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Modernity’s False Martyrdom

8/28/2013

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There are two catchphrases of college culture (although not limited to it) that dominate students’ mentality, “I don’t care what others think of me” and “I don’t give a f***.” I can’t stand hearing these things because they express a mentality deeply rooted in the culture of individualism and the culture of “meh.” The funny thing is, though, is that they have a deeper root, which is the Christian martyr mentality.

The Christian martyrs in all times and places perplexed the world around them, because they accepted their deaths with dignity, purpose, honor, bravery, and even glory. One of my favorite examples is St. Lawrence, who was grilled to death, and while he was on the flames told them, “Turn me over I’m done on this side.” When Christians were thrown to the beasts in the Colosseum to be ripped to shreds, they were often times the ones laughing at the Romans.

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So what’s the deal with Christian martyrdom? It comes down to love of Christ. For the martyrs, nothing could separate them from their faith, that is, being in relationship with Jesus. Nothing was worth more than that. They clung to God’s Truth and Love so firmly that they were able to detach themselves from worldly concerns that normally dominate our lives:  how do I look, what do they think of me, will I get in trouble for saying this… When the world around them reacted so violently to their testimony to the Christ’s death and resurrection that they were sent to their deaths, not even the fear of pain or death affected them anymore because they were so wrapped up in God’s eternal love, and so they accepted their martyrdom willingly as the most powerful witness to the Truth. They died for the sake of Christ, the king of martyrs, who died for the sake of the world, and for the sake of his Church, the Catholic Church, so that others might be inspired to enter into that same life of perfect love. 
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As inadequate as that was at explaining Christian martyrdom, lets get back to our modern phrases. Essentially, they are expressions of a false Christian martyr mentality. “I don’t care what others think of me.” That’s a strong statement to a world that certainly wants you to care what it thinks of you. It proclaims your detachment from worldly concerns. The problem is that its root is individualism, which is not transcendent at all the way Catholic Christianity is.

Catholicism accepts you just the way you are, but calls you forward toward perfection. To say I’m perfect just the way I am is a glaring denial of my countless shortcomings in how I live out my life. It leaves me no room for improvement, no way to grow and become even better, and that is not living, that is not freedom if I put that limit on the possibility of loving even more deeply. When it comes down to it, the modern individualistic expression is a copout that let’s me be exactly how I am without having to make an effort to be greater, to try harder, to love deeper.

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“I don’t give a f***.” Saying that drives a person nuts who really wants you to care. Again, not at all the way Catholicism sees detachment. Catholicism cares, a lot. The Christian martyrs cared, a lot, just not about their own bodily comforts, but rather the love of God. The modern mentality of “I don’t give a f***,” is so dull, apathetic, and boring. It is truly the opposite of love. It plunges itself into the tiny, dark, lonely world of me, me, me. Love is to will the Good of the other and to do something about it; by its nature Love cannot be self-concerned, but involves reaching to someone other than myself. This saying is also a copout like the first one, it allows me to be the dullest, flattest, least dynamic person ever, and masks it as the defiance of St. Lawrence. It denies my purpose, my ultimate end, and once again denies my ability to love. It lets me get away with everything and accomplish nothing.

So we as Christians need to learn a thing or two from our martyrs about true detachment. Are we witnessing to the Truth in our detachment, or glorifying self-serving individualism and “meh”? Are we allowing the world to get away with twisting the most powerful witness there is, martyring itself for the dull, boring, and flat? Or are we calling it through Beauty, Truth, and Goodness to transcend into the life wrapped completely in the love of God? Are we wrapped up so much in the love of God that we are ready to witness to the truth of Christ crucified and resurrected like the true martyrs?

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Written by: Marty Arlinghaus
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When You Wish Upon Ishtar

8/28/2013

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After its inception, this picture* has been making its rounds on the internet as an indictment to Christians as being grossly ignorant of their own cultural history. However, almost everything stated in the picture is completely wrong. Let’s be fair, though; at a glance it may all seem pretty plausible to certain people.  Imagine what a holiday like, say, Christmas could seem like to people who have never grown up in a devoutly religious family in modern America. On the one hand, they hear vocal groups of Christians loudly lamenting about a perceived “war on Christmas”, how Christmas is a purely Christian holiday that is being unduly influenced and celebrated by non-Christians. On the other, they notice the blatantly non-religious aspects of the holiday, like Santa and Christmas trees, that seem to be as ancient as the religious parts. And then they hear things like how, say, historically, Jesus probably wasn’t born in December, but that there used to be a big celebration for the winter solstice by these people called “pagans” around the same date. It adds up that there’s more to the contemporary holiday of Christmas than they’ve been hearing from the strident, “keep-the-Christ-in-Christmas” Christians, and when they don’t hear any other Christians address their questions and concerns calmly and intelligently, then it’s not hard to imagine why some people assume Christians are generally ignorant of their own cultural heritage. If Christians don’t know anything about the history of Christmas, then it stands to reason that they might not know anything about Easter too. Thus, perhaps therein lies some of the appeal of this picture. Of course, that doesn’t make it correct, and it does not exculpate anyone from doing some quick fact-checking before passing along such acrimonious statements.

So what do we find when we look into this? Where to begin? Well, the one part the picture gets right is that there was a Babylonian and Assyrian goddess of fertility and sexuality named Ishtar. Ishtar was a major figure in the religion of the people who lived in the region the ancient Greeks referred to as Mesopotamia, which means “[the land] between the rivers” (i.e. the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which reside mostly in what is modern-day Iraq). Her existence has been celebrated by the peoples in the area since at least the early bronze age (which started around 3600 BC in that region). This included not just the Assyrians and Babylonians, but even more ancient peoples of the region such as the Sumerians and Akkadians. The goddess became popular throughout much of the ancient Near East, and her name varied slightly from location to location, but I have not come across any iteration that is thought to have been pronounced like we pronounce “Easter”. Both the Akkadian and Sumerian spellings render a name pronounced as it looks: ish-tar. As for her “symbols”, she had many, and as a caveat I’ll concede that it may be possible that eggs were one of them; eggs are a symbol of fertility in numerous religions throughout the ancient world, and it’s not insane to think that the ancient Mesopotamians may have been among them. However, that does not mean that she was associated with eggs symbolically. I can find sourced examples of Ishtar being associated symbolically with lions and the planet Venus represented by the design of an 8-point star (or this may be a separate symbol, I’m not positive). Depending on how much you want to draw out the association between Ishtar and similar variations of the goddess in the ancient Near East, you might be able to add certain crowns, serpents, or possibly even dates to the list of symbols, but I can’t find anything mentioning either eggs or bunnies, and I honestly do have a book here with me on ancient Near Eastern goddesses.

So how on earth does coloring eggs fit into the resurrection of Jesus, and why is a bunny rabbit hiding them? Totally valid questions I think everybody has had. And again, it’s obviously not in the Bible, so people could be forgiven for thinking that there are non-Christian sources for the traditions. Coincidentally, the practice of dying eggs for Easter does apparently come from Mesopotamia. Not from ancient worshipers of Ishtar though, but from early—wait for it—Christians; possibly as early as the 2nd century. They dyed eggs red to symbolize the blood of Christ shed on the cross. Now, it may be that eggs were chosen as the object to decorate because they were associated with rebirth, but that’s harder to prove—although certainly not an outrageous consideration. Regardless, it was not an idea borrowed directly from any part of Ishtar worship, as her worshipers had been gone for centuries by the time the Christians started their egg dying traditions. And that is not to say that this was the first instance of eggs ever being painted in history. Indeed the ancient Sumerians did so. But as far as being able to connect the practice to Easter, the first people to do it were Christians themselves, not any sort of pagan. Adding to the popularity of egg-oriented traditions at Eastertime is the fact that many denominations of Christianity did not consume eggs during Lent. This not only led to a surplus of eggs at Easter, but the Sunday itself was the end of the Lenten fasting, and thus a great opportunity to eat a bunch of eggs. So what’s with the bunny? It’s a good question. That too is a Christian tradition. It comes from the Lutherans, and the earliest known mention of the concept is from an essay by a doctor in the late 1600’s who refers to it as an Alsatian (a region on the Rhine river that has been under both French and German control throughout history) tradition of an Easter Hare who acts basically like a Santa for Easter, judging children and delivering eggs, candy, and toys accordingly. Now, why the Alsatians picked a hare is harder to answer. What is certain is that it had nothing to do with Isthar. Her worshipers were separated by the Renaissance Alsatians by a couple thousand years and several hundred miles. That rabbits and hares are a symbol of spring and rebirth, or even fertility (hence the eggs) is not out of the question, but there hardly seems to be conclusive proof for it. However, it may have been the weirdness of their fertility that had more to do with the connection. In the ancient world, rabbits and hares were believed to be hermaphrodites. There is speculation that this led to them being associated with the Virgin Mary, as demonstrated by some medieval and Renaissance art (e.g. “Madonna with Rabbit” by Titian). This theory also lacks conclusive proof, of course, but it is still worth considering.

Moving on to Constantine. I suppose it would be fair to say he “Christianized” the [Roman] Empire, but how he did so is important to understand. He was indeed the emperor who made Christianity the official state religion of the Empire, and he did many things to support the growth and acceptance of Christianity therein, and he certainly deserves historical recognition for doing so. He did this largely though legal means, significantly: by rescinding previous laws that legally persecuted Christians, by adding new laws that granted perks and legal benefits to sanctioned churches, and by organizing church councils to ensure uniformity within the religion. What he didn’t do was foist the religion upon the masses, let alone rename a supposed Ishtar-based holiday and call it Easter. There’s just so many things wrong with that. Again, Ishtar worship had been gone for centuries by the time Constantine was born. Even if there had been a springtime celebration centered around Ishtar in the Bronze Age, it was long, long gone by the days of the Roman Empire, so there was nothing to copy over anyway. That Easter is celebrated in the spring should come to absolutely no surprise to even the most noncommittal and oblivious Chreaster**, but just so we’re all on the same page, it is and always has been because Easter is celebrated in remembrance of the resurrection of Jesus, which the Bible places on the Sunday after the Jewish festival of Passover, which is and has been celebrated in the early spring. Now, interestingly—well, it is to me, at least—Emperor Constantine did have something to do with the date of Easter. Part of Constantine’s efforts to “Christianize” the Empire involved trying to make church practices uniform throughout the Empire. In his day—and in fact still somewhat in the modern day—there wasn’t a standardized date for celebrating Easter. When Constantine called the Council of Nicaea in 325, standardizing the day Easter would be celebrated was a major topic and huge point of debate. In fact, the subsequent t introduction of the Gregorian Calendar (the calendar now used by most of the world) in 1582 was designed specifically to stay consistent with the decision for celebrating Easter decided at Nicaea 12 centuries prior. And Constantine did not make the specific dating decision himself. Like the vast majority of his theological laws, he deferred to Church authorities to make the final decisions; he basically acted as a manager and organizer. He just gave the order for others to make a decision. Easter was already widely celebrated throughout the Empire by the time of the Council of Nicaea, hence Constantine feeling the need to standardize the date.

So Easter has nothing to do ancient Mesopotamian paganism, but it may actually have a superficial connection to German paganism—a goddess, even. But it’s also worth noting that “pagan” has a really broad meaning that can get abused, particularly in cases like this. “Pagan” has come to mean something like ancient religions, or religions outside the mainstream. And this is a fine definition, but bear in mind that just because one religion is considered pagan doesn’t mean it will have anything in common with another pagan religion. The Germans of the Middle Ages had what is considered a pagan religion, and the ancient Mesopotamians had pagan religions as well. But that does not mean they are at all similar. So when people say things like, “Christians stole this idea from the pagans”, regardless of historical truth, that could mean any number of incredibly different religions. Anyway, the word “Easter” comes from German, and was used by at least as early as 899. There is debate over the precise etymology (i.e. the history of the word), but it is generally believed to come from the Old English Ēostre, the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess. And indeed it is believed that this was a fertility goddess associated with the springtime. So really, if you’re going to allege that Christians stole Easter from the celebration of an ancient fertility goddess, this is the one to pick. But this is only what Germanic languages (including English) call the holiday. Almost every other language uses some variation on “pascha”, from the Hebrew Pesach, the name for the Passover festival. So even if the Germanic language speakers “stole” Easter from the German pagans, you still have all the other languages that don’t have the pagan connection. And as we’ve discussed, the major Easter traditions can be accounted for from Christian sources. So while it is entirely possible that the Germans had a springtime festival in honor of a fertility goddess, the Christian springtime celebration of the resurrection of Jesus replaced it organically as Christianity became more popular than the pagan religion over centuries for a variety of reasons. It had nothing to do with Constantine, and nothing to do with stealing from pagan fertility cults.

* I have seen some people refer to this as a meme, which is not technically correct (Scientific America’s blog, which of all people should know better). A meme has to have a theme that can be varied to convey a new, but similar idea. This is effectively a single use picture and text combo.

** For those of you who haven’t heard this word, it’s portmanteau of Christmas and Easter, and it refers to people who only attend church services on those two days (or otherwise attend very few services).

Quick references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_eggs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bunny

Other Sources:

“When God Was a Woman” by Merlin Stone

“Constantine and Eusebius” by Timothy Barnes

Written By:
Christopher Gill

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The Beautiful Game

8/28/2013

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My sister Shannon is a great soccer player, but only if you are on her team. When playing against her (especially one-on-one), you will find yourself frustrated by her speed, stamina, sharp elbows, and uncanny ability to eject you from the ball despite the fact that she is smaller than you. You will also lose.


I love when Stephen Colbert talks about Catholicism because he “plays” apologetics like Shannon plays soccer. He doesn’t let those who debate him articulate their argument (which can be frustrating), but I suppose that those who debate him expect him to do that, and they have fun anyway. I marvel at how bluntly and good-naturedly he points out the truth.

Also, this:

My two sisters and I spent years playing soccer on the same teams, and we played well together. There was another trio of sisters on our club teams, and in high school, all six of us played varsity together. Because we knew one another’s game so well, we required very little communication to know where on the field the field one another would be. We were at our best when were all on the same page.
As a Church, we should live and communicate our faith just as harmoniously. Being the universal Church means of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing, no matter who or where we are. To competently communicate our faith, it helps to learn as a team, from the same coaches and the same play books. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is one of many publications that gives straight answers about what the Church believes. Our beliefs are no secret. Anyone can look them up, if they can distinguish between official Church teachings and some guy who has gone rogue.

Saying, “I’m Catholic,” is a concise way of saying that I believe everything the Catholic Church teaches.  When I encounter a Church teaching that I struggle to understand or accept (and this has certainly happened), I have two options: A) Judge the truth on my own, or B) Trust that Holy Mother Church knows best, obey her even when it’s a tough concept to swallow, and seek an understanding of what she says, one step at a time. As a member of this team that’s been playing together for almost 2,000 years, I choose the latter.

We must ask questions, but questioning is not an end in itself. Even the greatest mysteries can be known and understood to an extent. God has revealed such love to us. How will we respond? The Church offers us the tools we need to get answers for ourselves and work as a team to echo them to others.

Play on.

Written by: Kelly O’Brien

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Christ the Great Descender

8/28/2013

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I remember a moment in a theology class back in my junior year of high school.  It was a conclusion four months in the making, and you probably would have missed it if you had even nodded off for just a minute or two.  But it closed the last link to bring the chain of the past semester full circle.
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We return to the mountains (which have madenumerous appearances in past writings).  It was a World Religions class (taught by Paul Prokop [for any readers out there who may be familiar with St. Ignatius HS]).  We had started the semester with the analogy of a mountain as a way of examining what the most basic idea behind all religions is.  And it goes something like this:  There’s a mountain.  “Heaven” (or “Nirvana” or “Paradise” or what-have-you) is at the top.  But we’re stuck down here, at the base.  And religion is all about man trying to find a way to get up to the top of that mountain, to ascend from the bottom to the top.  In short, religion is man seeking God.

Of course, various religions throughout history have sought to accomplish this in various ways, but the basic premise usually has that sort of flavor to it.  We go stumbling along trying and failing and trying again to get to the top, either forging our own path, or attempting to follow those who seem to have had some success on a certain route in the past (luckily, in some religions you can even get a couple lifetimes to sort through this whole ordeal).

Being that we were at a Catholic/Jesuit school, ordinary Christianity didn’t get much mention in the class, on the fair assumption that we got enough of that in the other 3 ½ years of theology.  Christianity did get one brief shout out though, squeezed in on the very last day of class.  We returned once more to the mountain.

What makes Christianity different?  Why is it the Truth, when the others aren’t?  Why are we here in this Catholic school?  Why is our way better?  Well, I’ll tell you why.

Because we don’t have to climb the mountain – at least not on our own.  All those other religions have man scrambling up the mountain, trying to get to God.  In Christianity,God came down the mountain to us.  The analogy was complete, and I was dumbfounded at the picture it presented and the story it told.

This is the great mystery and miracle of the Incarnation.  At a Catholic Mass, you’ll usually see people bow at two points: during the Nicene Creed, when, speaking of Jesus, we say, “and by the power of the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man”; and when the Eucharist is presented to the receiver.  We bow when we remember Christ first coming in the flesh, and we bow when we see him do it again every Sunday.  It’s a big deal.

This is what makes Christianity different, and better (and is at least a good start to thinking about why it might be True).  It’s not just man seeking God anymore; but God seeking man.  And this doesn’t just start with Christ either (though that’s indeed the climax of the grand tale).  It started the second we messed it all up, back in Eden: in Genesis 3:6 we ate the fruit we should not have eaten; in verse 7 we hide; and by verses 8 and 9 God is already looking for us and calling for us.  God didn’t hesitate for a moment to begin his great descent to bring us back to Himself.

Christ the man came to our world as the ultimate guide up the mountain.  He didn’t just come to show us the way; He came to tell us He is the Way.  So, we can perhaps still trek the mountain if the adventure suits us; or perhaps we can just ride the gondola of grace straight to the summit.

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However, Christ the Great Descender didn’t halt his plunge when he came from Heaven to Earth; a week from today it will be Good Friday, and the Church will pause to remember the moment when he gave all, put out into the deep, and descended straight to the bowels of Hell.  His getting us up the mountain wouldn’t have done much good if we were just stuck at the gate once we got to the top.  So Christ in His mysterious triumph defeated Sin, Death, and the Devil himself.  And rose again on the third day.  And opened the gates of Heaven for all.

Jesus didn’t abandon his infant Church there either, to ascend right back home.  Rather, he stayed with them on Earth for a time (though not in the same way as before), until he ascended bodily into Heaven 40 days after Easter.  Then following a short 10 day period of possible confusion, the young Church was graced with another descent – this time of the Holy Spirit – on Pentecost Sunday.

So there you have it.  God the Father descended in Eden at the Fall; God the Son descended in Bethlehem at the Incarnation; and God the Holy Spirit descended in Jerusalem at Pentecost.  These are but a few examples of God seeking man in Christianity.  And all for the purpose of gathering us all up and bringing us Home, when in a great ascent we will inhabit a new Heaven and a new Earth, living in harmony with God – just as we were always meant to.

Although Pier Giorgio has indeed inspired me to climb a mountain or two, when it comes to my eternal fate and that of those I love, I think the Christian option is the way to go.  The mountain is there.  You can either ignore it (like the atheist), attempt to ascend it (as all the other religions of the world do), or accept the mystery of the route to the top coming to us itself (as in Christianity).  I choose the ladder.

Written by:  Matt Gangidine

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To the Top!

8/28/2013

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Have you ever wondered what the deal is with that picture off on the right of the blog?
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I bet it’s there now, taunting you in its perplexity: Who is that? What is he doing? Why are there scribbled words in another language?  And what the heck does it have to do with this blog anyway?  Well, today’s your lucky day my friends – prepare to take one more step on your journey to the Truth as you discover all this and more.
It is my sincere pleasure to introduce to you my good friend, Pier Giorgio Frassati.  (Or “Hottie Frassati,” as he’s known in some circles; I mean, look at this guy…)
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Our relationship is a bit different than with most of my other friends.  I’ve never shaken his hand or looked him in the eye.  He died over half a century before I was born.  And we probably couldn’t have said much more than “hello” to one another in the same language.

Yet, I find myself continuing to grow closer to this man is many ways.  And more importantly, through him growing closer to the person of Jesus.

Pier Giorgio Frassati is a Blessed on the road to Sainthood, and is the ideal model for young Catholics today – or, to be more catholic, truly for any young person today.  His life was one that is utterly relatable for those around the college stage of life.  He spent his time leading a rowdy band of friends, pulling pranks, intensely enjoying sports and the great outdoors, and even complaining about school (which to his credit, is quite hard not to do when you’re studying to be an engineer).

And yet, in the midst of his ordinary, everyday life, Pier Giorgio was on fire for Christ and his Gospel – and it showed.  Son of an extremely wealthy and well known family in Turin, Italy, he spent most of his days quietly giving away his fortune to the poor in his midst.  He would spend hours in Eucharistic Adoration (often alongside some friends who were there because they had lost pool hall bets to him), and would be so focused that he once didn’t even notice hot wax dripping on to him from a candle as he knelt in prayer.

He would lead friends on weekend hiking trips, but only if he could secure a priest who would come with them to celebrate mass wherever they would happen to find themselves in the mountains.

I think the last line on the back cover of Maria Di Lorenzo’s biography puts it best when it describes him as “a man who succeeded in wrestling holiness from everyday life.”

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What’s more, he did it excellently.  The life of Pier Giorgio serves as a clarion call for all of us to no longer meander in the mazes of mediocrity, but rather to ascend to the heights of greatness.  And to do so for, with, and through Christ Jesus.  On the permanent photo up at the right at the top of the blog, Pier Giorgio wrote the words “Verso l’alto!” – to the top!  The climb pictured proved to be his last, as his life ended short a month later, at the age of 24, after contracting polio from one of the many poor he cared for.  Thus, the short phrase has become something of a motto to his memory, inspiring us to be the best version of ourselves in all pursuits, as we strive towards the ultimate goal of heaven.  Here is a man who lived life to the full.

(As an aside, Pope John Paul II – who incidentally would have celebrated a mountain mass for Pier Giorgio in a heartbeat – inspires us with another non-English exhortation: “Duc in altum” – put out into the deep.  You have altitude options, my friends; just seek Him somewhere….)

Bl. Pier Giorgio is one of the patrons of our group (along with St. Paul), and serves as a model and a help as we strive to live out our Catholic faith in our everyday college lives.  He has become the namesake for the Frassati Catholic Speaker Series that we have instituted to bring Catholic speakers on to campus, as well as for the less-than-official Pier Giorgio Hiking and Climbing clubs, which try to respectively frequent Red River Gorge and the UC rock wall as often as possible in his spirit.

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I encourage you to get to know this “man of the 8 beatitudes” better, and to join us in our pursuit of following his example and asking for his intercession as we pray for the courage to be great, as he was.

Verso l’alto, my friends!

Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati,

– Pray for us.

Written By:
Matt Gangidine

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Bottoms Up!

8/28/2013

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As a native Clevelander named Kelly O’Brien, stereotypes suggest that spent this past Sunday celebrating St. Patrick by excessively elevating my blood alcohol level.

Buuuut I’ve never been one to fit stereotypes. According to SADD, “nearly three quarters of students (72%) have consumed ‘more than just a few sips’ of alcohol by the end of high school, and more than a third (37%) have done so by eighth grade.” If your high school is anything like mine was, you might be thinking, “Only 72%? Seems low…”

I felt like almost everyone from school drank, so I admired those who, for whatever reason, chose not to. To me, not conforming to the high school/college drinking culture spoke volumes about a person’s character. What “the crowd” was doing didn’t strike me as particularly admirable, so I decided that I would wait to drink alcohol until I was twenty-one years old.

It is not because I think alcohol is inherently evil (It’s not).
It is not because my family has a history of alcoholism (As far as I know, we don’t).
It is not because people who drink are bad (We’re not).
It is not because some mental/physiological metamorphosis magically takes place the moment a person turns 21 (That definitely doesn’t happen.)

Drinking alcohol is not bad. So what’s the problem?

God made us in his image and likeness. Our free will and our capacity for judgment and reason are a huge part of that. These gifts set us apart from all other creatures and make us capable of love. When a person drinks too much, he cripples (or even surrenders) all three.

Our bodies are very good, and we are responsible for their care. Gluttony of any kind is destructive. If I consume an amount of alcohol that has a destructive effect on my body, I’m abusing myself.

Some use alcohol to run away from reality. The problem with this is that we are called to cultivate, embrace, and protect creation, not reject it. Yes, there are thorns amidst the roses, but when God created the world he created it good. The troubles from which alcohol offers an escape will not go away until we sober up, face them, and fix them.

I celebrated my twenty-first birthday by enjoying my first drinks with some close friends who told me stories and advised me on some pitfalls to avoid (Like “never mix colors.” Who knew?). I felt a little floaty and giggly, but my personality, boundaries, wise judgment, and reason remained in tact. My 21st is a happy memory.

In a letter he wrote me a few years ago, my dad said, “It’s rarely a good idea to run with the herd. It doesn’t know where it’s going or why, and it’s not interested in stopping to think it through. Fight the good fight, then put it away and think about other things.”

The point of this post is not to brag about what I do and do not consume, but rather to encourage you: you don’t have to run with the herd and, in fact, it’s usually better not to.

Temperance, on the other hand, helps us safeguard our souls, bodies, and minds. Temperance means being balanced; stopping before going too far. When I was a kid, sometimes I’d go to my dad’s softball games and afterwards to the bar that sponsored their team. I asked him how he knew when to stop drinking and he told me that if he feels funny, he stops. That made sense to me. Overindulging in a gift that God gives us is abusing it (and ourselves). At the legal age, kicking back with a couple cold ones while enjoying good company is great. Even Jesus drank wine and I bet he’d be happy to have a beer with you.

If you’re of legal age to drink, I encourage you to crack open a Seagram’s Jamaican Me Happy (my favorite adult beverage) and enjoy this video by Chris Stefanick:

For now…


May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face, 


and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
Written by:
Kelly O’Brien
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The True Opiate of the Masses (Part 2)

8/28/2013

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In my last post I commented on the most fundamental question of our existence, why is there something rather than nothing? That’s not the only point of disagreement I have with atheism. (This one is longer so bear with me)

My favorite of the New Atheists (these are the ones that everyone holds up as the best of the best atheists, the ones who make it on all of the debates, write the best-selling books, and are leading the charge to rid the world of religion, which is why I comment on them) is Christopher Hitchens. In his debate with Danesh D’souza, he gives us the line, “…you only have to look at the many religions that people have constructed to find out that they are indeed the product of an imperfectly evolved primate species about a half a chromosome away from a chimpanzee with a prefrontal lobe that is too small and adrenaline gland that is too big along with many other evolutionary deformities…” 

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From Hitchens’ viewpoint, we’re basically just cleverer animals than the rest and our belief in the supernatural is a projection caused by our fear of the world around us. If we were just a little more evolved, we’d know better. (I’m not arguing the truthfulness of evolution as a scientific explanation of biological function; the problem comes when it’s used to try to answer metaphysical questions, which science cannot answer.) So why in the world would humans create something like religion if we’re just cleverer chimpanzees? I say, it has everything to do with the uniquely human desire for perfect fulfillment.

With Hithens’ view as our basis for atheism, it leads us to believe that we can find complete satisfaction in our lives here on earth. Without the existence of any deeper reality that we are connected with (souls/heaven/God) because we are only physical matter, there must be some way for us to become perfectly happy in the 75 or so years we have to live.

How do I become happy? If I had more money, if I had a better house and car, if I had a bunch of sex, if I could party all the time, if I could travel everywhere, if I could be on a tropical island.  We keep finding ways to satiate our desire for happiness, but it doesn’t ultimately satisfy us. Yes, we get glimpses of satisfaction in these things, but then it wears off, and we need more, and we need even more, and if we don’t get more, we’re not happy. Sounding maybe a little bit like a drug addiction yet? What was that thing about the opiate of the masses?

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And with atheism, that’s all there is. We cannot look deeper to see if there’s something that our satisfaction can rest on that’s not contingent on something else, because we claim that there is nothing deeper than physical existence. We are not allowed to look deeper in order to answer our deepest desire for fulfillment, so we literally have to drug ourselves into thinking we can be totally satisfied with the goods of the world around us.

So are humans just an evolutionarily deformed species of primates that created religion out of fear? No, we’re not. We’re quite logical actually. Religion is not a projection of the supernatural. Religion is a response to something that came first, that being the supernatural.

You wouldn’t say that your hunger for food is a projection of our stomachs of the existence of food. Instead, it confirms the existence of food. Would we even call it food if we didn’t need to eat it?
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Likewise with God. He is not a projection of our minds, but rather, he exists first, and our desire for perfect fulfillment rests in him, who is not contingent on other things of this world, therefore God is the very source of our fulfillment.

So I encourage everyone, do not let yourself be reduced into the purely physical, into some simple mechanical function of nature that cannot even begin to explain the depth and the width and the height of the human experience. Do not let someone tell you to stop listening to the inner yearning for something better, deeper, fuller than this world has to offer. If you take yourself seriously, then you have to take God seriously, and it’s not always the most comforting thought, but remember, “you were not made for comfort; you were made for greatness.”

Written by: Marty Arlinghaus

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The True Opiate of the Masses

8/28/2013

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Religion is the opiate of the masses. Clearly Karl Marx had it right when he generously gave this phrase to atheists and skeptics the world around to use to take down religion. Considering how well his crowning idea worked out in practice for the betterment and freeing of mankind,
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I’m curious to ask, was he right?

Is it religion that is pulling the hood over peoples’ eyes to give us false hope and giddy comfort in a harsh reality? Or could it perhaps be the other way around?

Is atheism the true opiate of the masses? I say yes.

Even the brightest atheists have not, cannot, and will not answer the question of, why is there something rather than nothing? Ask Richard Dawkins and he will say it’s silly to even ask that question. Ask Stephen Hawking and you read that, because of a law like gravity, there is not necessarily a need for a creator in order for the universe to be created. My question for him is, where did the law of gravity come from?

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Scientists can keep pushing the question further back into bristling complex theories and equations, but ultimately it does nothing to give an answer.

What’s Catholicism’s take? A little something called contingency. Simply put, all matter comes from some other matter.

A book is made of paper, which comes from pulp, which comes from trees, which came from the seeds of other trees and the nutrients in the ground, etc. etc. Now expand it out a little. Where’d the earth come from? Well, from the supernova of the sun, which came from the energy, gasses, and other particles of the big bang… Where’d the big bang come from? Aha, here’s where we finally get to the root of our question, how do we have matter in the first place if the big bang is the beginning of the physical universe?
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The Catholic answer is this:  there must be something that is not contingent, meaning that you can’t trace its origin to something that existed before it. Its very nature is to be; it is existence itself, therefore a being. That is what we mean when we say God. (Thank you St. Thomas Aquinas!)
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So who’s being honest with themselves when they’re trying to grapple with the most important question of existence? The atheists? Or the believers? Even if you don’t agree with or don’t like the conclusion we come to, we’re not drugging ourselves with the easy way out that atheism provides by ignoring the best logical conclusion.

There will also be a part 2 to this where I take on my favorite of the New Atheists, Christopher Hitchens!

Written by: Marty Arlinghaus

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St. Irenaeus: An Ancient Hero for a Modern Battle

8/28/2013

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I love listening to the New Atheists. They’ve actually done a lot to draw me closer to God. I love listening to talks and debates by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris (and even Bill Maher, although he doesn’t belong nearly in the intellectual realm as the other guys). It’s exciting, it’s challenging, it can be unnerving, it can be aggrivating (or amusing) to watch the incompetent Christian apologist flounder as they get Hitch-slapped, it causes you to question and ponder, and it makes you take a side. Am I for the existence of God or against it? Do I agree with what they are saying, or not? Deep down the answer has always been “I am for God, I do not agree with what they’re saying,” but I couldn’t articulate it.

Then I discovered St. Irenaeus of Lyons,

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one of the Church Fathers. Irenaeus lived in the 2nd Century, which was fraught with heresies. Heresies essentially take a small part of the Truth, and overemphasize it to the exclusion of the other parts of the Truth, which leads then to ignorance and therefore enslavement of the mind, heart, and soul (and often times the body, too).

Irenaeus did what every good Catholic should do (although it’s not what every Catholicdoes do), he learned everything about what these heresies taught, and then showed how they were incongruent, flawed, or completely non-sensical. He took down these heresies not by violence or force, but by intellectual excellence and faithful adherence to the Trinity… faith and reason.

The two most important things I have learned from St. Irenaeus (which help me articulate almost every disagreement I have with the New Atheists) are as follows:  God has no need, and the glory of God is man fully alive.

The New Atheist conception of God tends to see Him as a fussy, manipulative, one being among many others in the universe, who competes with other things for our attention and demands that we bow down and worship Him, otherwise His overinflated ego will go down and He’ll get mad and smite us.

This isn’t how Catholics know God at all though. Using St. Iraneaus, we know that God has no need, this is because He is perfect in every way. It does not hurt God if we do not praise Him. Likewise it does not hurt God if we insult Him. When we blaspheme God, it ends up hurting us. So you will see Christians push back when the disrespect gets tasteless but it’s not because God has been wounded by it, we have.

It is because of God’s objectivity in this sense that I can believe and put my trust in Him, worship Him, pray to Him, because He isn’t like the Greek or Roman gods who are petty, fussy, egotistical, all-too-human beings who need the humans to worship them, otherwise they get angry and start messing with the annoying loud humans. Because God has no need, His love is true love and my praise and worship is a free response to that love.

(Another misconception about prayer gets thrown around and it goes something like this.)

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This brings us to the next point the New Atheists make and it concerns freedom. If I understood God the way the New Atheists do, I would be an atheist too, because it would be enslaving myself to worship Him. But like I said, that’s not who God is. He has no need, so my worship and praise of Him is my free gift, my free response given to the one who has first loved me.

Being God, He created me. The One who is Love itself gave fully and freely of Himself the gift of life to me. Inscribed into the inmost depths of my heart, then, is the desire to participate in that perfect love, to be wrapped up in it, conformed to it, fullfilled by it, perfected by it. This is true freedom, this is what humans long for on the deepest level of our being, this is the glory of God, that we be fully alive. We are fully alive only if we are perfectly united to the one who began us in love. On earth we get glimpses and tastes of this perfect love as seen only through the eyes of our faith, but know that what is to come will surpass all that we can imagine it to be.

I believe I owe a debt of gratitude to the New Atheists for helping me discover one of the great treasures of the Catholic Church and Her 2,000 year Tradition…

St. Irenaeus, pray for us.

Written by:  Marty Arlinghaus

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Pope Francis – The Humble Servant

8/27/2013

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Yesterday, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as the 265th successor of St. Peter. He was that guy every media person was talking about before yesterday, who was expected to become the next Pope.

Wait a minute, no. That was a bunch of other people that weren’t him.

Fittingly enough, this humble man from Buenos Aires entered into the Papacy without his name being thrown around too much beforehand. Apparently Pope Francis hasn’t historically been one for a media presence. Even when he was appointed as Cardinal, he introduced himself and was known across the board as “Father Jorge”. Most people came into contact with this man never knowing he was a Cardinal. When Pope Francis first came out after being announced as the new Pope, he was all:

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But then after a brief few seconds, he was like:
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Many people (myself included), upon hearing how gentle this man was, mistook this gentleness for a lack of personality. Well, that was quickly disproven after one of the first things he did as Pope was crack a joke. Hey, I wonder if he likes all those Jesuit jokes.

Really though – take a look at this picture. While hilarious, it also points out a very real truth about our new Pope, and what a meek man he is.

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Then, instead of going straight into the Blessing over the people that the newly elected Popes are prescribed to do, he took a little detour, asking for a minute of silence for prayer, so that everybody else could first pray for God to bless him. It’s not every day when you’re seeking a blessing from the Pope that he asks you to bless him instead.

If you’ve been watching Pope Francis so far, or have done some research on him, he’s the type of guy who would give you the Pope-shoes off his feet. He embodies humbleness. Upon becoming a cardinal in 2001, Pope Francis refused to order new robes, and simply had the already used robes of another cardinal mended for his own use. Along with being a cardinal came the nice living quarters of the palatial bishop’s residence.  Not for Father Jorge. He chose to live in a small apartment nearby. Oh, and the chauffeured limousine at his disposal? Not for him. He chose the bus and the trains.  He denied these luxuries that were presented to him as he chose to live his daily life in service of the poor, the meek, and the neglected. In 2005, during the election process where Benedict the XVI became Pope, Father Jorge was a strong contender, with votes often being split between Benedict and himself. Well apparently Father Jorge was also voting for Benedict, because he actually got up and pleaded with the Cardinals to not vote for him, because he also thought Benedict was what the Church needed. Apparently, he gave them an IOU.

Further embodying humbleness into his life, it was only fitting he chose the name Francis, after St. Francis Xavier de Sales of Assisi. Once again, an unexpected name choice, albeit a fitting one. The Jesuit chose the name of the founder of the Franciscans. No “my Order is better than yours” rivalry there. Pope Francis chose his name due to the devotion to the poor St. Francis of Assisi had. The most famous prayer of St. Francis perfectly embodies the meek persona of Pope Francis.

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Pope Francis: both the humble servant AND the Supreme Pontiff. The man who can guide the Church with a gentle yet powerful hand, and reach out to the least of us, as he has dedicated his life to do. Let’s say a prayer of thanks for such a wonderful man being elected Pope, and continue to pray for him as his new journey begins.
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