Jeffrey Miller

I am not really surprised to find that Kathy Shaidle and Our Sunday Visitor were not quite a match, but the benefit for us is that we get to now read the column she wrote for OSV that they wouldn’t print on the non-coincidence of Lenin’s Birthday and Earth Day an how environmentalism has become a substitute religion.

I remember as a young atheist the first Earth Day and see now how ecology was my religion and recycling a major sacrament. I remember watching PBS on that first high holy day for environmentalists and dutifully watching a program that contained a cartoon of the whole earth being covered with cement. I remember now with embarrassment the conversations we had as kids in the neighborhood decrying the population boom and the eminent destruction of the earth. Our worries about the coming ice age and the forming of a neighborhood environmentalist group that would impose fines on other kids for littering.

Here is a good article written by Father Raymond J. De Souza as we celebrate the second anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI.

This past week, Pope Benedict XVI celebrated both his 80th birthday and, today, his second anniversary as pope. A special Mass at St. Peter’s last Sunday marked the two occasions, and the gifted pianist attended a classical musical concert in his honour at the Vatican on Monday night. I suspect, though, that Benedict will consider his visit this weekend to the Italian town of Pavia a more special gift still, for that is where Saint Augustine — the fifth-century North African convert, bishop and doctor of the Church–is buried. Across the centuries, one great theologian-bishop is going to visit another.

St. Augustine is more than the principal intellectual influence on Benedict; the greatest of the first millennium’s Christian scholars is the Pope’s constant intellectual companion. His preaching and teaching are unfailingly leavened with Augustinian quotations. If John Paul II was a great philosopher pope, teaching the wisdom of Saint Thomas Aquinas to the late 20th century, Benedict is doing the same for Augustine in the 21st.

"Augustine defines the essence of the Christian religion," then-Cardinal Ratzinger once said. "He saw Christian faith, not in continuity with earlier religions, but rather in continuity with philosophy as a victory of reason over superstition."

It is a favourite theme of Pope Benedict, one that provided the high point of his papacy thus far, the world-shaking address at Regensburg last year, when he argued that to act contrary to right reason was to act contrary to God — a critical message in an age of religously motivated violence.

Benedict argues that God’s revelation of Himself to Abraham began a definitive break with the world of pagan superstition and the fearful gods of the ancient world. That revelation, first to the children of Israel, finds its fulfilment in Jesus Christ, who shows forth the Father’s mercy in offering Himself to atone for our sins. The contrast with gods of the ancient world could not be more complete. Whether the pagan gods of the Roman Empire, the gods of Greek mythology, the Egyptian gods of the river or the harvest, or, in this part of the world, the gods of the Aztecs or Mayas, the ancient world was dominated by gods who were feared and needed to be appeased, and whose arbitrary power could be exercised to subordinate man, or destroy him altogether.

Benedict follows St. Augustine in seeing the Christian logos, the divine Word that rationally orders all things, an entirely different conception of God. Here is a God who is rational, whose creation reflects the order and goodness of right reason, and who can be known by human beings, made in His image and able to reason themselves. And even more extraordinary than that, this God revealed Himself as one who was love — a love that creates, redeems and calls His creation to Himself. The logos of philosophy becomes the God who is love, as Benedict put it in his first encyclical.

The God of Judeo-Christian revelation is not merely the god of the philosophers, acting as a remote first cause or principle of motion. Rather this God is a rational person, the principle of rationality and truth. This God can be approached by human creatures in truth –both the natural truths of science, and the revealed truths of faith. The ancient gods of the Nile or Mount Olympus, with their need for power and domination, had no standing in the world of philosophy. They belonged to a world of superstition. St. Augustine demonstrated how the God of Abraham belonged the world of philosophy, but pointed beyond it to the world of salvific love.

Benedict argued at Regensburg that the meeting of Biblical faith with Greek philosophy constitutes an essential part of Christian revelation. It was St. Augustine in whom that encounter was lived most deeply in the early Church.

Augustine is also a saint — one who not only knows about the things of God, but loves God and follows Him. This too, Benedict argues, is consistent with reason, for what other reason could there be for an omnipotent and self-sufficient God to create angels and human beings and animals and lakes and mountains except out of love? The ancient philosophers sought after the cause of being. Biblical faith responds that the reason for being is nothing other than divine love. And the reasonable response to love is to love in return.

Observers have wondered why Benedict’s first two years have not been focused on contemporary controversies, but on preaching the love of God, and looking repeatedly to the first centuries of the Church for wisdom and teaching. Perhaps it’s because Benedict knows that the world today lacks confidence in the possibility of reason to know the truth, and in the possibility of true love. The man buried in Pavia is one of the great witnesses that in God this world’s restless heart can indeed find both.

A reader sent me the following story which is interesting considering that Blessed Miguel Pro S.J. is my blog patron saint.

MEXICO CITY – Miss Mexico is toning down her Miss Universe pageant dress — not because it’s too slinky or low-cut, but because its bullet-studded belt and images of hangings from a 1920s uprising have outraged Mexicans.

The floor-length dress is accented with crosses, scapulars and a sketch of a man facing a firing squad. Designers who helped select the dress from among 30 entries argued it represented the nation’s culture and history, especially since Mexico City is hosting the pageant in May.

Cut from a traditional natural cotton called manta, the dress depicts scenes from the 1926-1929 Cristero war, an uprising by Roman Catholic rebels against Mexico’s secular government, which was imposing fiercely anti-clerical laws. Tens of thousands of people died.

“ We wanted a dress that made you think of Mexico,” Hector Terrones, who served on the selection committee, told La Jornada newspaper. “The design should grab people’s attention and have impact without giving too much information.”

But many Mexicans weren’t happy about the history the dress evoked, especially at a moment of debate about the Catholic Church’s role in politics and its lobbying against a Mexico City proposal to legalize abortion. Others said it glorified violence in a country where a battle between drug gangs has brought a wave of killings and beheadings.

Miss Mexico, Rosa Maria Ojeda, presented the dress March 29, showing off the billowing, hoop skirt adorned with sketches of Catholic rebels hanging from posts.

Rosaries and scapulars hung from the bullet-studded, bandolier belt; a large crucifix necklace, black halter top and wide-brimmed sombrero completed the outfit.

Not mentioned in the article is that it also has a prominent picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the front of the skirt.

FREDERICKSBURG, VA – “Last year International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) dispensed 103.4 million condoms to starving people. The problem is, you can’t eat condoms,” said Brittany Shankle, a senior at the University of Mary Washington who is coordinating the event. “Students at Mary Washington University are taking part in a demonstration called Food Not Condoms which insists that the selfish policies of sending condoms to places where people are starving to death must come to an end.”

Today, Tuesday, April 17, students will share in a free meal composed of rice, beans and tortillas – the staple diet for most of the world. According to the fliers distributed at the event, “On the American market this meal would cost only 25 cents. With the average cost of a condom at 50 cents, IPPF could feed 206.8 million starving people in a year instead of distributing 103.4 million condoms.”

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The name of the event says it all,” said Shankle, “We want to raise awareness of the fact that people in Africa, Honduras, and other parts of the world are starving while organizations and governments are shipping millions of dollars worth of condoms every year instead of food or aid. Food Not Condoms is their wakeup call.”

Shankle wants her fellow students to realize that the policies of the American government, the UN, and private organizations such as IPPF of sending condoms to starving people are not only ineffective, but selfish too. “By claiming overpopulation as the problem, these organizations are telling African and South American people that if they didn’t exist, starvation wouldn’t be a problem,” said Shankle. “In essence, these policies are prejudiced against minorities and impoverished people.”

The Food Not Condoms event is aimed at highlighting social injustices, and, Shankle hopes, enlightening people to the true root problem of world hunger: selfishness.

“
Starvation and disease will persist as long as we continue to apply a ‘band-aid’ of contraception to this gaping wound,” said Shankle. “Our community needs to understand that contraception is not the cure.”

Food Not Condoms is sponsored by the college group Project Plus, an organization dedicated to revealing the truth about contraception to their college peers. Project Plus can be reached at their website, www.theprojectplus.com, or via email at projectplusinfo@gmail.com.