Dear Friends of Kellenberg...

JMJ

                                                                                    October 21, 2011

Friends of Kellenberg,

After much prayer and discernment I have decided that I will be leaving the Marianist Community.  Although I love the mission and work of the Marianists, I have concluded that the life in whole is not for me.  I will no longer be teaching at Kellenberg which saddens me, but I know this is what I have to do at this point of my life.  The past two months of teaching have been a great joy and something I will truly miss.

I feel that God is calling me to the priesthood.  I will start at Douglaston Seminary in the near future.  Although the vocation of a brother appeals to me, priesthood appeals to me more deeply. 

I would like to say once more, thank you for everything.  I consider myself truly blest and for having the Marianists and Kellenberg in my life.  Pray for me and I will pray for you.

                                                All the best,

                                                                 Michael Joseph Plona

Women Priests and Liberals...Oh My

A priest was detained yesterday at the Vatican as he marched through the streets of Rome up to St. Peter's Square with a group of 17 protesters there to deliver a petition in support of the ordination of women to the priesthood.  Fr. Roy Bourgeois was excommunicated "latae sententiae" — automatically — in November 2008 after participating in the attempted ordination of Janice Sevre-Duszynska, who was also at the Oct. 17 demonstration in Rome.  He is also on the brink of being formally released by his religious order, the Maryknoll Fathers. 

Why is it that these groups that go against the Church can't seem to get more then a couple of people together and they're made up of a few aging liberals left over from the 70's?  It is inspiring to me that crowds like this are on their way out.

The Church declared in 2008 that any woman who attempts to be "ordained" a Catholic priest is automatically excomunicated along with the person attempting to "ordain" her.  Bl. Pope John Paul II stated definitively once more in 1994 that the Church simply cannot ordain women to the priesthood and the issue is not open to debate.  The priesthood was instituted by Christ; for the Church to change that, She would be unfaithful to Her Master. 

The police officers told the group that it was illegal to hold a protest without a permit.  An officer said that it would have been more appropriate to notify the Vatican in advance for them to deliver their petition.  "It's not like delivering a pizza, you can't just show up" unannounced and without authorization, the undercover police officer said.  "It's a very important pizza," one of the demonstrators shouted.  Judging by the size of your protest and how serious you were treated, your pizza is anything but important.  The Church is not a democracy, sorry.

http://www.ncronline.org/news/women-religious/maryknoll-priest-who-backs-womens-ordination-detained-vatican

More Christian Persecution in Egypt

Coptic Christians in Egypt were once again targeted by the militant Muslim majority recently.  On Sunday night a group of Copts were peacefully protesting outside of a state TV station that was supposedly inciting violence against Christians.  Not long after, gangs of Muslim thugs showed up and began fighting with the protesting Christians.  Soon after the military joined in.  Eyewitnesses said the army (which is basically all Muslim) began attacking the Copts.  They drove military vehicles into crowds with no regard for who might be in front and shot into the unarmed crowd.  In the end, 26 were left dead.

This of course is not an isolated incident or a random outburst, but the latest chapter in an ongoing persecution of the religious minority in Egypt, the Coptic Christians.  The "Arab Spring" which began in Egypt, is already being noted by many as a complete failure.  President Obama and leaders in Europe were highly supportive of the changes that have and are occurring throughout the middle-east.  It seems though that nothing has changed and Islamist ideals still run the state, allowing for absolutely no growth to take place.  The cultural revolution that started in Egypt has merely taken one unstable Islamic government out of power to replace it with another unstable Islamic government.  Its the story of the middle east; the story of Islam and politics.  Is it any surprise why there is no peace in the middle east?  Is there any surprise we are not even a bit closer?

In solidarity with the Copts,

Mike

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44841995/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/#.TpWsx3NuFl0  

Fr. Barron's "Youtube Heresy" ~ Part 4

The fourth and final "Youtube Heresy"is the over-exagerated relationship between religion and violence.  This has become completely exacerbated after September 11th, 2001.  The basic argument against faith from this perspective is that religion is so irrational, it must resort to violence.  The arguments from this particular angle against Catholicism almost always brings up the Crusades, Inquisition, and most recently the sex-abuse scandal in the Church.

Although the reports of the Crusades are extremely unbalanced and the Inquisition numbers have been greatly overblown.  The Crusades were in reality a retaliation against the Muslim invasion of the Holy Land and their violence against Christian pilgrims.  For example, a group of about 7,000 German pilgrims were en-route to Jerusalem when a group of Muslim occupiers slaughtered all but 2,000 of them (all un-armed and many women and children).  Nevertheless, I digress.

You can go "tit-for-tat" with what this and that group did throughout the course of history, but it is still really begging the question.  The Church is holy, but Her members are sometimes not.  This of course is not a license for clergy to do whatever they want, but a reality check.  The sins committed within the Church, although many of them  repulsive, do not alter Her mission which is immutable.

The Church has both human and divine dimensions.  The Church with Her sacraments, teachings and apostolic tradition make up the mystical body of Christ.  However, the people who are in the Church (even in the highest positions), are not prevented from doing stupid and sometimes horrible things.  For an institution about 2,000 years old, its nothing less then miraculous that it is around at all but with 1 billion plus members.  Its worth remembering also that the worst perpetrators of violence of all time were Hilter, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.  They were not the products of religion, but militantly atheistic anti-religious ideologies.

Fr. Barron's "Youtube Heresy" ~ Part 3

The third Youtube Heresy is scientism. Fr. Barron defines scientism as, "the reduction of knowledge to the scientific way of knowing." This basically is a concept that people can know truth only through the sciences (i.e. what we can measure and observe through the emperical world). This statement in itself though is a contradiction for there is no way to prove that we can know everything through the sciences. The claim that all knowledge is reducible to scientific knowledge is not itself somthing that can be proved scientifically.

The argument also does not take into account philophical paths to truths, for example, you cannot prove scientifically what is morally right and wrong and what beauty is. A wise old priest told me that the volumes and volumes and pages upon pages of work by St. Thomas Aquinas can best be summed up in two words: res sunt (things are). How strange it is that there is something rather then nothing?

All sciences rest upon the concept of intelligibility; that the universe is somehow to some degree knowable. We somehow have this innate belief that we can measure and observe the natural world and through that know something about it. Intelligibility is an act of faith in the truest sense; that we can somehow know something without any scientific proof.

The relationship between faith and reason is overly misconstrued in many people. The Catholic tradition has always been faith and reason, not one or the other, but both and.  Many of the greatest scientific minds have also been very religious individuals themselves.  Take for example Newton, Pascal, Descartes, Tycho Brahe.  Its also interesting to note that the man who began modern genetics, Gregor Mendel, was a friar and the formulator of the Big Bang Theory of the universe, Georges Lemaître, was a priest.  Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Ze Dong however were atheists.

Part 4 coming soon.

Gregor Mendel

                                                                   Georges Lemaître

Fr. Barron's "Youtube Heresies" ~ Part 2

Fr. Barron's second Youtube Heresy is Biblical Interpretation.  Many people assume that the Catholic approach to the Bible is the same as a fundamentalist/evangelical Protestant approach to the Bible; on the other hand evangelicals think Catholics don't even know what the Bible is.  Two things must be noted from the get go:
1.  Biblical literalism or fundamentalism has never been the Catholic approach to the Bible.
2.  And as for the Protestants who think that Catholics know nothing about the Bible...we compiled it.
     Catholics do not approach the Bible in the same manner as Muslims approach the Koran.  Catholics believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God written down by human hands.  God is the ultimate author and inspiration for everything in the Bible, but it was written down by different people in different times and different places with different emphases.

     The Catholic approach to the Bible is similar to the way one approaches a library.  There are many sections in a library just as there are in the Bible such as poetry, stories, psalms, wisdom literature, letters, mystical writings, and journalism (i.e. the Gospels).  One cannot approach a piece of poetry with the same lens as one who would approach a piece of journalism and vice versa.  The Bible is not so much a book but a collection of books.  This has always been the Catholic approach.  There is no contradiction between true faith and true reason simply because truth cannot contradict truth.

    Catholicism unfortunately often gets roped into the same category as fundamental protestantism, but as stated above, nothing could be further from the truth.  When some fundamental evangelical decides to build a creation museum with cavemen riding on animatronic dinosaurs because the Bible says the world cannot possibly be older then several thousand years, one cannot help but laugh.  Modern science and reason has shown that that is not the case (by the way a Catholic priest came up with the Big Band theory of the universe, Fr. Georges Lemaître).  Unfortunately such people tarnish Christianity in whole and make many think that all Christians have thrown reason out the window altogether.  True Christianity however has certainly not.

Part 3 coming soon.

Fr. Barron's "Youtube Heresies"

Popular writer/media-man/theologian, Fr. Robert Barron, came up with what he titles the four "Youtube Heresies".  They refer to some of the major objections people have against faith; more specifically the Catholic faith.  They are great at reasonably countering unreasonable objections to faith.

The Meaning of the Word "God"


     Modern day atheism often tries to debunk faith by coming from a warped definition of the word "God".  What I mean by that is that they have a concept of God as some kind of mythical sky fairy or magical being or better yet an invisible friend.  Renowned atheist Christopher Hitchens came up with the laughable misnomer flying spaghetti monster referring to God.  What he meant by that is that there is just about as much proof for the existence of said spaghetti monster as there is for the existence of God.

     This has never been the traditional Catholic approach to the question.  St. Thomas Aquinas said that God is best described not as ens summum (the highest being), but rather as ipsum esse (the subsistent act of being itself).  God is not a being among many and cannot be placed in any genus of being.  Along with St. Thomas' definitions for God are his classic proofs for His existence.  Thomas' proofs are very logical and simple and follow along the common path of human reason.  Among his arguments for the existence of God are the arguments from the first mover, contingency, natural hierarchy, and the list goes on.  If you have never read them before, you must.  I don't want to go on and on about Aquinas (because that would take days) and the vast treasure trove of knowledge he has left us, but his insights and observations help us to see the rich intellectual tradition of the Catholic faith.

    God of course cannot be proven any more then a math formula can be proven.  What I mean by that is that no one can argue the objective reality that 2 + 2 equals 4.  Although you cannot touch or see the formula itself, it is true and does exist.  God Himself, who is not a being among many, but the subsistent act of being itself cannot be put into a little box and captured as if He was.  He is the ultimate transcendent reality.

     The vast majority of atheists and agnostics today, I would argue, do not believe not because of some serious intellectual reasoning, but out of sheer indifference.  Fr. Barron would argue as do I that the classic arguments for the existence of God need to be brought back into the discussion room.  As for atheists, I don't believe in atheists, therefore they do not exist.

Stay tuned for part 2.