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Time and space, science and story

Wednesday, 19 June 2013 19:58

Scientists claim the universe is 13.8 billion years old (and the modern Catholic Church sees no reason to disagree). To put this “deep time” into perspective, imagine a bookshelf with 30 hardbound volumes on it. Each volume is made up of 450 pages, and each page represents a million years. If this is our history, single-cell life doesn’t arrive on the scene until volume 27. Humanity as we know it occurs on the last half of the last page of the last book.

What was God doing for the first 26 volumes? What role does chance play in this framework? And how can such a vision not impact the way we think theologically about ourselves and our surroundings?

Such were some of the thoughts offered by Professor John Haught of Georgetown University, one of the leading theorists in the crucial dialogue between religious faith and evolutionary science, in a recent presentation called Darwin, God, and the Drama of Life as part of the “God and Modern Biology Program” funded by the John Templeton Foundation and hosted by bio-chemist Dr. Glenn Sauer. The lecture audience included scientists, academics, and diocesan and religious clergy at Fairfield University’s campus.

Haught’s extensive reading of evolutionary biology posits three aspects of Darwin’s contribution to modern intellectual discourse: (1) a greater appreciation for “deep time” as mentioned above, (2) the existence of accidents in cosmological and human development, and (3) natural selection.

Haught in no way discounts such realities. Nonetheless, he does call into question the philosophical presuppositions that have defined much of the terms of contemporary debate on the topic in academic circles — atheistic materialist naturalism and Intelligent Design. To Haught’s mind, neither do justice to the narrative and dramatic qualities of human existence. Both exhibit a narrow-minded “explanatory monism” and tend to conflate ideological presuppositions with their ultimate claims.

An example. “My name is Mike.” Why were you able to make sense of that short statement? Because the printing office arranged for pixilated black dots in the shape of those letters to appear on the page. Because you studied syntax and grammar in high school and can make sense of that arrangement of words. Because I wanted you to know my name, which is the English version of my great-grandfather’s from Italy.

Explanatory monism, from the word for singular, would say one of these is true. However, a thoughtful person realizes that none are untrue and that their multi-leveled assertions do not discount one another. Haught says the framing of the questions about planetary and human origins needs to take into account a “plurality” of explanations. Multiple levels of study can offer insights without contradicting one another. Science and theology are poised to answer different questions, but need to remain in dialogue.

The biblical tradition is replete with notions of promise, covenant, divine self-communication, and joyful anticipation of an unseen future. Haught says that these themes can inform our appreciation for the cosmological drama in which we play a part, without rejecting the exponential growth in scientific data and understanding.

If God creates in order to love, there must be an other upon which he bestows such love. Creation is that other. If we have learned anything from the recent annual celebration of the Passion, it is that God teaches us how we are to love by emptying Godself in unmerited gift, in the process theologians call “kenosis.” The universe the naturalists demand be explained without rationality or transcendence ends in cul-de-sacs of absurdity and moral relativism. Materialists cannot prove that matter is all there is.

Catholics also argue for more than an Intelligent Designer. If the cosmological system were perfect, with no evolutionary space for accidents or indeterminacy, with suffering and death perfectly explicable in the short term, it would not be able to receive God’s communication of self in freedom, for it would be frozen in perfection and thus really only an adjunct to or appendage of the divine.

There is, rather, an analogical or sacramental relationship between creation and the divine, which is both eminently rational and yet steeped in mystery and unpredictability. More than a Designer. We proclaim a Father and a relationship with Him, and so a “story,” which is the quintessential medium of meaning, and one that demands unfolding.

If a human observer somehow floated into the primordial soup in the period immediately following the big bang when the atoms of the universe had not yet formed themselves into planets and stars, could he or she imagine the incredible diversity that would eventually come to be on earth and throughout the galaxies? Or have any premonition of the self-conscious beings which would arise to sing its praises and unlock at least some of its mysteries? If not, how can we throw tantrums now when we do not know where we are headed as a universe, or what “a new Heavens and a new earth” could possibly look lke in the future?

More than “Design” tinged with Deism ever could, drama involves waiting, suspense, adventure and hope — all the markings of a truly good narrative. And from the prophets to the Parousia, we know that transformative, communal anticipation and deep-seated longing for the Ultimate Future defines our existence at every turn. We just need to ask the right questions of the right disciplines if we hope to find the right answers.

Michael M. Canaris is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.

Lessons in radical discipleship from the church’s newest saints

Columns

Wednesday, 19 June 2013 19:58

This past week’s canonization of some new saints in Rome points out the Christian command to love and witness to the kerygmatic claim that “Jesus is Lord.” Each of them models how to live a radical life of discipleship in a distinct way.

First, the Martyrs of Otranto. Our era is not the first to be complicated by “the culture wars.” In fact, though there are many obvious exceptions, we have largely made great strides in living amicably among different ideologies in our pluralistic world. There is at least a concerted effort with the mainstream strands of the monotheistic traditions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam to co-exist peaceably today, and to foster relationships with all people of good will.

It is clearly evident that Pope Francis supports this effort and wants greater openness and dialogue, especially with the burgeoning explosion of Islamic believers migrating westward and northward into Europe. Yet, he canonized the more than 800 residents of Otranto, in Puglia, the heel of Italy’s “boot,” this week, not for opposing Islam per se, but for being willing to shed their blood as martyrs (literally “witnesses”) for the name of Christ in the 1400s.

We heard about St. Stephen, the first martyr, in the Sunday readings recently. Otranto’s residents may be able to teach us also to echo Steven’s final words from that reading, “Lord do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60). He was killed by inter-religious intolerance, by the way, at the order of the violent and hateful criminal who would eventually become known to us as St. Paul. Powerful to keep in mind that no one is beyond redemption.

The other two saints canonized were Latin Americans, a Colombian named Laura of St. Catherine of Siena Montoya y Upegui, and a Mexican named Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala, more commonly referred to as Mother Lupita. In countries racked by poverty, corruption, and drug trafficking, with which our South American pope is all too familiar, these women teach us how to care for the weakest of society, in the mold of St. Francis who instructs us to “preach the Gospel always, and use words if necessary.”

Like Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and so many before and since, these women loved without liking those whom they served. Let me clarify — I do not mean to say that they necessarily secretly disliked anyone or held distasteful grudges toward them. But they emulated Christ’s broad and genuine other-centered love, which is in theological terms agapic (charitable and altruistic) and kenotic (self-emptying). You cannot like someone you barely know or have never previously met, but you can “love” them as did the Good Samaritan, who cared for the beaten Jew who hated him.

These women through their actions say not “This person is nice/kind/attractive/magnetic/likes me so therefore I should do right by them.” But rather “I love and care for you in your weakness because you are a Temple of the Holy Spirit and an image of God, my heart’s origin and deepest longing. You can be sinful and dirty and mean to me and violent and without proper authorization, and yet I care for you at the command of my Lord Jesus, the author of Life whom hatred has unsuccessfully tried to put death.” A radical vision of discipleship that can continue to challenge us and give us food for thought.

St. Joseph and the dignity of work

Columns

Wednesday, 19 June 2013 19:58

Many people are familiar with the feast of St. Joseph on March 19. This is an enormous holiday in Italy, where many Italians, as well as their descendants in America, eat delicious crème-filled pastries called Zeppole di San Giuseppe, often in the middle of Lent (Isgro’s and Termini Brothers’ Bakeries in Philadelphia make spectacular ones by the way). This year the inaugural Mass of Pope Francis was held on that day, one honoring Jesus’ foster father as the patron saint of the Universal Church.

However, perhaps less known is the separate feast of St. Joseph the Worker, recently celebrated on May 1. This feast is relatively young, at least from the perspective of Catholic history. But its development is a fascinating one.

In 1955, Pope Pius XII was disillusioned with the spread of atheistic communism and the increasingly icy diplomatic relations between socialist and capitalist nations which came to result in the Cold War. Daybreak on the first of May, originally celebrated by the pagans on Walpurgis Night exactly six months removed from All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween), had been adopted by communist and worker parties in the wake of the Haymarket Affair in 1886. May Day celebrations provided a focal point in which Marxist and socialist groups and regimes rallied to condemn the perceived excesses of consumer capitalism and to fight to redefine socio-economic structures and wealth distribution.

To combat what he saw as a distortion of the Christian vocation to dignified labor and of the right to own private property, Pius dedicated May 1 to St. Joseph the Worker. It became the feast most associated with “sanctifying” our daily workdays, and of offering all of the efforts of our hands, minds, and toils to God, even if unrecognized by others. Like the carpenter, Pius argued, we ought to use our talents, humble though they may be, for the greater glory of God.

Pope Francis said the following on the feast this year: “The work [God does in creation recorded in Genesis] is part of the plan of God’s love; we are called to cultivate and safeguard all the goods of creation and in this way we participate in the work of creation! The work is fundamental to the dignity of a person. Work, to use an image, ‘anoints’ us with dignity, it fills us with dignity; it makes us similar to God, who has worked and works still; He Who is always acting.”

It is important to reflect upon how each day is not only an opportunity to encounter God in the midst of our employment or personal vocation, but also sheer unmerited gift. I once read a story years ago about the conversion of a simple launderer in a dry-cleaning business somewhere. I do not remember the exact context so I must paraphrase, but the image has always stayed with me. He said that over years of working in the business, he came to realize that those who picked up their dress shirts rarely checked under the collars to see if small stains had been removed there, where no one could ever see. So he simply stopped cleaning there to save time. But upon his conversion he came to believe that even if no human eye saw his corner-cutting, a Divine one did. And so he saw this small, extra, unsung step of diligently cleaning an area which no one examined as a silent path to holiness.

A good lesson there on the sanctification of work and one I try to draw to mind when I’m grading my 150th undergraduate essay of the semester, when no one would know whether or not I point out for the umpteenth time that you can’t end a sentence with a preposition (that is something up with which I will not put!). But I realize it’s part of my vocation and calling to help make each and every student think more deeply and articulate him- or herself more clearly, not just for my eye, but for their eventual careers.

Lastly, St. Joseph the Worker does not cease to intercede for us or serve as a role model once we get our golden pocket-watch and retire to the Jersey shore. When a member of the Society of Jesus is of advanced age and can no longer contribute in a palpable way to active works of ministry, the Jesuit directory lists his official position as “Ora pro Soc.” (“Praying for the Society”), a phrase I’ve always liked.

He, like us, is never completely excused from engagement with the world through the vocation of work, even if in humble and silent union of our sufferings with those of the Lord. St. Joseph the Worker, also relatedly the patron saint of a Happy Death for tradition, holds that he died in the arms of Jesus and Mary, continues to inspire us to make every step of our working lives, from their idealistic beginnings to their quiet twilight, meaningful and holy.

The Seven Deadly Sins- Pride- The radical choice that faces each of us

Columns

Wednesday, 19 June 2013 19:58

We have all heard it said that “pride cometh before the fall,” which is actually a paraphrasing of Proverbs 16:18. For Christians, the relationship is not so much chronological or sequential, as essential.

In pride, because of pride, through pride, concomitant with pride. . .cometh the Fall (with a capital “F”). The two are intimately connected, for pride is really the foundational cornerstone upon which every elaborate edifice of self-adoration or self-appeasement is erected. And the Fall is that rebellious characteristic which echoes in our hearts and actions the words of Milton’s vainglorious devil in “Paradise Lost’: “Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”

Lust, greed, gluttony, envy, wrath, sloth — each and every shortcoming and frailty that humanity faces or embodies can be distilled into what theologians have called the “fundamental option,” namely the radical choice that faces each of us in countless particular situations and in the overarching narrative of our entire lives, one with only two possible answers – Around what are our lives oriented? God (and derivatively the other) or the Self? What are we putting first and with whom does our loyalty lie?

Humility, pride’s counterpart in virtue, is quite different from self-abasement or passivity in the face of oppression. It is not remaining in untenable or inappropriate situations out of a misplaced conviction that we can “change” another person or institutional bureaucracy or tyranny by grinning and bearing it at the price of our human dignity.

It is not faux meekness expressed in silently supporting systems which are unjust because of “good citizenship” or patriotism or comfort with the status quo.

It is not ignoring our surroundings or the way in which we approach other human beings because of a firm assurance that we will be rewarded in the future (in this life or the next) with a metaphorical pat on the head for our unpretentious acceptance of things as we are told they should be.

Rather, pride is combatted with humility born out of love. Not the cloying, syrupy-sweet sentimentality of Valentine’s Day, but the raw, challenging, sacrificial love which pours itself out for the other and has the pottery of its selfhood shattered in the process. What the Gospels call agape.

Our commitment to our neighbor, as evidenced in the interpenetrating sources of Scripture and tradition (the Good Samaritan parable, care for those in any kind of need, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and so on), can never be divorced from our creedal statements about the very nature of God.

As the theologian Karl Rahner makes clear, love of God and love of neighbor are two sides of the same coin.

To return to the Good Samaritan, in the healing and ministry offered to the beaten wayfarer, the Samaritan restores him some measure of his personhood. And yet, the relationship is dialogical — cliché as it is, in giving he or she somehow receives.

It is clear that the relationship between the one who is ostensibly in need and the one who is ostensibly the caregiver is not as clear cut as one might first think with a cursory glance. In this self-emptying, the “minister” is mysteriously filled too. Here pride is undone and as the demon in “The Screwtape Letters” claims, “pain and pleasure take on transfinite values and all our arithmetic is dismayed.”

Somehow one approaches the other without seeking to obliterate or absorb him or her, but in authentic relationality, and always in contact with God as the source of all being and of all love. Somehow the three are distinctly three, and yet also simultaneously one. They are independent and yet bound together by dynamic love.

Sounds like another Christian doctrine, doesn’t it?

Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.

The Seven Deadly Sins – Greed - Greed defines motivation and focus of our culture

Columns

Wednesday, 19 June 2013 19:58

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms - greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge - has marked the upward surge of mankind...."

So says Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's 1987 film "Wall Street."

Greed or avarice, from the Latin root for "desiring or longing after" may define our culture more than any of her six deadly siblings. Acquisitiveness, sadly instead of inquisitiveness, lies at the heart of many Americans' everyday motivations and focus, and is certainly central to modern consumer capitalism.

The goods of this world need not be an unqualified evil. For instance, though the apostles explicitly did not do so after the Resurrection, the church has long defended the right to own private property (cf. Rerum Novarum). But lengthy and calamitous is the human record of temptation not to possess possessions, but to be possessed by them.

There is a secret Scrooge inside many of us, willing to exploit Tiny Tim to the fullest, either directly through theft and uncaring materialism or through more subtle sins of omission, to expand our bank accounts. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus warns against Gekko's worldview: "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions." And elsewhere: "You cannot serve both God and Mammon."

Spenser, Milton and Dante all depict Mammon (or the closely related Plutus) as a sort of demonic money-god, the personification of our idolatrous infatuation with worldly goods and the "wolfish" tendency to sneak and store and hoard them for ourselves. There is something endlessly alluring about the honors of the world, whether in finance or prestige or power.

And yet Francis of Assisi, renouncing all luxury and comfort and inheritance in his voluntary betrothal to Lady Poverty, teaches us "It is only in giving, that we receive."

It is a great mystery of human life. We take and take and still want more, the cavernous black hole of desire opens wider the more that we have in our possession. The corner office is never sufficient, the sportscar always too slow compared to our neighbors', the vacation never long enough. However, when we pour ourselves out for others, to the point where we are not sure that we can do more or give of ourselves any further lest we break apart, then we are somehow filled. It's cliché to the point of annoyance, but truly all the wealth in the world cannot buy that experience.

There is a complex twin relationship with poverty for Christians. We are called to eradicate it, to work untiringly to foster justice and indiscrimination over the face of the earth. And yet, Jesus says things like "The poor you will always have with you" and, even more puzzlingly, "Blessed [from the root word for happy] are the poor."

This is not a trite, upper-echelon condescension - "Look at all those penniless little children in the ghetto and slums, good thing they are interiorly happy and blest, whether they realize it or not."

Rather it's a call to every person who has ever or will ever read those words, no matter their investment portfolio, to foster inner affluence by divesting himself or herself of those things which encumber our relationship with God and with our brothers and sisters, especially those most marginalized and vulnerable.

If we take the original World Magnate at His word, that "all that he has is ours," perhaps we should tell the Gekko and Scrooge within: "You're fired!"

Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is an administrator at Fairfield University's Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.