Saint Andrew Dung-Lac & companions


Thumbnail image for St Andrew Dung-lac & comp.JPGO God, the source and origin of all fatherhood, you kept the blessed martyrs Andrew and his companions faithful to the cross of your Son even to the shedding of their blood. Through their intercession enable us to spread your love among our brothers and sisters, that we may be called and may truly be your children.

 

 

 

An excerpt of a letter written 1843 by Paul Le-Bao-Tinh, shortly before his martyrdom:

 

I, Paul, chained for the name of Christ, wish to tell you the tribulations in which I am immersed every day, so that you, inflamed with love for God, may also lift up your praise to God, ‘for his mercy endures forever’. This prison is truly the image of the eternal Hell: to the cruelest tortures of all types, such as fetters, iron chains and bonds, are added hate, vindictiveness, calumny, indecent words, interrogations, bad acts, unjust oaths, curses and finally difficulties and sorrow. But God, who once freed the three boys from the path of the flames, is always with me and has freed me from these tribulations and converted them into sweetness, ‘for his mercy endures forever…

 

Assist me with your prayers so that I may struggle according to the law, and indeed ‘fight the good fight’ and that I may be worthy to fight until the end, finishing my course happily; if we do not see each other again in this life, in the future age, nonetheless, this will be our joy, when standing before the throne of the spotless Lamb, with one voice we sing his praises, exulting in the joy of eternal victory. Amen.

Communion & Liberation, in brief

Here is the description of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation which appears in the Directory of International Associations of the Faithful, published by the Pontifical Council for the Laity (Libreria Editrice Vaticana [adapted], 2006).

 

Official name: Fraternity of Communion and Liberation; also known as: Communion and Liberation (CL)

 

Established: 1954

 

History: At the beginning of the 1950s, realizing the need to rebuild the Christian presence in the student world, Father Luigi Giussani, a professor at the Theological Faculty at Venegono, dedicated himself to teaching religion in schools.

 

The experience of a small group of students from the Berchet classical high school in Milan, which gathered around him, led to the establishment of Gioventù Studentesca (Student Youth). With the strong encouragement of the archbishop of Milan, Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, Gioventù Studentesca spread to other Italian cities, and after 1968 it also began to involve undergraduates and adults.

 

This led to the establishment of Communion and Liberation which, in 1980, was to be canonically recognized by the Benedictine Ordinary (Bishop) Abbot of Montecassino, Martino Matronola. The first fraternity groups were set up in the latter half of the 1970s by CL graduates who, using a method based on communion, wished to strengthen their membership in the Church as adults, along with the responsibilities that this entails.

 

It was through their spread to various countries that the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation came about. On Feb. 11, 1982, (Our Lady of Lourdes) the Pontifical Council for the Laity decreed recognition of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation as an international association of the faithful of pontifical right.

 

Identity: The essence of the CL charism is

the proclamation that God became Man; in the affirmation that this man — Jesus of Nazareth, who died and rose again — is a present event,

whose visible sign is communion, that is to say, the unity of a people led by a living person, the Bishop of Rome

in the awareness that it is only in God made Man, and hence within the life of the Church, that man is more true and humanity is truly more human.

 

In the educational proposal made by CL, the free acceptance by the individual of the Christian message is determined by the discovery that the needs of the human heart are met by the annunciation of a message that fulfills them.

 

It is the reasonableness of the faith which leads men and women who have been transformed by their encounter with Christ to commit themselves with Christian experience to affect the whole of society. This commitment strengthens their awareness of their own identity, enabling them to see their life as a vocation, and is supported by the experience of communion which makes the memory of Christ’s coming a daily reality.

 

The educational process,

nurtured by proclamation and catechesis

by attendance at retreats and spiritual exercises

and by the celebration of the sacraments,

gives pride of place to the dimensions of

 

1.   cultural work, as a means of deepening and expressing their faith and as a condition for having a responsible presence in society

2.   charity work, as education in service to be freely given to others and social commitment

3.   and the mission, as education in the sense of the catholicity of the Church and as a vocational choice.

 

Bearing witness to Christ

  • in schools and universities
  • in factories and offices
  • in the local neighborhood and in the city
  • takes place above all through work, which is the specific way in which adults relate to reality.

 

Organization: The life of the fraternity is lived through the free formation of groups of men and women of ail conditions and states of life, whose friendship and communion are based upon their common commitment to move forward together toward holiness, which they acknowledge to be the genuine purpose of human existence.

 

The association is guided by the president and by the Central Diakonia, of which all the international leaders are members.

[There are also] the officials in all the various areas in which it is present, and representatives of the other entities that have emerged from the CL charism:

·         the Memores Domini Lay Association (The life of its members (lay men and women who normally live in houses made up of either men or women, following a rule of group living and personal ascesis) is governed by the call to contemplation, understood as the constant memory of Christ, and of mission, especially in the workplace. The life is committed to the conception of virginity is based on St. Paul’s call to “possess as though not possessing.” It is not in order to give up something that one makes a sacrifice, but rather to possess reality completely analogous to the possession of Christ);

·         the priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo;

·         the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Assumption;

·         Fraternity of Saint Joseph (dedicated their lives definitively to Christ and the Christian life, while remaining in their current life situations; members of this fraternity are free of marriage bonds, because widowed or unmarried, according to the Gospel tradition: in obedience, poverty, virginity, which are dimensions of faith, hope, and charity).

 

ln the dioceses, the diocesan leader is assisted by a

Diakonia and by a spiritual assistant appointed by the local bishop acting on a proposal by the fraternity president.

 

Since 1997, the Communion and Liberation International Center has been operating in Rome, as the liaison center linking all the parts of the movement worldwide.

 

Membership: The fraternity has 47,994 members in 64 countries. More than 60,000 people share the CL experience.

 

Works: Individuals and groups belonging to the fraternity have taken the responsibility to establish cultural, charitable and entrepreneurial works linked together in the Company of Works which has offices in Italy and abroad.

 

These works of CL include

·         shelter homes for the mentally ill, drug addicts, the disabled, AIDS patients and the terminally ill

·         companies to provide employment for the disabled

·         nongovernmental organizations (AVSI in Italy and CESAl in Spain) to provide assistance and foster the development of poor countries

·         foundations such as the Food Bank, which provides daily food to more than 1 million poor people in Italy,

·         and the Pharmaceutical Bank

·         solidarity centers to assist the unemployed in seeking a job

·         welfare facilities in children’s prisons in Africa and America

·         and aid for needy families and finding homes for people in difficulty.

 

The initiatives that have emerged in the field of culture have become a special place for ensuring that the pooling of different experiences is an opportunity for every individual to communicate their own “proprium” regarding the Christian event:

·         cultural centers

·         schools (often established by parents’ cooperatives)

·         publishing houses, publishing and newspaper initiatives

·         foundations and academic institutions

·         and international conferences, such as the Meeting for Friendship among Peoples.(Rimini)

 

The Sacred Heart Foundation in Milan is directly dependent upon the Fraternity, as a nonprofit entity which manages schools, and works for the promotion and protection of free education, consistent with the Christian tradition and the teaching of the Church.

 

Publications: Traces Litterae Communionis, a monthly magazine in Italian, French, English, Polish, Portuguese/Brazilian, Russian, German and Spanish; Piccole Tracee, a magazine for children published every two months

 

Web site: www.clonline.net

Blessed Miguel Pro


Bl Miguel Augustin Pro.jpgToday is the liturgical memorial of Blessed Miguel Pro, a fitting connection with today’s  Solemnity of Christ the King, and the devotion to the Sacred Heart. The memorable line of Pro’s is his last: Long live Christ the King. With that he was killed. Blessed Miguel Pro teaches us to serve Christ the King all that we do and remain close to the mercy of God. He wrote:

 

I believe, O Lord, but strengthen my faith… Heart of Jesus, I love Thee; but increase my love. Heart of Jesus, I trust in Thee; but give greater vigor to my confidence. Heart of Jesus, I give my heart to Thee; but so enclose it in Thee that it may never be separated from Thee. Heart of Jesus, I am all Thine; but take care of my promise so that I may be able to put it in practice even unto the complete sacrifice of my life.

 

Chaplet of Blessed Miguel Pro, SJ

 

Blessed Miguel, before your death, you told your friend to ask you for favors when you were in Heaven. I beg you to intercede for me and in union with Our Lady and all the angels and saints, to ask Our Lord to grant my petition, provided that it be God’s Will. {mention the request}

We honor and adore the triune God. The Gloria.
We ask the Holy Spirit for guidance. Come Holy Ghost.
We pray as Jesus taught us to pray. The Our Father.
We venerate with love the Virgin Mary. The Hail Mary.
All you angels, bless you the Lord forever.
Saint Joseph, Saint {name of your patron}, and all the saints, pray for us.

Blessed Miguel, high spirited youth, pray for us. Viva Christo Rey.
Blessed Miguel, loving son and brother, pray for us. Viva Christo Rey.
Blessed Miguel, patient novice, pray for us. Viva Christo Rey.
Blessed Miguel, exile from your homeland, pray for us. Viva Christo Rey.
Blessed Miguel, prayerful religious, pray for us. Viva Christo Rey.
Blessed Miguel, sick and suffering, pray for us. Viva Christo Rey.
Blessed Miguel, defender of workers, pray for us. Viva Christo Rey.
Blessed Miguel, courageous priest in hiding, pray for us. Viva Christo Rey.
Blessed Miguel, prisoner in jail, pray for us. Viva Christo Rey.
Blessed Miguel, forgiver of persecutors, pray for us. Viva Christo Rey.
Blessed Miguel, holy martyr, pray for us. Viva Christo Rey.

Imprimatur: Joseph A. Fiorenza, Bishop of Galveston – Houston, August 13, 1995

 

Christ the King

Christ the King.jpgThe Feast of Christ the King is of recent origin, but what it celebrates is as old as the Christian Faith itself. For the word Christ is, in fact, just the Greek translation of the word Messiah: the Anointed One, the King. Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified son of a carpenter, is so intrinsically King that the title “king” has actually become his name. by calling ourselves Christians, we label ourselves as followers of the King, as people who recognize him as their King. But we can understand properly what the kingship of Jesus Christ means only if we trace its origin in the Old Testament, where we immediately discover a surprising fact. It is obvious that God did not intend Israel to have a kingdom. The kingdom was, in fact, a result of Israel’s rebellion against God and against his prophets, a defection from the original will of God. The law was to be Israel’s king, and, through the law, God himself…. But Israel was jealous of the neighboring peoples with their powerful kings…. Surprisingly, God yield to Israel’s obstinacy and so devised a new kind of kingship for them. The son of David, the King, is Jesus; in him God entered humanity and espoused it to himself. If we look closely, we shall discover that this is, in fact, the usual form of the divine activity in relation to mankind. God does not have a fixed plan that he must carry out; on the contrary, he has many different ways of finding man and even of turning his wrong ways into right ways.

 

We can see that, for instance, in the case of Adam, whose fault became a happy fault, and we see it again in all the twisted ways of history. This, then, is God’s kingship–a love that is impregnable and an inventiveness that finds man by ways that are always new. For us, consequently, God’s kingship means that we must have an unshakeable confidence. For this is still true and is applicable to every single life: no one has reason to fear or to capitulate. God can always be found. We, too, should make this the pattern of our lives: to write no one off; to try to reach them again and again with the inventiveness of an open heart. Our most important task Is not to have our own way but to be always ready to follow the path that leads to God and to one another. The Feast of Christ the King is not, therefore, the feast of those who are under a yoke but of those who are grateful to find themselves in the hands of him who writes straight on crooked lines.

 (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year, pp. 377-8)

“Christ without Culture” is untenable for Christians

First Things editor-in-chief Father Richard John Neuhaus puts his finger on a persistent topic that concerns me at this time: Christ and culture.  In “The Deadly Convenience of Christianity Without Culture” Neuhaus briefly explores what it means to be an engaged member of the Church, the Body of Christ. He identifies what the Church is and how she is to act.

 

What I am seeing, and you may be seeing a similar thing, is that Church (clergy and laity alike) are giving into the pressure from the radical secularists to remove the Christian proposal from the public platform. A good example is the South Carolina politician who wanted to refuse a local Catholic Church from expanding because the Catholics were against abortion, women priests and held “ideologies” (i.e., theology) that conflicted with Unitarian Universalist “freedoms.” Of course, it is not only the outside world that is becoming more and more reticent toward the Church, it’s those who make the claim of being Catholic who are speaking less of Christ, the Church and true Christian living that makes me unnerved and thus becoming biege, even engaging in spiritual malpractice. 

 

Christians seem to be accepting that belief in Christ and the flourishing of faith in world is irrelevant. Can it be that Christians are willing to absent themselves more and more from a public discussion of what it means to live morally, or the exploration of how faith and reason intersect, or the reality of life issues which holds to a principle of human dignity, or the need for a sensible national security plan, or the requirement of just immigration policies, or an adequate distribution of natural resources which feeds the hungry, clothes the naked and give drink to the thirsty? Do we not see the face of God in the world around us? How can it be that some of us call ourselves Christians and yet shy away from actually living the Gospel? How is it that professed Christians, clergy and laity alike, are ashamed at being identified as Christian in the public square? Are these questions above your pay grade? Is virtue that shameful that it can’t be spoken of or demonstrated? Is faith in Christ truly a mere private affair that one’s engagement in culture (art, politics, economics, romance, religion, friendship, etc.) can actually thrive without Christ?

 

I am hopeful that Catholics will begin to see that the notion of “Christ without cultural” is an impossible way to live, that is, bankrupt, and therefore pick up the shovel and starting digging a new foundation for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be built upon. We are baptized into a communion, a Church, not a social club. We need to do more than just show up for “church.” Either is Christ King of heaven and earth, or we’re in trouble. How will our lives different this week?

Saint Cecilia

While musical instruments were playing, Cecilia sang to the Lord, saying:


St Cecilia at organ.jpgLet my heart be undefiled, that I be not confounded.

 O God, Who does gladden us by the annual solemnity of blessed Cecilia, Thy Virgin and Martyr, grant that as we venerate her by this festival we may also follow in the example of her holy life.

 

But Oh! What Art Can Teach,
What Human Voice Can Reach

The Sacred Organ’s Praise?

Notes Inspiring Holy Love,

Notes That Wing Their Heavenly Ways
To Mend The Choirs Above

(John Dreyden, Song for St. Cecilia’s Day, 1687.)

Looking deeply into reality through the perspective of Georges Rouault

Do you know the work of Georges Rouault? Well you should. Franco Mormando writes
“Of Clowns And Christian Conscience: The art of Georges Rouault”
in the November 24th issue of America Magazine. The article follows.

 

Georges Rouault was 34 years old and barely recovered from a physical and nervous breakdown when he had a life-changing epiphany in 1905, which he described in a letter to his friend, édouard Schuré. While out walking one day, the artist happened to come across a “nomad caravan, parked by the roadside.” It was a circus, preparing for its next public performance. Rouault’s eye fell upon one of the figures: an “old clown sitting in a corner of his caravan in the process of mending his sparkling and gaudy costume.” It was then that Rouault had a piercing flash of insight, one that was to affect deeply his vision of life and art.

 

The artist was utterly struck by the jarring contrast between the clown’s external garb and
Clown Georges Rouault.jpg professional accoutrements–“brilliant scintillating objects, made to amuse”–and the wretchedness of his condition as an impoverished, vagabond laborer living on the fringes of society, enduring a “life of infinite sadness, if seen from slightly above.” From that contrast came another equally eye-opening realization: “I saw quite clearly that the ‘Clown’ was me, was us, nearly all of us…. This rich and glittering costume, it is given to us by life itself, we are all more or less clowns, we all wear a glittering costume….” (Rouault summed up this vision in several studies entitled “Sunt Lacrymae Rerum”–“There are tears [of grief] at the very heart of things.”)

 

From that moment on, the clown, as well as other circus figures and denizens of the disreputable periphery of society, haunted Rouault’s imagination and art, becoming one of his signature icons. An icon of what? Of the painful disconnection between appearances and reality, between who we are on the inside and who we pretend to be, or what society judges us to be, on the outside. Rouault confronts us on the one hand with clowns and prostitutes, whose real (if battered and buried) human dignity nonetheless still emits some light from within their souls, and on the other hand with the furthest extreme of the social spectrum: the rich, the well-born, the powerful, the “glitterati,” wearing the masks of their expensive clothes and polished manners, hiding cruel, narcissistic hearts full of dust and ashes. (See, for example, Rouault’s “The Accused” of 1907 and “Superman” of 1916). In his professional life Rouault knew this type well, for it was and is a familiar figure in the upper echelons of the art establishment. His own art dealer, the unsavory but hugely successful Ambroise Vollard, certainly seems to have been of that ilk.

 

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Rouault’s death, the McMullen Museum at Boston College has mounted a magnificent, comprehensive review of his prodigiously productive career, Mystic Masque: Semblance and Reality in Georges Rouault, 1871-1958, on view until Dec. 7. This landmark exhibition features over 180 works from every period of the artist’s life, some never before seen in the United States. The exhibition was boldly conceived and curated by Stephen Schloesser, S.J., of the Boston College History Department, who also edited an ample and illuminating catalog that features interdisciplinary contributions from more than 20 scholars.

 

The key word is “masque,” meaning both “theatrical face cover” and “masked pageant” (think of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death”). Not only in his clown paintings, but everywhere in his art, Rouault explores–and provokes his viewers into exploring–the private human reality behind the public mask in order to expose the soul. In that exposure, the high and mighty are reduced to the level of the risible, if not the pathetic (as in his 1927 aquatint, “As proud of her noble stature as if she were still alive”), while the lowly are made to shine in their inherent human dignity. Again, as the artist himself explained to Schuré: “I have the defect…of leaving no one his glittering costume, be he king or emperor. I want to see the soul of the man in front of me…and the greater he is, the more mankind glorifies him, the more I fear for his soul.” In Schloesser’s view, “Rouault felt compelled to unmask society’s well-respected and well-born, and to raise up society’s lowly and overlooked.” In other words, Rouault’s art comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. It is an art that a Peter Maurin or a Dorothy Day would assuredly have cherished.

 


Crucifixion Georges Rouault.jpgWith his fertile imagination and years of productivity, Rouault treated many different themes beyond clowns and masks and employed a variety of media and styles. A revelation for me, and, I suspect, for many viewers, is the Rembrandt-inspired style of his earliest period, represented in the exhibition by two stirring canvases, “The Way to Calvary” and “Job.” But perhaps his most enduring stylistic trademark is the use of richly luminous colors gleaming forth from a heavy matrix of thick black lines, clearly the influence of his youthful apprenticeship with stained-glass makers. The exhibition includes one actual stained-glass window by Rouault, a crucifixion scene, and it is simply a gem in the literal sense of that word.

 

Rouault uses the same stained-glass-inspired style to perhaps its most memorable effect in
Veronica veil Rouault.jpg his many depictions of the “Holy Face,” the face of the suffering Jesus as traditionally seen in representations of the sudarium of St. Veronica, which, according to pious belief, shows the true likeness of Christ. The face of Christ is an almost obsessive visual leitmotif for Rouault, a potent symbol of the suffering of an innocent humanity oppressed by an unjust society.

 

Another disturbing existential question is raised by Rouault’s art, most literally in the title he gives to several of his works: “Are we not all slaves?” Here Rouault is speaking from bitter personal experience. In 1917, desperately poor and with a family to support, he was forced into what was essentially indentured servitude to that same infamous art dealer, Ambroise Vollard, or Fifi Voleur (Fifi the Thief) as Gauguin called him, a cunning businessman whose ambiguous personal life had much to hide, as Christopher Benfey has probingly written for the online magazine Slate.

 

Those who prefer art that presents only what Charles Baudelaire would call “la vie en beau” (the pretty side of life) or who shun the examination of conscience might not fully savor this exhibition, but Rouault’s style is so visually compelling that it will certainly arrest anyone’s attention and ultimately give delight on some level. For many viewers, I dare say, questions surrounding the moral life, social justice, sincerity and authenticity will likely dominate their response to this exhibition, as they dominated Rouault’s artistic imagination and as they dominate the conception of the exhibition itself.

 

Rouault is probably familiar to anyone who went through the parochial school system in the United States. My own introduction to “Rouault the Catholic artist” occurred many years ago at Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx. Yet Rouault himself (a true believer, albeit not of the orthodox kind) rejected the very notion of sacred art or the “Catholic artist.” “There is no sacred art,” he has been quoted as having said. “There is just art pure and simple.” Nonetheless, Rouault’s work not only has the power to please the eye and feed the mind, but to quicken our attention to the moral and spiritual dimension of human experience and to help move us to a higher plane of consciousness.

 

 

 

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Blessed art thou, O may, who did believe; those things shall be fulfilled in thee which were spoken to thee by the Lord, alleluia.

 


Presentation of the BVM3.jpgO God, Who did will that the blessed Mary ever Virgin, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, should this day be presented in the temple; we beseech Thee, grant that through her intercession we may be found worthy to be present in the temple of Thy glory.

 

 

 

Mater Amabilis

Mother most lovable

 

WHY is she “Amabilis” thus specially? It is because she was without sin. Sin is something odious in its very nature, and grace is something bright, beautiful, attractive.

 

However, it may be said that sinlessness was not enough to make others love her, or to make her dear to others, and that for two reasons: first, because we cannot like anyone that is not like ourselves, and we are sinners; and next, because her being holy would not make her pleasant and winning, because holy persons whom we fall in with, are not always agreeable, and we cannot like them, however we may revere them and look up to them.

 

Now as to the first of these two questions, we may grant that bad men do not, cannot like good men; but our Blessed Virgin Mary is called Amabilis, or lovable, as being such to the children of the Church, not to those outside of it, who know nothing about her; and no child of Holy Church but has some remains of God’s grace in his soul which makes him sufficiently like her, however greatly wanting he may be, to allow of his being able to love her. So we may let this question pass.

 

But as to the second question, viz., How are we sure that our Lady, when she was on earth, attracted people round her, and made them love her merely because she was holy? — considering that holy people sometimes have not that gift of drawing others to them.

 

To explain this point we must recollect that there is a vast difference between the state of a soul such as that of the Blessed Virgin, which has never sinned, and a soul, however holy, which has once had upon it Adam’s sin; for, even after baptism and repentance, it suffers necessarily from the spiritual wounds which are the consequence of that sin. Holy men, indeed, never commit mortal sin; nay, sometimes have never committed even one mortal sin in the whole course of their lives. But Mary’s holiness went beyond this. She never committed even a venial sin, and this special privilege is not known to belong to anyone but Mary.

 

Now, whatever want of amiableness, sweetness, attractiveness, really exists in holy men arises from the remains of sin in them, or again from the want of a holiness powerful enough to overcome the defects of nature, whether of soul or body; but, as to Mary, her holiness was such, that if we saw her, and heard her, we should not be able to tell to those who asked us anything about her except simply that she was angelic and heavenly.

 

Of course her face was most beautiful; but we should not be able to recollect whether it
BVM.jpgwas beautiful or not; we should not recollect any of her features, because it was her beautiful sinless soul, which looked through her eyes, and spoke through her mouth, and was heard in her voice, and compassed her all about; when she was still, or when she walked, whether she smiled, or was sad, her sinless soul, this it was which would draw all those to her who had any grace in them, any remains of grace, any love of holy things. There was a divine music in all she said and did — in her mien, her air, her deportment, that charmed every true heart that came near her. Her innocence, her humility and modesty, her simplicity, sincerity, and truthfulness, her unselfishness, her unaffected interest in every one who came to her, her purity — it was these qualities which made her so lovable; and were we to see her now, neither our first thought nor our second thought would be what she could do for us with her Son (though she can do so much), but our first thought would be, “Oh, how beautiful!” and our second thought would be, “Oh, what ugly hateful creatures are we!”

 

(taken from Card. John Henry Newman’s “Discourses to Mixed Congregations”, 1849)

Faith and…people, science, money & sexuality

In the past month or so I advertized a lecture series at Columbia University entitled “What’s faith got to do with it?” given by Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete.

 

The point of the lectures was to think about the relationship between faith and life in four important human experiences: politics, science, economics and affectivity. Often I hear, or it is intimated, that we live in a world where the vast majority of the citizens either don’t care about faith or are searching for “something” (or both). There is a sense of craziness going on in today’s world that can’t be ignored by believers. Why? How is that people get out of bed in the morning intimidated by feelings (thoughts?) of inadequacy, narcissism and nihilism in piecemeal or all at once. Curious! I am usually looking for the bathroom, the toothpaste and a cup of coffee.

 

Nevertheless, I think there is a need to explore the issues and interpersonal relations that man and woman face regularly: other people, science, money and sex/sexuality/intimacy viz. the Catholic faith. It is distinctly “Catholic” to engage these matters; to ignore them is to betray unbelief in the Incarnation and it is irrational. There is a relationship between these 4 areas and faith and a public forum shows how they intersect “live”. Albacete is taking life seriously by engaging these facts of life because he knows that faith is a form of knowledge (read the book Is It Possible To Live This Way? Vol. I Faith by Luigi Giussani) and therefore it broadens reason. As it’s been said, “faith should give us a better vantage point to understand the realities of life.”

 

The transcripts of the 4 lectures are available for download:

 

Faith and Politics: Do they mix?

Faith and Science: Are they in conflict?

Faith and Money: Do they add up?

Faith and Romance: Are they a good match?