Metaphors regarding the Church and sports are nothing new. St. Paul certainly used them and there are intersections with sports and the practice of the faith that make them useful. So I was interested when I saw a new book called The Catechism of Hockey by Alyssa Bormes. That it had a forward by Dale Ahlquist and is published by the American Chesterton Society certainly recommended itself to me. Plus that it has positive reviews from Archbishop Nienstedt and Bishop Paprocki sealed it.

Now I am not exactly a hockey fan and only have passing familiarity with the sport. Yet my lack of knowledge about hockey did not subtract from my enjoyment of the book in any way. A book as an extended metaphor comparing the Catholic faith and the sport of hockey would seem to be able to only go so far. That you would be stretching the metaphor at every juncture to try to make an apt and worthy comparison. Yet over and over I was rather amazed at how she put this forth with comparison after comparison and provided examples and lessons that I think are quite helpful in thinking about the faith. The penalty box and confession makes for a good parallel, but it is her writing which takes it beyond that. She ties it up quite nicely going from personal sin to how it affects the whole Body of Christ or using the hockey term being at “full strength.” There were a couple of comparisons that I thought were stretching it a bit. Still overwhelmingly it was dead on with an intriguing perspective of the faith and a real Catechism in the amount of topics covered.

Not every comparison in the book was hockey related, but even these parallels were made after originally grounding it in something hockey-based. One of these correlations involving the Mystical Body and the crowd of people in line to see the body of Pope John Paul II was stunning in its aptness and another example of how she took a metaphor and drew so much out of it. Over and over again in a Chestertonian way you would start to see something fresh from a new angle. No surprise that G.K. Chesterton was quoted a couple of time. In fact as I was reading the book and where she talked about the rules of hockey I was often reminded of one of his quotes.

“Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playgroundÉ.We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliffÕs edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.”

So I was quite pleased to see her use that same quote later on in the book. I so enjoyed how fun and inventive this book was which made serious points in a way I suspect could break through a previous barrier to something regarding the faith.

Update: Pope Francis on November 22nd offered what I would call a Catechism of Rugby.

Why in the world is the USCCB Blog promoting Sr. Helen Prejean, CSJ? Despite what good work she might have done involving the death penalty she is also involved in serious errors. She is not an example to parade on the USCCB blog.

At the Democratic National Convention in 2008 she spoke to an interfaith crowd saying:

She received nothing but a stony silence, however, when she questioned the basis of the biblical crucifixion story as a “projection of our violent society.”

“Is this a God?” Prejeans asked about the belief that God allowed his son, Jesus, to be sacrificed for the sins of humanity. “Or is this an ogre?”

So much for St. Paul’s “we preach Christ crucified.”

The previous year in 2007, she had this to say:

(A)ccording to Sister Helen Prejean, author of the best-selling book Dead Man Walking, and internationally-renowned advocate against the death penalty, it is the Church’s doctrine on homosexuality that is sinful, as it fails to recognize “the full dignity of all human beings.”

Speaking on Sunday at the close of the symposium, Prejean noted that the first steps in denying and “removing” a human being is to declare them somehow “not quite human, not like how we are … to say that they’re ‘disordered’” – a reference to the language of the Vatican to describe the orientation of gay people. Such terminology, she said, fails to recognize the full dignity of all human beings and is the “greatest form of disrespect.”

Accordingly, “to not stand with LGBT people would be a sin,” declared Prejean to thunderous applause.

Prejean said that she is hopeful as she’s convinced that “people are waking and rising,” and that this will “change the Church.”

“When dialogue starts, the bread starts rising,” she said. “The yeast, the Holy Spirit, is in our hearts.”

In 2006 she was one of the signers of an ad in the New York Times that in part said “YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.” After being disinvited by Duluth Bishop Dennis Schnurr to be a keynote speaker at an education dinner she later clarified “I believe that all of life is sacred and must be protected, especially in the vulnerable stages at the beginning of life and its end.” Yet she still managed to sign this document while at the same time saying: “ I stand squarely within the framework of ”the seamless garment“ ethic of life.” A year after this in the July-August 1997 St. Catherine Review: Sister Prejean “will not take a stand against abortion.” She has also said if she got a chance to talk to President Obama it would only be about his support of the death penalty. She can find nothing else to chide him about.

Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York, made clear that the Catholic Church remains adamantly opposed to the president’s health-care law because of what the Church considers its assault on conscience rights. “We bishops have been really kind of in a tough place, because we’re for universal, comprehensive, life-affirming health care,” Dolan said on Meet the Press, noting that the Catholic Church in the United States has supported the goal of universal and affordable health care for almost a century.

But the so-called HHS mandate, which requires coverage of contraception, sterilization, and drugs that may be abortifacients, without any co-pays, on all health-insurance plans, has made it impossible for Catholics to support the president’s efforts, Dolan said. “Mr. President, you’re really pushing kind of aside some of your greatest supporters. We want to be with you, we want to be strong, and if you keep doing this, we’re not going to be able to be one of your cheerleaders,” Dolan said. “That sadly is what happened.” (source)

While I can certainly understand some of the points Cardinal Dolan is making here. I think it also plays down or ignores other aspects. For example it was not the tacking on of the HHS mandate that made Obamacare morally unacceptable. The mandate just made it even worse. The U.S. Bishops were in the majority opposed to this act before the HHS Mandate which occurred only after the passage of the law. The very law itself had significant moral problems.

His statement “Mr. President, you’re really pushing kind of aside some of your greatest supporters.” also seems rather hyperbolic or a kind of diplomacy in place of truth. The assault on our faith by this President has extended across multiple lines beyond just the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” The idea that Catholics could be his greatest supporters if only he put aside the HHS Mandate is rather laughable. Yeah if he would just put aside his support for abortion, infanticide, contraception, so-called same-sex marriage, ordered drone strikes with oversight or accountability, assault on religious liberty, IVF, three-parent embryo creation, and a whole laundry list of morally problematic thrusts by his administration we would be great friends! We are called to love our enemies not whitewash away what makes them enemies.

Maybe I am being too hard on the Cardinal here who is obviously trying to balance prudentially calling out something without being belligerent. Yet I wish this prudence included not making a statement so obviously untrue.

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