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St. Thomas on the three kinds of obedience

II II 104, 6

Ad tertium dicendum quod religiosi obedientiam profitentur quantum ad reuglarem conversationem, secundum quam suis praelatis subduntur. Et ideo quantum ad illa sola obedire tenentur quae possunt ad regularem conversationem pertinere; et haec est obedientia sufficiens ad salutem. Si autem etiam in aliis obedire voluerint, hoc pertinebit ad cumulum perfectionis, dum tamen illa non sint contra Deum aut contra professionem regulae, quia talis obedientia esset illicita.

Sic ergo potest triplex obedientia distingui: una sufficiens ad salutem, quae scilicet obedit in his ad quae obligatur; alia perfecta, quae obedit in omnibus licitis; alia indiscreta, quae etiam in illicitis obedit.

So where does Jesuit obedience fall? Same blame the Jesuits for bringing upon Catholics a culture of "slavish and unquestioning obedience"; others blame voluntarism, while some make a connection between the two. Because of "slavish and unquestioning obedience" the disastrous liturgical reform of the 60s and 70s were implemented without much protest from the laity. (See, for example, Geoffrey Hull, The Banished Heart.) Still, I wonder if this is a fair charge to lay at St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuit Constitutions.

Christian Order article that mentions The Banished Heart
Dr. Hull's Essay, The Proto-History of the Roman Liturgical Reform
Some links

Miscellaneous
Nicholas Wilton Sacred Choral Music
Dominicanus

Holy See to U.N. on Religious Freedom

Holy See to U.N. on Religious Freedom

"A Fundamental Element of the Common Good"

GENEVA, MARCH 30, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is the March 22 address which Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See's permanent observer to the United Nations at Geneva, delivered to the Ordinary Session of the Human Rights Council on the theme of religious freedom.

* * *

Mr. President,

1. The notable increase of interest in religion for its impact on the lives of individuals and of societies around the world is a phenomenon that finds -- rightly so -- an echo also in the Human Rights Council.

Abuse of rights of believers, even outright violence against them, state restrictions, undue impositions and persecution, public insult to religious feelings, unfortunately persist and call for remedy.

The delegation of the Holy See appreciates and fully supports the openness of the new council to uphold a universal vision of human rights protection.

A major contribution of the council is an approach that is inclusive and consistent with existing provisions in human rights instruments and declarations that clearly support, among other rights, freedom of religion, of expression, of conscience, of worship in private and in public, and respect of religious convictions for believers of all faiths and for nonbelievers alike.

2. The Holy See delegation observes with preoccupation the emergence of an apparent dilemma between respect due to religions and the right to religious freedom as if they were incompatible and mutually exclusive aspects. On the contrary, they are complementary values that cannot stand one without the other.

The religious dimension of the human person, his attitude before transcendence and the consequent ethical demands, make up a concrete and fundamental manifestation of his or her capacity of free auto-determination. It is a basic reference point of personal and social behavior. Religions can offer, and in fact do offer, a solid foundation for the defense of the values of personal and social justice, for respect of others and of nature.

3. In the course of history, there have been sad episodes of religious fanaticism with tragic social results. Yet religions are among those social factors that, together with science, have most contributed to the progress of humanity through the promotion of cultural, artistic, social and humanitarian values. Therefore any religion that preaches or condones violence, intolerance and hatred renders itself unworthy of the name.

On the other hand, we cannot avoid noticing that besides pseudo-religious fanaticism there is evidence on occasions of a certain anti-religious fanaticism that denigrates religion or, generally, the faithful of a religion, by attributing to them responsibility for violent actions done today or in the past by some members of that religion.

The legitimate criticism of certain forms of behavior of followers of a religion should not turn into insult or unjust defamation nor into offensive mockery of its revered persons, practices, rites or symbols. Respect for the rights and dignity of others should mark the limit of any right, even that of the free expression and manifestation of one's opinions, religious ones included.

4. Respect for the human person and his or her dignity implies respect for his freedom in religious matters to profess, practice and publicly manifest one's religion without being mocked, injured or discriminated against. Respect for religion means respect of those who have chosen to follow it and practice it in a free and pacific way, in private and in public, individually or collectively.

Offense to a religion, especially when it is that of a minority, brings about some coercion against its followers that will make it more difficult to profess, practice and manifest this religion in public.

5. The subject of religion and the subject of freedom is always the human person, whose dignity is at the origin of fundamental rights. The respect for any religion is based in the end on the respect that is due to all those who, in the exercise of their freedom, follow and practice it.

Of course, such respect cannot imply contempt or attacks on the rights of people who do not follow the same religion or follow other convictions. In this way, the issue of respect due to religions should find its explicit foundation in the rights of religious freedom and freedom of expression.

Consequently, the promotion of respect for the rights of freedom of religion and freedom of expression should not leave aside the respect for concrete religions, beliefs and opinions in which such rights are realized.

One cannot consider the ridicule of the sacred as a right of freedom. In the full respect of the right of expression, mechanisms or instruments need to be developed, coherent with the human rights provisions that would defend the message of religious communities from manipulation and would avoid a disrespectful presentation of their members.

Mr. President,

6. In conclusion, a really democratic state values religious freedom as a fundamental element of the common good, worthy of respect and protection, and creates the conditions that allow its citizens to live and act freely. If the discussion focuses only on religious tolerance and defamation of religion, it limits the range of rights and the contribution that religions offer.

In fact, the impression could develop that religion is tolerated on the base of cultural, ethnic, political circumstances, that could change or even turn into forms of coercion, and is not recognized as a fundamental human right inherent in every human person.

A comprehensive approach, that sees respect of religion rooted in the freedom that every human person is entitled to enjoy in a balance of rights with others and with society, appears as the reasonable way forward.

Thank you, Mr. President.

[Original text in English; text adapted]

Pope's Study of Church Fathers Not Just for Catholics

Pope's Study of Church Fathers Not Just for Catholics

Interview With Theologian David Warner

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, MARCH 28, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI's Wednesday-audience series on the Apostolic Fathers can give us hope for unity among Christians, says a Catholic theologian who was once an evangelical Protestant minister.

In this interview with ZENIT, David Warner discusses how reading Church Fathers led to his return to the Catholic Church and offers some reflections on the Pope's teachings.

Warner is now a senior fellow of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology in Steubenville, Ohio, and an adjunct professor for the University of Sacramento, California.

Q: How have the early Church Fathers been influential in your own life, first as a Protestant minister and later as a Catholic?

Warner: I left the Catholic Church during my high school years. A far-ranging search led me away from the Church and toward a Christianity of my own invention.

After three years of wandering, I re-embraced Trinitarian theology and had an evangelical conversion to the divinity and lordship of Jesus Christ. This was the beginning of what turned out to be a rediscovery of, and return to, what the Nicene Creed calls the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church."

Again and again during my 18-year sojourn through various streams of Protestantism, I kept coming back to study the early centuries of Christianity.

While teaching a survey course in Church history, I became convinced that I was incompletely joined to the one Church directly established by Christ and witnessed to by the Fathers.

Reading the Apostolic Fathers and the second-century apologists forced me to come to grips with the thoroughly "Catholic" elements of early Christianity.

There was no escaping the fact that already in the first generations, Christians believed, for example, in a sacramental theology, a hierarchy led by bishops who were appointed by the first apostles, and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

As a Catholic, my Christian formation was corrected and enriched by studying for three university degrees in Catholic theology. My favorite studies related to patristics.

Whether I was researching biblical, systematic, moral, historical, or pastoral theology; Catholic education or ecumenism; a common point of integration was to discover what the earliest theologians and pastors taught and practiced.

My doctoral studies centered on the 19th-century English convert, Cardinal Newman, who, like so many recent evangelical ministers including myself, returned to the fullness of the ancient Church largely through the influence of the Fathers.

Q: Why would non-Catholic Christians be any more interested in the Fathers of the first couple of centuries than in later saints and doctors of the Church?

Warner: In the Apostolic Fathers and the earliest bishops and apologists, we have the earliest links in the chain that connects today's Christians with the Twelve.

Quoting a second-century bishop, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Benedict XVI reminded us that St. Clement, the third bishop of Rome in succession from St. Peter, had the first apostles' "preaching in his ears, and their tradition before his eyes."

Pope Clement had no qualms about asserting his extra-local apostolic authority, teaching and correcting the Church of Corinth, in distant Greece.

Other great bishops whom Benedict XVI explores, like St. Ignatius of Antioch, and St. Polycarp died as martyrs for the truth they knew they had received directly from the original apostles who had taught them.

I remember reasoning while still a Protestant minister, that if Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and Irenaeus could not get it right after just one or two generations, then what hope did I have for believing that Jesus was who the New Testament claimed he was, or that he had founded a Church that would kick in the gates of hell, and be led by the Spirit of truth until his return?

In the end, I wearied of trying to be my own pope, and returned to the Church of the Fathers.

Q: How do you think non-Catholic Christians and others will view Benedict XVI's catechesis on the Fathers of the early Church?

Warner: It is unlikely that many of them will, in fact, come across these teachings directly. But for those who do, their reactions will be influenced by their preconceived ideas and present convictions.

Those who are of a more sociohistorical revisionist persuasion will tend to categorize Benedict's teachings as being nothing more than a repetition of "history as told by the victors" in the ancient battles for orthodoxy.

For them, a seemingly endless stream of "lost gospels" and "new discoveries" are at least complementary to, if not equal or superior to, sacred Scripture and the orthodox writings of the early bishops and saints.

It is a case study for what Cardinal Ratzinger warned of in his homily just before the papal conclave: "Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. … We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain."

We have become accustomed, for example, to being bombarded through the media every Christmas and Easter with wild theories regarding Jesus and the varieties of early Christian belief, appealing to so-called suppressed writings.

Typically, these were written by pseudonymous authors claiming to be one of the apostles or their companions. Many of these manuscripts promoted Gnostic teachings that were already being warned against by the New Testament authors in the first century.

They were rejected by the early bishops as being unfaithful to the teachings of Christ, as passed down through the apostles and their successors.

One encouraging sign is the growing interest among some Protestant scholars and pastors who are fascinated with the project of rediscovering and adapting the unique worldview, theology and spirituality of the Fathers.

Seeking to become more "Catholic" without necessarily becoming "Roman," many evangelical theologians and publishers are producing serious studies on the biblical theology of the Fathers.

This is a promising path of potential convergence that could serve Benedict XVI's own ecumenical commitments. I think these brothers and sisters in Christ might find food for thought and an expansion of their religious imagination by the Pope's patristic reflections.

Q: Do you have any thoughts on why Benedict XVI would choose to teach on these early Christian Fathers just now?

Warner: The present Wednesday-audience series on the Fathers began on March 7, 2007. It is a continuation of the Pope's catechesis on the mystery of the Church that began a year ago in March 2006, with weekly meditations on each of the Twelve Apostles.

By October, he was ready to draw our attention to St. Paul and his collaborators: apostolic men like Timothy and Titus -- early bishops, and lay leaders in the Church like the married couple, Aquila and Priscilla.

Benedict XVI is trying to follow Our Lord's command to Peter to "feed my sheep." The food he has chosen to provide us during this series is the tremendous heritage of holy men and women who lived and died as witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and his Church during the first centuries of the Christian era.

From their witness, we can better understand the mystery of the Church as the "presence of Christ among men."

For Catholics, salvation history is the drama of God's unfolding plan for his people. This story can be read in the pages of sacred Scripture and Church history. Benedict XVI's reflections are designed to cause us to reconsider the essential nature and mission of the Church in the context of salvation history.

Q: What common ground can Christians find in the Fathers, and how might this help ecumenical efforts?

Warner: The Fathers can inform and challenge Christians of every description. Protestants can rediscover their forgotten roots. This in turn often results in an increased appreciation for Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and other episcopal and liturgical traditions.

In other cases, openness to the Fathers becomes a steppingstone toward embracing what we believe to be the fullness of Christian faith and practice found within the Catholic Church.

Catholics can and should rediscover some of the patristic priorities that modern evangelicals are noted for, including: living in and for Christ; reverencing and studying the Bible as the unique, authoritative written word of God; and becoming better informed and enthusiastic witnesses to Jesus Christ, the one and only savior of the world.

We can reaffirm our Catholic tradition of promoting all of the gifts of the Spirit -- including the charismatic and hierarchical gifts -- toward the end of Christian maturity and unity. All of these distinctive traits are clearly taught and modeled in the Fathers.

We can relearn how to "breathe with both lungs," a phrase Pope John Paul II often used to refer to drawing from both the Western and Eastern Christian traditions of theology and spirituality.

Many of the earliest Fathers were in fact "Eastern"; they lived in the Near East or Northeast Africa, and wrote in Greek and other non-Latin tongues. Our Eastern Orthodox brothers have the highest regard for the same figures the Pope is holding up for our example and instruction.

Benedict XVI gives us hope for Christian unity by directing us to Ignatius of Antioch who was "truly a doctor of unity." He taught the unity of the Trinity, the unity of the Incarnate Logos, and the unity of the Church in the bonds of love.

Ignatius' prescription for authentic spirituality and ecumenism was "a progressive synthesis between configuration to Christ -- union with him, life in him -- and dedication to his Church -- union with the bishop, generous service to the community and the world."

The Second Vatican Council taught that authentic ecumenism begins with individual, interior repentance and renewal. This can lead to a broader institutional humility and renewal, and docility toward the lessons of history.

Through the Fathers' writings, all Christians may learn from these privileged witnesses to the sacred deposit of faith entrusted by Our Lord to the first apostles. The first- and second-century Fathers and apologists serve as windows into the mystery of the Church as "one, holy, catholic and apostolic."

On St. Irenaeus of Lyons

On St. Irenaeus of Lyons

"The First Great Theologian of the Church"

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 28, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave at the general audience today in St. Peter's Square. The reflection focused on St. Irenaeus of Lyons.

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

In the catechesis on the great figures of the Church during the first centuries, today we reach the figure of an eminent personality, Irenaeus of Lyons. His biographical information comes from his own testimony, sent down to us by Eusebius in the fifth book of the "Storia Ecclesiastica."

Irenaeus was most probably born in Smyrna (today Izmir, in Turkey) between the years 135 and 140. There, while still a youth, he attended the school of Bishop Polycarp, for his part, a disciple of the apostle John. We do not know when he moved from Asia Minor to Gaul, but the move must have coincided with the first developments of the Christian community in Lyons: There, in 177, we find Irenaeus mentioned among the college of presbyters.

That year he was sent to Rome, bearer of a letter from the community of Lyons to Pope Eleutherius. The Roman mission took Irenaeus away from the persecution by Marcus Aurelius, in which at least 48 martyrs died, among them the bishop of Lyons himself, the 90-year-old Pothinus, who died of mistreatment in jail. Thus, on his return, Irenaeus was elected bishop of the city. The new pastor dedicated himself entirely to his episcopal ministry, which ended around 202-203, perhaps by martyrdom.

Irenaeus is above all a man of faith and a pastor. Like the Good Shepherd, he has prudence, a richness of doctrine, and missionary zeal. As a writer, he aims for a twofold objective: to defend true doctrine from the attacks of the heretics, and to clearly expound the truth of the faith. His two works still in existence correspond exactly to the fulfillment of these two objectives: the five books "Against Heresies," and the "Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching" (which could be called the oldest "catechism of Christian doctrine"). Without a doubt, Irenaeus is the champion in the fight against heresies.

The Church of the second century was threatened by so-called gnosticism, a doctrine which claimed that the faith taught by the Church was nothing more than symbolism for the simpleminded, those unable to grasp more difficult things. Instead, the initiated, the intellectuals -- they called themselves gnostics -- could understand what was behind the symbolism, and thus would form an elite, intellectual Christianity.

Obviously, this intellectual Christianity became more and more fragmented with different currents of thought, often strange and extravagant, yet attractive to many. A common element within these various currents was dualism, that is, a denial of faith in the only God, Father of all, creator and savior of humanity and of the world. To explain the evil in the world, they asserted the existence of a negative principle, next to the good God. This negative principle had created matter, material things.

Firmly rooted in the biblical doctrine of Creation, Irenaeus refuted dualism and the gnostic pessimism that devalued corporal realities. He decisively affirmed the original holiness of matter, of the body, of the flesh, as well as of the spirit. But his work goes far beyond the refutation of heresies: In fact, one can say that he presents himself as the first great theologian of the Church, who established systematic theology. He himself speaks about the system of theology, that is, the internal coherence of the faith.

The question of the "rule of faith" and its transmission lies at the heart of his doctrine. For Irenaeus, the "rule of faith" coincides in practice with the Apostles' Creed, and gives us the key to interpret the Gospel, to interpret the creed in light of the Gospel. The apostolic symbol, a sort of synthesis of the Gospel, helps us understand what the Gospel means, how we must read the Gospel itself.

In fact, the Gospel preached by St. Irenaeus is the one he received from Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, and the Gospel of Polycarp goes back to the apostle John, Polycarp having been John's disciple. Thus, the true teaching is not that invented by the intellectuals, rising above the simple faith of the Church. The true Gospel is preached by the bishops who have received it thanks to an uninterrupted chain from the apostles.

These men have taught nothing but the simple faith, which is also the true depth of the revelation of God. Thus, says Irenaeus, there is no secret doctrine behind the common creed of the Church. There is no superior Christianity for intellectuals. The faith publicly professed by the Church is the faith common to all. Only this faith is apostolic, coming from the apostles, that is, from Jesus and from God.

To adhere to this faith publicly taught by the apostles to their successors, Christians must observe what the bishops say. They must specifically consider the teaching of the Church of Rome, pre-eminent and ancient. This Church, because of its age, has the greatest apostolicity; in fact its origins come from the columns of the apostolic college, Peter and Paul. All the Churches must be in harmony with the Church of Rome, recognizing in it the measure of the true apostolic tradition and the only faith common to the Church.

With these arguments, very briefly summarized here, Irenaeus refutes the very foundation of the aims of the gnostics, of these intellectuals: First of all, they do not possess a truth that would be superior to the common faith, given that what they say is not of apostolic origin, but invented by them. Second, truth and salvation are not a privilege monopolized by a few, but something that everyone can reach through the preaching of the apostles' successors, and, above all, that of the Bishop of Rome.

By taking issue with the "secret" character of the gnostic tradition and by contesting its multiple intrinsic contradictions, Irenaeus concerns himself with illustrating the genuine concept of Apostolic Tradition, that we could summarize in three points.

a) The Apostolic Tradition is "public," not private or secret. For Irenaeus, there is no doubt that the content of the faith transmitted by the Church is that received from the apostles and from Jesus, the Son of God. There is no teaching aside from this. Therefore, for one who wishes to know the true doctrine, it is enough to know "the Tradition that comes from the Apostles and the faith announced to men": tradition and faith that "have reached us through the succession of bishops" ("Adv. Haer." 3,3,3-4). Thus, the succession of bishops, personal principle, Apostolic Tradition, and doctrinal principle all coincide.

b) The Apostolic Tradition is "one." While gnosticism is divided into many sects, the Church's Tradition is one in its fundamental contents, which -- as we have seen -- Irenaeus calls "regula fidei" or "veritatis." And given that it is one, it creates unity among peoples, different cultures and different communities. It has a common content like that of truth, despite different languages and cultures.

There is a beautiful expression that Irenaeus uses in the book "Against Heresies": "The Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes these points (of doctrine) just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. For, although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same. For the Churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world."

We can already see at this time -- we are in the year 200 -- the universality of the Church, its catholicity and the unifying force of truth, which unites these so-very-different realities, from Germany, to Spain, to Italy, to Egypt, to Libya, in the common truth revealed to us by Christ.

c) Finally, the Apostolic Tradition is, as he says in Greek, the language in which he wrote his book, "pneumatic," that is, spiritual, led by the Holy Spirit. In Greek, spirit is "pneuma." It is not a transmission entrusted to the abilities of more or less educated men, but the Spirit of God who guarantees faithfulness in the transmission of the faith.

This is the "life" of the Church, that which makes the Church always young, that is, fruitful with many charisms. Church and Spirit are inseparable for Irenaeus. This faith, we read in the third book of "Against Heresies," "which, having been received from the Church, we do preserve, and which always, by the Spirit of God, renewing its youth, as if it were some precious deposit in an excellent vessel, causes the vessel itself containing it to renew its youth also. … For where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church, and every kind of grace" (3,24,1).

As we can see, Irenaeus does not stop at defining the concept of Tradition. His tradition, uninterrupted Tradition, is not traditionalism, because this Tradition is always internally vivified by the Holy Spirit, which makes it alive again, allows it to be interpreted and understood in the vitality of the Church.

According to his teaching, the Church's faith must be preached in such a way that it appears as it must appear, that is "public," "one," "pneumatic," "spiritual." From each of these characteristics, one can glean a fruitful discernment of the authentic transmission of the faith in the Church of today.

More generally, in the doctrine of Irenaeus, human dignity, body and soul, is firmly rooted in Divine Creation, in the image of Christ and in the permanent work of sanctification of the Spirit. This doctrine is like the "main road" to clarify to all people of good will, the object and the limits of dialogue on values, and to give an ever new impulse to the missionary activities of the Church, to the strength of truth which is the source of all the true values in the world.

[Translation by ZENIT]

[After the audience, Benedict XVI greeted visitors in various languages. In English, he said:]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Continuing our catechesis on the Church Fathers, we turn now to Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, a great theologian and bishop at the end of the second century. In his writings, Irenaeus clearly sets forth the contents of the apostolic faith and appeals to the Church's living tradition in order to defend that faith from false teachings. He thus emphasizes the regula fidei: the "rule of faith" contained in the Apostles' Creed and in the Gospel proclaimed by the Church's Bishops. The Gospel Irenaeus preached was the Gospel preached by his teacher Polycarp, who in turn received it from the Apostle John in an unbroken line of succession going back to Christ himself. Irenaeus also writes of the unique authority of the Church of Rome as founded on the Apostles. This zealous pastor illustrates for us three important characteristics of the Apostolic Tradition: it is "public", because it is available to all through the teaching of the Bishops; it is "one", because its content remains the same despite the variety of languages and cultures; and it is "pneumatic", because, through it, the Holy Spirit continues to enliven and renew the Church even today.

I am pleased to welcome the many English-speaking pilgrims present. In a special way, I offer cordial greetings to the priests from the Institute for Continuing Theological Education and to the students of the NATO Defense College. Upon all of you I invoke God's blessings of peace and joy.

© Copyright 2007 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana

José Ortega y Gasset

José Ortega y Gasset

Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses

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José Ortega y Gasset

Dr. Pakaluk on the virtus controversy

Thi manlynesse [L. humanitatem tuam] shewid to alle men

Robert Kaster's review of Myles McDonnell, Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic.
Myles McDonnell's reply

In the end though, how many people care about the historical account of how equivocal uses of a word came about, and what those uses are? After all, naming is flexible, and a word can come to have as many meanings or definitions as the mind sees fit. Those who fail to recognize this may argue that naming must be purely univocal but it is an unreasonable demand.

(This is not to say that definitions for a specific thing are equally good--just that a name can be applied to different things, and it is not necessary for it to be applied to one thing only.)

The Atheistic Delusion

The Atheistic Delusion

Religion's Critics Taken to Task

By Father John Flynn

ROME, MARCH 26, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The spate of recent attacks on God and religion has not gone unanswered. Among the replies to last year's book "The God Delusion," by Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, is the just-published book by Alister McGrath, "The Dawkins Delusion?" (SPCK). McGrath is a professor of historical theology at Oxford.

In the introduction to the book he co-authored, McGrath admits that in the 1960s he was, as Dawkins is now, an atheist. Dawkins is an expert in evolutionary biology; similarly, McGrath started out in science, earning a doctorate in molecular biophysics.

But he then switched to theology and, as he explains: "I subsequently found myself persuaded that Christianity was a much more interesting and intellectually exciting world view than atheism."

McGrath declares himself disappointed with the level of argument in Dawkins' book, which he describes as "the atheist equivalent of slick hellfire preaching, substituting turbo-charged rhetoric and highly selective manipulation of facts for careful, evidence-based thinking." He adds: "Dawkins preaches to his god-hating choirs," relying on pseudoscientific speculation and aggregating convenient factoids.

A delusion?

McGrath devotes a chapter to explaining why God is not a delusion, as Dawkins maintained. He observes that the definitions used by Dawkins to describe faith, such as a "process of non-thinking," are foreign to a Christian definition of faith.

Dawkins is correct in arguing that we need to examine our beliefs, McGrath acknowledges. To that end children need to receive a true and accurate instruction in Christianity. It would be far more damaging, he contends, for them to have their heads filled with the superficial and erroneous arguments that Dawkins uses.

Most of us, McGrath points out, hold many beliefs we cannot prove to be true, but they are, nevertheless, reasonable to entertain. Thus, these beliefs are justifiable, without being absolutely proven in an empirical sense. This situation occurs not only in the area of religion, but also in science, where there are many theories that have not reached the status of being conclusively proved.

McGrath also cites what some prominent scientists, such as Stephen Jay Gould, a biologist in the United States, and Sir Martin Rees, president of the British Royal Society, had said about religion. Both of them admitted the limits of science and accepted that science and religion are not by their nature mutually exclusive.

Moreover, many of the great questions about life, McGrath points out, can be explained by a number of theories and there is no absolute scientific proof available. In addition, there are questions that lie beyond the scope of the scientific method, such as deciding whether there is purpose within nature.

Another prominent scientist, Sir Peter Medawar, who was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work in immunology, dealt with this subject in his book "The Limits of Science." McGrath explains that Medawar distinguished between transcendent questions, which are better left to religion and metaphysics, and inquiries into the organization and structure of the material universe.

A further demonstration that Dawkins is not representative of scientific thought is the fact that in 2006, the year "The God Delusion" appeared, three leading research scientists published books that admitted the validity of a space for the divine in the universe. They were: Owen Gingerich, "God's Universe"; Francis Collins, "The Language of God"; and Paul Davies, "The Goldilocks Enigma."

"Dawkins is forced," McGrath concludes, "to contend with the highly awkward fact that his view that the natural sciences are an intellectual superhighway to atheism is rejected by most scientists, irrespective of their religious views."

Being evil

Another argument used by Dawkins is that God and religion are evil, being responsible for all sorts of violence and abuses in mankind's history. McGrath readily admits that violence which draws its inspiration from religion is clearly something to be rejected.

McGrath, who grew up in Northern Ireland, had plenty of experience with religious violence. Nevertheless, he points out that it is an entirely different proposition to argue that violence is an inherent element of religion. Dawkins also errs in making out atheism to be a universally benign influence. A look at 20th-century history readily provides abundant examples of politically motivated violence, not least of which was that committed by the atheistic regime of the Soviet Union.

Clearly, people are capable of both violence and moral excellence, McGrath points out, and both of these qualities may be provoked by worldviews, religious or otherwise. It is true that religion can turn human conflicts into battles of good and evil. At the same time, a society that rejects God then tends to hold up as an absolute other realities or concepts. Thus, the French Revolution in its effort to replace Christianity with secular ideals carried out violent repression as it sought to impose its principles.

Another book, from 2006, also dealt with the question of violence and replied to criticisms made against religion. Keith Ward, professor of divinity at Gresham College, London, in "Is Religion Dangerous?" (Lion Hudson), argues that the world would be a lot worse off without religion.

Ward admits that there are examples of religiously inspired violence, but that a lack of faith can also lead to destructive impulses and evil. It is true that religious texts such as the Bible can be misused for unjust purposes. But this is achieved only when vital precepts, such as love of God and neighbor are ignored, and when the texts are taken out of context.

Seeking good

All human beings, Ward argues, are susceptible to the temptation of evil, whether they be religious or not. How to guard against this? One of the best ways, he suggests, is a set of beliefs that teaches principles of right and wrong and motivates us to repentance and to seek goodness.

Instead of making generic charges about "religion being dangerous," we should be asking whether a particular religion in its specific context might be dangerous, Ward contends. The answer to this question will vary according to the circumstances. In general, he continues, most of the time religion is one of the forces making both for social stability and for morally serious debate and reform.

Certainly, the threat of Islamic terrorism has led to concerns over religiously inspired violence. But, this is just one way in which Islam has been interpreted. A number of other social and political factors, not religious in nature, have also played a role in promoting this violence. And while the media give much attention to religious violence, a lot of the strife in today's world has little to do with religion. Moreover, when religion does promote violence it is often in a situation where religion has become blended with political institutions, and it is then used in an instrumental way to justify the use of force.

We should also recall all the positive contributions made by religion, Ward explains in one chapter. The example of charity left to us by Jesus has inspired people over the centuries to follow a life of loving others. Christianity also has inspired countless hospitals, schools and universities, as well as great works of art, literature and music.

Christian faith also encouraged rational enquiry into the material world and gave rise to modern science. The Christian belief in the dignity of human life played a crucial role in developing ideals of human rights. Religion, Ward concludes, can be one of the most positive forces for good in human life.

The Fragility of the Human Body

What is the explanation from evolution why human beings are not like other apes? Not having fur, and so on?

To complete the argument, I would have to look at the necessity of shoes for protection. There are various peoples who still do not wear shoes and can manage without footware--but can they handle the same wear and tear that other apes can handle? Or are humans more vulnerable to injury in comparison to them? Perhaps the human body is not as fragile as we who live in rather pampered societies might think. Still, one wonders if it is easier to injure the human foot than it is to injure, say, the foot of a gorilla?

Nature equips us with a fragile body? Very little protection against the elements? Why not keep a more ape-like body, with more hair and fur, tougher skin and feet, etc.?

On the other hand, humans would not need protection if it came from another source? (From God, in the form of a preternatural gift.) If in comparison to the other apes we are weak and vulnerable, these facts, coupled with a proper argument for the wisdom and goodness of Divine Providence, might signal to the non-believer to some event like original sin.

Might it also be an argument against evolution? After all, if having a hairy body is still a benefit, what is the advantage of losing fur? It is not clear to me that hair would significantly impede the application of reason to various tasks, or confer a reproductive advantage. (Unless one wants to argue that humans who are less hairy are somewhat more sexually attractive, but if this is solely due to perception and does not involve a chemical signal, what is the mechanism? Those who have less hair would be at a disadvantage in colder climates, but in warmer climates... one can survive despite having a lot of body hair? How is hairiness selected for or against? And what causes thickness of hair? And the density of hair follicles?)

An argument against this might be that humans have intellects which enable them to fashion tools with which they can compensate for what they lack by nature (see Aristotle). But why should they lack the protective features other animals/apes have in the first place? Does it spur intellectual development? Create an incentive for the acquisition of some compensating benefit?

In science fiction one often sees a manifestation of the gnostic tendency coupled to evolutionary theory -- as humans become more "intellectual," or more evolutionary advanced, the weaker the body the becomes-- the mind becomes everything, the body nothing. (For example, the first sequel to the original Planet of the Apes.)

Is Scholastic sacramental theology responsible?

For the loss of a proper understanding of the liturgy? Or could we not point fingers at the fact that the liturgy was in a dead language instead?

Cardinal Ratzinger, How Should We Worship,
(print-friendly)

It is important, in this connection, to interpret the "substantial continuity" correctly. The author expressly warns us against the wrong path up which we might be led by a Neoscholastic sacramental theology that is disconnected from the living form of the Liturgy. On that basis, people might reduce the "substance" to the matter and form of the sacrament and say: Bread and wine are the matter of the sacrament; the words of institution are its form. Only these two things are really necessary; everything else is changeable. At this point modernists and traditionalists are in agreement: As long as the material gifts are there, and the words of institution are spoken, then everything else is freely disposable. Many priests today, unfortunately, act in accordance with this motto; and the theories of many liturgists are unfortunately moving in the same direction. They want to overcome the limits of the rite, as being something fixed and immovable, and construct the products of their fantasy, which are supposedly "pastoral", around this remnant, this core that has been spared and that is thus either relegated to the realm of magic or loses any meaning whatever. The Liturgical Movement had in fact been attempting to overcome this reductionism, the product of an abstract sacramental theology, and to teach us to understand the Liturgy as a living network of Tradition that had taken concrete form, that cannot be torn apart into little pieces but that has to be seen and experienced as a living whole. Anyone who, like me, was moved by this perception at the time of the Liturgical Movement on the eve of the Second Vatican Council can only stand, deeply sorrowing, before the ruins of the very things they were concerned for.

This is potentially an example of the problem of using facile historical explanations that seek a root in some simple "intellectual" cause to explain some practice or development. Fortunately, it takes the form of a waning--do not adopt a simplistic understanding of the liturgy and disregard its organic development over time. Still, it would not surprise me if there are polemicists who seek to put the blame of everything that is wrong in the Church on scholasticism and neo-scholasticism, including the Church's liturgical problems.

The problem is not the analysis, but rather the deficiencies in catechesis of the one studying scholastic theology.

Similarly, some have criticized the causal analysis of the sacraments offered by scholastic theologians as being too narrow or inadequate.

The Anaphora of Addai and Mari
Guidelines on Eucharist Between Chaldean and Assyrian Churches (Vatican.va)
The East Syrian Liturgical Tradition
Mar Thoma: The Apostolic Foundation of the Assyrian Church and the ...
SYRIAC SOURCES AND RESOURCES FOR BYZANTINISTS Sebastian Brock ...

Fr. Taft, S.J. comments on the decision regarding the Anaphora of Addai and Mari:
Mass Without the Consecration?
A reaction from the SSPX

doc

John Allen reports:

Taft calls the agreement “the most remarkable Catholic magisterial document since Vatican II.” He believes that by treating consecration as something accomplished by the entire liturgical prayer, and not by an isolated set of “magic words,” the Vatican has repudiated a quasi-mechanistic understanding that “seriously warped popular Catholic understanding of the Eucharist.”

Rome Diary #48
Fr. McBrien
On Studying the Liturgy
By Father Allyne Smith, Th.D.

Anaphoren ohne „direkte“ Wandlungsworte bereits unter Pius XI. (1922-1939)
Ein Beitrag zu einer aktuellen Diskussion
von P. Martin Lugmayr FSSP

Potpourri pdf

Still, I wonder if the ruling on the anaphora is the last word from Rome on the matter, or whether the case put forward by certain scholars that the words of consecration were originally present in the liturgy but were gradually removed from the texts has any water. Is it not a legitimate question to ask when Christ becomes sacramentally present? Either He is present or He is not--there is no middle ground (otherwise one violates the principle of non-contradiction.) And if He is present, what is the formal cause of the sacrament? (As I think about it, perhaps formal cause is not the right way to explain it--after all, is not the formal cause of Christ being present in the Sacred Species something else? I guess I'll have to study more Thomistic sacramental theology.)

What to do about illegal drugs?

1. Massive public education program on the effects of drug use, particularly the negative effects on health, self-control/real freedom and responsibility. (Prevent sellers from having the excuse that they didn't know how bad the product is, they're just meeting the demands of the market. In actuality they are taking advantage of human weakness and exploiting others in order to make a living.)

2. Increase of economic opportunities that will provide a decent alternative to selling drugs.

3. After the first two steps have been taken and some time has passed--the introduction of harsher penalties, including possibly the death penalty for those at the top of the pyramid?

The Year Without Toilet Paper

The Year Without Toilet Paper
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

By PENELOPE GREEN
Published: March 22, 2007

DINNER was the usual affair on Thursday night in Apartment 9F in an elegant prewar on Lower Fifth Avenue. There was shredded cabbage with fruit-scrap vinegar; mashed parsnips and yellow carrots with local butter and fresh thyme; a terrific frittata; then homemade yogurt with honey and thyme tea, eaten under the greenish flickering light cast by two beeswax candles and a fluorescent bulb.

A sour odor hovered oh-so-slightly in the air, the faint tang, not wholly unpleasant, that is the mark of the home composter. Isabella Beavan, age 2, staggered around the neo-Modern furniture — the Eames chairs, the brown velvet couch, the Lucite lamps and the steel cafe table upon which dinner was set — her silhouette greatly amplified by her organic cotton diapers in their enormous boiled-wool, snap-front cover.

A visitor avoided the bathroom because she knew she would find no toilet paper there.

Meanwhile, Joseph, the liveried elevator man who works nights in the building, drove his wood-paneled, 1920s-era vehicle up and down its chute, unconcerned that the couple in 9F had not used his services in four months. “I’ve noticed,” Joseph said later with a shrug and no further comment. (He declined to give his last name. “I’ve got enough problems,” he said.)

Welcome to Walden Pond, Fifth Avenue style. Isabella’s parents, Colin Beavan, 43, a writer of historical nonfiction, and Michelle Conlin, 39, a senior writer at Business Week, are four months into a yearlong lifestyle experiment they call No Impact. Its rules are evolving, as Mr. Beavan will tell you, but to date include eating only food (organically) grown within a 250-mile radius of Manhattan; (mostly) no shopping for anything except said food; producing no trash (except compost, see above); using no paper; and, most intriguingly, using no carbon-fueled transportation.

Mr. Beavan, who has written one book about the origins of forensic detective work and another about D-Day, said he was ready for a new subject, hoping to tread more lightly on the planet and maybe be an inspiration to others in the process.

Also, he needed a new book project and the No Impact year was the only one of four possibilities his agent thought would sell. This being 2007, Mr. Beavan is showcasing No Impact in a blog (noimpactman.com) laced with links and testimonials from New Environmentalist authorities like treehugger.com. His agent did indeed secure him a book deal, with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and he and his family are being tailed by Laura Gabbert, a documentary filmmaker and Ms. Conlin’s best friend.

Why there may be a public appetite for the Conlin-Beavan family doings has a lot to do with the very personal, very urban face of environmentalism these days. Thoreau left home for the woods to make his point (and secure his own book deal); Mr. Beavan and Ms. Conlin and others like them aren’t budging from their bricks-and-mortar, haut-bourgeois nests.

Mr. Beavan looks to groups like the Compacters (sfcompact.blogspot.com), a collection of nonshoppers that began in San Francisco, and the 100 Mile Diet folks (100milediet.org and thetyee.ca), a Vancouver couple who spent a year eating from within 100 miles of their apartment, for tips and inspiration. But there are hundreds of other light-footed, young abstainers with a diarist urge: it is not news that this shopping-averse, carbon-footprint-reducing, city-dwelling generation likes to blog (the paperless, public diary form). They have seen “An Inconvenient Truth”; they would like to tell you how it makes them feel. If Al Gore is their Rachel Carson, blogalogs like Treehugger, grist.org and worldchanging.com are their Whole Earth catalogs.

Andrew Kirk, an environmental history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, whose new book, “Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism,” will be published by University Press of Kansas in September, is reminded of environmentalism’s last big bubble, in the 1970s, long before Ronald Reagan pulled federal funding for alternative fuel technologies (and his speechwriters made fun of the spotted owl and its liberal protectors, a deft feat of propaganda that set the movement back decades). Those were the days when Stewart Brand and his Whole Earth writers, Mr. Kirk said, “focused on a brand of environmentalism that kept people in the picture.”

“That’s the thing about this current wave of environmentalism,” he continued. “It’s not about, how do we protect some abstract pristine space? It’s what can real people do in their home or office or whatever. It’s also very urban. It’s a critical twist in the old wilderness adage: Leave only footprints, take only photographs. But how do you translate that into Manhattan?”

With equals parts grace and calamity, it appears. Washed down with a big draught of engaging palaver.

Before No Impact — this is a phrase that comes up a lot — Ms. Conlin and Mr. Beavan were living a near parody of urban professional life. Ms. Conlin, who bought this apartment in 1999 when she was still single, used the stove so infrequently (as in, never, she said) that Con Edison called to find out if it was broken. (Mr. Beavan, now the family cook, questioned whether she had yet to turn it on. Ms. Conlin ignored him.)

In this household, food was something you dialed for.

“We would wake up and call ‘the man,’ ” Ms. Conlin said, “and he would bring us two newspapers and coffee in Styrofoam cups. Sometimes we’d call two men, and get bagels from Bagel Bob’s. For lunch I’d find myself at Wendy’s, with a Dunkin’ Donuts chaser. Isabella would point to guys on bikes and cry: ‘The man! The man!’ ”

Since November, Mr. Beavan and Isabella have been hewing closely, most particularly in a dietary way, to a 19th-century life. Mr. Beavan has a single-edge razor he has learned to use (it was a gift from his father). He has also learned to cook quite tastily from a limited regional menu — right now that means lots of apples and root vegetables, stored in the unplugged freezer — hashing out compromises. Spices are out but salt is exempt, Mr. Beavan said, because homemade bread “is awful without salt; salt stops the yeast action.” Mr. Beavan is baking his own, with wheat grown locally and a sour dough “mother” fermenting stinkily in his cupboard. He is also finding good sources at the nearby Union Square Greenmarket (like Ronnybrook Farm Dairy, which sells milk in reusable glass bottles). The 250-mile rule, by the way, reflects the longest distance a farmer can drive in and out of the city in one day, Mr. Beavan said.

Olive oil and vinegar are out; they used the last dregs of their bottle of balsamic vinegar last week, Mr. Beavan said, producing a moment of stunned silence while a visitor thought about life without those staples. Still, Mr. Beavan’s homemade fruit-scrap vinegar has a satisfying bite.

The television, a flat-screen, high-definition 46-incher, is long gone. Saturday night charades are in. Mr. Beavan likes to talk about social glue — community building — as a natural byproduct of No Impact. The (fluorescent) lights are still on, and so is the stove. Mr. Beavan, who has a Ph.D. in applied physics, has not yet figured out a carbon-fuel-free power alternative that will run up here on the ninth floor, though he does subscribe to Con Ed’s Green Power program, for which he pays a premium, and which adds a measure of wind and hydro power to the old coal and nuclear grid.

The dishwasher is off, along with the microwave, the coffee machine and the food processor. Planes, trains, automobiles and that elevator are out, but the family is still doing laundry in the washing machines in the basement of the building. (Consider the ramifications of no-elevator living in a vertical city: one day recently, when Frankie the dog had digestive problems, Mr. Beavan, who takes Isabella to day care — six flights of stairs in a building six blocks away — and writes at the Writers Room on Astor Place — 12 flights of stairs, also six blocks away — estimated that by nightfall he had climbed 115 flights of stairs.) And they have not had the heart to take away the vacuum from their cleaning lady, who comes weekly (this week they took away her paper towels).

Until three weeks ago, however, Ms. Conlin was following her “high-fructose corn syrup ways,” meaning double espressos and pastries administered daily. “Giving up the coffee was like crashing down from a crystal meth addiction,” she said. “I had to leave work and go to bed for 24 hours.”

Toothpaste is baking soda (a box makes trash, to be sure, but of a better quality than a metal tube), but Ms. Conlin is still wearing the lipstick she gets from a friend who works at Lancôme, as well as moisturizers from Fresh and Kiehl’s. When the bottles, tubes and jars are empty, Mr. Beavan has promised her homemade, rules-appropriate substitutes. (Nothing is a substitute for toilet paper, by the way; think of bowls of water and lots of air drying.)

Yet since the beginning of No Impact, and to the amusement of her colleagues at Business Week, Ms. Conlin has been scootering to her office on 49th Street each day, bringing a Mason jar filled with greenhouse greens, cheese and her husband’s bread for lunch, along with her own napkin and cutlery. She has taken a bit of ribbing: “All progress is carbon fueled,” jeered one office mate.

Ms. Conlin, acknowledging that she sees her husband as No Impact Man and herself as simply inside his experiment, said she saw “An Inconvenient Truth” in an air-conditioned movie theater last summer. “It was like, ‘J’accuse!’ ” she said. “I just felt like everything I did in my life was contributing to a system that was really problematic.” Borrowing a phrase from her husband, she continued, “If I was a student, I would march against myself.”

While Ms. Conlin is clearly more than just a good sport — giving up toilet paper seems a fairly profound gesture of commitment — she did describe, in loving detail, a serious shopping binge that predated No Impact and made the whole thing doable, she said. “It was my last hurrah,” she explained.

It included two pairs of calf-high Chloe boots (one of which was paid for, she said, with her mother’s bingo winnings) and added up to two weeks’ salary, after taxes and her 401(k) contribution.

The bingo windfall points to a loophole in No Impact: the Conlin-Beavan household does accept presents. When Mr. Beavan’s father saw Ms. Conlin scootering without gloves he sent her a pair. And allowances can be made for the occasional thrift shop purchase. For Isabella’s birthday on Feb. 25, her family wandered the East Village and ended up at Jane’s Exchange, where she chose a pair of ballet slippers as her gift.

“They cost a dollar,” Ms. Conlin said.

It was freezing cold that day, Mr. Beavan said, picking up the story. “We went into a restaurant to warm her up. We agonized about taking a cab, which we ended up not doing. I still felt like we really screwed up, though, because we ate at the restaurant.”

He said he called the 100 Mile Diet couple to confess his sin. They admitted they had cheated too, with a restaurant date, then told him, Yoda-like, “Only in strictness comes the conversion.”

Restaurants, which are mostly out in No Impact, present all sorts of challenges beyond the 250-mile food rule. “They always want to give Isabella the paper cup with the straw, and we have to send it back,” Mr. Beavan said. “We always say, ‘We’re trying not to make any trash.’ And some people get really into that and others clearly think we’re big losers.”

Living abstemiously on Lower Fifth Avenue, in what used to be Edith Wharton country, with early-21st-century accouterments like creamy, calf-high Chloe boots, may seem at best like a scene from an old-fashioned situation comedy and, at worst, an ethically murky exercise in self-promotion. On the other hand, consider this response to Mr. Beavan’s Internet post the day he and his family gave up toilet paper.

“What’s with the public display of nonimpactness?” a reader named Bruce wrote on March 7. “Getting people to read a blog on their 50-watt L.C.D. monitors and buy a bound volume of postconsumer paper and show the filmed doc in a heated/air-conditioned movie theater, etc., sounds like nonimpact man is leading to a lot of impact. And how are you going to measure your nonimpact, except in rather self-centered ways like weight loss and better sex? (Wait, maybe I should stop there.)”

Indeed. Concrete benefits are already accruing to Ms. Conlin and Mr. Beavan that may tempt others. The sea may be rising, but Ms. Conlin has lost 4 pounds and Mr. Beavan 20. It took Ms. Conlin over an hour to get home from work during the snowstorm on Friday, riding her scooter, then walking in her knee-high Wellingtons with her scooter on her back, but she claimed to be mostly exhilarated by the experience. “Rain is worse,” she said.

Perhaps the real guinea pig in this experiment is the Conlin-Beavan marriage.

“Like all writers, I’m a megalomaniac,” Mr. Beavan said cheerfully the other day. “I’m just trying to put that energy to good use.”

After Virtue, 3rd edition

After Virtue
A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition

The third edition includes a new prologue:

In the Third Edition prologue, MacIntyre revisits the central theses of the book and concludes that although he has learned a great deal and has supplemented and refined his theses and arguments in other works, he has “as yet found no reason for abandoning the major contentions” of this book.

Cardinal Hummes on Priestly Celibacy

Cardinal Hummes on Priestly Celibacy

"Christ's Precious Gift to His Church"

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 24, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is an article written by Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, on "The Importance of Priestly Celibacy." It was published in the Italian edition of L'Osservatore Romano.
* * *

At the beginning of the 40th anniversary of the publication of the Encyclical "Sacerdotalis Caelibatus" of His Holiness Paul VI, the Congregation for the Clergy deems it opportune to recall the magisterial teaching of this important papal document.

Indeed, priestly celibacy is Christ's precious gift to his Church, a gift one needs to meditate on anew and to strengthen, especially in today's profoundly secularized world.

Scholars note that the origins of priestly celibacy date back to apostolic times. Father Ignace de la Potterie writes: "Scholars generally agree that the obligation of celibacy, or at least of continence, became canon law from the fourth century onwards. ... However, it is important to observe that the legislators of the fourth and fifth centuries affirmed that this canonical enactment was based on an apostolic tradition.

"The Council of Carthage (390), for instance, said: 'It was fitting that those who were at the service of the divine sacraments be perfectly continent (continentes esse in omnibus), so that what the Apostles taught and antiquity itself maintained, we too may observe.'"[1]

In the same way, Alfons-Marie Stickler mentions biblical arguments of apostolic inspiration that advocate celibacy.[2]

Historical development

The Church's solemn Magisterium has never ceased to reaffirm the measures regulating ecclesiastical celibacy. The Synod of Elvira (300-303?) prescribed in canon 27: "A bishop, like any other cleric, should have with him either only one sister or consecrated virgin; it is established that in no way should he have an extraneous woman"; in canon 33: "The following overall prohibition for bishops, presbyters and deacons and for all clerics who exercise a ministry has been decided: they must abstain from relations with their wives and must not beget children; those who do are to be removed from the clerical state."[3]

Pope St. Siricius (384-399), in his "Letter to Bishop Himerius of Tarragona" dated February 10, 385, affirmed: "The Lord Jesus ... wished the figure of the Church, whose Bridegroom he is, to radiate with the splendor of chastity ... all of us as priests are bound by the indissoluble law of these measures ... so that from the day of our ordination we may devote our hearts and our bodies to moderation and modesty, to please the Lord our God in the daily sacrifices we offer to him."[4]

At the First Lateran Ecumenical Council of 1123, we read from canon 3: "We absolutely forbid priests, deacons or subdeacons to cohabit with concubines or wives and to cohabit with women other than those whom the Council of Nicea (325) permitted to live in the household."[5]

So too, at the 24th session of the Council of Trent, the absolute impossibility of contracting marriage for clerics bound by sacred orders or for male religious who had solemnly professed chastity was reasserted; and with it, the nullity of marriage itself was declared, together with the duty to ask God, with an upright intention, for the gift of chastity.[6]

In more recent times, the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council reaffirmed in the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, "Presbyterorum Ordinis,"[7] the close connection between celibacy and the Kingdom of God. It saw in the former a sign that radiantly proclaims the latter, the beginning of a new life to whose service the minister of the Church is consecrated.

With the encyclical "Sacerdotalis Caelibatus" of June 24, 1967, Paul VI kept a promise he had made to the Council Fathers two years earlier. In it, he examined the objections raised concerning the discipline of celibacy. Subsequently, by placing emphasis on their Christological foundation and appealing to history and to what we learn from the first-century documents about the origins of celibacy and continence, he fully confirmed their value.

The 1971 Synod of Bishops, both in the presynodal program "Ministerium Presbyterorum" (Feb. 15) and in the final document "Ultimis Temporibus" (Nov. 30), affirmed the need to preserve celibacy in the Latin Church, shedding light on its foundations, the convergence of motives and the conditions that encouraged it.[8]

The new Code of Canon Law of the Latin Church in 1983 reasserted the age-old tradition: "Clerics are obliged to observe perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven and therefore are obliged to observe celibacy, which is a special gift of God, by which sacred ministers can adhere more easily to Christ with an undivided heart and can more freely dedicate themselves to the service of God and humankind."[9]

Along the same lines, the 1990 synod resulted in the Apostolic Exhortation of the Servant of God, Pope John Paul II, "Pastores Dabo Vobis," in which the Pontiff presented celibacy as a radical Gospel requirement that especially favors the style of spousal life and springs from the priest's configuration to Jesus Christ through the sacrament of orders.[10]

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1992 and which gathers the first fruits of the great event of the Second Vatican Council, reaffirms the same doctrine: "All the ordained ministers of the Latin Church, with the exception of permanent deacons, are normally chosen from among men of faith who live a celibate life and who intend to remain celibate 'for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.'"[11]

At the most recent Synod on the Eucharist itself, according to the preliminary unofficial draft of its final propositions authorized by Pope Benedict XVI, in proposition. 11, "the importance of the priceless gift of ecclesiastical celibacy in the practices of the Latin Church is recognized" despite the scarcity of clergy in certain parts of the world as well as the "Eucharistic hunger" of the People of God.

With the reference to the Magisterium, particularly that of the Second Vatican Council and of the most recent Pontiffs, the Fathers asked that the reasons for the relationship between celibacy and priestly ordination be properly described, with full respect for the tradition of the Eastern Churches. Some of them referred to the matter of the "viri probabi," but the hypothesis was judged to be a way not to be taken.

Only recently, on Nov. 16, 2006, Benedict XVI presided at one of the regular meetings held in the Apostolic Palace of the Heads of the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia. On that occasion, the value of the choice of priestly celibacy in accordance with the unbroken Catholic tradition was reasserted and the need for the sound human and Christian formation of seminarians and ordained priests was reaffirmed.

Reasons for holy celibacy

In his encyclical "Sacerdotalis Caelibatus," Paul VI begins by presenting the situation of priestly celibacy at that time, from the viewpoint of the appreciation of it and of the objections to it. His first words are crucial and ever timely: "Priestly celibacy has been guarded by the Church for centuries as a brilliant jewel, and retains its value undiminished even in our time when the outlook of men and the state of the world have undergone such profound changes."[12]

Paul VI revealed what he himself meditated upon, questioning himself on the subject in order to be able to respond to the objections. He concluded: "Hence, we consider that the present law of holy celibacy should today continue to be linked to the ecclesiastical ministry. This law should support the minister in his exclusive, definitive and total choice of the unique and supreme love of Christ and of the Church; it should uphold him in the entire dedication of himself to the public worship of God and to the service of the Church; it should distinguish his state of life both among the faithful and in the world at large."[13]

"It is true," the Pope added, "that virginity, as the Second Vatican Council declared, is not demanded of the priesthood by its nature. This is clear from the practice of the early Church and the tradition of the Eastern Churches (cf. "Presbyterorum Ordinis," no. 16). But at the same time the Council did not hesitate to confirm solemnly the ancient, sacred and providential present law of priestly celibacy. In addition, it set forth the motives which justify this law for those who, in a spirit of faith and with generous fervor, know how to appreciate the gifts of God."[14]

It is true. Celibacy is a gift that Christ offers to men called to the priesthood. This gift must be accepted with love, joy and gratitude. Thus, it will become a source of happiness and holiness.

Paul VI gave three reasons for sacred celibacy: its Christological, ecclesiological and eschatological significance.

Let us start with its Christological significance.

Christ is newness. He brings about a new creation. His priesthood is new. He renews all things. Jesus, the only-begotten Son of the Father sent into the world, "became man in order that humanity which was subject to sin and death might be reborn, and through this new birth might enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

"Being entirely consecrated to the will of the Father, Jesus brought forth this new creation by means of his Paschal Mystery; thus, he introduced into time and into the world a new form of life which is sublime and divine and which radically transforms the human condition."[15]

Natural marriage itself, blessed by God since creation but damaged by sin, was renewed by Christ, who "has raised it to the dignity of a sacrament and of a mysterious symbol of his own union with the Church. ... But Christ, 'Mediator of a more excellent covenant' (cf. Hebrews 8:6), has also opened a new way in which the human creature adheres wholly and directly to the Lord, and is concerned only with him and with his affairs; thus, he manifests in a clearer and more complete way the profoundly transforming reality of the New Testament."[16]

This newness, this new process, is life in virginity, which Jesus himself lived in harmony with his role as Mediator between heaven and earth, between the Father and the human race. "Wholly in accord with this mission, Christ remained throughout his whole life in the state of celibacy, which signified his total dedication to the service of God and men."[17] The service of God and men means that total love without reserve which distinguished Jesus' life among us: virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of God!

Now Christ, by calling his priests to be ministers of salvation, that is, of the new creation, calls them to be and to live in newness of life, united and similar to him in the most perfect way possible. From this derives the gift of sacred celibacy, as the fullest configuration with the Lord Jesus and a prophecy of the new creation. He called his apostles "friends." He called them to follow him very closely in everything, even to the cross. And the cross brought them to the Resurrection, to the new creation's completion.

We know, therefore, that following him with faithfulness in virginity, which includes sacrifice, will lead us to happiness. God does not call anyone to unhappiness; he calls us all to happiness. Happiness, however, always goes hand in hand with faithfulness. The late Pope John Paul II said this to the married couples whom he met at the Second World Meeting of Families in Rio de Janeiro.

Thus, the theme of the eschatological meaning of celibacy is revealed as a sign and a prophecy of the new creation, in other words, of the definitive Kingdom of God in the parousia, when we will all be raised from the dead.

As the Second Vatican Council teaches, "She [the Church] is, on earth, the seed and the beginning of that kingdom."[18] Virginity, lived for love of the Kingdom of God, is a special sign of these "final times," because the Lord announced that "in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven."[19]

In a world like ours, a world of entertainment and superficial pleasures, captivated by earthly things and especially by the progress of science and technology -- let us remember the biological sciences and biotechnology -- the proclamation of an afterlife, of a future world, a parousia, as a definitive event of a new creation is crucial and at the same time free from the ambiguity of aporia, of din, suffering and contradictions with regard to the true good and the new, profound knowledge that human progress brings with it.

Finally, the ecclesiological meaning of celibacy leads us more directly to the priest's pastoral activity.

The encyclical "Sacerdotalis Caelibatus" affirms: "The consecrated celibacy of the sacred ministers actually manifests the virginal love of Christ for the Church, and the virginal and supernatural fecundity of this marriage."[20]

Like Christ and in Christ, the priest mystically weds the Church and loves the Church with an exclusive love. Thus, dedicating himself totally to the affairs of Christ and of his Mystical Body, the priest enjoys ample spiritual freedom to put himself at the loving and total service of all people without distinction.

"In a similar way, by a daily dying to himself and by giving up the legitimate love of a family of his own for the love of Christ and of his Kingdom, the priest will find the glory of an exceedingly rich and fruitful life in Christ, because like him and in him he loves and dedicates himself to all the children of God."[21]

The encyclical likewise adds that celibacy makes it easier for the priest to devote himself to listening to the Word of God and to prayer, and prepares him to offer upon the altar the whole of his life, marked by sacrifice.[22]

Value of chastity, celibacy

Even before it is a canonical disposition, celibacy is God's gift to his Church. It is an issue bound to the complete gift of self to the Lord.

In the distinction between the age-old discipline of celibacy and the religious experience of consecration and the pronouncement of vows, it is beyond doubt that there is no other possible interpretation or justification of ecclesiastical celibacy than unreserved dedication to the Lord in a relationship that must also be exclusive from the emotional viewpoint. This presupposes a strong personal and communal relationship with Christ, who transforms the hearts of his disciples.

The option for celibacy of the Latin Rite Catholic Church has developed since apostolic times precisely in line with the priest's relationship with his Lord, moved by the inspiring question, "Do you love me more than these?"[23] which the Risen Jesus addressed to Peter.

The Christological, ecclesiological and eschatological reasons for celibacy, all rooted in the special communion with Christ to which priests are called, can therefore be expressed in various ways, according to what is authoritatively stated in "Sacerdotalis Caelibatus."

Celibacy is first and foremost a "symbol of and stimulus to charity."[24] Charity is the supreme criterion for judging Christian life in all its aspects; celibacy is a path of love, even if, as the Gospel according to Matthew says, Jesus himself states that not all are able to understand this reality: "Not all men can receive this precept, but only those to whom it is given."[25]

This charity develops in the classical, twofold aspect of love for God and for others: "By preserving virginity or celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, priests are consecrated in a new and excellent way to Christ. They more readily cling to him with undivided heart."[26]

St. Paul, in the passage alluded to here, presents celibacy and virginity as the way "to please God" without divided interests:[27] in other words, a "way of love" which certainly presupposes a special vocation; in this sense it is a charism and in itself excellent for both Christians and priests.

Through pastoral charity, radical love for God becomes love for one's brethren. In "Presbyterorum Ordinis" we read that priests "dedicate themselves more freely in him and through him to the service of God and of men. They are less encumbered in their service of his Kingdom and of the task of heavenly regeneration. In this way they become better fitted for a broader acceptance of fatherhood in Christ."[28]

Common experience confirms that it is easier for those who, apart from Christ, are not bound by other affections, however legitimate and holy they may be, to give their heart to their brethren fully and without reserve.

Celibacy is the example that Christ himself left us. He wanted to be celibate. The encyclical explains further: "Wholly in accord with this mission, Christ remained throughout his whole life in the state of celibacy, which signified his total dedication to the service of God and men. This deep connection between celibacy and the priesthood of Christ is reflected in those whose fortune it is to share in the dignity and mission of the Mediator and the Eternal Priest; this sharing will be more perfect the freer the sacred minister is from the bonds of flesh and blood."[29]

Jesus Christ's historical existence is the most visible sign that chastity voluntarily embraced for God's sake is a solidly founded vocation, both at the Christian level and at that of common human logic.

If ordinary Christian life cannot legitimately claim to be such if it excludes the dimension of the cross, how much more incomprehensible would priestly life be were the perspective of the crucified One to be put aside.

Suffering, sometimes weariness and boredom and even setbacks have to be dealt with in a priest's life which, however, is not ultimately determined by them. In choosing to follow Christ, one learns from the very outset to go with him to Calvary, mindful that taking up one's cross is the element that qualifies the radical nature of the sequela.

Lastly, as previously stated, celibacy is an eschatological sign. In the Church, from this moment, the future Kingdom is present. She not only proclaims it but brings it about through the sacraments, contributing to the "new creation" until her glory is fully manifested.

While the sacrament of marriage roots the Church in the present, immersing her totally in the earthly realm which can thus become a possible place for sanctification, celibacy refers immediately to the future, to that full perfection of the created world that will be brought to complete fulfillment only at the end of time.

Being faithful to celibacy

The 2,000-year-old wisdom of the Church, an expert in humanity, has in the course of time constantly determined several fundamental and indispensable elements to foster her children's fidelity to the supernatural charism of celibacy.

Among them, also in the recent Magisterium, the importance of spiritual formation for the priest, who is called to be "a witness of the Absolute," stands out. "Pastores Dabo Vobis" states: "In preparing for the priesthood we learn how to respond from the heart to Christ's basic question: 'Do you love me?'. For the future priest the answer can only mean total self-giving."[30]

In this regard, the years of formation are absolutely fundamental, both those distant years lived in the family, and especially the more recent years spent at the seminary. At this true school of love, like the apostolic community, young seminarians cluster round Jesus, awaiting the gift of his Spirit for their mission.

"The relation of the priest to Jesus Christ, and in him to his Church, is found in the very being of the priest, by virtue of his sacramental consecration/anointing and in his activity, that is, in his mission or ministry."[31]

The priesthood is no more than "'living intimately united' to Jesus Christ"[32] in a relationship of intimate communion, described "in terms of friendship."[33] The priest's life is basically that form of existence which would be inconceivable without Christ. Precisely in this lies the power of his witness: Virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of God is a real element, it exists because Christ, who makes it possible, exists.

Love for the Lord is authentic when it endeavors to be total: Falling in love with Christ means having a deep knowledge of him, it means a close association with his person, the identification and assimilation of his thought, and lastly, unreserved acceptance of the radical demands of the Gospel.

It is only possible to be witnesses of God through a deep experience of Christ; the whole of a priest's life depends on his relationship with the Lord, the quality of his experience of martyria, of his witness.

Only someone who truly has Jesus for his friend and Lord, one who enjoys his communion, can be a witness of the Absolute. Christ is not only a subject of reflection, of a theological thesis or of a historical memory; he is the Lord who is present, he is alive because he is the Risen One and we live only to the extent that we participate ever more deeply in his life. The entire priestly existence is founded on this explicit faith.

Consequently, the encyclical says: "The priest should apply himself above all else to developing, with all the love grace inspires in him, his close relationship with Christ, and exploring this inexhaustible and enriching mystery; he should also acquire an ever deeper sense of the mystery of the Church. There would be the risk of his state of life seeming unreasonable and unfounded if it were viewed apart from this mystery."[34]

In addition to formation and love for Christ, an essential element for preserving celibacy is passion for the Kingdom of God, which means the ability to work cheerfully, sparing no effort to make Christ known, loved and followed.

Like the peasant who, having found the precious pearl, sold all he had in order to purchase the field, so those who find Christ and spend their whole lives with him and for him cannot but live by working to enable others to encounter him.

Without this clear perspective, any "missionary urge" is doomed to failure, methodologies are transformed into techniques for maintaining a structure, and even prayers can become techniques for meditation and for contact with the sacred in which both the human "I" and the "you" of God dissolve.

One fundamental and necessary occupation, a requirement and a task, is prayer. Prayer is irreplaceable in Christian life and in the life of priests. Prayer should be given special attention.

The Eucharistic Celebration, the Divine Office, frequent confession, an affectionate relationship with Mary Most Holy, spiritual retreats and the daily recitation of the holy rosary are some of the spiritual signs of a love which, were it lacking, would risk being replaced by unworthy substitutes such as appearances, ambition, money and sex.

The priest is a man of God because God calls him to be one, and he lives this personal identity in an exclusive belonging to his Lord, also borne out by his choice of celibacy. He is a man of God because he lives by God and talks to God. With God he discerns and decides in filial obedience on the steps of his own Christian existence.

The more radically a priest is a man of God through a life that is totally theocentric, as the Holy Father stressed in his Address at the Christmas Meeting with the Roman Curia on Dec. 22, 2006, the more effective and fertile his witness will be, and the richer in fruits of conversion his ministry. There is no opposition between fidelity to God and fidelity to man: On the contrary, the former is a prerequisite for the latter.

Conclusion: a holy vocation

"Pastores Dabo Vobis," speaking on the priest's vocation to holiness, having underlined the importance of the personal relationship with Christ, expresses another need: The priest, called to the mission of preaching the Good News, sees himself entrusted with it in order to give it to everyone. He is nevertheless called in the first place to accept the Gospel as a gift offered for his life, for himself, and as a saving event that commits him to a holy life.

In this perspective, John Paul II has spoken of the evangelical radicalism that must be a feature of the priest's holiness. It is therefore possible in the evangelical counsels, traditionally proposed by the Church and lived in the various states of consecrated life, to map out the vitally radical journey to which, also and in his own way, the priest is called to be faithful.

"Pastores Dabo Vobis" states: "A particularly significant expression of the radicalism of the Gospel is seen in the different 'evangelical counsels' which Jesus proposes in the Sermon on the Mount, and among them the intimately related counsels of obedience, chastity and poverty. The priest is called to live these counsels in accordance with those ways and, more specifically, those goals and that basic meaning which derive from and express his own priestly identity."[35]

And again, taking up the ontological dimension on which evangelical radicalism is founded, the postsynodal apostolic exhortation says: "The Spirit, by consecrating the priest and configuring him to Jesus Christ, Head and Shepherd, creates a bond which, located in the priest's very being, demands to be assimilated and lived out in a personal, free and conscious way through an ever richer communion of life and love and an ever broader and more radical sharing in the feelings and attitudes of Jesus Christ. In this bond between the Lord Jesus and the priest, an ontological and psychological bond, a sacramental and moral bond, is the foundation and likewise the power for that 'life according to the Spirit' and that 'radicalism of the Gospel' to which every priest is called today and which is fostered by ongoing formation in its spiritual aspect."[36]

The nuptial dimension of ecclesiastical celibacy, proper to this relationship between Christ and the Church which the priest is called to interpret and to live, must enlarge his mind, illumine his life and warm his heart. Celibacy must be a happy sacrifice, a need to live with Christ so that he will pour out into the priest the effusions of his goodness and love that are ineffably full and perfect.

In this regard the words of the Holy Father Benedict XVI are enlightening: "The true foundation of celibacy can be contained in the phrase: Dominus pars (mea) -- You are my land. It can only be theocentric. It cannot mean being deprived of love, but must mean letting oneself be consumed by passion for God and subsequently, thanks to a more intimate way of being with him, to serve men and women, too. Celibacy must be a witness to faith: faith in God materializes in that form of life which only has meaning if it is based on God.

"Basing one's life on him, renouncing marriage and family, means that I accept and experience God as a reality and that I can therefore bring him to men and women."[37]

------------------------

NOTES

1. Cf. Father Ignace de la Potterie , Il fondamento biblico del celibato sacerdotale, in Solo per amore. Riflessioni sul celibato sacerdotale, Cinisello Balsamo, 1993, pp. 14-15.
2. Cf. Alfons-Marie Stickler, in Ch. Cochini, Origines apostoliques du Célibat sacerdotal, Preface, p. 6.
3. Cf. Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, ed. P. Hünermann., Bologna, 1995, nn. 118-119, p. 61.
4. Ibid., op. cit., n. 185, p. 103; [n. 10].
5. Cf. ibid., op. cit., n. 711, p. 405.
6. Ibid., op. cit., n. 1809, p. 739.
7. Second Vatican Council, Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, Presbyterorum Ordinis, n. 16.
8. Enchiridion of the Synod of Bishops, 1, 1965-1988 ed. General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, Bologna, 2005, nn. 755-855; 1068-1114; especially nn. 1100-1105.
9. Code of Canon Law, canon 277, §1.
10. John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis, 25 March 1992, n. 44.
11. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1579.
12. Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, n. 1.
13. Ibid., n. 14.
14. Ibid., n. 17.
15. Ibid., n. 19.
16. Ibid., n. 20.
17. Ibid., n. 21.
18. Cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, n. 5.
19. Paul VI, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, n. 34.
20. Ibid., n. 26.
21. Ibid., n. 30.
22. Cf. ibid., nn. 27-29.
23. John 21:15.
24. Paul VI, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, n. 24.
25. Matthew 19:11.
26. Second Vatican Council, Presbyterorum Ordinis, n. 16.
27. Cf. I Corinthians 7:32-33.
28. Second Vatican Council, Presbyterorum Ordinis, n. 16.
29. Paul VI, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, n. 21.
30. John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, n. 42.
31. Ibid., n. 16.
32. Ibid., n. 46.
33. Ibid.
34. Paul VI, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, n. 75.
35. John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, n. 27.
36. Ibid., n. 72.
37. Benedict XVI, Address at the Audience with the Roman Curia for the Exchange of Christmas Greetings, 22 December 2006; L'Osservatore Romano English edition, 3 January 2007, p. 5.

[Text adapted]

Dr. Pellegrino

Dr. Edmund Pellegrino came to BC to deliver the LaBrecque lecture in medical ethics last night--there was a good turnout. He also gave a luncheon seminar today.

Today he gave a short overview of the President's Council on Bioethics and the work that it is doing. There is a growing recognition that bioethics is increasingly a matter of public policy. The council advises the president on various ethical implications of public policy.

In 1972 bioethics was "baptized," and a national commission was established in 1977 to study various issues, especially human research. The Belmont Report came out of this national commission, laying out 4 principles of bioethics:

1. autonomy
2. beneficence
3. justice
4. non-malificence (which some distinguished from beneficence)

This commission was succeeded by a Presidential commission studying human research and the ethics of behavioral science.

In 1983 a series of reports were issued. (Not sure by whom.)

A congressional commission was formed during the 80s to study the moral status of the fetus. There was only one meeting--one of the members passed away, and Congress was unable to settle on a replacement.

Hiatus of 13 years?

President Clinton appointed the National Bioethics Advisory Committee which was stacked towards approving anything new. It was a White House appointment. Dr. Pellegrino believes the current Bioethics Council differs from the Clinton one in that it is "surprisingly well-balanced." Dr. Pellegrino sees himself as a political independent.

"Bioethics is everybody's business." The Council does not make policy, it is just advisory; its mission is to lay out issues as thoroughly as possible, both for the public and for policy makers--to lay out issues of fact. The Council does make policy recommendations, for example the moratorium on human cloning.

What place do philosophers have on the Council? There are two extremes of opinion:
1. No place whatsoever, since there is no such thing as an expert in bioethics, philosophers aren't experts at anything, they have no experience with medicine and science, etc.
2. Everyone on the council should be a bioethicist.

When it comes to actual philosophers, there is only one who is currently on the council, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo. Michael Sandel is no longer on the council. There are 18 members, all are presidential appointees.

Current topics for discussion:
1. Organ transplanation -- including, Are brain death criteria defensible? (When should a person be considered dead? Circulatory death vs. brain death.) How are organs to be allocated? Can organ donation be commercialized? Is it really morally permissible to have a living donor? (It has been discovered that those who donate do suffer from complications--kidney donors suffer from hypotension, etc.)
2. Newborn genetic screening -- should it be required? uniform on a natinoal basis? (PKU, etc.)
3. The concept of human dignity?

Dr. Pellegrino hopes these reports will be issued in the next 6 months.

All meetings of the council are public--there are no secret meetings, no executive privilege--everything is on the public record. (Sunshine laws) The members are very careful when it comes to making everything public, and Dr. Pellegrino has made things even more strict.

They are the first of 7 or 8 topics, which include justice in health care and professional ethics. The topics are chosen by the council itself, though they did receive one request from the White House, and that was to present a report on cloning.

What of the conflict of obligations? I have an obligation to my patient, but also to the common good. The individual doctor has a responsibility to his patient, they have a covenantal relationship; but he also has a duty to the common good and to decide wisely the allocation of limited resources.

(Chromosome Six, by Robin Cook -- using bonobos to create human organs)

How to define a bioethicist? What are a bioethicist's qualifications? At present there are no specific criteria for declaring someone to be a bioethicist. (Dr. Pellegrino declares that he is not one.) Generally, anyone today can declare himself to be a bioethicist if he has studied the subject. One can be trained in "bioethics" (Dr. Pellegrino does not necessarily approve); there are 105 bioethics centers around the country, but no formal process of certification. Bioethicists have a presumed expertise; people believe that they can provide a more reliable way of making ethical decisions. (But this of course is not necessarily true--one can be an "ethicist" without being ethical."

Doctors should help analyze the problem, make recommendations about the best course of medical treatment, but refrain from talking about values/ethical judgments. Doctors can consult about human relationships (getting family members to talk to one another), and prudential judgments. Doctors have medical expertise.

Dr. Byrne: autonomy and dignity are leading principles today
However, choice was initially associated with something.
For Kant, with reason. For Locke, with bodily integrity in the state of nature (law of nature). But now there is no more rational underpinning.

A lawyer and member of the council, Carl E. Schneider, has written a book on autonomy: The Practice of Autonomy: Patients, Doctors, and Medical Decisions.

Dr. Pellegrino points out that autonomy also exists for the physician, nurse, etc -- one cannot violate their conscience in demanding a service. (Martin Buhl? talks about I and thou in the decision-making process.)

Dr. Pellegrino supports universal health care and a single-payer system; he believes that such a system does not entail Federal management of health care, or a new bureaucracy. Private insurance companies should be done away with. Dr. Lebrecque argues that the profit that would be generated should instead be channeled into providing health care.

Rationing/mechanisms for allocation would not be decided by the Federal Government, but health care would be Federally funded.

Dr. Byrne: The profitability of insurance companies drives efficiency, cost-effectiveness?

Dr. Pellegrino: Mandatory health care insurance, one pays in terms of net income--everyone should have access to basic medical care. HMOS: control costs to increase top-end profitability.

Bad fortune cannot be avoided, but what about responsibility for one's own health?

Another member of the Lebrecque family argued that costs for private insurance increase because of mandates by individual states.

Dr. Pellegrino: Is health care a commodity? Is it fundamental? What kind of society do we want?
Adam Smith would not treat it as a commodity, not subject it to the "laws" of the marketplace.
You get the kind of health care you want. How does health care fall under justice? He claims that we can afford it. In a survey of officials of different countries, they prioritized health care needs as follows:

1. sure access of everyone to emergency health care
2. chronic/disabling illness
3. maternal/child health

Very few talk about preventive medicine; to do it well is expensive, as it requires constant human input and behavior modification. (Habits are involved.)

But how important is life and the good of health? Enough that others should pay for my health care when I have failed to be responsible for my own health? One should have access to a doctor; but where do the expenses come in? Diagnostics? Treatment and procedures?

Dr. Pellegrino claims that in rural areas there are a lot of people who are untreated. (His first job was in rural medicine.) However, this may be a question of lack of proper public education and lack of transportation, not necessarily lack of quality health care.

Can certain skills be taught as a part of domestic arts? For example, first aid skills and other simple procedures for non life-threatening illnesses. What about chronic illness and disease? Old age? How much health care do I need before I should say enough is enough, and stop being a burden to others?

What are the different levels of health care that would exist in a universal system? Though the Comptroller General advocates universal health care and a single-payer system, how does he reconcile this with his warnings about the impending bankruptcy of the Federal Government?

At the Modernity conference someone gave a talk on health care--was it Peter Riola?--he emphasized that the basics of public health included sanitation, water, and infrastructure. As for the other details... I'd have to try to remember them, but if his paper got published that would be good.

What of obesity and the illnesses that are caused by it?

Georgetown Clinical Bioethics page; Philosophy page

Virtual Mentor profile
CBHD: Meet Edmund Pellegrino
bioethics.net :: Reflections on the Appointment of Edmund ...
blog.bioethics.net