member of our faith. As Jesus taught, “no one can be my disciple unless he takes up the cross to follow me.” Signing with the cross sets the tone for all that will follow, both in the baptism rite and in the life of the new Christian. Anointings are predominant in Baptism. The first, before the water ritual, is allied to the Church’s use of oil in the Sacrament of the Sick. It sees sin as a disease, a contagion, and by a healing anointing with the Oil of Catechumens, celebrates as sort of sacramental ‘vaccination’ that looks on Christian membership as a remedy for sin and a strengthening against the power of evil. The second anointing, after the water ritual, is done with Chrism – an olive oil heavily laced with perfumes and spices – to celebrate the sacred dignity the newly baptized now shares with Christ who is THE ‘anointed of God.’ A new white robe then vests the neophyte, a visual sign of what St. Paul calls a ‘putting on of Christ’ that is Baptism. And a lighted candle, taking its flame from the Easter Candle, is given for the newly baptized to carry through life until the day Christ comes in glory at the end of time. It is, by the way, from this gift of light at Baptism that the custom of putting lighted candles on a birthday cake arises...pretty strange behavior when you think about it, even though it is so ‘normal’ and expected that it is hardly a birthday without the little lights and the wish and the attempt to get them all out in one breath. Talk about ritual behavior! Finally the neophyte’s ears and lips are touched with language that recalls Christ’s opening of the ears of the deaf and the lips of the mute – Ephphatha (be opened) - one of those Aramaic words that had become sacramental language even before the Gospels were set down*, and which were placed in the mouth of Jesus as he cures [Mk 7: 34] Each baptized person is to take in God’s Word by careful listening, and then proclaim it with faith filled speech. All in all, everything we recognize about Christ’s mission from his Father becomes our own in Baptism. We become Christ-ened. * Another is the Aramaic phase Jesus uses when he restores the daughter of Jairus to life: Talitha, kum! [Mk 5: 41], _________________________________________________________________________________ Confirmation - Born Again in the Spirit Even in the biblical record there was a distinction between what was a practice of baptizing new members and their experience of sharing in the Spirit that came upon the Church at Pentecost. In their mission journeys, the Apostles meet, more than once, Christian communities in need of the fuller gifts God pours forth on his children. There is a further dimension to initiation beyond baptismal introduction to membership...a dimension that will be energized by the completion of membership that sharing in the Eucharist brings: the sense that the ‘other Christ’ we become in baptism is incomplete unless it is the ‘Christ who is sent.’ Just as surely as Jesus is sent for the salvation of the world, Christians are sent to share in that mission. It is part of the ‘apostolic’ nature of the Church itself. To be a Christian is to be sent. Confirmation is the sacrament of sending. The gestures that give visible evidence are ancient in Israel, and, indeed, within many cultures: laying on of hands and anointing with oil. A person’s hand is easily the clearest symbol of that person’s active self. Language that speaks of ‘the work of our hands’ goes far beyond just what physical craftsmanship accomplishes. The image speaks of the total product of the human person. In the same way, a person’s head is not just a convenient biological pedestal for eyes and ears and the nose, the mouth, or even the brain. The head represents the whole person. For one to lay hands upon the head is to imbue, in gesture, the transfer of mission to a new person. A new generation takes on the work. We understand as soon as we see it and accept the notion of delegation and empowerment. But there is even more. One of the primary physical attributes associated with the presence of the Holy Spirit is the movement of the air. We saw it when, long ago, we looked at the meaning of the Holy Spirit...in Hebrew and in Greek, wind, breath and spirit all represented by the same vocabulary word. Laying on of hands literally moves the air above and upon that person, invokes the Holy Spirit upon him. In much the same way the spirit is called down upon the gifts of bread and wine in the Eucharistic Prayer at Mass. The newly confirmed takes upon himself/herself that same consecration as Jesus received at the Jordan when the Father’s voice called and the wind from the beating wings of the dove in-Spirited him for his mission as messiah _______________________________________________________________________________ Sealed with the Gift The language that accompanies the celebration of Confirmation is – as with all sacraments – powerful and determinative. What is spoken defines what is done. Be sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit. Sealing, in the ancient world, had a lot more meaning than what you get with tupperware. In the Book of Revelation there is an entire course of teaching that is presented through the gradual un-sealing of a scroll. [ ch.5-8] The scroll is written front and back, which was one way, in the pre-Xerox world, of documenting important things. The text was written twice - front and back – so that there would be no mistake about the content. This scroll, about life itself and redemption in the Blood of the Lamb, also bears seven seals. Not because you need special entry to read it, but because it has the highest possible authority behind it - God Himself. Seven is always a number signifying perfection in Hebrew thought. The seal marked ownership and authorship. To seal anything, a document, a possession, even slaves, granted unique ownership and oversight to that person or thing. To ‘seal’ someone was to identity under whose authority and protection that person acts. Sort of like diplomatic credentials. In Confirmation, the candidate is so marked. He/she is of God, acts for God, acts with God’s power. Not alone, certainly, but in union with and as a member of the One Body of the Christ, a member of the Church. The confirmed takes on, with the Church the mission of the Messiah: the very salvation of the world. This is why the anointing with chrism accompanies the language of sealing. The Greek word Christ, and its Hebrew equivalent, Messiah, mean ‘the anointed one.’ The costly and distinctive aromas of perfume and spices that are added to the olive old base of chrism are meant to alert any nostril in range that this person is anointed of God and acts on behalf of God. For the success of the commission, manifold (seven-fold) gifts of the Spirit will abide with the Confirmed, and...Peace! That inner quiet that comes from knowing what one is about and why. So, the final gesture – misunderstood for quite some time as a slap on the face for reasons that came to be invented because the original reason had been forgotten or ignored: a sign of peace, a caress on the cheek: “Peace be with you.” Another Christ-ian steps into the world, Baptized in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and now sealed and strengthened as was Christ himself. _______________________________________________________________________________ Taking Away the Sins of the World On the evening of the day he rose, Jesus came to his apostles in their upper room ‘hide out’ with a dramatic commission that was possible to them only in the effect of his resurrection: Forgive sins. It’s what his own mission was from the Father, once sin is understood as the fall out from the alienation from God that is the sin of Adam. We have seen already that what Christ accomplishes is not an endless string of sin-sorrow-repentance and forgiveness. Ancient Israel had that. John the Baptist was dealing with it very nicely at the Jordan. No, what Jesus effects in humanity is the removal of the sinning, not just the sin. All is accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father and the Risen Son upon the Church, the members of Christ. Not just to bring a sinner to repent in sorrow, but to change the heart and mind and soul of the sinner. To make of each sinner another, sinless, Christ. How does one express and celebrate such a wonder? Well, it’s a long story, but a good one. We begin, as with so many things about us, with Israel. Beyond what the Baptist did by ‘washing away’ sin in water, Jews then and now celebrate their sacrament of reconciliation as the new year begins in the festival of Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement. When the temple existed, the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies, utter the sacred, never spoken name of God (Yahweh) and petition his mercy upon all the People of Israel. Hands would be laid upon a goat, the scapegoat, in a gesture that infected it with the sins of the whole nation; then it was driven into the wilderness, the realm of the desert demon Azazel. The gesture was wonderfully reversed in the ministry of Jesus when, in his cures of so many diseases and afflictions, the demons themselves were the ones driven to the wilderness. Christians needed to express this victory over sin in the person of Christ and as part of his own conquest of sin and death in the Paschal Mystery. One clear dimension of sin and freedom from sin was the union a person had with Christ...much the same concept as Israel had and cared so very much about: membership in the people of God. If one’s life was so torn by sin that communion with the synagogue was broken the sinner would be “bound over to Satan.” Once reconciled, he would be “loosed’ from that binding. Binding and loosing were our first concepts in regard to freeing people from sin. _______________________________________________________________________________ Learning How to Forgive There was no doubt or hesitation about the right of the Church to forgive. Jesus told us as much on that first Easter Sunday night when he appeared to the twelve, breathed on them the Holy Spirit and charged them to forgive.[Jn 20:22-23] How we were to do it was going to develop over centuries and be governed by circumstances well outside Church boundaries. Out first lesson came from our Mother, Israel. The synagogue had a simple understanding of a person’s status as ‘saint’ or ‘sinner’: was the person in union of faith and religious life with the qahal Israel, the assembly of Israel. If not, one was excommunicated, “bound over to Satan.” St. Paul mentions doing it on a couple of occasions to Christians whose lives were apparently destructive to the mission of the Church [1 Cor 5:5; 1 Tim 1:20] Once one realized the nothingness of no longer belonging, and repented, the bonds were loosed and the sinner was restored to membership. For both Israel and the first century Church, there was no salvation possible apart from the ‘People of God’....or, as St. Paul would recast the concept, the “Body of Christ.” It wasn’t just that one could not partake of the Eucharist and other Sacraments – that idea would come later – it was deeper than that. One simply no longer belonged. There was a rigidify about sin and forgiveness that we find hard to understand. The difference was, in part, that Jesus was expected to return again quite soon. Being faithful to the covenant of Baptism was not looked upon as a task that would last for years. Just hang in there; it won’t be long. One aspect of forgiveness that added to the Church’s practice was the understanding that forgiveness could be (should be?) granted only once in a lifetime after Baptism. [Hb 10:26] There were only four sins that came under the Church’s authority: murder, idiolatry, apostasy and adultery/fornication. Everything else was seen as forgiven by prayer, fasting, and, above all, love. [1 Pt 4:8] For these four, either self-incrimination or evidence given by other members of the Church brought about a formal separation from the Church and the imposition of a public penance that, only upon completion, would reunite the sinner with the community. ________________________________________________________________________________ Early Reconciliation We are so used to an almost ‘fast food’ approach to forgiveness and reconciliation it is like visiting another planet to remember what things were like when the sacrament of reconciliation was discovering itself. Jesus never gave us a format or exact words, as he did with Baptism and Eucharist, but he absolutely gave his Church the mandate and authority to forgive [Jn 20:22-23] Do it....but figure out how on your own...you can handle it....I trust you. Grave sin was viewed as such a break, not only with God, but with the community of the Church, that the community was involved in every aspect of the process. It would be the community itself that would reveal that a sin had been committed (remember, only the great sins of murder, idolatry, apostasy and adultery/fornication were dealt with in this public way.) There would follow a formal excommunication – not just from reception of the Eucharist, but from the Church itself. The sinner was no longer a member of the family. A gradual re-entry was then undertaken, varying from place to place, but following a general pattern. If the sinner was in holy orders, he would be returned to the ranks of the laity. If married, forbidden the marriage bed; if in business, no longer to be patronized. External signs of penance were expected. Fasting, postures of kneeling, the shaving of the head, the wearing of penitential dress. The first stage of reconciliation was to stand outside the assembly and beg prayer from those who entered. This category of penitents were known as the flentes, ‘the weepers.’ After a period, they would be admitted to the assembly but only to the point of the Liturgy of the Eucharist. They were not permitted to join in the Creed or pray the intercessions with the congregation. Members of this group were known as the audientes, ‘ the listeners.’ The final stage allowed penitents to remain for all the prayer, but not to partake of the Eucharist. These were known as the consistentes, ‘those who remain.’ At the end of the penitential period - which could go on for years - just before the Triduum (Holy Thursday to Easter), an absolution was given, hands were laid on the heads of the penitents, not just by the bishop but by the lay members as well, and the reconciled would be readmitted to communion at the Lord’s Supper Mass. That would be it, for life. No more chances. The attitude was that if one sinned again, he or she was obviously insincere in repenting and in committing to Christ. It would be up to God as to whether heaven was possible or not. Obviously, there were lessons we had to learn. And we did.
From As with many of the truly saintly members of our family, Pierre’s lowly social status made his imitation of Christ all the more powerful. He began life in 1766 as a slave, son of slaves, owned by wealthy, Catholic, French planters in Haiti. Though both his parents and his owners shared the one faith, the social conventions of master and slave were in play and Pierre labored for little more than his daily bread. The masters, Jean and Marie Berard were, however, what would pass for ‘enlightened, and they saw to it that Pierre had the use of their library and learned to read and write. When the Haitian slaves threatened to end their servitude by a violent uprising, the Berards retreated to New York City, taking Pierre and his younger sister Rosalie with them. In the far from Big Apple city, Pierre was apprenticed as a hair dresser to the society elite, including Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, and their high bouffant coifs at which he became a very well paid master. But with a difference. Like many a barber or bartender, Pierre was also a ‘father confessor’ to his clients, listening and advising, counseling and sympathizing....and also advising faith in God, prayer and imitation of Christ. His own prayers were promised for those who needed the support of his brotherly – if Black – intercession. And, he never gossiped. Never. In time he was rich. Rich enough to buy the freedom of numerous black slaves, to support orphans and immigrants through his parish church, Old St. Patrick in lower Manhattan, New York’s first cathedral, which Pierre generously endowed. He also came to the rescue of Marie Berard when her husband Jean died, pennyless after their Haitian plantation collapsed.. Although he could easily have bought his own freedom, he stayed on as a slave so that he might keep Marie in her high social state, without embarrassing her, until she died years later and even in the period of her second marriage. It was only at her death that he became a freedman, at the age of forty-one. It was then that he wed the love of his life, Juliette Noel, a Haitian slave whose freedom he had earlier purchased and who had waited for him until he felt his ‘obligations’ to the Berards were ended. His sister, Rosalie, had died a young woman, leaving a daughter that Pierre and Juliette adopted as their own, and, childless themselves, became their only family. There were, through it all, an endless stream of orphans, former slaves, migrants and immigrants who shared the home of the Toussaints and there were further charities and philanthropies they endowed: the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore, a community of black women religious; St. Vincent de Paul School for Blacks on Canal Street in New York; and orphanage for all children that Pierre and Elizabeth Ann Seton founded as fellow parishioners at Old St. Patrick’s. For the sixty years of his life in New York, Pierre was faithful at the daily 6:00 a.m. parish mass before his Berard household chores and his hairdressing appointments. In all that time he was made aware in countless ways that he was black, a slave and a member of a mistrusted immigrant Church, the Catholic Church. Despite what all would recognize as just cause to have his own Haitian slave revolt, he never assumed any attitude other than Christ’s...one that bore insult without retort or revenge, who loved even those who had enslaved him, and who found in forgiveness more black power than what any would attain by assertion of his rights as an equal child of God. For him, social justice was for everyone else; God alone was his surety. Pierre died, two years after Juliette, in 1853 at the age of 87 and was buried in Old St. Patrick Cemetery. In 1989 his body was exhumed and placed in the crypt of the present St. Patrick’s, uptown, where many of his former client’s families prayed in the days after slavery, but not yet past prejudice and injustice, for which America, and American Catholics surely need to pray. His cause for canonization is in its early stages. Pierre would be too humble to push it too fast. Worth Thinking about.... Contra Relativisitas The Enlightenment attained for the human person a freedom of thought and conscience to match the political freedoms won by the outpouring of blood in the age of revolution. The obituary for Christendom was altogether a welcome evolution that echoed the natural separation from parental authority that every adolescent toasts with the cocktail elixir of freedom and responsibility. Once the declaration of personal independence is proclaimed all will be well with the world. God – if God exists – is in heaven and all’s well on earth. If only that were true. If only anything, ever again could be true. Once the apron strings to a Mother Church were cut, there were also abandoned the comforting kitchen smells of religious consolation and the sense of family that the new political and academic associations one inhabited could scarcely approximate. In renouncing the concept of Truth, there would no longer be any steady patch of existence on which to make a stand that could endure beyond the moment. Permanence itself became a myth. In the wondrous perspective of science that revealed existence itself as a reality the knowledge of which would depend upon.....what; upon so many variables that the pursuit of its essence would be forever futile. The greater the catalogue of things known, the more immeasurable would be the expanse of ignorance. It all depends. It’s all relative. And, of course with so many possibilities for perception, who can say what the correct perception of anything might be...or even if the ability to perceive anything correctly is, itself, rightly perceived. Is learning thus to be evermore a circular riddle? As popular theory runs: education is not supposed to give you the answers; it is to provide you with more and more questions. Educational achievement is – for quite a while now – not the providing of answers but only the further elucidation of the questions. This approach has also about it the wonderful benefit for both teachers and students: there is no certain way to measure the excellence either of teaching skills nor whether anything taught has actually been learned. Nothing to be worth knowing or learning...only worth questioning and knowing the questions. And for this, what a joke it is to set or pay the $45,000 annual fee!. And yet we seek to know. To know more. To know why. About everything. And we live day by day in the fantasy that we really can attain to the Truth, acting with practical verve on the principal that what we think we know is real....is true. So fiercely do we cling to the need for Truth that, not infrequently, we will fight for and die for and even slay others for what we hold True. No one has been able yet to deactivate the gene in each of us that wants to trust what we perceive to be, really is. Is all of this what Sartre would call useless passion? Or might there truly be something there, in the very structure of ourselves that cannot be dissuaded from the cold logic: the Truth about things does exist; the Truth can be known. Growing up is not to deny the quest for Truth, it is the wedding of what has been revealed (science, religion) with what satisfies – even revolutionarily - the most profound and human of all longings: to know what is and how what is relates to Me. To deny that reality is to impose on self a life sentence of limitless pursuit of the unattainable. It misses the exultation of knowing. It makes impossible the acclamations of eureka that have echoed through the ages. It denies the perfection of knowledge that was put away with Mother Church such a little while ago, in the long scheme of things. And which can be found again, like a parent who becomes a friend, by those laugh at the adolescence of relativism in the embracing of the adult task that pursues and engages Truth until eternity makes It fully known.
THE NEWMAN FORUM Recent topics: at Swarthmore...Stem Cell Research/Moral Reflections with Prof. Bill Anderson. at Swarthmore...War, Peace and Moral Responsibility with George Weigel at Haverford.... John Paul II's Theology of the Body with Christopher West at Swarthmore...The Catholic Church in dialogue with Science with Scott Gilbert at Bryn Mawr - Christ in the Bowery - the Life and Work of Dorothy Day with Peter Jordan
Proposed Topics, 2008-2009 I. Freedom or License George Weigel II. Cultural Stability rests on Morality Francis Fukuyama III. Religion as Foundation of Freedom Only a virtuous people can be free. Freedom is not the power of doing what we like, but rather the right of being able to do what we ought. Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. George Washington IV. The Place of Natural Law in Moral Discourse George Weigel
Student Nominated Faculty Panelists Please respond with: Which of the three topics would you most like to see The Newman Forum Address at your campus this year: I. Freedom or License Which member of the Faculty would you like to invite to the discussion? Topic: I. II III IV Faculty Name;________________________________________________________ Faculty College:____________________________________ Your College______________________________________
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