Robert George on Politics and Conscience

Robert George on Politics and Conscience

"Freedom Is a Two Way Street""

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 21, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is the text of an address by Robert George on political obligations and moral conscience.

* * *

XIII General Assembly
Program of the Preparatory Meeting of September 29-30, 2006
Casa Bonus Pastor
Vatican City

Political Obligations, Moral Conscience, and Human Life

Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence
Princeton University

The Catholic Church proclaims the principle that every human being -- without regard to race, sex, or ethnicity, and equally without regard to age, size, stage of development, or condition of dependency -- is entitled to the full protection of the laws.

The Church teaches that human beings at every stage of development -- including those at the embryonic and fetal stages -- and those in every condition -- including those who are mentally retarded or physically disabled, and those who are suffering from severe dementias or other memory and mind-impairing afflictions -- possess fundamental human rights. Above all, each of us possesses the right to life.

Now this teaching is disputed by some. There are those, including some Catholics, who deny that human embryos are human beings. They assert that and human embryo is merely "potential" human life, not nascent human life.

The trouble with this position is not theological but scientific. It flies in the face of the established facts of human embryology and developmental biology. A human embryo is not something distinct in kind from a human being -- like a rock or potato or alligator.

A human embryo is a human being at a particular, very early, stage of development. An embryo, even prior to implantation, is a whole, distinct, living member of the species Homo sapiens. The embryonic human being requires only what any human being at any stage of development requires for his or her survival, namely, adequate nutrition and an environment sufficiently hospitable to sustain life.

From the beginning, each human being possesses -- actually and not merely potentially -- the genetic constitution and epigenetic primordia for self-directed development from the embryonic into and through the fetal, infant, child, and adolescent stages and into adulthood with his or her unity, determinateness, and identity intact. In this crucial respect, the embryo is quite unlike the gametes -- that is, the sperm and ovum -- whose union brought a new human being into existence. You and I were never sperm or ova; those were genetically and functionally parts of other human beings.

But each of us was once an embryo, just as each of us was once an adolescent, and before that a child, an infant, a fetus. Of course, in the embryonic, fetal, and infant stages we were highly vulnerable and dependent creatures, but we were nevertheless complete, distinct human beings.

As the leading textbooks in human embryology and developmental biology unanimously attest, we were not mere "clumps of cells," like moles or tumors. So the basic rights people possess simply by virtue of their humanity -- including above all the right to life -- we possessed even then.

Another school of thought concedes that human embryos are human beings; however, it denies that all human beings are persons. There are, according to this school of thought, pre-personal and post-personal human beings, as well as severely retarded or damaged human beings who are not, never will be, and never were, persons.

Proponents of this view insist that human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages are not yet persons. Indeed, logically consistent and unsentimental proponents say that even human infants are not yet persons, and therefore do not possess a right to life; hence, the willingness of Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, and others to countenance infanticide as well as abortion.

Permanently comatose or severely retarded or demented human beings are also denied the status of persons. So euthanasia is said to be justified for human beings in these conditions. Although some who think along these lines will allow that human individuals whom they regard as "not yet persons" deserve a certain limited respect by virtue of the purely biological fact that they are living members of the human species, they nevertheless insist that "pre-personal" humans do not possess a right to life that precludes them from being killed to benefit others or to advance the interests of society at large.

Only those human beings who have achieved and retain what are regarded as the defining attributes of personhood -- whether those are considered to be detectable brain function, self-awareness, or immediately exercisable capacities for characteristically human mental functioning -- possess a right to life.

The trouble with this position is that it makes nonsense of our political, philosophical, and, for many of us, theological commitment to the principle that all human beings are equal in fundamental worth and dignity.

It generates puzzles that simply cannot be resolved, such as the puzzle as to why this or that accidental quality which most human beings eventually acquire in the course of normal development but others do not, and which some retain and others lose, and which some have to a greater degree than others, should count as the criterion of "personhood."

The superior position, surely, is that human beings possess equally an intrinsic dignity that is the moral ground of the equal right to life of all. This is a right possessed by every human being simply by virtue of his or her humanity. It does not depend on an individual's age, or size, or stage of development; nor can it be erased by an individual's physical or mental infirmity or condition of dependency.

It is what makes the life of even a severely retarded child equal in fundamental worth to the life of a Nobel prize-winning scientist. It explains why we may not licitly extract transplantable organs from such a child even to save the life of a brilliant physicist who is afflicted with a life-threatening heart, liver, or kidney ailment.

In any event, the position that all human beings equally possess fundamental human rights, including the right to life, is the definitively settled teaching of the Catholic Church. It is on this basis that the Church proclaims that the taking of human life in abortion, infanticide, embryo-destructive research, euthanasia, and terrorism are always and everywhere gravely wrong.

And there is more. For the Church also teaches that it is the solemn obligation of legislators and other public officials, as servants of the common good, to honor and protect the rights of all. The principle of equality demands as a matter of strict justice that protection against lethal violence be extended by every political community to all who are within its jurisdiction.

Those to whom the care of the community is entrusted -- above all those who participate in making the community's laws -- have primary responsibility for ensuring that the right to life is embodied in the laws and effectively protected in practice. Notice, by the way, that the obligation of the public official is not to "enforce the teaching of the Catholic Church," it is, rather, to fulfill the demands of justice and the common good in light of the principle of the inherent and equal dignity of every member of the human family.

Yet, today many Catholic politicians, including the Democratic leaders of both houses of the United States Congress and the Republican governor of New York and the former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, are staunch supporters of what they describe as a "woman's right to abortion."

Most of these politicians also support the creation and government funding of an industry that would produce tens of thousands of human embryos by cloning for use in biomedical research in which these embryonic human beings would be destroyed.

Catholic politicians in the United States and in other nations who support abortion and embryo-destructive research typically claim to be "personally opposed" to these practices but respectful of the rights of others who disagree to act on their own judgments of conscience without legal interference.

Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo famously articulated and defended this view in a speech at the University of Notre Dame in 1984. Recently, Cuomo revisited the issue, speaking in Washington at a Forum on Politics and Faith in America. He offered an argument which, if successful, not only justifies Catholic politicians in supporting legal abortion and embryo-destructive research, but requires them to respect a right of people to engage in these practices despite their admitted moral wrongfulness.

Cuomo asserted that holders of public office -- including Catholic office-holders -- have a responsibility "to create conditions under which all citizens are reasonably free to act according to their own religious beliefs, even when those acts conflict with Roman Catholic dogma regarding divorce, birth control, abortion, stem cell research, and even the existence of God."

According to Cuomo, Catholics should support legalized abortion and embryo-destructive research, as he himself does, because in guaranteeing these rights to others, they guarantee their own right "to reject abortions, and to refuse to participate in or contribute to removing stem cells from embryos."

But Cuomo's idea that the right "to reject" abortion and embryo-destructive experimentation entails a right of others, as a matter of religious liberty, to engage in these practices is simply, if spectacularly, fallacious. The fallacy comes into focus immediately if one considers whether the right of a Catholic (or Baptist, or Jew, or member of any other faith) to reject infanticide, slavery, and the exploitation of labor entails a right of others who happen not to share these "religious" convictions to kill, enslave, and exploit.

By the expedient of classifying pro-life convictions about abortion and embryo-destructive experimentation as "Roman Catholic dogmas," Cuomo smuggles into the premises of his argument the controversial conclusion he is trying to prove. If pro-life principles were indeed merely dogmatic teachings -- such as the teaching that Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten Son of God -- then according to the Church herself (not to mention American constitutional law and the law of many other republics) they could not legitimately be enforced by the coercive power of the state.

The trouble for Cuomo is that pro-life principles are not mere matters of "dogma," nor are they understood as such by the Catholic Church, whose beliefs Cuomo claims to affirm, or by pro-life citizens, whether they happen to be Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics or atheists. Rather, pro-life citizens understand these principles and propose them to their fellow citizens as fundamental norms of justice and human rights that can be understood and affirmed even apart from claims of revelation and religious authority.

It will not do to suggest, as Cuomo seems to suggest, that the sheer fact that the Catholic Church (or some other religious body) has a teaching against these practices, and that some or even many people reject this teaching, means that laws prohibiting the killing of human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages violate the right to freedom of religion of those who do not accept the teaching.

If that were anything other than a fallacy, then laws against killing infants, owning slaves, exploiting workers, and many other grave forms of injustice really would be violations of religious freedom. Surely Cuomo would not wish to endorse that conclusion.

Yet he provides no reason to distinguish those acts and practices putatively falling within the category of religious freedom from those falling outside it. So we must ask: If abortion is immunized against legal restriction on the ground that it is a matter of religious belief, how can it be that slavery is not similarly immunized?

If today abortion cannot be prohibited without violating the right to religious freedom of people whose religions do not object to abortion, how can Cuomo say that the prohibition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1866 did not violate the right to religious freedom of those in the 19th century whose religions did not condemn slaveholding?

Cuomo says that the Catholic Church "understands that our public morality depends on a consensus view of right and wrong," but it would be scandalous to argue that Catholics should have opposed a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery in the 19th century, or legislation protecting the civil rights of the oppressed descendants of slaves in the mid-20th century, on the ground that "prudence" or "realism" requires respect for "moral pluralism" where there is no "consensus" on questions of right and wrong.

At one point at the forum on Politics and Faith, Cuomo suggested that laws against abortion and embryo-destructive research would force people who do not object to such things to practice the religion of people who do. But this is another fallacy. No one imagines that the constitutional prohibition of slavery forced those who believed in slaveholding to practice the religion of those who did not.

Would Cuomo have us suppose that laws protecting workers against what he, in line with the solemn teaching of every Pope from Leo XIII to Benedict XVI, considers to be exploitation and abuse have the effect of forcing non-Catholic factory owners to practice Catholicism?

At another point, in denying that there was any inconsistency between his willingness as governor to act on his anti-death penalty views but not on his anti-abortion views, Cuomo denied ever having spoken against the death penalty as "a moral issue." He claimed, in fact, that he "seldom talk[s] in terms of moral issues" and that, when he speaks of the death penalty, he never suggests that he considers it a moral issue.

Then, in the very next sentence, he condemned the death penalty in the most explicitly, indeed flamboyantly, moralistic terms: "I am against the death penalty because I think it is bad and unfair. It is debasing. It is degenerate. It kills innocent people." He did not pause to consider that these are precisely the claims made by pro-life citizens against the policy of legal abortion and its public funding -- a policy that Cuomo defends in the name of religious liberty.

The fact is that Catholics and others who oppose abortion and embryo-destructive research oppose these practices for the same reason we oppose postnatal homicide. Pro-life citizens of every faith oppose these practices because they involve the deliberate killing of innocent human beings.

Our ground for supporting the legal prohibition of abortion and embryo-destructive research is the same ground on which we support the legal prohibition of infanticide, for example, or the principle of noncombatant immunity even in justified wars. We subscribe to the proposition that all human beings are equal in worth and dignity and cannot be denied the right to protection against killing on the basis of age, size, stage of development, or condition of dependency.

One cannot with moral integrity be "personally opposed" to abortion or embryo-destructive research yet support the legal permission of these practices and even, their public funding as so many Catholic politicians do, including most Catholic Democrats and some Catholic Republicans in the United States. For by supporting abortion and embryo-destructive research they unavoidably implicate themselves in the grave injustice of these practices.

Of course, it is possible for a person wielding public power to use that power to establish or preserve a legal right to abortion, for example, while at the same time hoping that no one will exercise the right. But this does not get such a person off the moral hook. For someone who acts to protect legal abortion necessarily wills that abortion's unborn victims be denied the elementary legal protections against deliberate homicide that one favors for oneself and those whom one considers to be worthy of the law's protection.

Thus one violates the most basic precept of normative social and political theory, the Golden Rule. One divides humanity into two classes: those whom one is willing to admit to the community of the commonly protected and those whom one wills to be excluded from it.

By exposing members of the disfavored class to lethal violence, one deeply implicates oneself in the injustice of killing them -- even if one sincerely hopes that no woman will act on her right to choose abortion. The goodness of what one hopes for does not redeem the evil -- the grave injustice -- of what one wills. To suppose otherwise is to commit yet another fallacy.

If my analysis so far is correct, the question arises: What should the leaders of the Church do about people like Cuomo and his successor as New York's Governor, Republican George Pataki who evidently takes the same position? What should they do about those who claim to be in full communion with the Church yet promote gravely unjust and scandalous policies that expose the unborn to the violence and injustice of abortion?

In the run up to the last election, St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke offered an answer. He declared that public officials who support abortion and other unjust attacks against innocent human life may not be admitted to Holy Communion, the preeminent sacrament of unity.

Pro-life citizens of every religious persuasion applauded the archbishop's stand. Critics, however, were quick to condemn Archbishop Burke. They denounced him for "crossing the line" separating church and state.

But this is silly. In acting on his authority as a bishop to discipline members of his flock, who commit what the Church teaches are grave injustices against innocent human beings, Archbishop Burke is exercising his own constitutional right to the free exercise of religion; he is not depriving others of their rights.

Freedom is a two way street. No one is compelled by law to accept ecclesiastical authority. But Archbishop Burke -- and anyone else in the United States of America or other freedom-respecting nations -- has every right to exercise spiritual authority over anyone who chooses to accept it. There is a name for people who do accept the authority of Catholic bishops. They are called "Catholics."

In many cases, the charge that Archbishop Burke and other bishops who adopt the policy of excluding pro-abortion politicians from Communion "are crossing the line separating church and state" is also hypocritical. A good example of this hypocrisy comes from the Bergen Record, a prominent newspaper in my home state of New Jersey.

Bishop John Smith of Trenton did not go as far as Raymond Burke had gone in forbidding pro-abortion Catholic politicians from receiving communion. Bishop Smith did, however, in the words of the Bergen Record, "publicly lash" Governor James McGreevey, a pro-abortion Catholic, for his support of abortion and embryo-destructive research.

For criticizing the governor on these grounds, the Record lashed the bishop in an April 25th editorial. The paper accused him of jeopardizing the delicate "balance" of our constitutional structure, contrasting Bishop Smith's position unfavorably with President John F. Kennedy's assurance to a group of Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960 that he, as a Catholic, would not govern the nation by appeal to his Catholic religious beliefs.

Since the Record had seen fit to take us back to 1960 for guidance, I thought I would invite its editors to consider a case that had arisen only a few years earlier than that. In a letter to the editor, I proposed a question that would enable readers to determine immediately whether the editors of the Bergen Record were persons of strict principle or mere hypocrites.

I reminded readers that in the 1950s, in the midst of the political conflict over segregation, Archbishop Joseph Rummel of New Orleans publicly informed Catholics that support for racial segregation was incompatible with Catholic teaching on the inherent dignity and equal rights of all human beings.

Archbishop Rummel said that "racial segregation is morally wrong and sinful because it is a denial of the unity and solidarity of the human race as conceived by God in the creation of Adam and Eve." He warned Catholic public officials that support for segregation placed their souls in peril. Indeed, Rummel took the step of publicly excommunicating Leander Perez, one of the most powerful political bosses in Louisiana, and two others who promoted legislation designed to impede desegregation of diocesan schools.

So I asked the editors of the Bergen Record: Was Archbishop Rummel wrong? Or do Catholic bishops "cross the line" and jeopardize the delicate constitutional balance, only when their rebukes to politicians contradict the views of the editors of the Record? To their credit, the editors published my letter -- but I am still waiting for them to reply to my question.

Now, some good and sincere people have expressed concern that Archbishop Burke and bishops of similar mind are guilty of a double standard when it comes to demanding of politicians fidelity to Catholic teaching on justice and the common good.

They point out that the bishops who would deny communion to those who publicly support abortion and embryo-destructive research do not take the same stand against politicians who support the death penalty, which Pope John Paul II condemned in all but the rarest of circumstances, and the U.S. invasions of Iraq, of which the Pope and many other Vatican officials were sharply critical.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church indeed teaches that the death penalty should not be used, except in circumstances so rare these days as to be, in words of the late Pope, "practically non-existent." However, two points must be borne in mind in considering the obligations of Catholics and the question whether Catholic politicians who support the death penalty have in fact broken faith and communion with the Church.

First, neither the Pope nor the Catechism places the death penalty on a par with abortion and other forms of direct killing of the innocent. (Indeed, the Church will probably never equate the death penalty with these forms of homicide, even if it eventually issues a definitive condemnation of the practice.)

Second, the status of the teaching differs from the status of the teaching on abortion. As John Paul II made clear in the great encyclical "Evangelium Vitae," the teaching on abortion (as well as on euthanasia and all forms of direct killing of the innocent) is infallibly proposed by the ordinary and universal magisterium of the Church pursuant to the criteria of "Lumen Gentium," No. 25.

The same is plainly not true of the developing teaching on the death penalty. Moreover, Cardinal Avery Dulles and others have interpreted the teaching against the death penalty as essentially a prudential judgment about its advisability, not a moral prohibition following from the application of a strict principle.

As it happens, I don't agree with their analysis, but no one will be able to say with confidence from a Catholic point of view which side in this debate is right until the magisterium clarifies the teaching. So, it cannot be said that supporters of the death penalty are "obstinately persisting in manifest grave sin," and may or should be denied Holy Communion pursuant to Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law.

No one can legitimately claim for opposition to the death penalty the status of a definitively settled moral teaching of the Church. (Nor can one claim that the Church teaches or will ever teach that the death penalty -- except in cases where it is applied unjustly -- involves the grave intrinsic injustice attaching to any act involving the direct killing of the innocent.)

Regarding the question of the U.S. invasions of Iraq, it is important to understand the precise terms of Catholic teaching on just and unjust warfare. These terms are set forth with clarity and precision in the Catechism.

In line with the Church's historic teaching on the subject, neither Pope John Paul II nor Pope Benedict XVI has asserted that opposition to the war is binding on the consciences of Catholics. John Paul II's statements opposing the use of force in the run up to both invasions plainly questioned the prudential judgments of political leaders who, in the end, had and have the right and responsibility (according to the Catechism and the entire tradition of Catholic teaching on war and peace) to make judgments as to whether force is in fact necessary.

That is why the Pope and the bishops have not said, and will not say, that Catholic soldiers may not participate in the war. This contrasts with their clear teaching that Catholics may not participate in abortions or other forms of embryo-killing or support the use of taxpayer monies for activities involving the deliberate killing of innocent human beings.

I wish to close with a word to those in politics and the media -- Catholics and non-Catholics alike -- who have expressed anger, even outrage, at the world's Catholic bishops for teaching that the faithful must never implicate themselves in unjust killing by supporting legal abortion and embryo-destructive research.

In scolding the bishops, the editors of the New York Times , for example, have insisted that "separation of church and state" means that no religious leader may presume to tell public officials what their positions may and may not be on matters of public policy.

But if we shift the focus from abortion to, say, genocide, slavery, the exploitation of labor, or racial segregation we see how implausible such a view is. When Archbishop Rummel excommunicated the segregationist politicians in the 1950s, far from condemning the archbishop, the editors of the New York Times praised him.

They were right then; they are wrong now.

[Text adapted]

William Mahrt, Beauty and Liturgy

Via NLM:

Beauty and Liturgy: On the Apostolic Exhortation

By William Mahrt

n February 22, the Feast of the Chair of Peter, Pope Benedict issued an apostolic exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis, a document resulting from the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist, meeting in Rome last Autumn. In it the Holy Father summarizes salient points of discussion from the synod with recommendations for teaching and practice.

At first the document seems a bit of a potpourri, because it ranges widely through a great diversity of topics discussed by the synod. Some have already criticized it for having no teeth, no regulations, without which its discussions will remain in the realm of theory. Some have excused its lack of regulations as being an act of collegial reportage from the synod. Some have complained that it did not include their own desiderata; we musicians, for example, would have liked to have found more authoritative statements on the implementation of a greater return to Gregorian chant and polyphony.

But that is not his method. Benedict is no longer in charge of overseeing issues of doctrinal orthodoxy. He is now universal shepherd, and his method seems to be to establish first the fundamental principles as a basis for practical applications. Already we have seen it in Deus Caritas Est. Here he had the wish of Pope John Paul II that charitable works throughout the world be encouraged, which formed the second part of the encyclical. The first part, however, established a strong theoretical basis for the second by a quite original discussion of caritas. The traditional discussion of the two types of love had mainly drawn distinctions between caritas (agape in Greek) and amor (eros in Greek), but Pope Benedict explored the interrelation and the mutual interaction between these two kinds of love in an exemplary and inspiring exposition of fundamental principles which formed the foundation for the more practical discussion which followed.

The same is true for the apostolic exhortation. If one were to try to discern the most fundamental issue behind the present practice of the Mass in the parishes, one might say that it all too often focuses upon the congregation and too infrequently upon God. Indeed, it was one of my principal criticisms of Music in Catholic Worship that this document was almost exclusively anthropocentric and not sufficiently theocentric (see my “Toward a Revision of Music in Catholic Worship“). From this any number of difficulties flow, including a general de-emphasis upon the sacred and a corresponding incorporation of popular secular musical styles into the liturgy with a resulting loss of much of the tradition of sacred music.

Pope Benedict in Sacramentum Caritatis meets such a situation head-on by dealing with the most fundamental reality: the Eucharistic liturgy must be Christocentric. This places the apostolic exhortation along-side Deus Caritas Est, where the Eucharist is the most profound expression of Christ’s love for us. There follows a rich exposition of the Old Testament precedents of the Eucharist and their fulfillment in the sacrifice of Christ, in the relation of the Eucharist to the other sacraments, to the last things, and finally to the Virgin Mary.

On the ground that there is a binding relation between belief and practice, between lex orandi and lex credendi, he develops this relation by discussing the role of beauty in liturgy:

The liturgy is inherently linked to beauty: it is veritatis splendor. . . . In Jesus we contemplate beauty and splendor at their source. This is no mere aestheticism, but the concrete way in which the truth of God’s love in Christ encounters us, attracts us and delights us, enabling us to emerge from ourselves and drawing us towards our true vocation, which is love. . . . Beauty, then, is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation. (¶35)

Pope Benedict addresses the question of popular participation. He understands that it must be more than externally active participation:

The active participation called for by the Council must be understood in more substantial terms, on the basis of a greater awareness of the mystery being celebrated and its relationship to daily life. (¶52)

Preparation for this more substantive participation ought to include a cultivation of inner dispositions, aided by recollection and silence, by fasting, even by confession. Moreover, “the primary way to foster the participation of the People of God in the sacred rite is the proper celebration of the rite itself.” (¶38)

If all of this were understood well, our everyday liturgical problems would admit of much easier solution. If beauty is a compelling need in the liturgy, then we must choose the most beautiful music possible. If the focus upon Christ is the all-encompassing theme, we should comprehend more easily the reasons that the pax should be given with reserve immediately before we are to receive him in the sacrament. Pope Benedict draws such practical applications, including some quite specific recommendations for the use of chant and Latin (included in the section of documents, below).

Actually, we cannot expect everything from one document. It is, after all, an apostolic exhortation following upon the synod of bishops. It responds to the discussions of the synod, and it is true that collegiality calls for a kind of reportage from the wishes of the bishops. This does not mean that Pope Benedict does not express his own wishes, for on numerous occasions he turns to the first person and says “I ask,” “I reaffirm,” “I wish.” But he is also clear what the fathers of the synod wanted, and so when it comes to Gregorian chant,

I desire that, in accordance with the request advanced by the synod fathers, that Gregorian chant be suitably esteemed and employed as the chant proper to the Roman liturgy.(¶42)

This we had already heard from the preparatory documents for the synod; it is still good that it comes to us now with his authority and with his desire. But we have not heard the last from Pope Benedict concerning liturgy and music. What we have heard, though, is a continuing commitment to Gregorian chant as the proper music of the Roman Rite, now in the context of a Eucharist ecstatically focused upon the love of Christ and this as the source of beauty in the liturgy and thus of music. It behooves us to read the whole document carefully for this central vision and not just the paragraphs on music, for it expresses the deep foundations of our liturgy and music.
___________
William Mahrt is associate professor of music at Stanford University, and editor of Sacred Music. This article appears as an editorial in the Summer 2007 issue.

Robert Coles, Gluttony

HARVARD DIARY
Gluttony

By Robert Coles
November 1995

Robert Coles is Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Humanities at Harvard Medical School, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and a Contributing Editor of the NOR.

These days in the privileged precincts of America, gluttony is an all too evident aspect of our existence -- the overweight ones as victims, the determinedly thin ones as prideful winners in a constant war against temptation. I doubt Adam Smith and other early apologists for capitalism ever imagined how central to its survival a hyped-up consumerism would one day become -- the endlessly clever and manipulative messages that tell us to want more and more, hence by implication to live, always, on the very edge of dissatisfaction. Every day, in countless shopping malls across the land, millions of us assemble in an almost desperate effort to acquire things, as if our very worth as human beings is at stake. Young people in droves use those same malls as hang-outs, places to pass the time of day, places where they can gawk and themselves be regarded, and trysting places too -- in movies and restaurants and in the nearby armies of cars, themselves a memorial to a progression of sorts: from a helpful convenience to an economic and social necessity, not to mention a psychological instrument that lends itself to all sorts of symbolic expressions, all sorts of idiosyncratic needs, aspirations.

For many years I never did understand why such a desire to get, to have, to buy and buy, to eat up, to wear then set aside in favor of tomorrow's garb, to drive this car -- why all that hungry inclination to possess, to own (and show to others) amounts to a serious sin. Gluttony and greed struck me as serious, present-day vices, but not especially evil in a spiritual sense. But during my Catholic Worker days (when I had the opportunity to help out at a "hospitality house," and talk at some considerable length with Dorothy Day), I began to learn otherwise -- learn from her, and others close to her, not the virtues of asceticism (a misconception in the minds of some: that she and Peter Maurin were committed ideologically to a kind of Catholic Puritanism), but the distinct danger of a materialism that gets out of hand, becomes outright gluttony, hence sin. Here is Dorothy Day to help us, me, in 1968, to understand the progression I have just mentioned -- a response, on her part, to my inquiry as to her attitude toward possessions: "I'm not the one to judge others -- I have enough to do trying to keep myself in line [with respect to moral matters]. But I know -- from personal experience, that's how I know -- that anything, just about anything can turn into a trap for us: we want it, we get it, we want more, and more, and more -- and we're not [thereby] only greedy, we're ‘sinful.'"

She paused long enough for me to tell her that I didn't quite follow her move (for me, then, a leap) from greed to sin, unless we were embracing a kind of self-denial or self-abrogation that itself, so I was intent on arguing, could become quite sinful -- a manifestation of pride. Soon enough, I heard this: "I've never been interested in saying no to people -- to myself: no to good food, and no to nice clothes, and no to travel. I've loved all that in the past, and I still do, even if I live differently now [than was the case during her 20s, when she was, by her own description, a Greenwich Village bohemian of sorts]. I happen to enjoy myself here [at the Catholic Worker hospitality house on the lower east side of New York City]. I mean, these days fill me up -- I like talking with our guests [the poor whom she served a daily lunch], and I like being part of a community. You may think I'm an advocate of austerity, but that's because I conceal my gluttony!"

Her gluttony! I laughed -- and looked for her wry, ironic smile, so familiar to me by then. But I soon realized she was dead serious. I didn't have to speak in order to elicit the following disquisition of sorts: "You think I'm fooling! You haven't seen me in a book store! You haven't seen me when someone wants to borrow one of the books I love and tell people to read. When push comes to shove, when someone takes my words to heart, and asks me for a novel of Dickens or Tolstoy or Dostoevsky -- right there on my shelf, and not being read by me now and in the foreseeable future -- I'm likely to freeze. Oh, I don't say what's on my mind; I try to be nice, and often I'll lend the book, but I'm sure to ask that it be returned soon, and to tell you the truth, I'm almost counting the days, the hours, until that book is safely back here!

"You may consider all this trivia, but I don't -- because I see in myself not only the wish for more and more books, and the wish to hold onto them for dear life, but the meaning of this: I get so taken up with something, I lose all sense of [moral, spiritual] perspective -- and that's what gluttony meant, I think, to the Church Fathers -- you behave as if your life depends on eating this or getting that, rather than on God's judgment of how you're living this life He's given you!"

There was much more explanatory and self-critical comment; and I began to understand what she was getting at. Gluttony for her was not a matter of being challenged secularly: appetite control in the interest of longevity. Nor was gluttony a violation of a Puritan ethic -- the notion that less is better, by virtue of John Calvin or some environmental guru. Gluttony, for her, was a universal possibility, something that can arise in the poor (or those like her who essentially choose poverty) as well as the well-to-do: a hunger for something, a possessiveness about something, that becomes distracting, indeed -- a means by which one loses sight of God, amidst one's frantic eyeing of one or another object or option. Even the vernacular expression of being a "glutton for punishment" has an interesting implication to it that Dorothy Day would surely recognize: We can take on so very much hardship in this world, prove ourselves (proudly) virtual martyrs, and all the while overlook the why, the supposed purpose of such a sacrificial effort. A lived series of burdens become, themselves, a collective acquisition of a kind.

Gluttony, in a sense, is one of the more devious sins -- it is meant to be a diversion, and it readily succeeds to the point that we may recognize the nature of the deed (the eating, the collecting, the amassing, the buying and buying, spending and spending), but we overlook the larger significance of the particular preoccupation as it gets lived out. Put differently, gluttony shows us materially or emotionally driven, but we are all too apt to overlook the spiritual consequences -- and maybe, as well, the spiritual cause. "I don't have the time to go to church," I heard once from a patient -- and then, an explanation: "I could make the time, I know, but I don't see eye to eye with the Pope these days." Not a rare comment, and one I did not at the time choose to challenge. Instead, I listened as he moved directly on to what he did have the time to do -- go to auctions in search of stamp collections and a certain kind of "country antique": chairs, tables, lamps, all of which (save the stamps) he stored, ostensibly for his children, grandchildren. I had no interest in judging, even interpreting his actions and interests -- we had other things, pressing hard on him, to discuss. But I thought I'd heard something important, had been unselfconsciously taught something, yet again, by this person, a thoughtful and sensitive man who had a way of dropping provocative asides as he told of his life, its vicissitudes as well as its relative good fortune.

Unwilling to immerse himself in religious issues which vexed him, and which maybe threatened a comfortable adjustment to a contemporary, late 20th-century American set of values, he chose another road: that of catalogs, then shops, then bidding wars. He and his wife would chide themselves occasionally, laugh derisively at their "greedy ways," but were not at all inclined to understand them -- and by that last observation, I don't fault them in the psychiatric sense. It is tempting, of course, for all of us to do just that -- look for the covert emotional sources of just about anything we do. But there, too, we can become gluttons -- anxious to accumulate ideas, interpretations, theories, explanations. The issue is essentially ethical, if not spiritual -- in the words of David Riesman, not a theologian, but a shrewd, knowing observer of our end of the century (end of the millennium!) habits, preferences: "affluence for what?" That "what" is rhetorical of course, meant to turn our heads, to prompt a moment's pause -- so that we might wonder what it is that we want out of life -- what it is that we truly believe, what our purpose is in this time we're given here. In three carefully chosen words, a social essayist was suggesting that affluence (and the gluttony that can so inspire us to get money, then use it to satisfy dozens of tastes, if not sate ourselves) can go thoroughly unexamined by us, to our collective and personal detriment, both. No longer hungry in our bellies, we are hungry in our souls -- and sometimes mistake that hunger for a "psychological problem," when it is a larger, more "existential" one, of the kind that both Dorothy Day and David Riesman had in mind, I think, when they took a look at all of us as we take on the moral perils that go with life in this rich country of ours.

Papal Address to Youth Forum

Papal Address to Youth Forum

"The Attention of the Church Has Been on the Social Question"

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 17, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a Vatican translation of Benedict XVI's March 28 address to participants in an international youth forum.

* * *

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE 9th INTERNATIONAL YOUTH FORUM
(Rocca di Papa, 28-31 March 2007)

To Archbishop STANISLAW RYLKO
President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity

It gives me great pleasure to send my cordial greeting to you, Venerable Brother, to the Secretary, to those working with the Pontifical Council for the Laity, and to all those who are taking part in the 9th International Youth Forum on the theme "Witnessing to Christ in the world of work" that is taking place this week in Rocca di Papa. It is with particular affection that I direct my thoughts to the young delegates from the bishops' conferences and the international movements, associations and communities that have come from the five continents and who work in very different fields. I extend my respectful greetings to the distinguished speakers who have agreed to contribute to the meeting with their expertise and experience.

The theme is very much a topical issue and takes into account the transformations that have taken place in recent years in the fields of economics, technology and communications, changes that have radically changed the appearance and conditions of the labour market. The progress achieved has, on the one hand, given new hope to young people, but on the other it has created disturbing forms of marginalisation and exploitation with more and more situations of personal hardship. Because of the noticeable difference between the education and training received and the world of work, it is now more difficult for them to find employment that meets with their personal skills and studies, and there is no certainty that they will be able to maintain even unstable employment for any length of time. The process of globalisation taking place in the world entails a need for mobility that obliges numerous young people to emigrate and live far from their home countries and their families. This brings about an unsettling feeling of insecurity that undoubtedly has repercussions on their ability to not only dream and build up a project for the future, but even to commit themselves to matrimony and start a family. These are complex and delicate questions that must be faced in due course, keeping in mind the reality of our times while referring to the social doctrine of the Church. This is duly presented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and especially in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.

The attention of the Church in recent years has been constantly directed on the social question, and in particular on that of work. We remember the encyclical Laborem exercens published a little over twenty-five years ago, on 14 September 1981, by my well loved predecessor John Paul II. This reaffirmed and updated the great intuitions developed by Pope Leo XIII and Pius XI in the encyclicals Rerum novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo anno (1931), both written during the period of the industrialisation of Europe. In a context of economic liberalism conditioned by market forces, of competition and competitiveness, these pontifical documents forcefully call on the need to evaluate the human dimension of work and to protect the dignity of the person. In fact, the ultimate reference of every human activity can only be the human person, created in the image and likeness of God. A close analysis of the situation, in fact, shows that work is part of God's plan for humankind and that it is participation in his work of creation and redemption. Every human activity should be an occasion and place for the growth of individuals and society, the development of personal "talents" that should be appreciated and placed at the ordered service of the common good, in a spirit of justice and solidarity. For believers, moreover, the ultimate aim of work is the building up of the Kingdom of God.

While I invite you to treasure the conversations and reflections that take place over the next few days, I hope that this important assembly of young people may be a profitable occasion of spiritual and ecclesial growth for the participants, through the sharing of experiences and personal accounts, and common prayer and liturgies celebrated together. Today, more than ever, it is necessary and urgent to proclaim "the Gospel of Work", to live as Christians in the world of work and become apostles among workers. In order to fulfil this mission it is necessary to remain united to Christ through prayer and a deep sacramental life, and for this purpose, to hold Sunday in special high regard, for it is the day dedicated to the Lord. While I encourage young people not to lose heart when faced with these difficulties, I invite them to participate next Sunday in Saint Peter's Square in the solemn celebration of Palm Sunday and the 22nd World Youth Day, the final stage of preparation for the World Youth Day that will take place in Sydney Australia next year.

The theme for reflection this year is: "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another" (Jn 13:34). Here I repeat what I wrote to young Christians all over the world, that there may be awakened in young Christians, "trust in a love that is true, faithful and strong; a love that generates peace and joy; a love that binds people together and allows them to feel free in respect for one another", and allows them to develop their abilities to the full. It is not simply a question of becoming more "competitive" and "productive", but it is necessary to be "witnesses of charity". It is only in this way that young people -- with the support of their respective parishes, movements and communities, in which it is possible to experience the greatness and vitality of the Church -- will be able to experience work as a vocation and true mission. To this end, Venerable Brother, I assure you of my prayers, with the heavenly protection of Mary and Saint Joseph, patron of workers, I send you and all those participating in the International Forum and all young Christian workers, a special Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican, 28 March 2007

Benedictus PP XVI

© Copyright 2007 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana

On Clement of Alexandria

On Clement of Alexandria

"One of the Great Promoters of Dialogue Between Faith and Reason"

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 18, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered today at the general audience in St. Peter's Square. The reflection focused on St. Clement of Alexandria.

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

After a time of holidays, we return to our normal catechesis, despite the fact that the square is still visibly decorated for the feasts. With these catecheses, we return, as I said, to the theme previously begun. We have spoken about the Twelve Apostles, then the disciples of the apostles, and now we turn to the great personalities of the nascent Church, of the ancient Church.

Last time, we had spoken about St. Irenaeus of Lyons and today we will speak of Clement of Alexandria, a great theologian who was probably born in Athens, sometime around the turn of the second century. In Athens, he picked up a keen interest in philosophy that would make him one of the great promoters of dialogue between faith and reason in the Christian tradition.

While still a youth, he moved to Alexandria, the "symbolic city" of this fruitful nexus between cultures which characterized the Hellenistic age. He was a disciple of Pantaenus and even succeeded him in directing the catechetical school. Numerous sources say he was ordained a priest. During the persecution from 202-203, he fled Alexandria and took refuge in Caesarea, in Cappadocia, where he died in the year 215.

The most important of his works which still exist are the "Exhortation," the "Instructor" and the "Stromata." Although it seems that it was not the author's original intention, these works make for a real trilogy, adequate for efficiently accompanying the spiritual maturation of a Christian.

"The Exhortation," as the title itself implies, exhorts one who is beginning and searching for the path of faith. Moreover, "The Exhortation" coincides with a person: the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is an "exhorter" of those who decidedly begin the journey toward Truth.

Christ himself later becomes the "educator," that is, the "instructor" of those who, by virtue of baptism, have become sons and daughters of God. Christ himself, finally, is also "Didascalo," that is, the "Teacher," who proposes the deepest teachings. These are collected in Clement's third work, "The Stromata," a Greek word meaning "miscellanies." It is a composition that is not systematic, but rather deals with various arguments, and is the direct fruit of the ordinary teaching of Clement.

Taken together, Clement's catecheses accompany the catechumen and the baptized step by step, because, with the two "wings" of faith and reason, they lead to knowing the Truth, which is Christ, the Word of God. "Authentic gnosis" -- the Greek expression which means "knowledge" or "intelligence" -- can only be found in knowing the person of the truth. This is the edifice built by reason under the impulse of the supernatural principle. Therefore, the authentic "gnosis" is a development of the faith, drawn forth by Christ in the souls of those united to him. Clement later defines two levels of Christian life.

The first level: believing Christians who live the faith in an ordinary way, although with their horizons always open toward sanctity. The second level: the "gnostics," that is, those who lead a life of spiritual perfection. In any case, the Christian has to begin with the common base of the faith and by way of a path of searching, he should allow himself to be led by Christ and thus arrive to the knowledge of the Truth and the truths that make up the content of the faith.

This knowledge, Clement tells us, becomes for the soul a lived reality: It is not just a theory. Rather, it is a life force, a union with a transforming love. The knowledge of Christ is not just a thought, but a love that opens the eyes, transforms the person and creates communion with the "Logos," the divine Word that is truth and life. In this communion, which is the perfect knowledge and is love, the perfect Christian reaches contemplation and union with God.

Clement finally takes up doctrine, according to which the final end of the person consists in being like God. We have been created in the image and likeness of God, but this is also a challenge, a journey; in fact, the objective of life, the final destiny of the person consists in making himself like God. This is possible thanks to a connaturality with him, which the person has received at the moment of his creation, by which he is already the image of God. This connaturality enables him to know divine realities to which the person adheres above all by faith, and through the living of the faith, the practice of the virtues, can grow until he reaches the contemplation of God.

In this way, on the journey to perfection, Clement gives the same importance to moral requirements as to the intellectual ones. The two go together because it is not possible to know the truth without living it, nor to live the truth without knowing it. It is not possible to make oneself like God and contemplate him simply with a rational knowledge: In order to achieve this objective, it is necessary to live according to the "Logos," a life according to truth. And, therefore, good works have to accompany intellectual knowledge, as the shadow accompanies the body.

There are two virtues which particularly adorn the soul of the "authentic gnostic." The first is freedom from passions ("apátheia"); the second is love, the true passion, which ensures intimate union with God. Love gives perfect peace, and enables the "authentic gnostic" to confront the greatest sacrifices, including the supreme sacrifice in the following of Christ, and brings him to rise to the level of living virtue. In this way, the ethical ideal of ancient philosophy, that is, the freedom from passions, is redefined by Clement and complemented by love, in the unending process which leads to being like God.

In this way, the thinker from Alexandria fosters the second great opportunity for dialogue between the Christian message and Greek philosophy. We know that St. Paul, in the Areopagus in Athens, where Clement was born, had made the first attempt at dialogue with Greek philosophy and for the most part, had failed, given that his listeners said, "We will listen to you at another time." Now Clement, takes up again this dialogue, and supremely ennobles it in the tradition of Greek philosophy.

As my venerable predecessor, John Paul II, wrote in his encyclical "Fides et Ratio," Clement of Alexandria arrived to an interpretation of philosophy as "instruction which prepared for Christian faith" (No. 38). And, in fact, Clement even affirmed that God had given philosophy to the Greeks "as their own Testament" ("Stromata," 6, 8, 67, 1).

For him, the tradition of Greek philosophy, almost like the Law for the Jews, is the context for "revelation." They are two currents that definitively direct toward the very "Logos." Clement decisively continues along the path of those who want to "give reason" for their faith in Jesus Christ.

He can serve as an example for Christians, for catechists and theologians of our time, who John Paul II exhorted in that same encyclical to "recover and express to the full the metaphysical dimension of truth in order to enter into a demanding critical dialogue with […] contemporary philosophical thought."

We conclude with one of the expressions from the famous "Prayer to Christ, 'Logos'" with which Clement concludes the "Instructor." His prayer reads: "Show favor to your children … grant us to live in peace, to arrive to your city, pass through the currents of sin without sinking into them, be transported with serenity by the Holy Spirit, by ineffable Wisdom: we, who by day and by night, until the last day, raise to you a hymn of thanksgiving to the one Father … the Son, Instructor and Teacher, together with the Holy Spirit, Amen!" ("Instructor," 3, 12, 101).

[Translation by ZENIT]

[At the end of the audience, the Holy Father greeted the people in several languages. In English, he said:]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In our catechesis on the Fathers and teachers of the early Church, we now turn to Saint Clement of Alexandria. As head of the catechetical school of Alexandria, Clement promoted a fruitful encounter between the Gospel and the Greek philosophical tradition. For Clement, faith in Christ grants the true knowledge which the ancient philosophers had sought through the use of reason. Faith and reason thus appear as two necessary and complementary "wings" by which the human spirit comes to the knowledge of Christ, the Word of God. Faith itself, as a divine gift, inspires a search for a deeper understanding of God’s revelation. As creatures made in God’s image, we are called to become ever more like him not only through the perfection of our intellect, but also through our growth in the virtues. Freed from our passions, we are drawn to contemplate in love the God who has revealed himself in Christ. By his life and teaching, Clement can serve as a model for all Christians who seek to give an account of their hope (cf. 1 Pet 3:15), and especially for catechists and theologians as they strive to articulate the Christian faith in a disciplined dialogue with the great philosophical tradition.

I greet all the English-speaking visitors and pilgrims present at today’s Audience, including groups from Britain and Ireland, Gibraltar, Scandinavia, Asia and North America. I extend a special welcome to the ecumenical visitors from Finland and to the many students and teachers present. Upon all of you I invoke the abundant blessings of this Easter season, and I pray that your visit to Rome will bring you closer to Christ our Risen Lord. May God bless you all!

© Copyright 2007 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Vatican spokesman says fathers of the Church, centrality of the liturgy essential elements of Benedict XVI’s pontificate

via NLM

Vatican spokesman says fathers of the Church, centrality of the liturgy essential elements of Benedict XVI’s pontificate

Vatican City, Apr 17, 2007 / 10:58 am (CNA).- On the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI’s 80th birthday, the director of the Holy See’s Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, said this week there are two issues of profound concern to Pope Benedict XVI: the continual reference to the fathers of the Church and the constant explication and living of the Sacred Liturgy.

“Two particular aspects call come to mind. First of all, the richness and the nature of the references to the Fathers of the Church. There hasn’t been a break in the two thousand years since the Scriptures until today. One can see the continuity in the reflections and in the deepening of the faith throughout time from Jesus to today. The Fathers were somewhat eclipsed in the common culture of the believer, and now they have become more familiar,” Father Lombardi said.

In speaking about the second aspect, the Vatican spokesman underscored the profundity of the Pontiff when he refers to the liturgy and “the celebration of our faith: the significance of the rites, the expression of the relationship between believers and God, which grows through the history of our faith. They are understood now in a living context, in which memory becomes actuality, and we more fully understand that come into contact with the mystery of God.”

Likewise, the Vatican spokesman underscored that the life of the Pope has been “characterized by a vocation that has developed in different successive phases and modalities of increasing responsibility, with a great coherence of unity of inspiration and strength. Priest and theologian, man of faith, of culture and ecclesial service. Culture and faith do not remain restricted to the realm of pursuit and to private life, but rather they become treasures shared always in the widest of atmospheres, to the ends of the Church and to today’s humanity.”

Father Lombardi described the Pope’s “charism” as the ability to speak with clarity, profundity about the center of the faith by helping to understand the need and the beauty of the continual and daily relationship between faith and reason, study and spirituality. “The encyclical ‘Deus Caritas est’ and the book ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ are two reference points for entering into this perspective and for remaining involved and, we might even say, fascinated,” he added.

“We wish the Pope many more years,” Father Lombardi said.

What sex is for

Designed for Sex: What We Lose When We Forget What Sex Is For
by J. Budziszewski, for Touchstone Magazine

Pontiff's Birthday Takes on Ecumenical Tone

Pontiff's Birthday Takes on Ecumenical Tone

He Receives Patriarch of Constantinople's Delegate

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 16, 2007 (Zenit.org).- On his 80th birthday, Benedict XVI received in audience Metropolitan Ioannis Zizioulas of Pergamum, who delivered a letter from Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople.

According to statements made to the press today by Metropolitan Zizioulas, the letter from the patriarch proposes that the Pope support the meeting in the Italian city of Ravenna to inaugurate the working sessions of the Catholic-Orthodox Commission for theological dialogue that will take place Oct. 7-15.

The metropolitan added that representatives from all the Orthodox Churches will be present at the meeting.

"Among ourselves we have the same faith and the same tradition. The more important theme that we have to face is the primacy of the bishop of Rome, that is to say, the role of the Pope," he told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

"For some it is a problem without solution," the metropolitan added. "I, however, believe that a solution can be found."

Metropolitan Zizioulas continued: "The issue is to define well the place of the bishop of Rome in the structure of the universal Church. The Orthodox are prepared to accept the idea of a universal primate and, according to the cannons of the ancient Church, the bishop of Rome is the 'primus.'"

"According to the Orthodox vision," he clarified, "it is a universal primate that always acts in communion with the synod" of the various Churches.

The Orthodox patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Alexy II, also sent birthday greetings to the Pope, wishing him in a letter good health, a long life and the help of God in his spiritual ministry.

Some info on Fr. Serge Keleher

From Stuart Koehl at Mere Comments:

>>>Stuart, this is off topic but I have been wondering what your reaction is to the changes in the DL of the ByzCath churches in the Pittsburgh diocese recently? Adopting "inclusive language" in the Nicene Creed, etc.?<<<>

It sucks. My wife (professional translator who speaks Slavonic, Russian, Slovak, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and half a dozen other Slavic languages) and I are preparing an article on the subject for Eastern Churches Journal. In the interim, you can perhaps get a copy of Fr. Serge Kelleher's scathing review "Studies on the Byzantine Liturgy-The Draft Translation: A response to the proposed recasting of the Byzantine-Ruthenian Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom". This can be ordered from:

Stauropegion Press
PO Box 14096
Pittsburgh, PA 15237-9998

The price is $20.00 + $4.00 per book shipping and handling ($24.00 total per book).

and

Fr. Serge was elevated to the dignity of Mitred Archmandrite by Bishop Basil (Losten) of Stamford at the request of Patriarch Lyubomir (Husar) of Kyiv for his work in reestablishing the Lviv Theological Academy (now the Lviv Theological University). He is presently de facto Ethnarch for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic community in Ireland. He celebrates the Divine Liturgy in St. Kevin's Oratory underneath St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin. When I was there a couple of years ago, the little chapel was packed to the gills, a temporary iconostasis having been erected across the sanctuary. His flock encompassed Slavs from all over Eastern Europe, both Catholic AND Orthodox, mainly working class, mostly young, with children (I remember one blond little boy who kept crawling under the Royal Doors. Father Serge would bend down, turn him around and let him crawl back out). A surprising number were actually Irish, some Roman Catholics, some Protestants, a few unchurched. The Divine Liturgy was an interesting blend of modern Ukrainian, Irish Gaelic, and Slavonic--but no English, which made it fun trying to follow along. Fortunately, having served for Father Serge on a number of occasions, I knew his style.

He's supposed to be setting up a couple of missions in Belfast and Londonderry, a sign that this new St. Patrick is reconverting the Irish.

Society for Thomistic Natural Philosophy

still no website...

Martinez J. Hewlett cv
Marie I. George cv

Reminder: Check American Maritain Association

website

Call for papers for the2007 AnnualAMA Conference (coming soon)
at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana

Institute for the Study of Nature

Dr. Michael Augros is associated with it. He teaches for the Legionaries over at Thornwood. (Is he related to Dr. Robert Augros over at St. Anselm? Probably.)

The ISN is having its first Summer Institute (June 11th) and Conference (June 15th).

ISN Summer Conference 2007:“The Nature of Nature”
At the end of the four days of study at the Summer Institute, the ISN will hold a small academic conference called “The Nature of Nature” for the benefit of the students and interested scholars.

What: A one and one-half day academic conference with one or two keynote addresses, and the presentation of 10-15 academic papers. Papers are encouraged on topics ranging from anti-reductionism/holism in science to self-organization, systems theory, and complexity, to papers in natural philosophy in the neo-Aristotelian or phenomenological traditions. See the ISN “articles, essays, and books” page to get a sense of the range or relevant topics.

Who: The invited keynote speaker (not confirmed) is Dr. Leon Kass. Scholars interested in giving papers are welcome to submit their proposals by May 11th; those whose papers are selected will have their travel expenses reimbursed, and may receive a small stipend (to be determined). Any interested scholar may attend. Also, we hope and expect the students from the preceding Summer Institute will remain to participate, since this conference is for their benefit as well.

Thanks to Mark Shea.

Misc:
Altered Nuclear Transfer website

The Constitutional Right of Secession in Political Theory and History

The Constitutional Right of Secession in Political Theory and History

a Libertarian pov

Long on Embryonic Rescue

From Steven Long, "An Argument for the Embryonic Intactness of Marriage," The Thomist 70 (April 2006), 267-88.

8. It is surely true that it is more natural for an embryonic child to be carried by a woman in her womb than by a machine such as an artificial womb, and also that it is more natural for the embryonic child to develop and live rather than to die. But the conclusions drawn from this are erroneous. For while it is generically speaking more natural for the child to be carried in a woman's womb than in a machine or artificial womb, the accruing of an additional form may make such carrying of the child to be unnatural. Similarly, it is generically better not to kill human beings than to kill them, but subsequent upon a certain form of justice, it may be better to kill--say, in just war, in defense, or in the case of the death penalty. Likewise, generically it is more natural for the embryonic child to be carried in the womb of a woman. But when one considers the added formality that the woman in question is not the mother of the child, so that such carrying constitutes either a sin against marital intimacy, against the chastity of the unwed, or against the vow of religious chastity, it is clear that by this form it is contrary to natural order for such a woman to carry the child of other parents. Indeed, it is the sin of surrogacy which the Church has proscribed. It is clear that it is then more natural for the child to be saved in an artificial womb than that anyone contrary to moral precept materially violate marital intimacy, or unwed chastity, or religious chastity. With respect to it being more natural for the child to live than to die, this is generically true; but, consequent upon the form that for the child to live someone must do moral evil, one sees that in this case, even were death the only remaining likelihood for the child, it would be better that no morally evil act be done. For one may not do evil that good may come.

With respect to the claim that it is simply natural for women to carry children (to gestate) and therefore it is natural for a woman to gestate another's child, one must say: this is overly generic, too general. Generically speaking, yes, it is natural for

---

page 285

women to carry children, to gestate; and generically speaking, one might also say it is natural to human beings to gestate; or indeed, one might say it is natural for human beings to engage in sexual activity, or for human beings to marry. But what is generically true requires specification. It is natural to the mother to carry the child she conceives, but not for the woman to go to a clinic and carry a child she never conceived. It is natural to man and wife within the bounds of matrimony to procreate children, but it assuredly is not a perfection of normative natural teleology for all human persons of whatsoever age and sex, and apart from matrimony, to engage in sexual activity. It is natural to those fit for and desiring marriage to marry, but it is not natural to one who is called by God to religious life or the priesthood to deny the divine call, or alternatively and by way of defect for one who cannot engage in the procreative act to marry. It is natural for the prison guard to hold prisoners in jail, but it is not natural for the prison guard to hold someone in jail who is known by all to be innocent or if such holding is clearly contrary to law, justice, and charity. From such a generic proposition as "it is natural for women to carry children" one does not sufficiently fathom normative natural teleology, for the children carried do not naturally fall out of the air, but are conceived by man and wife. It is natural for a wife to conceive a child and then to carry the child in her womb, but the normative teleology is not for a woman to have an embryonic child whom she never conceived implanted in her womb by a clinic.

It remains true that one may not do evil that good may come--one may not violate marital intimacy, the chastity of the unwed, or religious chastity, for the end of saving the lives of embryonic children wrongfully alienated from their mothers' wombs and in danger of death. Yet there is in fact hope that these children may be rescued through the development of an artificial environment that can medicinally provide some minimal degree of what the mother should have provided her child in her womb.

---

Page 286

9. It is true that many acts that are not otherwise permissible may become permissible on the supposition of some prior evil, danger, or grave situation. Nonetheless no such act is permissible if it involves the objective transgression of negative precept, that is, if its moral species is one of wrongdoing. One may not do evil that good may come. Hence the reason why the apostate priest may not habitually dispense the sacrament is that his state of unbelief would render this sacrilegious given his public unbelief, and that he lacks the habitual grace minimally proportionate to such habitual sacaramental action, and that this might even in the external forum be an occasion for the ridiculing of the sacrament. But just as in the case of a penitent in extremis there is an extreme need, so the apostate priest may in such a state, mindful of that dignity to which he had been called, receive from God the graced motion of will whereby he wills in this extreme case to provide the sacrament. One notes that the giving of the sacrament is an end that is good in itself. Likewise, for the child's mother to bear her child is good in itself; but for one who is not the mother to carry the child is not good in itself because contrary, as has been said above, either to marital intimacy, the chastity of the unwed, or religious chastity. And so there is no moral parity here between an apostate priest hearing confession of a penitent in extremis and the case of the woman who chooses to carry a child she has not conceived with her husband in a specific act of conjugal unity: for the former is (or at least may be) good, while the latter is, simply speaking, not good, because it is surrogacy.

Yet the gravity of the case of the embryonic human persons needs to be addressed. How shall it be addressed? It has been seen above that whereas it is generically better for a woman to carry the child, consequent upon a certain form it is seen that to carry a child not her own is wrongful because materially violative of marital intimacy, the chastity of the unwed, or religious chastity. Likewise, as already seen it is generically inferior for an embryonic human being to be placed in a machine rather than in the womb of a woman. But given the realization that this child cannot be placed in the maternal womb as ought to be the case,

---

page 287

and that this child can be placed in the womb only of a woman for whom this act will be violative of marital intimacy, unwed chastity, or religious chastity, clearly it is better for the child not to be placed in such a woman's womb, and to be placed in an artificial womb. For this offers both to supply medicinally at least some minimal degree of that of which the child has been deprived by its mother, and also it does this without any violation of the moral law. It is, accordingly, the only moral option for attempted rescue of frozen embryonic human beings. But if there is no such artificial womb that is workable, or if any attempt at thawing in the current state of technology should prove to be lethal, may these embryonic children be kept in their unnatural and frozen state in the hope that a technical means may be found to enable at least some of them to survive and live normal human lives?

Although this is not formally part of the question at hand, it seems fitting to conclude by noting that this is indeed one of the circumstances in which, supposing the prior evil, and supposing that there is real hope of normal life for these beings, we may do what elsewise we would not, namely, retain them in their frozen state. Although this is unnatural, and it was wrong initially for them to be alienated from their mothers, yet to unfreeze them is lethal and arguably thus to do them even worse injury; and by unfreezing them it seems that we deliberately choose to take responsibility for their deaths. Hence insofar as there is a realistic prospect of providing a means for at least some of these children to live, it seems not unreasonable to retain them in this unnatural condition in the hope, finally, of freeing them not merely from this affliction by thawing them unto their deaths, but of freeing them from this unnatural state for the sake of living a normal human existence.

In the absence of any such realistic prospect, however--if it is correctly judged that this is now, and for the foreseeable future will remain, impossible--then to unfreeze them, baptize them, and permit them to perish free of their unnatural and unnaturally imposed state, is permissible under the principle of double effect, inasmuch as the circumstances pertinent to their unnatural

---

page 288

condition rather than the effort to free them therefrom exerts the decisively baneful influence. For to keep innocent human persons trapped in unnatural rigidity indefinitely, in quasiperpetuity and with no practical plan to free them, is unjust. Further, in such circumstances the caretaker's principal responsibility is to baptize them--which means also letting them thaw and die, since there is more probability that they will be alive to be baptized earlier rather than later. To insist upon keeping them in their frozen state without any practical hope of normal life is to perpetuate the wrongful act of those who initially separated them from their mothers and froze them. Only a reasonably practical hope of enabling normal life for these embryonic persons could justify failing to baptize them and keeping them for some slight increment longer in their present unnatural frozen state.

M is for Messy

M is for messy
By Martin Gardner

Lee Smolin
The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next.
Houghton Mifflin, 392 pages, $26

Peter Woit
Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law.
Basic Books, 291 pages, $26.95

For more than thirty years, string theory has been what Murray Gell-Mann called “the only game in town.” By this he meant that it was the only good candidate for a TOE, or Theory of Everything. Not only does it claim to unify relativity and quantum mechanics, it also explains the existence of all fundamental particles. Instead of being “pointlike,” they are modeled by filaments of energy so tiny that there is no known way to observe them or even to prove they are real.

A string can have two ends or be closed like a rubber band. Of great tensile strength, strings vibrate at different frequencies. They live in a space of ten or eleven dimensions, of which six or seven are “compacted” into inconceivably minute structures attached to every point in our four-dimensional spacetime. The simplest vibration of a closed string produces a graviton, the quantized particle of gravity. One of string theory’s earliest triumphs was forcing the reality of gravitons.

After an obscure, bumbling start, string theory slowly began to gain momentum until it became the hottest topic in physics. Thousands of papers were published and thick textbooks written. The fastest way to advance in departments of great universities was to work on strings. Richard Feynman and Sheldon Glashow were almost alone among famous physicists who were skeptical of the trend. Not until a few years ago did skepticism begin to surge. Simmering doubts reached a boiling point last September when two eminent physicists published slashing attacks on string theory. Their books may mark a dramatic turning point in the history of modern physics.

For years, Lee Smolin rode the string bandwagon. After teaching at Yale and Penn State, he became a researcher at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, a think tank he helped found. The Trouble with Physics, his third book, is a powerful indictment. He sees string theory as not a theory—only a set of curious conjectures in search of a theory. True, it has great explanatory power, but a viable theory must have more than that. It must make predictions which can be falsified or confirmed.

In addition to this whopping lack of evidence, string theory has suffered other setbacks. It has been absorbed into a richer set of conjectures called M-theory. The M stands mainly for membranes (branes for short), or for Magic, Mystery, Mother of all theories, or any other term you like that begins with M. In M-theory, strings are one-dimensional branes that can roam free or be attached to two-dimensional branes. Branes may be of any dimension from 1 through 9. One wild speculation is that our 3-brane universe floats within a monstrous higher-dimension brane. To a mere science journalist like myself, the great mathematical beauty of early string theory has degenerated into M for Messy. Its membranes, in Smolin’s opinion, are as ugly as the epicycles Ptolemy fabricated to describe the curious paths of planets as they seem to circle Earth.

The most troubling aspect of string/M-theory is that the compacted dimensions, known as Calabi-Yau manifolds, can take at least a hundred thousand different shapes. This has led to the mind-boggling concept of a vast “landscape” consisting of a multiverse containing a hundred thousand, perhaps an infinity, of universes, each with its own Calabi-Yau space! Every universe would have a random selection of physical constants, such as the velocity of light. By anthropic reasoning, we of course live in a universe with just the right set of constants that make possible galaxies, stars, planets, and, on one small planet, such improbable creatures as you and me.

Other string/M-theory embarrassments are carefully detailed by Smolin. Cosmologists have discovered that most of our universe consists of “dark matter,” so called because it is totally invisible. String theorists failed to predict it and have nothing useful to say about it. A more recent discovery is that the universe is expanding at a slightly increasing rate. Such acceleration can only be caused by the pressure of a mysterious “dark force.” Again, writes Smolin, dark force was not predicted by string theory, and the theory has no good explanation for it.

A chapter in Smolin’s persuasive book divides physicists into two classes: craftsmen who test theories; and seers, like Newton and Einstein, who create theories. What physics now desperately needs, Smolin is convinced, is a new Einstein who can replace M-theory with a TOE that can be confirmed by a workable experiment.

Another chapter is devoted to lonely seers, working patiently outside the establishment on conjectures as revolutionary as string theory. Roger Penrose, Oxford’s famous mathematical physicist, is the best known seer. His twistor theory, alas also untestable, is M-theory’s chief rival. Like many other seers, Penrose thinks Einstein was right to regard quantum mechanics as “incomplete.” Other intrepid seers are starting to question even special relativity. Because both relativity and quantum mechanics are essential to M-theory, finding either theory in need of revision would be, Smolin writes, another severe blow to string/M-theory.

In a chapter on sociology, Smolin introduces the concept of “groupthink”—the tendency of groups to share an ideology. This creates a cultlike atmosphere in which those who disagree with the ideology are considered ignoramuses or fools. Most physicists tied up in the string mania, Smolin believes, have become groupthinkers, blind to the possibility that they have squandered time and energy on bizarre speculations that are leading nowhere.

In spite of such criticisms Smolin, like Edward Witten, by far the most energetic and creative of the stringers, believes that even if string/M-theory is finally abandoned, portions of it will remain fruitful. Peter Woit, a mathematical physicist at Columbia University, is less optimistic. He sees little hope that any aspect of M-theory will survive. The harshness of his rhetoric is signaled by his book’s arresting title, Not Even Wrong. It’s a famous quote from the great Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli. A certain theory was so bad, he said, that “it was not even wrong.” By this he meant it was so flimsy it couldn’t be confirmed or falsified.

Most of Woit’s book is a moderately technical, equation-free survey of quantum mechanics, the standard model of particle theory, and the history of superstrings. The prefix “super” indicates the linkage of strings to an earlier theory called supersymmetry. Not until the last third of his book does Woit take up reasons for regarding string theory a failure, destined to give way to a testable TOE.

Although Woit sees Edward Witten as the guru of what resembles a religious cult, he has only the highest respect for Witten’s genius. Amazingly, Witten’s early training was in economics. He soon shifted to mathematics and physics at Princeton University. There, he obtained his doctorate and became a professor for several years before moving to New Jersey’s Institute for Advanced Study where he has remained ever since. He has been given a MacArthur award and a Fields medal, the mathematical equivalent of a Nobel prize.

When Woit was a graduate student at Princeton, he once followed Witten up a stairway from a library to a plaza. When he reached the plaza, Witten had mysteriously vanished. “It crossed my mind,” Woit writes, “that a consistent explanation … was that Witten was an extraterrestrial being from a superior race who, when he thought no one was looking, had teleported back to his office.”

Woit’s main objection to string theory, of course, is that it has not, in Glashow’s words, “made even one teeny-tiny experimental prediction.” Woit quotes Feynman: “String theorists do not make predictions, they make excuses.”

In his book Interactions, Glashow writes:

Until string people can interpret perceived properties of the real world they simply are not doing physics. Should they be paid by universities and be permitted to pervert impressionable students? Will young Ph.D’s, whose expertise is limited to superstring theory, be employable if, and when, the string snaps? Are string thoughts more appropriate to departments of mathematics, or even to schools of divinity, than to physics departments? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How many dimensions are there in a compacted manifold, 30 powers of ten smaller than a pinhead?
Woit quotes from another Nobel Prize winner, the Dutch physicist Gerard ’t Hooft:
Actually, I would not even be prepared to call string theory a “theory” rather a “model” or not even that: just a hunch. After all, a theory should come together with instructions on how to deal with it to identify the things one wishes to describe, in our case the elementary particles, and one should, at least in principle, be able to formulate the rules for calculating the properties of these particles, and how to make new predictions for them. Imagine that I give you a chair, while explaining that the legs are still missing, and that the seat, back and armrest will perhaps be delivered soon; whatever I did give you, can I still call it a chair?
Woit has only harsh things to say about the recent acceptance of an anthropic principle by several leading string theorists, notably Weinberg and David Susskind. Susskind has even written a popular book about it—The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design. The notion that there could be millions of other universes, each with its own Calabi-Yau structure—or what amount to the same thing, with its own basic state of what physicists like to call the “vacuum”—is not one that appeals to Witten. “I’d be happy if it is not right,” Woit quotes from a 2004 lecture, “but there are serious arguments for it, and I don’t have any serious argument against it.”
In the nineteenth century, a conjecture called the vortex theory of the atom became extremely popular in England and America. Proposed by the famous British physicist Lord Kelvin, it had an uncanny resemblance to string theory. It was widely believed at the time that space was permeated by an in- compressible frictionless fluid called the ether. Atoms, Kelvin suggested, are super-small whirlpools of ether, vaguely similar to smoke rings. They take the form of knots and links. Point particles can’t vibrate. Ether rings can. Their shapes and frequencies determine all the properties of the elements. Vortex theory isn’t mentioned by Woit, although Smolin considers it briefly.

Kelvin published two books defending his conjecture. It was strongly championed in England by J. J. Thomson in his 1907 book The Corpuscular Theory of Matter. Another booster of the theory was Peter Tait, an Irish mathematician. His work, like Witten’s, led to significant advances in knot theory. In the United States, Albert Michelson considered vortex theory so “grand” that “it ought to be true even if it is not.” Hundreds of papers elaborated the theory. Tait predicted it would take generations to develop its elegant mathematics. Alas, beautiful though vortex theory was, it proved to be a glorious road that led nowhere.

Will string theory soon meet a similar fate? Glashow wrote a clever poem that he recited at a Grand Unification Workshop in Japan. It ends with the following lines:


Please heed our advice that you too are not smitten—
The book is not finished, the last word is not Witten.

The prospect of all-female conception

The prospect of all-female conception
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 13 April 2007

Women might soon be able to produce sperm in a development that could allow lesbian couples to have their own biological daughters, according to a pioneering study published today.

Scientists are seeking ethical permission to produce synthetic sperm cells from a woman's bone marrow tissue after showing that it possible to produce rudimentary sperm cells from male bone-marrow tissue.

The researchers said they had already produced early sperm cells from bone-marrow tissue taken from men. They believe the findings show that it may be possible to restore fertility to men who cannot naturally produce their own sperm.

But the results also raise the prospect of being able to take bone-marrow tissue from women and coaxing the stem cells within the female tissue to develop into sperm cells, said Professor Karim Nayernia of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Creating sperm from women would mean they would only be able to produce daughters because the Y chromosome of male sperm would still be needed to produce sons. The latest research brings the prospect of female-only conception a step closer.

"Theoretically is it possible," Professor Nayernia said. "The problem is whether the sperm cells are functional or not. I don't think there is an ethical barrier, so long as it's safe. We are in the process of applying for ethical approval. We are preparing now to apply to use the existing bone marrow stem cell bank here in Newcastle. We need permission from the patient who supplied the bone marrow, the ethics committee and the hospital itself."

If sperm cells can be developed from female bone-marrow tissue they will be matured in the laboratory and tested for their ability to penetrate the outer "shell" of a hamster's egg - a standard fertility test for sperm.

"We want to test the functionality of any male and female sperm that is made by this way," Professor Nayernia said. But he said there was no intention at this stage to produce female sperm that would be used to fertilise a human egg, a move that would require the approval of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

The immediate aim is to see if female bone marrow can be lured into developing into the stem cells that can make sperm cells. The ultimate aim is to discover if these secondary stem cells can then be made into other useful tissues of the body, he said.

The latest findings, published in the journal Reproduction: Gamete Biology, show that male bone marrow can be used to make the early "spermatagonial" stem cells that normally mature into fully developed sperm cells.

"Our next goal is to see if we can get the spermatagonial stem cells to progress to mature sperm in the laboratory and this should take around three to five years of experiments," Professor Nayernia said.

Last year, Professor Nayernia led scientists at the University of Gottingen in Germany who became the first to produce viable artificial sperm from mouse embryonic stem cells, which were used to produce seven live offspring.

His latest work on stem cells derived from human bone marrow suggests that it could be possible to develop the techniques to help men who cannot produce their own sperm naturally.

"We're very excited about this discovery, particularly as our earlier work in mice suggests that we could develop this work even further," Professor Nayernia said.

Whether the scientists will ever be able to develop the techniques to help real patients - male or female - will depend on future legislation that the Government is preparing as a replacement to the existing Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.

A White Paper on genetics suggested that artificial gametes produced from the ordinary "somatic" tissue of the body may be banned from being used to fertilise human eggs by in vitro fertilisation.

Pope says science too narrow to explain creation

Pope says science too narrow to explain creation
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

PARIS (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, elaborating his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, says science has narrowed the way life's origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question.

The Pope also says the Darwinist theory of evolution is not completely provable because mutations over hundreds of thousands of years cannot be reproduced in a laboratory.

But Benedict, whose remarks were published on Wednesday in Germany in the book "Schoepfung und Evolution" (Creation and Evolution), praised scientific progress and did not endorse creationist or "intelligent design" views about life's origins.

Those arguments, proposed mostly by conservative Protestants and derided by scientists, have stoked recurring battles over the teaching of evolution in the United States. Some European Christians and Turkish Muslims have recently echoed these views.

"Science has opened up large dimensions of reason ... and thus brought us new insights," Benedict, a former theology professor, said at the closed-door seminar with his former doctoral students last September that the book documents.

"But in the joy at the extent of its discoveries, it tends to take away from us dimensions of reason that we still need. Its results lead to questions that go beyond its methodical canon and cannot be answered within it," he said.

"The issue is reclaiming a dimension of reason we have lost," he said, adding that the evolution debate was actually about "the great fundamental questions of philosophy - where man and the world came from and where they are going."

NOT BY FAITH ALONE

Speculation about Benedict's views on evolution have been rife ever since a former student and close advisor, Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, published an article in 2005 that seemed to align the Church with the "intelligent design" view.

"Intelligent design" (ID) argues that some forms of life are too complex to have evolved randomly, as Charles Darwin proposed in his 1859 book "The Origin of Species." It says a higher intelligence must have done this but does not name it as God.

Scientists denounce this as a disguised form of creationism, the view that God created the world just as the Bible says. U.S. courts have ruled both creationism and ID are religious views that cannot be taught in public school science classes there.

In the book, Benedict defended what is known as "theistic evolution," the view held by Roman Catholic, Orthodox and mainline Protestant churches that God created life through evolution and religion and science need not clash over this.

"I would not depend on faith alone to explain the whole picture," he remarked during the discussion held at the papal summer palace in Castel Gandolfo outside Rome.

He also denied using a "God-of-the-gaps" argument that sees divine intervention whenever science cannot explain something.

"It's not as if I wanted to stuff the dear God into these gaps - he is too great to fit into such gaps," he said in the book that publisher Sankt Ulrich Verlag in Augsburg said would later be translated into other languages.

AGAINST ATHEISM

Schoenborn, who published his own book on evolution last month, has said he and the German-born Pontiff addressed these issues now because many scientists use Darwin's theory to argue the random nature of evolution negated any role for God.

That is a philosophical or ideological conclusion not supported by facts, they say, because science cannot prove who or what originally created the universe and life in it.

"Both popular and scientific texts about evolution often say that 'nature' or 'evolution' has done this or that," Benedict said in the book which included lectures from theologian Schoenborn, two philosophers and a chemistry professor.

"Just who is this 'nature' or 'evolution' as (an active) subject? It doesn't exist at all!" the Pope said.

Benedict argued that evolution had a rationality that the theory of purely random selection could not explain.

"The process itself is rational despite the mistakes and confusion as it goes through a narrow corridor choosing a few positive mutations and using low probability," he said.

"This ... inevitably leads to a question that goes beyond science ... where did this rationality come from?" he asked. Answering his own question, he said it came from the "creative reason" of God.

(c) Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.