Chicago Studies Fall/Winter 2023

Chicago Studies Editorial Board Melanie Barrett Kevin Magas

Maria Barga

Lawrence Hennessey

Patricia Pintado-Murphy

Paul Hilliard

Juliana Vazquez

John Lodge

Ray Webb

Founding Editor George Dyer CHICAGO STUDIES is edited by members of the faculty of the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary for the continuing theological development of priests, deacons, and lay ecclesial ministers. The journal welcomes articles likely to be of interest to our readers. Views expressed in the articles are those of the respective authors and not necessarily those of the editorial board. All communications regarding articles and editorial policy should be addressed to cseditor@usml.edu. CHICAGO STUDIES is indexed in the ATLA Religion Database and New Testament Abstracts.

Cover Design by Deacon Thomas Gaida Copyright © 2023 Civitas Dei Foundation ISSN 0009-3718

The Church in the World: Evangelization and Liturgy Editors’ Corner—Fall 2022/Winter 2023

By Dr. Juliana Vazquez, Ph.D. and Dr. Melanie Barrett, Ph.D./S.T.D. We dedicate this issue of Chicago Studies to the memory of Reverend Martin Zielinski, who served as coeditor of Chicago Studies for the past several years. A well-respected member of the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary faculty, Fr. Zielinski was equally dedicated to parish ministry and the intellectual life, as a scholar of Church history who specialized in American church history. He passed away earlier this year after waging a valiant war against cancer. We include his funeral homily, given by Fr. Lawrence Hennessey, at the conclusion of this volume.

The first four essays of this volume were presented publicly for the 2022 Albert Cardinal Meyer Lecture Series at the University of St. Mary of the Lake. The Most Reverend Robert Barron, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Winona-Rochester, presented the first two lectures. Both focus on the theme of breaking through the buffered self. Invoking the classical doctrine of the circumincession of the transcendentals, Bishop Barron explains how truth, goodness, and beauty can function dynamically to evangelize Catholics in the contemporary milieu.

The next two essays offer a constructive response to Barron’s proposals. Reverend Brendan Lupton, President of the Pontifical Faculty at USML, whose research expertise lies in the area of patristic theology, responds to Bishop Barron by garnering insights learned from the social networks in the early Church that promoted Christian evangelization. Dr. Patricia Pintado-Murphy, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at USML who is also a trained theologian, expounds upon the necessity of friendship, community, and personal witness if evangelization efforts are to be successful.

The final two essays are authored by experts in the discipline of sacramental theology. Dr. David Fagerberg, who recently retired from the theology faculty at the University of Notre Dame, evaluates how the permanent diaconate can bear fruit, both personally for the deacon and socially for his ecclesial community, through renewed attention to the interior life. Dr. Kevin Magas, an Assistant Professor at USML who teaches in the areas of dogmatic theology and liturgical studies, investigates how the twentieth-century liturgical movement and Catholic Action share the common goal of the transformation of all things in Christ, bringing together liturgy and life and responding to the needs and concerns of young Catholics.

A funeral homily written and preached by Reverend Larry Hennessey, a fellow diocesan priest, long-term seminary-faculty colleague, and close friend of Fr. Zielinski, closes out the volume.

Breaking through the Buffered Self: Beginning with the True

By Most Rev. Robert Barron, S.T.D. Introduction Anyone who has been following my work over the years knows that I have been preoccupied with the question of the unaffiliated, that is to say, the army of those people, especially the young, who have absented themselves from the practice of the faith and from church attendance. There is simply no way to avoid the conclusion that the Christian churches, at least in the West, are facing a practically unprecedented crisis of disaffiliation. In the early 1970s, roughly 3 percent of our country would have claimed the status of “none” when asked about religious affiliation. Today, the number has reached an astonishing 26 percent, and among the young, the numbers are worse still, reaching 40 percent of those under thirty. One need not be an expert in statistics to discern that this does not bode well for the future of the Church.

When asked why they have disaffiliated, the “nones” give a variety of reasons, chief among them that they have simply lost confidence in the teachings of Christianity. Since I have explored this and many other causes of disaffiliation before, I will not focus on the sociology of the issue.

Rather, what I would like to do in these presentations is to take a deeper dive, examining the culture that has given rise to the loss of religious commitment and then proposing some ways forward, some insights and practices whereby the religious sensibility can be reawakened.

Permit me to say something at the outset. Though we religious leaders and educators might be tempted at this time to wring our hands and give in to despair, we should, on the contrary, seize this moment. As I hope to make clear in these lectures, the secularist ideology is soul-killing, and the human heart quite naturally rebels against it. We should not be begging the avatars of secularism for a place around the table on their terms; we should be reclaiming our incomparably rich spiritual tradition in order to feed the hunger of the unaffiliated. This is not the time to retreat, but rather, to go out, as Paul Tillich said, mit klingendem Spiel (with fife and drum), confident in what we bring. 1 I will develop these reflections as follows. First, I will look at the cultural matrix that has made the army of the disaffiliated possible, namely, what Charles Taylor calls the culture of the “buffered self,” the ego cut off from any living contact with the transcendent. Then, using the three great transcendentals—the good, the true, and the beautiful—as my framework, I will propose ways to break through the buffered self and to open the restless heart to a consideration of God and the things of God. Though I will develop these thoughts in a disciplined, academic way, I want to make clear from the outset that my purpose is not purely speculative. Instead, I am proposing a strategy for the creative engagement of the “nones” and a program useful for the purposes of what the last several Popes have called “the new evangelization.”

The Buffered Self In his magisterial The Secular Age, the Canadian Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor constructs a complex narrative designed to explain the intriguing fact that, in 1500, practically everyone in the West believed in God, whereas today, again in the West, God’s nonexistence is taken as a very lively option by a considerable number of people. To make this claim a bit more

precise, many contemporary people hold something that their early modern forebears would have found unthinkable, namely, that the good life can be had apart from any relationship to a transcendent reality.

Tracing all the lines of Taylor’s complex and sinuous analysis would take us way too far afield, but I want to draw attention to one particularly pivotal insight that sheds considerable light on the present situation. Taylor insists that the self that existed in the West, certainly until 1500 and to a large degree up until very recent times, could be characterized as a “porous” self, which is to say, a self open to the influence of a supernatural or transcendent order of things. 2 And the self that obtains within the secular space today might be described as “buffered,” 3 which is to say, cut off from that transcendent realm, or perhaps, to state it more accurately, indifferent to it, convinced, again, that its fulfillment can be found in what Taylor calls “an exclusive humanism.” 4 As I mentioned, many different reasons are given for disaffiliation, but I believe that the fundamental ground for this move, whatever motive is consciously acknowledged, is the buffered self.

One rather obvious form that the buffering takes is the rejection of a naively “enchanted” universe, inhabited by sprites, ghosts, goblins, and spiritual agents both malign and benevolent.

One might think here of even such hypersophisticated premodern thinkers as Origen of Alexandria and Thomas Aquinas, both of whom took for granted the view that angels are responsible for the movement of the planets. I do not think for a moment that it would be a desideratum to return to that prescientific cosmology. However, there is a far more deleterious disenchantment of the world, which amounts to a rejection of the contingent universe’s connection to a transcendent cause or source. Along with many others—John Milbank, Louis Dupré, Brad Gregory, for instance—I have argued that this disjunction followed from a loss of the analogical conception of being and the consequent compromising of a participation metaphysics. The rather clear result of this disconnect is an ideological materialism and, on the epistemological level, a scientism, which is to say, the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge.

There is no doubt that the astonishing success of the physical sciences and the lifeenhancing value of their concomitant technology have contributed mightily to this view. Since the sciences have, it seems, been so thoroughly capable of explaining the world and since their technologies have made our lives so much longer and more comfortable, why would we even bother to explore other paths of knowledge? And why would we not appreciate phenomena previously seen as spiritual—the soul, the arts, the longing for meaning, moral commitment—as simply epiphenomenal, the effluvia of brain, nerves, and evolutionary impulses? In point of fact, this latter reductionist perspective has been very effectively propagated in the popular culture by many of the “new” atheists.

Another consequence of the buffering of the self is what I have termed the culture of selfinvention. The roots of this worldview are certainly in Nietzsche’s will to power and transvaluation of values, but also in Sartre’s prioritization of existence over essence, and perhaps especially in Foucault’s insistence that truth claims typically come down to displays of power. The upshot of this high philosophical speculation is that one’s capacity to determine through freedom the meaning of one’s own life is now the default position of practically every teenager in the Western world. Any proposal of a norm that ought to govern freedom or of an objective value that ought to be incorporated into one’s subjectivity is routinely unmasked as a ploy of a domination system.

Scientism, ideological materialism, and the self-invention culture have effectively locked many people—especially the young—into the stuffy confines of the buffered self. And this is not a matter of merely academic concern, for this cutting off of living connections to the transcendent,

as I suggested, does enormous damage to the soul—and I can see the effects of it practically every day in my ministry to seekers, doubters, and enemies of religion. Armies of people today are straining to convince themselves that an exclusive humanism is adequate to their deepest desires, but their restless hearts say otherwise. I am convinced that the needful thing, therefore, is to knock holes in the buffered self, letting in the light.

During the many years that I was a professor at Mundelein Seminary, I would speak of the “soul-doctoring” quality of our theological and spiritual traditions. 5 Prior to the split between spirituality and theology, bemoaned by Hans Urs von Balthasar as the greatest tragedy in the history of the Church, the most important theologians were the spiritual masters and vice versa: think of Irenaeus, Chrysostom, Augustine, Maximus the Confessor, Anselm, Bernard, and Thomas Aquinas, to name just a few. For it was taken for granted that the doctrines of Christianity are productive of a manner of life, that they are intended to heal and to order that most fundamental dimension of the self that we characterize as the soul. My many years of experience in the fields of cultural analysis and evangelization have taught me that the soul-doctoring of the buffered self is sorely needed and that the Church is perhaps the privileged agent of this ministration.

Escaping from the Cave I am continually amazed at the enduring presence of Plato’s parable of the cave in the contemporary culture. 6 One thinks, for example, of Ray Bradbury’s novel Farenheit 451 or of C.S. Lewis’s fantasy story The Last Battle, or of such films as The Truman Show and, of course, The Matrix Trilogy. In all of these narratives, someone trapped in a metaphysically superficial world manages to escape from his constraints and to make a journey to a higher, more densely real and beautiful mode of existence. In all of these archetypal tales, as in the Platonic original, the limited perception of the main characters is a function of a severe restriction imposed upon them from the beginning, and heightened perception is the consequence of a necessarily painful and disconcerting liberation. In Plato’s telling, the emancipated prisoner, who has left the cave and seen the world outside as well as the sun that is the ultimate provider of the light, returns to his former colleagues but appears a comical figure, stumbling his way through the dark, now unable to perceive clearly even the shadows that formerly beguiled him. This is the religious person making his or her way through the secularized world today, moving among buffered selves. She has seen more than they, and she wants to draw them toward her vision, but they can only hear her stories as fantasy and they can only mock her as someone hopelessly out of touch with reality.

So how do we find our way out of the cave? In the interests of breaking through the buffered self and ultimately establishing a connection to God, the work of Dietrich von Hildebrand is of signal importance. In the face of the relativism that was already in his time insinuating itself into Western culture, Hildebrand famously distinguished between what he called the “merely subjectively satisfying” and what he termed “the objectively valuable.” The merely subjectively satisfying is what pleases me, without any particular reference to the objective goodness, truth, or beauty of that which brings me pleasure. The example that Hildebrand often brings forward is a flattering but utterly unjustified compliment. I might indeed find this remark pleasing, but it has no basis in reality. In this case, the pleasure derived trumps completely the ontological status of what prompted it. Now there might be some substance to the compliment, but in the case of the merely subjectively satisfying, the stress falls on the subjective state of affairs.

On the other hand, the objectively valuable is a good, a truth, an aesthetic reality that is important in itself, whether it pleases, displeases, or has any particular effect on the one who takes

it in. It is recognized intuitively as right or good or beautiful in itself and for its own sake. 2 + 3= 5 whether I like it or not, whether that sum pleases me or not. It would be true across space and time, and even if holding it would become a deeply unpopular opinion. The same obtains in regard to the self-sacrificing act of Maximilian Kolbe, the nobility of Thomas More, even the simplest gesture of generosity or the forgiveness of an enemy. And the same is equally true with respect to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, the Farnese Palace, or Dante’s Commedia. The objectively valuable in itself calls forth what Hildebrand terms a “value response.” 7 This can take place in the intellectual, volitional, or affective orders: the mind accepts and celebrates the truth that it takes in; the will seeks the good that has been perceived; the heart (and Hildebrand is one of the great contemporary philosophers of the heart) exults and sings in answer to any type of value. And this implies that love is the essential move in the presence of the objectively valuable, by which I mean some transcendence of the ego, some moving out of the sphere of mere self-interest, an act of real union with the perceived value.

A remarkably parallel view can be found in the writings of another twentieth-century philosopher, with whom I am fairly certain von Hildebrand had no contact: Iris Murdoch.

Impatient with the largely Kantian and behavioristic accounts of the moral life prevalent in the mid-twentieth century, Murdoch endeavored to recover elements within the Platonic metaphysical and ethical systems, most particularly, the idea of the good. In her celebrated essay “The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts,” Murdoch, following a suggestion in Plato’s Phaedrus, draws our attention to an “unselfing” that happens through an encounter with the beautiful or the good, terms she uses, in the Platonic manner, more or less interchangeably. 8 She invites us to consider a scenario in which a person is looking out the window in an anxious state of mind, “brooding perhaps on some damage to [his] prestige.” 9 Suddenly his attention is caught by a “hovering kestrel” (a type of small falcon). “In a moment,” she writes, “everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when [he returns] to thinking of the other matter it seems less important.” 10 The point is that this good or beautiful thing has relativized the self, knocked it off its perch, reoriented it in such a manner that it is no longer the center of operations. And this is why the beautiful or the good “both in its genesis and its enjoyment…is a thing totally opposed to selfish obsession. It invigorates our best faculties and, to use Platonic language, inspires love in the highest part of the soul.” 11 There is the Hildebrandian element: the intrinsically valuable awakens selftranscendence and indeed self-donation, which we will make clear anon.

One of Iris Murdoch’s key ideas is that human beings are crucially compromised. Though she consistently shies away from explicitly religious language, she seems fairly at home with a notion like original sin. For her, this consists in our tendency to draw all of reality into and under the aegis of the ego, which functions like a black hole. Good art—as well as the beauty that appears in nature—“is something pre-eminently outside us and resistant to our consciousness. We surrender ourselves to its authority with a love which is unpossessive and unselfish.” 12 One is reminded here of James Joyce’s distinction between true art and all forms of pornography, the latter always operating utterly in the orbit of subjective-sensual desire. The truly beautiful does not submit to the authority of our subjectivity; rather, it rearranges and redefines our subjectivity.

Murdoch knows that Plato took the beauty and rigor of mathematics as another example of this phenomenon, but she herself identifies the learning of a foreign language as an instance of it closer to her own sensibility. “If I am learning, for instance, Russian, I am confronted by an authoritative structure which commands my respect….Love of Russian leads me away from myself towards something alien to me, something which my consciousness cannot take over,

swallow up, deny or make unreal.” 13 You might want a foreign language to correspond to your expectations and to be subjectively satisfying to you, but the language does not care and will not yield.

Murdoch interprets the cave—that place of flickering images—as the ego, where we do not see things as they are or in all of their depth, but only in the measure that they can be useful to us. Once again, even having escaped that narrow place, we feel a constant tug backward, like the Israelites longing for the fleshpots of Egypt: “The difficulty is to keep the attention fixed upon the real situation and to prevent it from returning surreptitiously to the self with consolations of selfpity, resentment, fantasy and despair.” 14 The master concept that presides over this entire manner of thinking is what Murdoch, in an at least quasi-Platonic way, calls the Good. It is, for her, a kind of heuristic device, a limit idea, an ideal toward which we strive and under whose influence we move in our journey out of the narrowness of the ego: “Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of a virtuous consciousness.” 15 This, of course, is why Plato compares the Form of the Good to the sun, which is to say, to the source of light which itself is practically impossible to see. Murdoch quotes the master himself: “It [the Good] is that which every soul pursues and for the sake of which it does all that it does, with some intuition of its nature, and yet also baffled.” 16 We see here a fundamentally two-step process of escaping from the buffered self. By a first move, we have simply to break free of the extraordinary gravitational pull of the ego. Breakthroughs, conversions, turnings-around, rearrangements are the order of the day here. One might think of still another mid-twentieth century figure, not entirely unlike Iris Murdoch in temperament, namely, the novelist Flannery O’Connor.

In O’Connor’s stories, time and again, people who are stuck in the narrow space of their own selfregard are violently invaded by what the author recognizes as divine grace. Mrs. Turpin in the story Revelation is the best example, but there are many more besides. And in point of fact, O’Connor’s fiction illumines that second step beyond the shattering of the ego and the introduction to the real all the way to the experience of the fully real, the utterly valuable, which we call God. Thomas Aquinas’s fourth argument for God’s existence, commonly recognized as the most Platonic of his demonstrations, moves within this ambit. Thomas begins with the acknowledgment, possible only for a decentered self, that there is a world of values, hierarchically arranged. We say that some things are more or less good, noble, just, and beautiful. It is crucially important to see that Thomas is not speaking of any and all kinds of discernment and discrimination—higher, lower, dirtier, redder, etc. Rather, he is speaking of qualities that are, in themselves, unlimited, since they are coincident with being as such. In regard to these, it is indeed correct to say that we gauge variations in intensity and degree in reference to something that is recognized as unconditioned. Hence Aquinas correctly intuits that we make these judgments with at least an implicit knowledge of what is “highest,” “noblest,” and “best,” and hence highest in being. 17 It is not my concern in this presentation to analyze this argument any further or to answer classical objections to it; it is merely to indicate the trajectory that I will be following throughout—breaking out of the buffered self and pushing toward a transcendent horizon.

Truth I should like to begin with the transcendental property of being which is truth. I will argue that, on the classical reading of things, authentic truth breaks through the buffered self and ultimately leads to a consideration of the Source of all Truth. But in order to understand this, we have to notice a sharp contrast between the traditional understanding of truth and the postmodern

sense of truth as information. The latter fosters the buffering of the self, while the former undermines it.

I do not know anyone in the West today who is not massively impressed by the availability of information through our quasi-miraculous technology. It is no exaggeration to say that practically every person in the developed world now carries in a device in his or her pocket a mean of accessing anything he wants to know, from the winner of the 1939 World Series to the structure of the genome. In a matter of moments, these data appear on a screen before us. That we have, in numberless ways, benefited from this access is not subject to doubt. However, I want to draw a sharp distinction between bits of information and what the classical authors in our tradition meant by “truth.” A first mark of information is that it is detachable from the event or thing or experience that generated it. Information is always “about” something; in the words of D. C. Schindler, “It indicates relation or reference from a distance. Information is knowledge about something, as distinct from direct acquaintance.” 18 And from this follows a second principal mark of information, namely, its transferability. What a delight we take in sending and receiving information on our various devices. Precisely because these data are detachable, they are transportable, even across enormous distances, to others who have, like us, had no original contact with the reality which generated the data in the first place.

Now contrast this to authentic knowledge which, as the Bible suggests in its peculiar usage, carries a sense of real intimacy: “I do not know a man” (Lk 1:34). Compare gathering information, indeed all of it correct, about the 1939 World Series and actually attending a World Series game.

Set side by side a Wikipedia article about a famous person and sitting down with that person for a dinner conversation. Though the internet summary could be shared with millions of people, in a very real sense the conversation can be shared only between the two of you. Another crucial point of demarcation between the two modes of knowing is that information always remains largely under the control of the subject. I can receive, change, manipulate, and send these data anywhere.

They are, quite literally, at my fingertips and under their domination. But real knowledge of another thing or person puts the subject in a far more receptive mode. The ego is not in control, but rather invited into openness and responsiveness to the other.

Having made this crucial contrast, we are now in a position better to understand what premodern thinkers mean when they speak of knowledge and of truth as a transcendental property of being. With typical scholastic understatement, Thomas Aquinas defines truth as the adaequatio intellectus et rei (the adjusting of mind and thing). 19 In most English renderings, this lapidary definition is translated as the “correspondence of the mind to reality.” But this can give the impression that truth consists in forming a mental picture that adequately imitates what exists out in the world, so that truth exists primarily or even exclusively “in here,” in the mind. But this is to miss so much of the flavor and texture of what the definition is meant to convey. If we take adaequatio to mean something like adjusting or equalizing, we see that there is a truth already existing in things that makes truth in the mind possible. Thomas means that the intelligible form of a person, thing, or state of affairs is the objective truth that calls out to an inquiring mind, an intelligibility seeking correspondence with an intelligence. Another way to speak of intelligibility is to speak simply of form, which, according to Aquinas and the scholastics, gives being to a thing.

We ought not to think of form as one detachable aspect of an object, but rather as the englobing intelligibility that orders all of the elements that make up the thing.

Form corresponds to the question “What is that?” and this is why the medievals took it to be the bearer of esse. As such, it always represents something more than simply the sum total of its parts, simply all the data that could be reasonably assembled regarding its manner of being. It

is both a kind of whole and something utterly interior, mysterious, elusive to the observing and calculating intellect. In regard to living things, this form Aristotle termed soul, and it is extremely instructive to note Aquinas’s characterization of the relationship between body and soul in human beings: the soul is in the body, not as contained by it, but rather as containing it. 20 The mind engages in intellection, from the Latin term suggestive of “reading into” (intus-legere).

Accordingly, the adaequatio involved in truth is the intimate, organic coming-together of intelligence and intelligibility. It is, at the risk of sounding overly dramatic, an ecstatic act by which subjectivity overcomes itself and thereby finds itself in the other. In Aquinas’s luminous account, intelligence and intelligibility bring each other to act: “Intellectus in actu est intelligibile in actu,” each one, as it were, illuminating the other. 21 It should be clear that we are a world removed from anything like the cool observer forming an interior image of the worldly object. In the words of Fergus Kerr, Aquinas’s epistemology is not of the “subjective-observer” type but of the “objectiveparticipant” variety. 22 The “subjective-observer” kind of mind, on display in Descartes’s res cogitans taking the measure of res extensa, came to full expression in the highly analytical, data-collecting style of Enlightenment-era scientists. Over and against this Newtonianism, Goethe famously rebelled, favoring a far more contemplative type of rationality, the subject entering sympathetically into the rhythms and patterns of what it sought to know. Hence the scientist in the Goethean mode would not rip the plant from the ground and dissect it, but would rather move noninvasively into the space of the living organism, drawing it, following its movements, allowing it to ask and answer its own questions. Once again, an attitude of love, breaking free of the preoccupations of the ego, is a prerequisite for this adaequatio.

Having come to a clearer sense of the meaning of truth for the classical tradition, let us take the next step. Because we are embodied creatures, endowed with senses, our first contact with the world outside of the self comes through the vivid experience of touch, sound, taste, smell, and vision. But the mind relentlessly pushes us beyond this merely animal level of perception, spurred on by what Aquinas terms the intellectus agens. This acting intelligence keeps asking, in regard to what is perceived, “What is that?” In the Western philosophical tradition, it is Socrates who is generally regarded as the first one consistently and courageously to ask this kind of question. Thus the Platonic dialogues are typically constructed around questions such as: What is justice? What is piety? What is love?

What is perhaps too often overlooked is that this type of question is not merely the fruit of intellectual curiosity, but also of a real transcendence of the immediate needs and concerns of the ego. The one who poses such an inquiry is not interested in the effect that the idea or object under consideration might have on him, or the benefit that might accrue to him upon understanding it more fully. He has been drawn out of this self-preoccupation and into a new spiritual space. He is not after the usefulness of the matter under consideration but only its intelligibility.

Another way to express this is to say that the inquirer has moved from the visible to the invisible. I hesitate somewhat to use this language, for it gives the impression that there are two types of realities, some relatively solid and others relatively ghostly, that exist side by side. What I mean by the “invisible” is another dimension of reality, beyond the merely sensible, but at the same time, deeply implicated in it. In point of fact, Aristotle’s account of the rapport between form and matter is more adequate here than Plato’s. But when someone, in the Socratic manner, asks the question “What is that?” he has, indeed, left the cave behind and left his own self-preoccupation behind and fallen in love with being in a more intense manner.

If we follow the Platonic prompt, we see that the first stop upon exiting the cave is the confrontation with shadows and images in the outside world. These correspond in Plato’s epistemology to mathematical objects and relationships, which are, quite rightly, appreciated as invisible. One of my predecessors as Meyer Lecturer is David Tracy, now emeritus professor at the University of Chicago. In a recently published essay entitled “The Ultimate Invisible,” Tracy draws our attention precisely to this Platonic construal of the mathematical. 23 “Aside from religions,” he writes, “the major form of invisibility in our time is that provided by mathematics and the mathematization of modern science nurtured in the early modern period by Galileo….” 24 Tracy observes that the classical definition of the circle—a locus of coplanar points equidistant from its center—is easy enough to memorize but absolutely impossible to imagine or concretize in fact. A picture of a wheel might suggest to the beginner in geometry the notion of circularity, but it could never adequately represent it and hence could never “suffice to answer the question ‘Why is the circle round?’” 25 In point of fact, we could never answer such a question by remaining in the field of the visible. “We can answer the question, but only by moving into a realm of intelligent supposing—a realm that can neither be seen nor imagined but can be supposed and understood.” 26 The inquiring mind knows these invisibilities by entering into intimate communion with them in their distinctive arena of existence.

As suggested above, the modern and now postmodern sciences are deeply indebted to mathematics, indeed, unthinkable apart from it. Tracy again: “Since Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, and others, modern science has employed three essential elements: dispassionate empirical observations, mathematical conceptual formulations of its hypotheses and theories, and experimental testing of all its theories.” 27 If we focus on that second indispensable step in the scientific method, we see that the very disciplines that, in the minds of many today, most root us in the empirical order in point of fact lift us beyond it to the invisible order.

Therefore, the search for intelligibility continues to lead us out of the cave and into more intense expressions of being. But the journey comes to a conclusion only when, to follow the Platonic master metaphor, we gaze up to the sun, the light that finally illumines anything that we perceive or know. Only when we “see” the one who gives intelligibility and hence who gives being, the one who, in Plato’s language, lies therefore beyond the beings, do we come to rest.

But why should we suspect there is such a giver? David Tracy comments that the sciences come to the end of their capacity when they confront the puzzling limit question which they, on their own terms, could not possibly address, namely, why should the world be intelligible at all?

Precisely because they rest, inevitably, on this very assumption, the sciences themselves could never answer this query. Albert Einstein himself grasped the nettle of this when he commented, “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” 28 As Joseph Ratzinger argued in his indispensable Introduction to Christianity, the only finally credible answer is that there is a governing Intelligence that has imbued the universe, in every detail, with intelligibility.29 In point of fact, this intuition, Ratzinger contends, is evident in our term “recognition” (re-cognition), a thinking again what has antecedently been thought. And once we grasp this notion, we come to the spiritual heart of Thomas Aquinas’s epistemology.

When the human knower finds adequatio with the form of the thing to be known, when he effects, in short, a real union with that intelligibility, he has attained, at the same time, an inchoate but deeply real oneness with the divine Agent who has, through a series of secondary causes, imbued that object with form.

Even when a person is in intellectual contact with an inanimate thing, he is, therefore, ultimately in contact with the supreme Person whose intelligence grounds the intelligibility he has

grasped. And thus we can see the truth of Thomas’s claim in the famous De veritate 22.2 that in every concrete act of knowing, God is implicitly co-known. 30 If even the simplest act of real knowledge—and not simply the gathering of information—involves self-transcendence, we see now that this is only an invitation to the radical loss of self, better, gift of self involved in coming to know the Intelligence behind the intelligibility.

96.

42.

1

Wilhelm Pauck and Marion Pauck, Paul Tillich: His Life and Thought (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1976),

2

Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), 37–

Taylor, A Secular Age, 27, 37–42.

Taylor, 19.

5 See “Priest as Doctor of the Soul,” in Robert Barron, Bridging the Great Divide: Musings of a Post-Liberal, Post-Conservative Evangelical Catholic (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 235–43.

6 Plato, Republic, in The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 514a–518b.

7 See Dietrich von Hildebrand, Christian Ethics (New York: David McKay Company, 1953).

8 The next several quotations are from “The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts” in Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature, ed. Peter Conradi (New York: Penguin, 1999), 363–85.

9 Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics, 369.

10 Murdoch, 369.

11 Murdoch, 370.

12 Murdoch, 372.

13 Murdoch, 373.

14 Murdoch, 375.

15 Murdoch, 376.

16 Murdoch, 380, quoting Plato’s Republic, 505.

17 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1.2.3.

18 D. C. Schindler, Love and the Postmodern Predicament: Rediscovering the Real in Beauty, Goodness, and Truth (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018), 68.

19 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate 1.1.

20 Thomas Aquinas, ST 1.52.1.

21 Thomas Aquinas, ST 1.12.2.

22 Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 27.

23 The next several quotations are from “The Ultimate Invisible: The Infinite” in David Tracy, Fragments: The Existential Situation of Our Time: Selected Essays (Volume I) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 35– 56.

24 Tracy, The Ultimate Invisible, 38.

25 Tracy, 40.

26 Tracy, 41.

27 Tracy, 39.

28 Albert Einstein, “Physics and Reality,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 221, no. 3 (March 1936): 351.

29 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, 2nd ed., trans. J. R. Foster and Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 151–58.

30 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate 22.2.

3 4

Breaking through the Buffered Self: Turning to the Good and the Beautiful

By Most Rev. Robert Barron, S.T.D. The Good I want now to turn to the second great transcendental property of being, namely the good.

Like the true, the good is, in our highly relativistic time, a problematic notion, for it appears as an imposition on one’s freedom and capacity to decide for oneself the meaning of his life. This is precisely why, as we saw, the notion of the good is so central to Iris Murdoch’s strategy of decentering the ego. I should like to commence my analysis by drawing a distinction parallel to the one I made in the last lecture between gathering information and true knowing. Just as the assembling and sharing of data is central to the digital culture, so is the gesture of liking or unliking. We might be tempted to appreciate liking as a perhaps less intense form of loving, since both involve the signaling of a positive attitude toward someone or something. But this is to miss the crucial difference. When one “likes” another, she is expressing only the most superficial kind of approbation. This approval does not reach deeply into the other, nor does it come from a profound place in the interiority of the one who grants it. This very ephemerality and superficiality are what has made the term so appropriate to the digital space, in which one can casually “like” a posting or a picture or a story and promptly move on to something more interesting, and where one can garner hundreds of thousands of “likes” without ever establishing anything even close to a relationship with those who bestow the designation. And again, very much like information, “likes” are utterly under the control of the self, since they involve no real commitment to the other and are bestowed from the safe and antiseptic distance of a computer keyboard.

In sharp contrast to liking is loving which, in the definition offered by Iris Murdoch, is “the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.” 1 How reminiscent the Murdochian formulation is of Aquinas’s characterization of love as “willing the good of the other.” 2 To love is to break free of the gravitational pull of the ego and its interests, to relocate the self, as it were, in the other. When I like you, I am in control; when I love you, I have given myself to you in such a way that I am no longer in control of our relationship. When I like you, you move within the ambit of my desires and preoccupations; when I love you, my life is no longer about me, but rather about you. The novelist Jonathan Franzen puts it this way: “To love a specific person, and to identify with their struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.” 3 Karol Wojtyła catches the rarity and strangeness of love by distinguishing it from any sort of selfish desire: “Goodwill is quite free of self-interest, the traces of which are conspicuous in love as desire. Goodwill is the same as selflessness in love: not ‘I long for you as a good’ but ‘I long for your good,’ ‘I long for that which is good for you.’” 4 In his commentary on Love and Responsibility, the Wojtyła expert Rocco Buttiglione observes, “The desire for the other as an answer to one’s own ontological insufficiency and as the completion and the company of one’s own person no longer comes first. Something else comes first: the wonder aroused by the other’s beauty and the will that that interior beauty of the person which is perceived in the lover’s glance should realize itself.” 5 Though the other’s loveliness first attracted me, I no longer want it for me, but for her, her reality mattering more for me than my own.

Following the prompt of D. C. Schindler, we can correlate this demarcation between liking and loving to a crucial distinction between two very different construals of the will and its activity.

Though its roots are in the late Middle Ages, especially in the thought of William of Ockham, the typically modern sense of the will comes to us, perhaps most directly, through the work of John Locke. Though it is certainly reflected in his explicitly political writing, most notably the Two Treatises of Government, Locke’s interpretation of the will is most fully articulated in his epistemological masterpiece, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

In this text, he lays out a revolutionary idea of will as primarily an active power of selfdetermination. Whereas on the traditional reading, a good outside of the will prompts that faculty to respond, on Locke’s reading, the will has ontological primacy and remains undetermined by anything outside of itself. Here is his account: “For that which determines the general power of directing to this or that particular direction, is nothing but the agent itself exercising the power it has that particular way.” 6 In a radical departure from the standard interpretation, Locke holds that the direct object of the will is not a thing but an action, namely its own. Rather than appreciating the will as extending itself into reality, Locke effectively shrinks its area of concern. In Schindler’s words, “It (the will) now no longer stretches out beyond the agent, but extends only as far as the boundaries of the self.” 7 And in Locke’s own extremely clear and illuminating formulation, “The will or power of volition is conversant about nothing but our own actions; terminates there; and reaches no further.” 8 We might say that the will, for Locke, perhaps determines itself toward a perceived good, but it is not determined by that good. So concerned is he to maintain the control that the will has over itself, Locke argues that the self “not only begins its act of will from itself alone, but that movement likewise ends exclusively in the self as the will’s proper object.”9 Whatever connection eventually obtains with the world outside of the dynamics of the will remains secondary and extrinsic, subordinate to the sovereignty and sufficiency of the choosing self.

Detached, turned inward, expressing approval or disapproval without personal connection, this Lockean will is perfectly attuned to the world of “liking” rather than loving.

It is most instructive to compare this interpretation to that which was generally offered in the premodern context. Thomas Aquinas’s account will serve nicely as a contrast to Locke’s. 10 Though he does indeed speak of liberum arbitrium as causa sui in one sense, Thomas insists that this self-determination is only one dimension of the will’s operation. Ingredient in every choice is the influence of the body, passions, mind, and understanding—and behind all of these is the most important cause, namely the external good which ultimately rouses the interest of the will.

Moreover, the particular good which immediately interests the will is itself embedded in a higher and more general good that it serves and that good is embedded in other again, and so forth. The essential point is that, for Aquinas, the will does not generate its own activity, but rather is generated by an entire nexus of goods extrinsic to it.

Whereas Locke understands the will primarily in terms of power, Thomas understands it in terms of attraction. And once we construe the will as power, the goods external to it must be appreciated as rivals, since they compete with the will, limiting its capacity for self-determination.

But when we conceive it, along Aquinas’s lines, as an “intellectual appetite,” we grasp how goods external to the will enhance the will, allowing it to realize its ownmost nature. 11 On the Lockean reading, we make contact with the world through an act of our own choice, thus keeping us firmly in control, but on Thomas’s reading, the good reaches into us and draws us out of ourselves. In Schindler’s words, “The world is always already active in me, shaping me, helping to make me who I properly am, and my will is a means by which I make this movement my own.” 12 Just as, in the epistemic order, the intelligibility of the objective thing lights up the intelligence of the knower,

so here, in the volitional order, the goodness of the object fires the will, effecting a union between the two. The intelligible gives itself to an intelligence that gives itself back; an objective value gives itself to a desire which gives itself in return.

On the more typically modern view, the self retains its sovereignty and its essential isolation, whereas on the classical view, the intellect and will are always in relation to and, in a certain sense, subordinate to the other which calls out to them. Being-with or being-for is always metaphysically fundamental, which should not puzzle a Christian, who holds that the creative source of finite existence is a play of relationality.

These clarifications serve to illumine Servais Pinckaers’s well-known distinction between two understandings of freedom, namely, what he calls liberté d’indifférence and liberté de qualité. 13 The first, freedom of indifference, is perfectly correlatable to Locke’s notion of the will, for it designates liberty as a state of neutrality in the face of a variety of options. Here the will is a capacity to choose, free from any exterior constraint, “indifferent” to the yes or to the no. But the second, usually rendered in English as “freedom for excellence,” makes sense within a Thomistic framework. For liberté de qualité is not the sovereign capacity of the will toward selfdetermination, but rather the disciplining of desire so as to make the achievement of the good first possible and then effortless. One becomes a free player of the piano, not by exercising arbitrary choice, but by subjecting oneself to the objective good of the laws that govern the playing of that instrument. One becomes a free and fluent speaker of French, not by speaking any way one wants, but by allowing one’s will to be so deeply influenced by the objective value of the French language that it becomes, indeed, second nature to the speaker.

Freedom for excellence, accordingly, does not stand in opposition to law; rather, law in a way is the condition for its possibility. Structured good, taken into oneself through an ecstatic act of self-forgetting, is what the classical world meant by the term freedom. On Lockean grounds, St. Paul’s holding simultaneously that he is the slave of Christ Jesus (Rom. 1:1) and that Jesus set him free (Gal. 5:1) is so much nonsense. But it is luminously clear on Thomist grounds.

The buffered self is a place where liking predominates over loving, for liking is utterly compatible with that narrow egocentric space. But as so many philosophers and spiritual teachers have intuited, authentic love tends to break through the buffered self, for it is perhaps the surest route of access to the transcendent Other whom we call God. Indeed, to will the good is to touch the real, as Murdoch said, and to touch the real is to take the first step toward the One whom Aquinas characterized as the ens realissimum. I will make this move by following two paths, the first a searching out of the foundations of the moral life and the second an exploration of the trajectory of that life. Dietrich von Hildebrand, whose devotion to the true and the beautiful could never be called into question, nevertheless insisted that the quest for the good is more important than either finding truth or cultivating beauty. We might regret it if a person never develops a capacity for knowing high philosophical or mathematical truths, and we might lament someone never becoming an artist or an aesthete, but we would never consider either of those failures a spiritual disaster. But we would indeed think it spiritually ruinous if someone fails in the moral order. Some theorists held certain basic goods—art, knowledge, sociability, etc.—as so fundamental that they are deemed to be incommensurable values. But this position seems not to be right, precisely because of the qualitative difference among the three quests for the transcendentals.

There is an ultimacy and demand implicit in the search for the good, which is probably why Plato named the very highest reality the Form of the Good and not the Form of the True. It is also why John Henry Newman distinguishes between the feel that a mathematical genius might

have for the most elegant form of demonstration or the sense that an aesthete has for fine art and that moral intuition that we call “conscience.” Again, we might feel a certain remorse if someone lacked the first two, but we would consider the lack of the third catastrophic. Newman remarks that the first two powers might be characterized as sensibilities, but the third, we regularly refer to as a voice, implying that it alone puts us into immediate contact with someone else, indeed with a Person who presses upon us with an unconditioned authority, who functions as lawgiver, and who finally possesses knowledge intensive and extensive enough to reach into the very deepest recesses of our interiority. 14 Here is Newman’s elegant formulation of the idea: “If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear.” 15 Lest we are tempted to understand the dynamics of conscience in purely moralistic terms, Newman vividly evokes the person-to-person quality involved in hearing and responding to that voice: “If, on doing wrong, we feel the same tearful, broken-hearted sorrow which overwhelms us on hurting a mother; if, on doing right, we enjoy the same sunny serenity of mind, the same soothing, satisfactory delight which follows on our receiving praise from a father, we certainly have within us the image of some person, to whom our love and veneration look.” 16 The German phenomenologist Max Scheler makes much the same point in his analysis of the act of repentance. “Repentance begins with an indictment! But before whom do we indict ourselves? Is it not then in the nature of an indictment that there should be a person who receives it and before whom the charge is laid? Repentance is furthermore an inward confession of our guilt. But to whom do we then confess….Repentance ends with a clear consciousness of the removal…of guilt. But who has taken the guilt from us?” 17 What Scheler remarks is that the sentiment of authentic shame and remorse goes far beyond a feeling of responsibility toward another human being whom we may have offended; it places us, painfully of course, in the presence of the source of moral obligation. And the experience of being truly forgiven, similarly, passes beyond whatever psychological satisfaction we might derive from receiving the benediction of another human being whom we have hurt, and it introduces us into the presence of a grace coming from a transcendent place.

Though both of these treatments have a rather dark tonality, I would insist that both are operating within the ambit of love. We feel ashamed upon performing a morally wrong act, precisely because God has, out of love, drawn us in a particular way, and we have responded, not with an answering love, but with rebellion. Even in our regret, we have entered into intimate contact with the Form of the Good, with the source of moral obligation, with the living God. Even as we feel remorse, we know that our journey beyond the ego has reached a qualitatively different level.

There is a second path that leads from the perception of the good to the experience of God, and it proceeds more teleologically than etiologically, that is to say, it is ordered toward what ultimately lures the will. Besides the famous five that he outlines at the beginning of the Summa theologiae, 18 Thomas Aquinas provides a number of implicit arguments for God’s existence throughout the massive text. One of these can be found in the opening questions and articles of the Prima secundae. 19 Having determined that the will necessarily seeks the good, or at the very least the apparent good, Thomas appreciates how particular goods generally find themselves nesting within wider and wider horizons of the good. So for example, I got out of bed this morning, seeing this rising from sleep as a good, but that value, I recognized, is in service of the greater good of working on this Meyer Lecture, which in turn is in service of the further good of addressing all of you, which nests within the even greater good of propagating the truth, which activity finds itself

under the aegis of the Truth itself, which is a supreme and consummate Good, the possession of which makes me happy.

To speak of consummate Good is not to speak of one good, however impressive, among many, but rather of the unconditioned Good, which, by definition, exists beyond any distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. It is to speak of the properly infinite and inexhaustible Good that we customarily refer to as God. Therefore, the simple act of getting out of bed does indeed place me, at least implicitly, in the presence of God. This kind of analysis, Thomas holds, can be undertaken with any act of the will, which is precisely why he can say, in that famous Question Twenty-Two of the De veritate, that just as in every particular act of knowledge God’s existence is implicitly co-known, so in every particular act of the will, God’s goodness is implicitly cowilled. 20 Once again, the ecstasy involved in any true act of love will reach its fullest expression in the total surrender to the unsurpassable Good.

The Beautiful Having seen how the first two transcendentals call the ego beyond itself, awakening an act of self-gift and self-surrender, we turn now to the last of the three, namely, beauty. Ever since Hans Urs von Balthasar raised this issue many decades ago, it is widely acknowledged that the tradition has tended to overlook or at least marginalize this great transcendental property of being.

Somehow, we see it as less “serious” than the true and the good, perhaps a pleasant decoration which enhances the more fundamental transcendentals. Indeed, Thomas himself readily appreciates the true and the good as belonging essentially to the notion of being, since the mind grasps being as true and the will desires being as good. But though he affirms that beauty is a transcendental, his reflections on this quality in relation to being are far less direct and focused.

Although I have followed the traditional ordering of the transcendentals, moving from the true to the good to the beautiful, I certainly do not want thereby to suggest that beauty is the least important. In point of fact, I would invoke a sort of liturgical hermeneutic and declare that, just as the most significant figure in a liturgical procession comes last, so here I am placing the most important of the three in the last place. What I hope to make clear in the course of this section is that beauty, in a sense, is the most immediate, basic, and englobing of the transcendentals, such that truth and goodness appear, finally, under its aegis.

And I will suggest that this perhaps explains why commencing with the beautiful might be the most effective evangelical strategy. I have found in the course of my pastoral work that beginning with the true (what one should believe) or with the good (how one should behave) is, in our relativistic and subjectivistic postmodern setting, often a nonstarter. But simply showing something beautiful is, for most people, less threatening and more winsome. This, I will contend, is not simply an accidental feature of our time, but rather follows from the metaphysically and epistemically fundamental quality of the beautiful.

Perhaps the first issue with which we have to come to terms is that of the objectivity of the beautiful. I think it is fair to say that the default position of most in our Western culture is that beauty is “in the eye of the beholder,” which is to say, simply a subjective impression or response, utterly dependent upon the formation, psychology, and perceptive capacity of a given recipient. If we were to seek out the sources for this widespread point of view, we could look to Spinoza in the seventeenth century and his insistence that we do not desire something because it is good, but rather, we call it good in the measure that we desire it. As von Hildebrand comments, the consequence of this ipsedixitism is the denial that “beauty is a quality of an object” and the

assertion that it is only “something existing in the mind, a feeling, or a mental satisfaction.” 21 But perhaps even more influential than Spinoza in this regard is the eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume, who observed, in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, that though Euclid gave a thorough account of the nature and attributes of a circle, the great geometrician never once mentioned its beauty. Hume opined that the reason for this is clear, namely, that “beauty is not a quality of the circle,” but “only the effect which that figure produces upon the mind.” 22 If we follow this subjectivizing line of interpretation to the end, we come to the formulations of the logical positivists of the twentieth century, Ayer, Carnap, and others, for whom “a value judgment is in reality nothing other than an exclamation, like the cry ‘ouch!’ when someone steps on your foot.” 23 I can only hope that people see how this trajectory of thought has conduced toward a deep impoverishment of the human spirit. And I would hope, furthermore, that they would see that this truncated understanding of beauty is analogous to the distortions of truth and goodness that we explored above, namely, data-gathering and “liking.” For all three are conditioned by the stubborn dominance of the all-seeing and all-determining ego. Just as authentic truth and authentic goodness are not subject to the manipulation of the self, but rather summon the self outward, so real beauty invades the subject, stops it in place (which is why we speak of “aesthetic arrest”), re-arranges it, and finally sends it on mission. The tidy Spinozan and Humean accounts of beauty, which have unfortunately become the default position of so many, effectively put shackles on the soul, preventing it from achieving the unique kind of ecstasy—both thrilling and dangerous—that real beauty prompts.

Dietrich von Hildebrand’s distinction between a value and a value response helps in the determination of the objectivity of beauty. There is no question that things, persons, and events of great beauty elicit from us a reaction, which is simultaneously bodily, affective, and intellectual.

We speak of being “moved” by beauty or of beauty “penetrating to the heart.” But these are subjective responses to an objective state of affairs that prompts them, namely, the truly beautiful, which is not simply satisfying for me personally, but which I recognize to be objectively important in itself. Whether it benefits me or not, whether it moves me more than it affects someone else, whether or not it is reverenced or despised in a given cultural moment, the Cathedral of Chartres is beautiful. By a sort of immediate intuition, we know that Chartres Cathedral is, if I may borrow the language of Augustine, for enjoyment (frui) and not for use (uti). It is not for the sake of something beyond it, and certainly not for my sake, that is, to awaken some feeling or response in me. Its beauty is of and for itself. It is the principium, and whatever is awakened in me as a reaction is the principiatum. Useful in this context is C.S. Lewis’s observation in The Abolition of Man that the feelings I have in the presence of a sublimely beautiful landscape are not, themselves, either beautiful or sublime. They are, rather, humble and grateful. 24 And this helps to prove von Hildebrand’s point that there is a sharp distinction between an objective value and a subjective value response.

At the risk of moving from the sublime to the ordinary, I would invoke here an article I read many years ago in Rolling Stone magazine, in which various musicians were asked which was the first song that “rocked their world.” I understood immediately the nature of that question.

The author was not inquiring after the songs that these musicians particularly liked or found entertaining. He was wondering which were the first pieces of pop music that overwhelmed their subjectivities, that changed them, that made them think about themselves and the world in a different way. In a word, he was wondering, not about the subjectively satisfying, but the objectively beautiful. I knew immediately, by the way, how I would have answered that question.

The first song that I remember liking was the Archie’s “Sugar, Sugar”; but the first song that rocked my world was Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” The former I found subjectively satisfying; the latter made me a different person. Once again, this is precisely why the readings of beauty offered by Spinoza, Hume, and their myriad disciples on the scene today are so dangerous: they effectively preclude or explain away the ecstatic transcendence of the self prompted by real beauty.

Having determined the objectivity of beauty, we naturally ask the Socratic question, “What precisely is beauty?” Prior to the subjectivizing moves of the modern philosophers, thinkers in the Western tradition were altogether willing to offer accounts of the beautiful. For our purposes, it is perhaps best to turn to Thomas Aquinas, for in many ways, he recapitulates the thinking of his philosophical predecessors. With admirable scholastic understatement, Thomas says that the beautiful is id quod visum placet (that which, having been seen, pleases). 25 “Seeing” here, of course, includes more than visual perception, but the term nicely combines two elements that are essential, at least in our ordinary experience of beauty, namely, the physical and the intellectual.

We take in, through our senses, some object or image or melody—that is to say, some arrangement of matter—but then we perceive, through our intellect, a harmonious pattern or form that is evident in it. If we simply know this pattern through abstraction, we are dealing with truth, but when we delight in it, when it pleases us, we are dealing with beauty.

But what exactly is it that pleases us? What is the patterned element in which we delight?

In order to determine more precisely the nature of this aesthetic form, I would recommend that we turn to the thirty-ninth question of the first part of the Summa theologiae, where Thomas provides his most thorough account of beauty. “For beauty includes three conditions, integrity or perfection, since those things which are impaired are by the very fact ugly; due proportion or harmony; and lastly, brightness or clarity, whence things are called beautiful which have a bright color.” 26 An admirable definition, save perhaps that last characterization of claritas as the quality of having bright color. If this were the case, we would be hard-pressed to find most of Rembrandt’s paintings beautiful. What becomes clear when we consult analogous texts in St. Thomas is that claritas has much more to do with the light of intelligibility. Whether we are talking about a beautiful face or landscape or symphony or fast break, we are noticing that it is one, that everything in it contributes to a sense of wholeness or integrity; second, that all of the parts that compose it are in harmonious relationship to one another; and finally, that this unified and formal pattern shines forth delightfully.

To my mind, one of the very best explications of these Thomistic qualities is found in James Joyce’s autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce was carefully trained in scholastic thought and maintained a lifelong interest in it, observing once that the only real intellectual option is between scholasticism and nihilism. At about the midpoint of the novel, Joyce’s alterego, Stephen Dedalus, engages his friend Lynch in a lively discussion around the topic presently under consideration. After citing the passage from the thirty-ninth question of the Summa, Stephen offers his commentary, using the visual aid of a “basket which a butcher’s boy had slung inverted on his head.” He commences, “In order to see that basket, your mind first of all separates the basket from the rest of the visible universe which is not the basket. The first phase of apprehension is a bounding line drawn about the object to be apprehended….You apprehend it as one thing. You see it as one whole….That is integritas….Then, said Stephen, you pass from point to point, led by its formal lines; you apprehend it as balanced part against part…you feel the rhythm of its structure….You apprehend it as complex, multiple, divisible, separable…harmonious. That is consonantia.” 27 But what do we make of claritas, the brightness of color, to which Thomas

refers? Stephen Dedalus concedes that for a long time the full meaning of that term in Aquinas baffled him. Finally, he came to this conclusion: “When you have apprehended that basket as one thing and have then analysed it according to its form…you make the only synthesis which is logically and aesthetically permissible. You see that it is that thing which it is and no other thing.

The radiance of which he speaks is the scholastic quidditas, the whatness of a thing.” 28 When we sense something that is truly beautiful, we have a tendency to say some version of “that’s what such a thing is supposed to be!” In a strikingly noble German Shepherd, we see what that breed is at its best; in an elegant golf swing, we see the very archetype of that notoriously difficult athletic move; watching a gorgeous sunset, we might be forgiven for saying, “now that’s a sunset.” In each case, having taken in both the wholeness and the harmony of the thing, we are responding to the luminosity of its form.

Hans Urs von Balthasar summed up this Thomistic analysis even more laconically than Thomas himself, commenting that beauty occurs at the intersection of species and lumen (form and luminosity). 29 By “species,” he means to convey what Thomas expresses by both integritas and consonantia, and by using that eloquently ambiguous term—which can designate both form and appearance—he at least implies the fact that in our immediate experience, beauty comes through the appearances mediated by the senses. And by lumen, of course, he is suggesting claritas, that peculiar radiance of form that causes delight in us as a value response.

With these clarifications in mind, we are now in a position to understand the primordial and inclusive quality of the beautiful that I hinted at above. What is it that first gets our attention?

What is it that first draws us out of ourselves in the direction of the real? I do not think it is correct to say the true plays this role, for the abstraction of form from matter requires considerable time and detachment from the object of our contemplation. Nor does the good first beguile us, for we have first to sense that something is valuable in itself before we can appreciate that it is worth seeking for ourselves. Is it not the case that the quality that initially awakens our love, which is to say, our transcendence of self, is beauty? First we delight. First we find something splendid. And then, our attention drawn, we come to know it as true and to seek it as good. Here is D. C. Schindler’s commentary on this primordial quality of beauty: “We are suggesting that beauty is an encounter between the human soul and reality, which takes place in the ‘meeting ground,’ so to speak, of appearance. Thus understood, beauty turns out to function as the foundation for all of man’s subsequent interaction with things in the world. It opens the horizon for there to be a world at all, and so is indispensable for proper human existence.” 30 Hans Urs von Balthasar made the marvelous and counterintuitive claim that what initially triggers in a little child the openness to something beyond his subjective desires and preoccupations, and ultimately an openness to the wider world and to the graciousness of being as such, is nothing other than the smile of his mother. 31 First, we find our mother’s smile beautiful—and all the rest follows as night follows day.

And this Balthasarian suggestion serves as a neat segue into a consideration of beauty in relation to God. As we saw in our consideration of the true and the good, the initial breakthrough of objective value into the space of subjectivity leads ineluctably to the breakthrough of transcendent value, hence rupturing the buffered self. Precisely because they are transcendental properties of being, both the good and the true serve as forerunners, harbingers of the unconditioned good and the unconditioned truth. The same dynamic obtains in regard to beauty.

Evidence of this relationship can be found throughout the philosophical and literary traditions. We might draw attention, first, to two places in the Platonic corpus, namely, the Diotima speech from the Symposium and the strange and marvelous metaphor of the wings of love in the

Phaedrus. Surrounded by his colleagues around the festive table, Socrates reports an account that he attributes to the wise woman Diotima, who speaks of the initiation of a person into the way of love. He will begin, she argues, with a particular beautiful thing or person that awakens his affection, but he will perceive, quickly enough, that the loveliness of the individual object or body is related to any other object or body of similar loveliness. Next, he will grasp that “the beauties of the body are as nothing to the beauties of the soul, so that wherever he meets with spiritual loveliness, even in the husk of an unlovely body, he will find it beautiful enough to fall in love with and cherish.” 32 And from this he will be led to contemplate the beauty of laws and institutions, and from these he will be led to the sciences and to all forms of knowledge, until finally, “turning his eyes toward the open sea of beauty, he will find in such contemplation the seed of the most fruitful discourse and the loftiest thought, and reap a golden harvest of philosophy.” 33 This gazing toward the open ocean of the Beautiful Itself corresponds precisely to the former denizen of the cave looking, with squinting eyes, toward the sun and realizing that he has found the source of all goodness and beauty.

The second great Platonic trope for this relationship between the beauty of the individual and the beauty of heaven is found in the Phaedrus. In accord with his musings in the Meno and elsewhere, Socrates holds that all of us originally inhabited the realm of the Forms and there we were outfitted with wings to fly to the heights of contemplation. At our birth, we fell into matter and, though we lost our wings in the process, their roots remained embedded in our shoulders. And when we see a beautiful person, we commence to shudder with awe as if in the presence of a god and then to sweat: “For by reason of the stream of beauty entering in through his eyes there comes a warmth, whereby his soul’s plumage is fostered, and with that warmth the roots of the wings are melted, which for long had been so hardened and closed up that nothing could grow.” 34 A bit fanciful, I know, but does it not give us a sense of what it feels like when we are in the presence of something truly beautiful? We do not simply exult in the splendor of what we are seeing; we also feel the impulse to fly, for by a powerful intuition, we are drawn from that particular beauty to the source of beauty.

The Platonic metaphors find a marvelous contemporary correlate in James Joyce’s account in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man of Stephen’s encounter with a young woman standing in the surf just off Sandymount strand in Dublin. “A girl stood before him in midstream: alone and still, gazing out to sea.…Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane’s….Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her….Her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.” 35 Because she is alone and still, silhouetted by the sea, Stephen can see her as one and perfect, separated from all that might compete for his attention. In a word, integritas is on display. Then he carefully follows the “rhythm of her structure,” noticing how the various parts of her body and pieces of her clothing relate to one another and to the composite. Consonantia emerges.

Next, the aesthetic arrest, which allows for the perception of the radiance of form, is described: “…And when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet suffrance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his…” 36 Like a medieval maiden sought by a troubadour, she allows him to worship, but at a proper distance, and she feels no shame because she knows that his look is not for the purpose of possession but rather contemplation. Finally, this aesthetic regard and attitude permit the growth of the wings, undoubtedly signaled by the similarity of our hero’s last name to “Daedalus,” maker of wings in ancient mythology. Like Diotima’s hero, Stephen and the girl gaze out together to the open sea of Beauty Itself, and the young man then acknowledges

that the connection to transcendence has been accomplished: “Heavenly God! cried Stephen’s soul, in an outburst of profane joy.” 37 These marvelous accounts give expression to something that many of us feel in the presence of beauty but cannot clearly articulate: how beautiful faces, events, objects, and songs can transport us to a higher dimension of reality. Von Hildebrand speaks in this context of “beauty of the second power.” This is a loveliness that goes far beyond whatever harmony and integrity we might notice in a given physical arrangement. A melody might indeed be beautiful in itself, but somehow its humble notes point beyond themselves to a transcendent beauty. “It (beauty of the second power) kindles in us a yearning for the world of lofty immaterial realities. Basically, this is a longing for that which is ‘above us,’ quae sursum sunt; it draws us upward.” 38 Now why should this be the case? I might distill the metaphysics behind von Hildebrand’s observation and behind the literary exemplars referenced above as follows: beauty is essentially form or intelligibility shining in matter. Once I realize that intelligibility belongs to being as such, I recognize some kind of beauty in all things; and once I understand this universality, I naturally seek out an intelligent source of objective intelligibility; and therefore I come, finally, to the transcendent Artist responsible for the beauty that I perceive in any and all finite realities, even in the simplest. Hence, beauty, like the true and the good, lures the ego out of itself and off its perch of superiority and brings it ultimately into the presence of the Light.

Conclusion Since this paper is already too long and since I have considered the matter frequently elsewhere, I will offer just a few words regarding the practical implications of these reflections for evangelization. That truth breaks through the buffered self should certainly lead Catholic catechists, teachers, professors, and evangelists to stop dumbing down the faith and to start embracing a smart, intellectually informed apologetics. I have at times heard in the Catholic commentariat the view that one should prefer “accompaniment” over apologetics. This is a beautiful example of a false dichotomy, for I can assure you that anyone who thinks that young people especially do not have myriad questions about the faith has not accompanied many young people. But more than this, Catholic educators and formators at all levels should help their charges see that any engagement with the truth can lead ultimately to God. And may I suggest that a stress should be placed on mathematics and the physical sciences, since these are seen by most people today as paradigmatic vehicles for understanding the truth. Let your students understand that these disciplines lead them out of the cave and toward an experience of the invisible dimension of reality, indeed to the very threshold of the divine. Of course there is not a “Catholic” mathematics or physics, but there is indeed a Catholic context for the study of these subjects. Teach it to your students.

Knowing that the good breaks through the buffered self, Catholic leaders and educators should stand athwart ethical relativism and show how an acknowledgment of objective moral value is implied in the intense political and social commitments of so many in our culture. Though most young people today assume a subjectivist position regarding sexual matters, they are anything but relativist when it comes to moral causes that they take seriously. Does any vocal social activist today hold that racism, sexism, the oppression of the poor, or homophobia are simply matters of private opinion or subjective positions that one may or may not adopt? The question answers itself.

We should start with these acknowledgments of objective moral value and then press in both

etiological and teleological directions, inviting people to search out the ultimate source and direction of these convictions.

Finally, knowing that the beautiful ruptures the buffered self, Catholic leaders and formators should find ever more creative ways to use our splendid aesthetic tradition in evangelization. As I hinted above, for many people today, the beautiful is a less threatening transcendental than the good and the true, both of which carry aggressive overtones. So start with the beautiful. A vivid exemplification of this truth can be found in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. The narrator, Charles Ryder, is a cool agnostic and a budding painter, who commences his long journey toward Catholicism with an experience of the overwhelming beauty of the manor house “Brideshead,” which functions throughout the novel as a symbol of the Church. Drawn in by its loveliness, Charles, in time, comes to appreciate the moral demand and the truth also present within the walls of that place. The movement was from the beautiful to the good and finally to the true. I have found that much the same dynamic obtains in the learning of a sport. First, a young person finds the game splendid, beautiful to watch, and this awakens an intense desire to play, and finally, having played, he comes to know the rules and rhythms that govern the game from the inside.

Ewert Cousins, who served twice as Paluch Theologian here at Mundelein Seminary, once commented to me that the particular genius of Catholicism is that “we never threw anything out.”

He meant that we have, more or less, resisted the iconoclastic tendency, which sadly presents itself with some regularity up and down the centuries. We have tended to keep and savor the beautiful, and this is of supreme evangelical importance. I would encourage Catholic catechists and evangelists to learn our aesthetic tradition well; and I would encourage Catholic artists and architects to make beautiful things; and I would encourage liturgists to make of the Mass the courtyard of heaven. Recent surveys consistently reveal that what disaffiliated Catholics remember with particular affection is the beauty of their former religion. We should take that seriously.

Buffering the self from contact with God is a moral and spiritual disaster. The regnant secular society has no interest, of course, in addressing this problem. The churches are the privileged means by which this buffering can be undone. The good, the true, and the beautiful are our best tools. Let us use them.

Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics, 215.

Thomas Aquinas, ST 1-2.26.4 co.; Summa contra Gentiles 1.91.2–3, trans. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Hanover House, 1955). See also Catechism of the Catholic Church 1766.

3 Jonathan Franzen, Farther Away (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 9.

4 Karol Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, trans. H. T. Willetts (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981), 83.

5 Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyła: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II, trans. Paolo Guietti and Francesca Murphy (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1997), 101.

6 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: J. F. Dove, 1828), 160.

7 Schindler, Love and the Postmodern Predicament, 54.

8 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 30, quoted in Schindler, 54.

9 Schindler, 55.

10 See Thomas Aquinas, ST 1.83.

11 Thomas Aquinas, ST 1.83.

12 Schindler, Love and the Postmodern Predicament, 57.

13 Servais Pinckaers, Sources of Christian Ethics, 3rd ed., trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 329.

14 John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of the Grammar of Assent (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1891), 105–21.

15 Newman, 109.

16 Newman, 109.

1

2

Max Scheler, On the Eternal in Man (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2010), 61.

Thomas Aquinas, ST 1.2.3.

19 Thomas Aquinas, ST 1-2.1.

20 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate 22.2.

21 Dietrich von Hildebrand, Aesthetics: Volume I, trans. Brian McNeil, ed. John F. Crosby (Steubenville, OH: Hildebrand Project, 2016), 34.

22 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Chicago: Open Court, 1907), 132.

23 Hildebrand, Aesthetics, 35.

24 C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperCollins, 1974), 3.

25 See Thomas Aquinas, ST 1.5.4.

26 Thomas Aquinas, ST 1.39.8.

27 James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1922), 248–49.

28 Joyce, 250.

29 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics I: Seeing the Form, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, ed. Joseph Fessio, SJ, and John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 115–16.

30 Schindler, Love and the Postmodern Predicament, 39–40.

31 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory: Volume II: Truth of God, trans. Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 254–56.

32 Plato, Symposium, in The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 562.

33 Plato, 562.

34 Plato, Phaedrus, in The Collected Dialogues, 497.

35 Joyce, Portrait, 199.

36 Joyce, 199.

37 Joyce, 199.

38 Hildebrand, Aesthetics, 210–11.

17 18

Christian Evangelization in the Early Church via Social Networks: A Response to Bishop Barron

By Rev. Brendan Lupton, S.T.D.

Before beginning this response, I would like to thank Bishop Barron for his brilliant lecture, for his insightful diagnosis of the current culture, and for his proposals of how the Church can engage the “nones,” especially via the way of beauty.

It is my hope that my response can supplement Bishop Barron’s argument of how we might engage them. To do so, I shall focus on another challenging moment in the history of Christian evangelization, i.e., from the apostolic age until the rise of Constantine, AD 312. The purpose of examining this moment is to propose another way to evangelize the “nones.” Bishop Barron focused on the great transcendentals, which, as he notes, “call the ego out of itself.” I shall focus on another way to engage them through the lessons of the early church, summarized well in the famous Latin phrase historia est magistra vitae, history is a teacher of life. In short, the lessons of early Christian evangelization can direct our current mission to engage the disaffiliated; past is prologue.

The early Christians faced very difficult circumstances, which will be summarized below, yet multitudes descended into the cold baptismal waters. In fact, historians contend that from the apostolic age until the fourth century, the number of Christians grew at the rate of 40 percent per decade. 1 This type of growth is staggering considering their overwhelming challenges.

To summarize these difficulties, let us consider for a moment what the Christians faced in the year AD 200. At this time, historians conjecture there were 200,000 Christians in the Roman Empire, which was under 1 percent of the population of about sixty million. 2 Since there were so few, they had little resources. A single copy of the Septuagint would be a tremendous luxury for a small Christian community. More to it, at this time, the New Testament canon was also in flux.

There were no public churches, few works of Christian art, and very few works of Christian literature. In fact, pagans had the way of beauty on their side; the white marble of pagan shrines, temples, and statuary adorned the Roman world and provided an ideal contrast with the “wine dark sea.”

Not only did Christians have scant resources, but also pagans considered the Christian faith odd, strange, and bizarre. An example of their early reaction to Christianity is the graffiti “Alexamenos graffito,” discovered in some solider barracks in 1857 on the Palatine Hill in Rome.

It is dated from around the early third century, perhaps AD 200. The inscription reads “Alexamenos worships his God” in rather crude Greek. It is believed that it was meant to mock Alexamenos, most likely a solider, because of his Christian faith. In fact, the raised arm was a symbol of homage or worship. This graffiti is the first “work of art” portraying the crucifixion of Jesus. 3 It captures well how some Romans reacted to “a crucified and weak God.” The crucified Jesus was the opposite of the Roman deities, who did what they pleased, were powerful, and would not succumb to the worst human punishment on earth, crucifixion. This “type of god” is more of an ass than a god.

Besides this pictorial representation of some pagans’ early reactions to Christianity, the first pagan text to refer to the Christian faith is “Pliny’s Letter to Trajan,” penned in ca. AD 111.

On this occasion, a local magistrate Pliny in Bithynia, modern day Turkey, wrote to the Emperor, Trajan, to find out how he should deal with a small group called the Christians. Should he hunt them out? Should he leave them alone? In this letter, Pliny refers to Christianity not as a religio,

but as a superstitio. 4 The difference is similar today to the distinction between a major world religion—such as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam—and a fanatical cult. For pagans, Christians were members of a cult. In fact, the great N.T. Wright explained that if one were to become a Christian during this early period, it was akin to going off the grid today and giving up every form of technology, since the gods, at this time, were involved in every aspect of one’s life, from sowing, to farming, to soldiering. To renounce the gods was a radical rejection of common everyday pagan life; it was strange and bizarre.

The graffiti and the brief quotation from Pliny’s letter provide two snapshots of how pagans first reacted to early Christianity. Yet, the number of Christians grew. How did they do so? An immediate retort is that the conversion of Constantine led to massive conversions. This was a watershed moment; however, historians admit that even if Constantine had not seen the blazing Chi-Rho in the heavens, Christianity still would have become the dominant religion of the Roman Empire based on their rate of growth, a 40 percent increase per decade.

Given these overwhelming odds and Christianity’s success, again we ask how did they succeed? This question has fascinated both theological and historical luminaries since the fourth century. St. Augustine speculated that “Christianity must have reproduced itself by means of miracles, for the greatest miracle of all would have been the extraordinary extension of the religion apart from any miracle.” 5 Grace and the power of God must have been at work. In his famous eighteenth-century work, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon argued that pagans had tired of the Greek and Roman gods and thirsted for a more robust faith, which Christianity supplied. Specifically, Gibbon added that Christianity promised eternal life, worked miracles, and introduced intolerant religious zeal, all of which led to its rapid growth. 6 This paper is not the place to analyze these various theories; rather, I would like to focus on the work of Rodney Stark, a historian and sociologist who has written extensively on early Christian mission. His analysis will supplement Bishop Barron’s presentation and provide some inspiration for those working in the trenches for the Church’s evangelical mission. For this presentation, I would like to focus on two subjects within Stark’s work—his social conversion theory and evangelization through plagues.

Social Conversion Theory As mentioned, Stark is a sociologist; thus, unlike the theology of Augustine and the historical approach of Gibbon, he approached the question of Christianity’s growth as a scientist.

First, he wanted to watch people convert to new and deviant religious movements; theorize about the process; and then test if similar dynamics or patterns occurred in the early years of Christianity.

At first blush, this methodology seems difficult to execute, since in the first few centuries, there were no surveys, Pew Research studies, or October counts. There are gaps in our knowledge, and this fact must be acknowledged before setting forth his findings.

As mentioned, first Stark desired to study people committing to a new and deviant faith, since of course early Christianity was one at its inception. In the mid-1960s, he learned of a new cult which people were beginning to join, the Moonies or the Unification Church. Founded in 1954 in Seoul by the late Sun Myung Moon, the Moonies number one to two million members today.

Allow me to summarize briefly the beginning of this faith. In the early 1960s, a certain young Korean woman Young Kim emigrated from Korea to the US to start a branch of the Moonies on US soil. Dr. Kim had been a professor of religion in Seoul. 7 At first, Dr. Kim attempted “to spread her message directly by talks to various groups and by sending out many press releases...[by] radio

spots and by renting a hall in which to hold public meetings. But these methods yielded nothing.”8 Eventually, however, Kim recruited some new initiates. The first were all young housewives who lived in Kim’s neighborhood. She rented a room in one of their homes and was able to recruit the property owner, who then recruited some of her neighbors. Stark notes that the group “never succeeded in attracting a stranger.” 9 Remaining with this pattern, the additional initiates were friends of one or more members of the Moonies. From these observations and others, Stark concluded that “Conversion to new, deviant religious groups occurs when, other things being equal people have or develop strong attachments to members of the group than they have to nonmembers.” 10 This conclusion, he explains, has been confirmed in numerous other sociological studies on conversion to deviant faiths. In short, people are much more likely to convert to a new deviant faith when they develop stronger social ties within the group than outside of it.

From this premise, Stark notes two important corollaries: first, if a person has strong social ties to a major religion, it is unlikely that he/she will convert to a new deviant cult. The uncommitted, however, are far more likely to convert: “Converts to new religious movements,” Stark explains, “are overwhelmingly from relatively irreligious backgrounds. The majority of converts to modern American cult movements report that their parents had no religious affiliation.” 11 Along these lines, today’s “nones” present a tremendous evangelical opportunity, since they are disaffiliated from any religious group and therefore do not have any social ties to a particular faith. The second corollary is that “successful movements [i.e., deviant successful cults] discover techniques for remaining open networks, able to reach out and into new adjacent social network.” 12 When Stark uses the term, “social network,” he does not mean something like Facebook or Twitter, but rather a community of individuals united via friendship, familial relations, etc. If a religious group is self-contained, it will die. Religions must be linked to communities of people to experience growth.

At this point, one might ask whether conversion to a new deviant faith is only based on relationship and not on faith or even on truth. Are religions merely social clubs? Stark explains that usually new converts begin to adhere to the doctrines or teachings of the deviant faith after their conversions. They might report that the doctrines drew them in, but according to the sociological studies, usually the social ties led them to the new faith. Stark writes, “After conversion has occurred is when most people get more deeply involved in the doctrines of their new group.” 13 In some sense, this sequence follows a post-liberal understanding of the acquisition of truth, in which a certain culture facilitates the apprehension of truth. The example that Bishop Barron often uses to explain this dynamic is learning how to play the game of baseball. A person does not learn by merely watching or reading about baseball or its rules. A person learns to play by swinging the bat, catching the ball, and throwing a batter out. When people “play” the game of a new deviant faith, they come to learn and understand its teaching and beliefs.

Having studied the dynamics of conversions to deviant faiths, Stark examined early Christianity to see if relationships also played a significant role in conversions. Before examining his results, again it should be repeated that the first and second centuries did not have Pew Research studies and that there are gaps in our knowledge.

When examining the apostolic work of St. Paul, Stark was able to discern the traces of social conversions in the Acts of the Apostles. He notes that “Paul did not rush from place to place leaving a trail of converts. Instead, he spent more than two years building a Christian group in Ephesus, eighteen months in Corinth and several years in Antioch—and many historians believe his stays in some other places were considerably longer.” 14 The Apostle remained so long in these cities in order to get to know the citizens, to form friendships, and to form small Christian

communities. Along similar lines, N.T. Wright makes an interesting observation concerning Paul’s day job. The Apostle, Wright explains, “spent most of his waking hours with his sleeves rolled up, doing hard physical work in a hot climate, and that perhaps two-thirds of the conversations he had with people about Jesus and the gospel were conducted not in a place of worship or study, not even in a private home, but in a small cramped workshop.” 15 Such an informal setting is ideal for forming friendship, trust, and relationships.

Another historian of early Christianity Bart Ehrman also observed social conversions in Acts of the Apostles. He explains that when Luke mentions a household conversion [i.e., when an entire household converts to Christianity], the Evangelist connotes that they were common: They [household conversions] are recounted in the book of Acts as a matter of course as if there was nothing at all unusual about members of a household joining the paterfamilias (or even the materfamilias) in the faith. And so, when Paul and his companions are in Philippi, they convert a wealthy woman named Lydia, and immediately “she and her household were baptized” (Acts 16:14-15). Soon thereafter an unnamed jailer learns he must believe in Jesus to be saved, and “he and his entire family were baptized without delay” (Acts 16:33)…the author of Acts saw nothing at all unusual in an entire family joining in the new faith. 16 In short, it seems that Luke’s expressions imply that these types of family conversions were common in the early Church. Besides family conversions, Luke also recounts conversion through friendship in Acts 10 when St. Peter baptizes Cornelius, his relatives, and close friends (Acts 10:24; 10:48). In each of these cases, members of the household or friends convert to Christianity through social and familial ties. Although these are isolated instances, the great historian of Late Antiquity, Peter Brown, supplements Ehrman’s observation about Luke’s language: “Ties of family, marriages and loyalties to heads of households had been the most effective means of recruiting members of the church and had maintained the continued adherence of the average Christian to the new cult.” 17 Suppose for a moment, however, that someone in one of these households was reticent to convert, since he or she might have had a previous attachment to a pagan god, whom now he or she must renounce. How did Christianity compare to his or her current “religious” life? The theologian and patristic scholar Boniface Ramsey explains that “Early Christianity distinguished itself from the paganism of the time by its firm belief in the possibility of a tender intimacy with the divine—an intimacy that went not only from man to God but that was believed to go as well from God to man.” 18 In short, Christianity turned the religious world upside down. A pagan was required to sacrifice an animal to a god, since the god wanted its blood. The relationship did not commence with the god’s love for the individual. In fact, scholars have noted that outside of the Scriptures, the Greek verbs ἀγαπᾶν and φιλεῖν, both meaning to love, are never used to describe a god’s love for humankind. On the contrary, their adherents are supposed to ἀγαπᾶν and φιλεῖν the gods. They do not love their subjects in return. 19 Imagine for a moment hearing this startling discovery—the one God loves humanity. This must have melted their hearts. Along these lines, St. Leo the Great in the fifth century writes, “It is far less amazing that human beings should progress upwards towards God than that God should have come down to the human level.” 20 Peter Brown speculates that one of the reasons why people rioted over christological issues was that when the position was unorthodox, they felt that the love of God for humanity expressed in Christ had been removed. 21 In other words, if Jesus were a mere

man, God’s love for humanity would not be embodied in Christ himself. This compelling nature of Christian teaching reveals that it was not just a social club, but something that melted people’s hearts and reversed their world. Unfortunately, today God’s love for humanity has become a platitude and has lost some of the power that it would have had to those early Christians.

Having reviewed Stark’s social theory of conversion and some examples from the Acts of the Apostles, one could argue that the real catalyst for the conversion was St. Paul and his preaching and not primarily the social ties. The apostle preached the kerygma, someone converted, and the household and friends followed suit. Without first the words of Paul, no Gentiles would enter this new deviant faith, fides ex auditu. The social ties, however, were secondary agents and played a crucial role.

Evangelization through Plagues After the Apostolic Age [i.e., after all the Apostles had died], Christianity entered a new chapter of evangelization. At this point, the Church did not have an evangelization strategy or even many evangelists. In fact, history chronicles only a few: Gregory the Wonderworker, a few nameless preachers in Egypt, and eventually Martin of Tours. 22 The historian Ramsay MacMullen writes, “after Saint Paul, the church had no mission, it made no organized or official approach to unbelievers.” 23 How did Christianity continue to grow?

Stark speculates that ironically plagues might have assisted evangelization. In AD 165, a horrible plague struck the Roman Empire and persisted for fifteen years. Barely after the people recovered, in 251, another epidemic multiplied throughout the Empire. During both of them, a quarter or third of the population were buried, including the famous Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 180 in Vienna. 24 Pagans and Christians responded differently to these epidemics. Since many of the large cities were petri dishes because of cramped living spaces and poor sanitation, most citizens knew enough to flee. Many Christians, however, remained in the cities to care for the sick.

In 260, the bishop of Alexandria, Dionysius, chronicled what happened during the second plague and revealed three important events. First, he explains that some Christians remained to care for the sick: “Most of our brothers Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ.” 25 Second, the pagans, the bishop reveals, did the opposite and left the city. Third, he implied that Christians had a much higher rate of survival. Why did a higher percentage of Christians survive? Clearly, they did not have better medicine. Stark proposes several reasons. First, possibly some Christians might have acquired immunity because of early exposure to the virus. Second, as Stark explains, “Modern medical experts believe that conscientious nursing without any medications could cut the mortality rate by two-thirds or even more.” 26 Nourishment and water could assist a person to battle through the virus. Finally, a loving and caring presence might help one to recover as well.

If, according to bishop Dionysius, a higher percentage of Christians survived, then some important implications follow: the overall percentage of Christians would increase without any conversions, since more pagans died, and many fled. More to it, such a demographic sift would alter their social networks. Pagans would be much more likely to enter a Christian social network.

Furthermore, if Christians did nurse pagans back to health, and there is no reason to suppose they did not, this would be a wonderful opportunity to form social bonds and, importantly, to remain an open social network. In short, these epidemics ironically were a great evangelical opportunity.

In conclusion, this brief reflection was intended to supplement Bishop Barron’s practical steps to “break through” the “buffered self.” Bishop Barron focused on the power of the transcendentals to do so, especially the way of beauty. This paper has argued that social relations in early Christianity played an integral role in forming the base movement for the Church, which then continued to expand. These relations, therefore, served as a powerful agent to help promote the growth of early Christianity against tremendous odds. Today as well, they can break through the walls of the “buffered self.” Often, a strong Christian community is one of the best ways to point toward the true, the good, and the beautiful, which above all is Christ himself. If used correctly, parish events such as fish fries, St. Joseph Tables, and basketball games are evangelical opportunities that can transform a parish community into an open network and invite the disaffiliated to faith in the one God, the God who loves them.

Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco: Harper, 1997), 6.

2 Robert Louis Wilken, The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 66.

3 Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet Seligman, vol. 2 of 2 vols. (London: New York Graphics Society, 1972), 89–90.

4 Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (New York: Harper One, 2014), 179; J. Stevenson and W. H. C. Frend, eds., “Pliny, Ep. X.96,” in A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD 337 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1987), 19.

5 Stark, The Rise of Christianity, 14; Adolf von Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (London: Williams & Norgate, 1905), 466.

6 Bart D. Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019), 107; Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J. B. Bury, 6 vols. (London: Methuen, 1909), 2–3.

7 Stark, Rise of Christianity, 14.

8 Stark, 16.

9 Stark, 16.

10 Stark, 18.

11 Stark, 19.

12 Stark, 20.

13 Rodney Stark, Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome (New York: Harper One, 2007), 12.

14 Stark, Cities of God, 13.

15 N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography (New York: HarperCollins, 2018), 69.

16 Ehrman, Triumph of Christianity, 172.

17 Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 90. Rodney Stark, Rise of Christianity, 20; cf. John Elliott, “The Jesus Movement Was Not Egalitarian but Family-Oriented,” Biblical Interpretation 11, no. 2 (2003): 173.

18 Boniface Ramsey, Ambrose (New York: Routledge, 2002), 9–10.

19 James Hastings, John Selbie, and John Lambert, eds., Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, vol. 1 of 2 vols., (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1918), s.v. “love.”

20 Leo the Great, Sermons, ed. Thomas P. Halton, trans. Jane Patricia Freeland and Agnes Josephine Conway, vol. 93, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 92.

21 Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000 (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996), 71.

22 Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).

23 MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, 34.

24 Stark, Rise of Christianity, 75.

25 Stark, 82; see Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, Books 6–10, trans. Roy J. Deferrari, vol. 29, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1955), 125.

1

26

Stark, 89.

The Crisis of the Buffered Self and the Call to Friendship, Community, and Witness: A Response to Bishop Barron

By Patricia Pintado-Murphy, S.T.L., Ph.D.

Bishop Barron offers a powerful analysis of the human condition in contemporary culture by relying on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. My brief response will first offer an overview of Taylor’s terms to further illumine the question of what the buffered self is. Second, I will address Bishop Barron’s diagnosis of the human condition to answer the question of why this self is in crisis. Finally, I will offer some complementary suggestions to answer the question of how to help our buffered selves.

The Constitution of the Buffered Self According to Taylor, the cultural shift from an enchanted to a disenchanted world gave rise to exclusive humanism: the self becomes the buffered self who is closed off from outside forces and focuses exclusively on the immanent world as opposed to the transcendent world. Taylor calls exclusive humanism the attitude that allows the buffered self to create or find meaning through its own means. This self inhabits the immanent frame, “a constructed social space that frames our lives entirely within a natural (rather than supernatural) order.” 1 But within this immanent frame the person still senses a longing for transcendence, a desire for the spiritual, and “this often springs from a profound dissatisfaction with a life encased entirely in the immanent order. The sense is that this life is empty; flat, devoid of higher purpose.” 2 In our postmodern world we are living in what Taylor calls the Age of Authenticity where spirituality is alive as a quest and one has to “find” one’s faith, yearning for experiences of fulfillment. 3 MacIntyre explained emotivism in his critique of the modern self as “the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expression of attitude or feeling,” 4 that shape our personal choices and convey meaning. How we think and what we do are determined by what we like and thus what we choose.

This is what Bishop Barron also refers to as the culture of self-invention which consists in one’s capacity to determine through freedom the meaning of one’s own life. Taylor argues that such a view implies that “[a]ll options are equally worthy, because they are freely chosen, and it is choice that confers worth.” 5 This assessment coincides with Bishop Barron’s awareness of how unlimited choice is a must to the generation of the “nones,” an expression referring to religiously unaffiliated people.

The Crisis of the Buffered Self And so the key question posed by Taylor is whether or not one can find fulfillment without God. 6 Having elucidated Taylor’s understanding of the buffered self, I will briefly turn to Bishop Barron, highlighting some of his key insights. The most central views involving the buffered self are the following, which I directly quote from Bishop Barron: 7 1. The culture has given rise to the loss of religious commitment.

2. The good life can be had apart from any relationship to a transcendent reality.

3. Scientism, ideological materialism, and the self-invention culture are cutting us off from a living connection to the transcendent.

4. The secularist ideology is soul-killing, and the human heart quite naturally rebels against it.

As a way out, Bishop Barron beautifully describes Plato’s emancipated prisoner. This is the religious person making his or her way through the secularized world of today, moving among buffered selves. To accomplish the liberation of the self, Bishop Barron relies on Dietrich von Hildebrand and Iris Murdoch. To situate Bishop Barron’s contribution, let me quote Tracey Rowland’s overview of the different critiques of modernity: “Most post-Conciliar generation scholars are familiar with the many critiques of modernity from theological and sociological perspectives.” She lists the examples of Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Hans Blumenberg, Eric Voegelin and the “Radical Orthodoxy” reading represented by Catherine Pickstock and John Milbank. Rowland notes that “[T]here is a common agreement that this culture developed in opposition to the medieval theological (especially Thomistic) synthesis and the culture which embodied its principles.” Barron follows in the footsteps of “theologians such as von Balthasar [who] would add that the severance of the relationship between the true, the beautiful, and the good was a central pathological feature of the new culture.” 8 For the sake of brevity, I will simply highlight Bishop Barron’s insights into the first transcendental, truth. He is spot-on when he states that the postmodern sense of truth is information. Information is knowledge about something, as distinct from direct acquaintance, as D. C. Schindler states. 9 A second mark of information is its transferability: I can receive, change, manipulate, and send this data anywhere. Bishop Barron turns to Aquinas to explain that real knowledge of another thing or person puts the subject in a far more receptive mode: “The ego is not in control, but rather is invited into openness and responsiveness to the other.” 10 He points to David Tracy’s insight that “the very disciplines that, in the minds of many today, most root us in the empirical order, in point of fact lift us beyond it to the invisible order.” 11 And he concludes that “if even the simplest act of real knowledge—and not simply the gathering of information— involves self-transcendence, we see now that this is only an invitation to the radical loss of self, better, gift of self involved in coming to know the Intelligence behind the intelligibility.” 12 Friendship, Community, and Witness Now I come to the third section of my talk. As a way of conclusion, I will attempt to point out some complementary suggestions to answer the question of how to help our buffered selves. I will address the themes of friendship, community, and witness, on the one hand, and the obstacles to belief in God that arise in contemporary culture but that are also caused by the deformation of Christianity due to Protestantism and some failures of our own Church, on the other hand.

And I say we buffered selves, because as Christians we are part of this postmodern world, heirs of modernity, benefactor of rights. We are not immune to the cultural trends described by Taylor and Bishop Barron. We could speak of a divided self: living out the faith is sometimes reduced to worship on Sunday and to preserving moral values in the family. And still, how we work, or how we use friends for pleasure or utility seems to be shaped by the common goals of our secular world: success, security, money, fame, and so on.

My first suggestion follows from my early study of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and my life experience, namely the importance of friendship. I am not challenging the greatness of the

Catholic intellectual tradition; in terms of diagnosis, Bishop Barron’s philosophical insights are superb, particularly if the audience are highly educated atheist/agnostic intellectuals and committed Catholics whom Bishop Barron enlightens so well through his ministry of Word on Fire. But I want to emphasize the importance of friendship in reaching those alienated from the faith. They are often not ready for a philosophical argument because as David Brooks or Jordan Peterson have shown, any attempt at relationships passes through our emotions, our experiences, and our fragilities. To engage the isolated buffered self of the “nones” and to overcome their suspicions or their indifference toward religion, we may simply show care and concern, be attentive to their history and be very, very patient as we walk together. As Msgr. Luigi Giussani loved to quote from Reinhold Niebuhr, “[n]othing is so unconvincing as the answer to a question that has not been asked.” 13 According to Taylor, “young people are following their own spiritual instincts.…Many are ‘looking for a more direct experience of the sacred, for greater immediacy, spontaneity, and spiritual depth.’” 14 Thus, we are called to exude an honest and authentic faith, genuinely open to the other. We need to learn to be sympathetic and understanding toward people and positions different from our own “where you really have a desire to know what it’s like to be the other person and live their kind of spiritual life.” 15 This is what Edith Stein would call empathy. 16 According to Ratzinger, “[t]he heart first enlightens the understanding…this is how thought also begins to see, through love; this is why faith does not arise from understanding but from hearing” (fides ex auditu: Rom. 10:17). 17 Why are so many closed toward the transcendent? What makes immanence appealing?

Taylor puts forward various reasons: dislike of religious fanaticism, progress of natural science, and the benefits of technology claim to explain everything. Instead, we must face “the roots of our desire to transcend our ordinary condition in the unease and fear we experience in our finitude, our limitations, our neediness, our vulnerability.” 18 Exclusive concern with human goods, call it consumerism or materialism, numbs the person and prevents them from seeking higher goals. And still the question remains if there is something more beyond the immanent world. 19 In our zeal, we would love to share the truth about Christianity, but considering these obstacles, those alienated from the faith have to first trust us and then they may ask why we are different. In this age of authenticity, the “nones” will be struck if our humanity has been transformed. Our friendship with the “nones” will help them change because we ourselves have been changed by our friendship with Christ.

This leads me to the second suggestion: community. The new liberated self seems to leave the cave by himself and stay alone. But Christ said that we will be recognized by the way we love each other. As Ratzinger affirms, “Love for Christ and of one’s neighbor for Christ’s sake can enjoy stability and consistency only if its deepest motivation is love for the truth….Love, the center of Christian reality is at the same time eros for truth, and only so does it remain sound as agape for God and man.” 20 Edith Stein suggested that “those who live with Holy Church…can never be lonely: they find themselves embedded in the great human community; everywhere, all are united as brothers and sisters in the depths of their hearts. And because streams of living water flow from all those who live in God’s hand, they exert a mysterious magnetic appeal on thirsty souls. Without aspiring to it, they must become guides of other persons striving to the light.” 21 Or in the words of Pope Francis, “[e]ach community is called to create a ‘God-enlightened space in which to experience the hidden presence of the risen Lord.’” 22

Young people could be awakened to the presence of the Lord in the pursuit of the common good and through acts of solidarity within a community and so begin to challenge their buffered selves. After all, Flannery O’Connor said that “[y]ou will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own.” 23 According to Bishop Barron, the “nones” are anything but relativist when it comes to moral causes that they take seriously, particularly social justice and the environment. The empathy that lies at the heart of social justice and environmental causes is the essence of community.

Tied to the idea of friendship and community, Taylor calls for a recovery of an incarnational Christianity: “Christianity, as the faith of the Incarnate God, is denying something essential to itself as long as it remains wedded to forms which excarnate.” 24 A vivid example of this incarnational dimension is the power of witness; he mentions a variety of remarkable people from Thérèse of Lisieux, to Theresa of Calcutta and, especially, Charles Péguy. The witness of converts also helps to show us that “the Christian faith can be lived better and more fully” as people seek to grow in truth. The saints are not to be forgotten among the cloud of witnesses, who “have radiated some sense of direct contact” 25 with fullness. This broad cloud of witnesses of faith had an encounter with God’s power and love and we reach out to “nones” in communion with them.

Finally, in responding to the problem of the buffered selves, we have to face the obstacles that the Church has erected by failing to live out an incarnational Christianity. We cannot summarize the 800-plus pages of Taylor’s narration of the impact of modernity on Christianity and the Church, so it will have to suffice to mention the saying ascribed to Cardinal Francis George during the Synod of Bishops for the Americas in November 1997. He said that US citizens “are culturally Calvinist, even those who profess the Catholic faith.” This Calvinism translates into other -isms that we can just mention in passing now: fideism, deism, legalism, moralism, and individualism.

So, how has Christianity changed from the late Middle Ages to the present? Taylor discusses “the turn to a more inward and intense personal devotion, a greater uneasiness at ‘sacramentals’ and church-controlled magic, and then latterly the new inspiring idea of salvation by faith, which erupted into a world riven with anxiety about judgment and a sense of unworthiness.” 26 These contribute to the buffering of selves in America. From his way of reading Scripture, Calvin rejected the sacramentality espoused by the Catholic Church, which he ridiculed as magic since he thought that it does not change Christians or help them obtain God’s salvation.

This too contributed to the buffering of selves in America. The Reformation’s fear of idolatry, moreover, brought an emptying of the spiritual life through a process of excarnation because such fear encouraged “the transfer of our religious life out of bodily forms of ritual, worship, practice, so that it comes more and more to reside ‘in the head.’” 27 This too buffers American selves. Taylor goes as far as to state that the Protestant Reformation was the main “engine of disenchantment,” 28 and thus of buffered selves, in particular in its Calvinist form.

Turning briefly to some challenges facing our Catholic Church, I am reminded of T. S. Eliot’s question in “Choruses from ‘The Rock’”: “Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?” 29 Taylor asserts that Vatican II repudiated clericalism, moralism, and “a pastoral policy of fear.” 30 We could contest his observation, but I suspect that some of these factors lead the “nones” to abandon the Church. Recent research by the Springtide Institute states that 52 percent of young people have little to no trust in organized religion. 31 While, yes, the beautiful pathways that Bishop Barron has outlined are further ways to open the buffered self, our witness has to begin from our own transformation because of an encounter. Here I am drawn to what Pope Francis says in Evangelii Gaudium, “I never tire of repeating those words of Benedict XVI which

take us to the very heart of the Gospel: ‘Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.’” 32 It is through the witness of disciples that the “nones” can encounter Christ again.

Recall the words attributed to Teresa of Avila: “Christ has no hands but yours, no mouth but yours,” i.e., the encounter with Christ takes place through the witness—the living testimony—of his disciples.

Bishop Barron correctly alerts us to the false dichotomy of preferring accompaniment over apologetics. Indeed, apologetics is not opposed to accompaniment, but evangelization is more than apologetics. In other words, our witness, identified by nonreligious persons or by those who have fallen away as an authentic way of living, may be the first way of entry to build a friendship, invite them to a community (a sense of belonging that young people today are craving), and encounter the person of Christ in others. Ideas, philosophy, and doctrine will reinforce that encounter. As Ratzinger taught us, “Indeed, in the person of Jesus appears the perfect dialogue itself between God and humanity. Through our experience of Christ, we come to know ‘God who is not only logos but also dia-logos.’” 33 As Christus vivit no. 212 indicates: “Any educational project or path of growth for young people must certainly include formation in Christian doctrine and morality. It is likewise important that it have two main goals. One is the development of the kerygma, the foundational experience of encounter with God through Jesus’s death and resurrection. The other is growth in fraternal love, community life and service.” 34 In the words of Romano Guardini, “when we experience a great love…everything else becomes part of it.” 35

1 James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 141.

2 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 506.

3 Smith, 89.

4 Alaisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1984), 11–12.

5 Charles Taylor, Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 37–8.

6 According to Smith, for Taylor fullness is “a term meant to capture the human impulsion to find significance, meaning, value—even if entirely within the immanent frame.” Smith, 141.

7 These quotes are from Bishop Barron’s “Breaking through the Buffered Self: Beginning with the True,” Cardinal Meyer Lecture, March 10, 2022, given at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois. Bishop Barron further elaborated on this theme in his 2017 Erasmus Lecture entitled “Evangelizing the ‘Nones,’” which was published in First Things in January 2018. Accessed April 29, 2023. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/01/evangelizing-the-nones.

8 Tracey Rowland, “The World in the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI” in Journal of Moral Theology 2, no. 2 (2013): 109–32, 129.

9 David C. Schindler, Love and the Postmodern Predicament: Rediscovering the Real in Beauty, Goodness, and Truth (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018), 68.

10 This quote is from the section entitled “Truth” in Bishop Barron’s “Breaking through the Buffered Self: Beginning with the True,” Cardinal Meyer Lecture, March 10, 2022, given at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois.

11 This quote is also from the section entitled “Truth” in Bishop Barron’s “Breaking through the Buffered Self: Beginning with the True,” Cardinal Meyer Lecture, March 10, 2022, given at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois.

12 This quote is from the closing section of Bishop Barron’s “Breaking through the Buffered Self: Beginning with the True,” Cardinal Meyer Lecture, March 10, 2022, given at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois.

Reinhold Niebuhr, Destino e la storia. Antologia degli scritti (Milan: BUR, 1999), 66.

Wade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 222. Cited by Taylor, 506.

15 Ron Kuipers, “Religious Belonging in an ‘Age of Authenticity’: A Conversation with Charles Taylor” (Part Two of Three) in The Other Journal, no. 12, Fall 2008. Accessed April 6, 2022. https://theotherjournal.com/2008/06/religious-belonging-in-an-age-of-authenticity-a-conversation-with-charlestaylor-part-two-of-three/.

16 Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, trans. Waltraut Stein, 3rd rev. ed. Vol. 3 of The Collected Works of Edith Stein (Washington, DC: ICS Publication, 1989).

17 Benedict XVI’s interview with Fr. Jacques Servais, SJ took place ahead of an October 2015 conference in Rome. Cf. L’Osservatore Romano’s full English translation of the interview: “Faith comes from hearing (fides ex auditu), St. Paul teaches us. Listening in turn always implies a partner. Faith is not a product of reflection nor is it even an attempt to penetrate the depths of my own being.” Accessed April 6, 2022. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/33591/full-text-of-benedict-xvis-recent-rare-and-lengthy-interview.

18 Taylor, 625. Here the author refers to Martha Nussbaum’s The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

19 Taylor, 561–66.

20 Joseph Ratzinger, Nature and Mission of Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 27.

21 Edith Stein, “Spirituality of the Christian Woman,” in Essays on Woman, trans. Freda Mary Oben, 2nd rev. ed. (ICS Publications, 1996), 126.

22 Gaudete et Exultate, Apostolic Exhortation on the Call to Holiness in Today’s World (Vatican City, 2018), no. 145. This is a quote from John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata (Vatican City, 1996), no. 142.

23 Seeds of the Spirit: Wisdom of the Twentieth Century, ed. Richard H. Bell and Barbara L. Battin (Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 11.

24 Taylor, 771.

25 Taylor, 729.

26 Taylor, 75–6.

27 Taylor, 613.

28 Taylor, 77.

29 T. S. Eliot, “The Choruses from ‘The Rock’,” T. S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), Chorus no. VII. 30 Taylor, 496 and 503. Here the author is citing Jean Delumeau’s expression “la pastorale de la peur” in Le Péché e la Peur (Paris: Fayard, 1983).

31 Springtide Research Institute, The State of Religion and Young People, 2021. Accessed April 29, 2022.

32 Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (Vatican City, 2013), no. 3. Cf. quote by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est (Vatican City, 2005), no.1.

33 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 183.

34 Pope Francis, Christus vivit: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation to Young People and to the Entire People of God (Vatican City, March 2019), no. 212.

35 Romano Guardini, Das Wesen des Christentums. Die neue Wirklichkeit des Herrn, 7th ed. (Mainz: Matthias Grunewald Verlag, 1991), 14.

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The Interior Life of the Deacon and Those to Whom He Ministers

By David W. Fagerberg, Ph.D.

You have invited a retired professor to say something about the interior life of a deacon, 1 so I suppose a warning is in order, and there are many in the spiritual tradition from which I could choose. I have selected this one from Louis Lallemant: In vain do we practise so much spiritual reading, and consult so many books, in order to acquire the science of the interior life: the unction and the light which teaches come from above. A pure soul will learn more in one month by the infusion of grace, than others in several years by the labour of study. More beyond all comparison is learnt by the practice of virtues, than by all the spiritual books and all the speculations in the world. 2 So there’s that, then. Nevertheless, I am going to turn for help to some books out of habit. They come from a group of spiritual writers whom I previously neglected, but began reading recently.

They wrote between 1500 and 1900, and since they all deal with the command Christ gave to “deny yourself and follow me,” I call them theologians of abnegation. On the one hand, they are well-known; on the other hand, they are ignored. I am enlisting their aid to describe the interior life.

The Deacon as Herald of Christ As often happens (to me, at least) this talk was fully composed in my mind before I got around to writing it down. It was composed while I was seated in a pew last January at the ordination of eighteen men to the permanent diaconate in my home diocese of Fort Wayne/South Bend. Out of all the words in the ordination rite, one stepped up to present itself to me. Here is the text and its rubric: Vested as deacons, the newly Ordained go to the Bishop and kneel before him. He places the Book of Gospels in the hands of each one and says: “Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you have become.

Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.” 3 The deacon becomes a herald. The deacon is made a herald at his ordination. He isn’t made the bishop’s herald; rather, the reception of the Book of Gospels indicates he will be heralding Christ.

With this word ricocheting around my mind I went to check the etymology and synonyms of the word—I like to do that—and as I expected, this thickened the word for me. As a noun, herald means a messenger or an envoy, but as a verb it means “to sound the praises of.” 4 A perfect description! The deacon is ordained a cleric who sounds the praises of Christ in the Church and to the world.

Here are some more definitions from various dictionaries. Listen for descriptions of the deacon’s heraldic ministry. First, it means a sign that something is about to happen; something that

precedes and indicates the approach of something or someone; an action or event serving as an introduction to something important. (The deacon is not responsible for making it happen, he is a herald for the One who will do it.) Second, it means the person who announces the start of something; an advocate or champion of it; one who announces the arrival of a notable event, typically with fanfare. (If the diaconate is the unnoticed third degree of the hierarchy, it seems that deacons should go about their ministry with a little more fanfare.) And third, it means to sound the praises of; to praise vociferously; to acclaim and to hail, especially with enthusiasm. (Enthusiasm should be a mark of diaconal ministry.)

The deacon was made the noun in the ordination rite, but he must become the verb; he was made a herald, now he must herald. The deacon’s sacramental ministry 5 will proclaim that something important is going to happen. To whom? Where? I submit the deacon must be a sign and instrument of the arrival of Christ in a person’s heart. And that is why we are concerned today with both the interior life of the deacon, and the interior life of those to whom he ministers.

A herald is a forerunner, or precursor, and who was a greater herald of Jesus Christ than John the Baptist? Indeed, the Orthodox tradition calls him John the Forerunner. He may be presented as a model for deacons, therefore, as Louis Bourdaloue noticed. The vocation of the Forerunner is to “Make straight the way of the Lord.” It is your God that comes to you, be prepared to receive him; prepare the blessed way within yourselves, the way which brings you to him, and which brings him to you.…The winding way, which we are obliged to make straight, is our conscience perverted by the false maxims and delusions of the world. 6 Jacques Bossuet says John gave evidence of his forerunning ministry even in his mother’s womb.

“He sees that his master has come to visit him, and he would fain go forth to receive Him.…He desires liberty for one thing only—that he may fly to his Saviour; and feels the restraint of his prison merely because it keeps him from doing so….[John’s] special ministry on earth was to make Jesus Christ be fervently desired by men.” 7 If you are a herald like John the Forerunner, then your special ministry is to make Jesus fervently desired.

The interior life is the theater for God, the Spirit’s foothold upon us, Christ’s intended throne, a palace of the Holy Trinity. It is the location for even greater miracles, Bourdaloue goes on to say. “Jesus Christ worked miracles at his death; he must work another that will crown all the rest, and that is, the miracle of our conversion. He split rocks; disclosed sepulchres….[now] the sight of the cross must split our hearts, perhaps harder than those rocks; it must disclose our conscience, perhaps to this time, shut up like sepulchres.” 8 This is the territory that the deacon is assigned to patrol. This is the arena in which he has certain rights, responsibilities, and knowledge.

John the Baptist heralded in the wilderness; the deacon heralds in the sanctuary and on the street, but the message is the same. Deacons have been ordained to announce and to abet the arrival of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom that is coming to seize our hearts, the Kingdom that will set itself in opposition to all the other vain kingdoms to which people have pledged allegiance. The deacon should persuade us to acknowledge its presence, to greet it gladly, to praise it vociferously.

The Deacon and the Interior Life You know the three offices the Basic Norms gives to diaconal ministry: word, sacrament, and charity. In reference to the munus docendi, the deacon proclaims Scriptures, instructs, and exhorts; in reference to the munus sanctificandi the deacon prays, administers baptism, distributes Eucharist, blesses marriages, presides at funerals, and administers sacramentals; and in reference to the munus regendi, the deacon does works of charity and assistance. I will tag them as the ministries of book, blood, and beneficence. The book is given at ordination; the beneficence issues in works of charity; and special emphasis is given to the deacon as “a minister of the Blood” 9 at the Mass. I know that St. Joseph is frequently named as a type for the bishop, but Fredrick Faber associates him with the deacon on account of the non-sacerdotal character of the foster father of Jesus. “The sacerdotal character of Mary’s holiness was not apparent in [Joseph]. He was a priest of the Infant Jesus, neither to sacrifice Him nor to offer Him, but only to guard Him, to handle Him with reverence and worship Him. Like a deacon he might bear the Precious Blood, but not to consecrate it.” 10 Handle the Precious Blood with reverence and worship, then bear it with you out of the sanctuary to sprinkle interior doorposts in blessing, for Christ fast approaches the interior soul. Bishop Ullathorne says the true man is within us, and this man can neither be reached by the scalpel of the anatomist, nor by the investigator of our mental operations, nor by the observer of man’s social conduct.…To find the life of the soul, we must open the door of our inward sense, that the Divine Giver of our life may find no resistance.…He who knows himself through this illumination has a light by which to know all mankind.

But this knowledge is rare, because men as a rule look outwards, and not inwards. 11 How do these theologians of abnegation describe this interior life? Louis Lallemant says that “the essence of the spiritual and interior life consists in two things: on the one hand, in the operations of God in the soul, in the lights that illumine the understanding, and the inspirations that affect the will; on the other, in the co-operation of the soul with the lights and movements of grace.” 12 Francis Libermann speaks of the interior as a trove which contains our greatest possession: “What a treasure this interior life is! What happiness, not only in its possession, but also in working at its acquisition! But we must act earnestly, and not go at it in a half-hearted way.” 13 François Fénelon says that “the interior life is the beginning of the blessed peace of the saints, who eternally cry, Amen, Amen! We adore, we praise, we bless God in everything; we see Him incessantly.” 14 And Jean Grou exclaims, “What is the interior life? A life based on the doctrine and example of Jesus Christ.” 15 Everyone always has an interior conversation going on, but the introduction of grace will change the conversation we have with ourselves into a conversation with God. The first requirement for that, says the book of Ecclesiastes, is to know the time for silence from the time for speech (3:7). We are often tempted in our prayer life to speaking out of turn. Libermann was approached by someone who complained about how difficult it was to express his heart in words of love during prayer, and wrote back, “My reply is, ‘Why do you want to draw forth from your heart those words of love?’ Leave them in your heart; Jesus is there; He will take them there Himself.” 16 I think most people wish they were living an interior life, and might even believe they are living an interior life, but how can we be sure? There are marks, says Giovanni Bona.

These are the marks by which you shall know whether you live an interior life with God: viz., if passing things displease you and solitude delights you; if you seek for what is most perfect; if you disdain the opinions and judgments of men.…It is not sufficient to know and meditate on Christ; you must imitate Him and live as if He Himself taught you by word and example. You shall never correct your irregularities unless you yourself be guided by an unerring rule. 17 Remember that herald as a noun means a sign, and herald as a verb means being that sign.

The deacon must become the sign of freedom from the world for freedom in prayer. De BernieresLouvigny warns that “a soul cannot arrive to this passive state unless she be dead to herself; unless her interior peace be great and stable; unless her prayer be, in a manner, continual.…[For how can a soul] hear the voice of God amongst the noise of creatures, if they still live in her with any affection?” 18 The atmospheric pressure pushing down on our bodies would crush us if it were not for the air inside our bodies exerting an opposite pressure outward. So also, the pressure exerted by the world would crush every soul were it not for an interior life exerting an opposite, counter pressure. The world’s unreality must be countered by truth-reality, its vice with counter virtues, its concupiscence with generosity, its vanity with true value, and so on. This means the interior life is a place of love, but it is a peculiar love, such as the world cannot give.

We might have legitimate reason to worry that if the deacon “is a cleric who lives a lay life,” as James Keating’s famous definition says, then you might be overcome by the noise of the world. You might seek the opinions and approvals of those with whom you rub shoulders.

Therefore, you must be on the lookout for this danger, and the restlessness in the world must be overcome by interior peace. Jean Baptiste Massillon warns: “Restlessness! Yes, my brethren, we all wish to avoid ourselves. To the generality of men nothing is more melancholy and disagreeable than to find themselves alone, and obliged to review their own hearts.” 19 Jean Grou adds that although a person living the interior life is not necessarily called to fly from the world, nevertheless “all are called upon to use this world as though they used it not, to detach from it their mind and heart, and to have with it only those relations which are indispensable; in short, in all their intercourse with the world, to avoid everything which could separate them from God.” 20 You can live amidst the noise of the world, so long as the noise of the world does not live in you!

Avoiding everything which could separate someone from God is a skill set the deacon must attain, encourage, and train others in. This means finding time for silence in a busy ministry. “The interior life is a treasure,” says Charles Gay, but “it is an unbridled tongue that most commonly squanders it away. The infallible means of making God silent within us, is our not being able to keep silence ourselves.” 21 Jean Boudon concurs: “They who talk the most are often the least recollected.” 22 The interior life requires God’s energizing grace and man’s synergizing abnegation. We treat the challenge too cheaply if we approach it as philosophical interiority, or psychological interiority—this is interiority that comes from the Holy Spirit leading us to an imitation of Jesus.

The Christian interior life is not the practice of a professional, egotistical, and mental interiority that comes from the self-help shelf at the bookstore. Christian interiority means imitating Jesus by welcoming the special grace of the Holy Spirit. Jean Grou says “it is the visit of God’s Holy Spirit which disposes the soul for the interior life.…What is the interior life? A life based on the doctrine and example of Jesus Christ.…[Christ’s] examples are powerless to influence the conduct or touch the heart, until the same divine Spirit imparts to human weakness the aid of a special grace.” 23

The Deacon and the Ministry of Charity The deacon will imitate Jesus’s outward actions, for sure: practice Jesus’s virtues, preach the good news, seek out the lost, embrace the sinner with charity. Your ministry of charity is not an add-on, a tagalong, a utilitarian justification of your ministry. Your ministry of charity is integrally tied to your love of God. Jesus said the great command is to love the Lord your God, but the second is like it, namely, to love your neighbor. Paul Segneri names nine reasons why the second is like the first.24 It is of obligation (not merely useful, but necessary); it is a divine commandment (both are given by God, not men); it is a moral law (Christ devoted a large portion of the Sermon on the Mount to it, and made it his “new” commandment); it is natural (love father, love brother); it is absolute (not conditional, but binding of its own nature); it is affirmative (it commands not by prohibiting, but by laying upon us what is good); it is universal (not particular to sex, state, or country); it is very clear (it requires no explanation, and is often kept better by simple persons than great doctors of the faith); and it is perpetual (not temporary). The two commandments are so closely united that they can never be separated, and neither can possibly be practiced without the other. It is therefore no surprise that love of neighbor receives special attention as one of your offices.

Charity is the “sweet-smelling savour of Jesus Christ,” 25 says Massillon, but to perform this exterior ministry, you must be an interior man of prayer. Our Lord prayed for us with abundant tears and powerful cries (Heb. 5:7) and Olier asks Q. Does our divine Lord do the same in our hearts?

A. Yes…What the Holy Spirit commenced once in the heart of Jesus, he continued during all his life, and will continue during all eternity. The operations of sanctity in the heart of Jesus, are eternal.…If we unite ourselves to Jesus Christ, our unworthiness is covered before his Father, when he perceives the perfume exhaled from the vestments of his eldest Son, Christ our Lord, with which we are covered. 26 As an ordained cleric, you receive dalmatic and stole, and the perfume exhaled from the vestments of Jesus in your office of ministry can be perceived in your offices of word and charity. The fact that you are ordained (and not just hired, or commissioned, or instituted) shows that the gifts that you distribute in your ministry of book and blood do not come from yourself. Therefore, neither your interior life, nor mind, can be lived apart from the sacraments. Olier concludes: “the precious body and blood of our Saviour are the channels through which his spirit is conveyed to us, to impart to us his life and divine operations, to be our food, to make us improve in the practice of all virtues, in a word, to communicate to us the plenitude of his interior life.” 27 According to Boudon, the greater proportion of our evils come from our taking pleasure in seeing and being seen—a kind of dangerous amusement and theatric before the world. That is why Jesus told his disciples to give their gifts in secret, and the Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward them. “What sullies the purity of acts of piety is that self-love desires to have them known and observed; that we always exhibit ourselves in the best light, and hide our defects…

They truly seek the notice, the esteem, and the friendship of God Only, since they have no desire to be seen, esteemed, or loved by any living creature whatsoever.” 28 Your diakonia is a hidden ministry of hidden things—one that does not call attention to itself as it goes about its business.

But even without trumpeting your own piety, the world will still notice someone who believes what he reads, teaches what he believes, and practices what he teaches.

Wait, though. Isn’t the deacon called to be active in the world? 29 True, but the fruit of activity grows from deep roots in the interior life. Here is a passage where Grou speaks of any pious Christian, but I point the words directly at you deacons: I admit you are called to an active life, but do not exceed the bounds marked out for you by the Providence of God; for otherwise this is what happens: We so exhaust ourselves by our exterior exertions that interiorly we become dry, and even lose the habit of recollection. The Spirit of God departs, a human spirit enters in, and after that, a worldly spirit. Persons thus affected gradually decline from the purity of the evangelical maxims, they acquire a relish for those of the world, and attempt to serve two masters, although the Son of God has declared it to be impossible. 30 Your special charism is to minister to the interior life of persons in the world as they occur in the midst of the mundane. So your ministry occurs within the circumstances that make up the fabric of the ordinary Christian person’s life because there is nothing trivial. As people move through life, the herald hollers out to them about the great graces that are surrounding them, and filling them, and which they do not notice.

The Deacon and His Hidden Ministry Every person in the world wants to find God, whether they know it or not: you stand like a spiritual signal corps guiding them to the place where God can be found. And where is that?

Ullathorne answers: “We cannot return to God unless we enter first into ourselves. God is everywhere, but not everywhere to us. There is but one point in the universe where God communicates with us, and that is the centre of our own soul. There He waits for us; there He meets us; there He speaks to us. To seek Him, therefore, we must enter into our own interior.”31 Granted, admits Fénelon, bidding someone to look for God in their own hearts “is like bidding them to look for [God] in the most remote and unknown parts of the earth.” 32 Why would they go explore it, unless you could persuade them that God is waiting for them there? Will you be surprised at resistance when you invite people to explore the landscape of this terra incognita?

The deacon slows down the pace of the world so that people do not walk past God; he raises eyes to a transcendent horizon so that people are not blind to God; he quiets the noise of the world so that people are not deaf to God; to the world’s centrifugal energies he adds a centripetal, spiritual energy. Bishop Ullathorne observes that worldlings fall into “habits of restlessness and the love of perpetual movement. Most men have become eager for novelty and change, and they live so much outside themselves as to neglect or even abandon the interior good of their souls.” 33 Above all things, then, you must not exhibit restlessness in yourself, or in your ministry. Be patient.

Be patient with yourself; be patient if your ministry does not show immediate fruit.

It is a hidden ministry, because only a hidden life imitates Jesus who loved being hidden in his Father. Great and wonderful things passed in Jesus’s interior, says Boudon, “so true is it that He remains ever a hidden God, even when He manifests himself the most. The thought also occurs, that those creatures who are exalted to the highest glory, are they whose life was least known to men.” 34 A good servant serves without being noticed; a good deacon deacons in a way someone

might not notice until years later. You, yourself, might not even notice your own growth until years later.

Boudon adds that a genuine love of the hidden life “is not satisfied until it has the happiness of remaining hidden even from itself.…In truth, there are certain interior pains which have the effect of entirely hiding those who endure them.…In fine, these states not only hide the person who endures them from all earthly creatures, and sometimes from the very angels of heaven; but, more than this, they hide the soul from itself, leaving it under the eye of God alone.” 35 All that is requested is that you remain faithful, which de Caussade says is the mark of a good servant who bears in himself that “simple attitude of waiting that [David] so well expressed by his comparison with a servant who keeps his eyes always fixed on his mistress, not through zeal and desire to act, but just so as to be ready for action.” 36 A deacon is a man of action—but not the kind the world expects.

Nothing of what we have said denies that the interior life involves spiritual warfare. Going into the heart is like a lion tamer entering the cage, or a gladiator the amphitheater.

What is the interior life? A succession, a tissue of temptations of all kinds. No sooner has the soul entered on that path than she at once encounters the enemy, whose only occupation is to strew it thickly with snares. God is always near her, it is true, but so also is Satan, who gives her not a moment’s respite.…But why does [the devil] so particularly direct his malice against interior souls? It is because immense glory accrues to God from the perfect devotion of such souls, and that glory is precisely what the devil desires to dispute with its almighty possessor.…

Satan is far more earnest in his efforts to divert a soul from the pursuit of sanctity than to incite her to sin. 37 In short, the interior life cannot exist without self-denial; the greater the self-denial, the greater the soul’s progress in perfection. John the Forerunner was not favorably met by Herod. Jesus was not favorably met by the world. You might not be met favorably by worldlings when you invite them to love the cross. You should be giving practical instruction in how to carry the cross, which means you must carry your own as an example. Grou is again speaking to Christians in general here, but once more I apply his words specifically to you: By willingly embracing the cross in anticipation, you dispose yourself to carry it courageously when it actually offers [itself]. And what is that cross for the generality of Christians? It is the persevering and exact observance of the gospel maxims…It is, in fine, the perpetual struggle against self…It is true that the interior life involves trials of a peculiar nature, but after all, the life of every Christian should be an interior life, for such is certainly compatible with all conditions, whatever may be asserted to the contrary. 38 The people of God need help navigating this struggle. Every Christian should live an interior life; therefore, deacons are sent everywhere to be heralds of the Crucified One. They are not confined to the temple. They are clerics living a lay life, which requires a radical abandonment to Providence, which is the reason for the special grace bestowed at ordination. The disciples were transformed into interior men at Pentecost; Christians are transformed into interior persons at their baptismal Pentecost; you were transformed into interior men at your ordination Pentecost.

Instruction can be given, formation can be applied, but ultimately all the deacon can rely upon is the sacramental grace bestowed through the laying on of hands. Grou says “grace, subject to the direction of obedience, must be our only guide.” 39 I offer a final quote that is addressed to all persons of piety, but which I am directing especially to you. Can you not hear your job description in this passage from de BerniereLouvigny? “It is a strange thing to see what little knowledge we have of the Christian life. Some who have left nature to follow grace suppose that it consists in doing much for God, and for the good of our neighbour, by preaching, instructing, giving alms, and such like charitable exercises.

This is good indeed; but we must first form the interior Christian; and then we shall do best what God calls us to undertake.” 40 Some deacons suppose their diaconate consists of doing much. It is an understandable temptation when your vocation includes didactic catechesis, homiletical preaching, evangelistic preaching, butlering of the Mass, benevolent charity, episcopal assistance, diocesan organization, and much, much more. However, underneath all the exterior activity you must be engaged in something hidden from the world, as de Bernieres-Louvigny concludes, “O how true is it, that in the depths of the heart the most noble operations of love are performed, hidden from all the world, and known to God alone. Even the soul itself does not know the interior communications of God, till long experience has rendered her skillful and the secrets of the supernatural life. They are impervious both to sense and reason.” 41 The Deacon in the Midst of the World: Preaching & Prayer The deacon serves the world, and that is no small thing. He serves the liturgy, and that is no small thing. But put the two together and we have the greatest thing: the deacon liturgizes in the midst of the world. The sacramental duties you perform on the temple hilltop are carried on your own back down to the city, to transform it also into a spiritual sanctuary for conversation with God. The diaconal connection between preaching and prayer can be seen in a condensed form in the first deacon, St. Stephen. First, he preached the original deacon’s sermon to the very council that was charging him with crimes. Acts 6:15 says his face was like the face of an angel. St. John Eudes describes preachers of the Gospel in a similar way: they are “incarnate angels of the Lord, messengers of heaven, seraphim of the Church, heralds of the Blessed Trinity.” 42 The preacher is clothed with power and wears a stole of authority, either priestly or diaconal. Ullathorne thereby concludes that a preacher “is not a man debating questions with his fellow-men, but a herald who proclaims the counsels of God.…Separated unto the Gospel, and placed within the sanctuary, filled with the divine word and its ineffable wisdom, endowed by consecration with the teaching spirit, replenished in soul with the blood of Christ, and flowing with the unction of the Holy One, he is the organ of God resounding all his will to man.” 43 Second, Stephen offered the first deacon’s prayer of impetration: he obtains by entreaty and petition. Acts 7:60 says he fell to his knees and “cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’” In the Mass, you, yourself, announce the intentions of the Universal Prayer; in the world, you, yourself, should be making constant prayers of entreaty. Paul Segneri compares intercessory prayer to the highest reward a prince could bestow on a faithful subject, namely, to permit that subject to dispense the prince’s own gifts. “This power of impetration is the last privilege granted to a favorite.…Such then was the prize which Stephen won; the privilege of asking and obtaining for others the choicest gifts contained in the treasury of God.” 44 When Segneri compares Stephen-the-deacon to other apostles, he says “we will not dispute the claim of

others to the possession of various miraculous powers, such as restoring the sick, giving sight to the blind, raising the dead to life; but to prove the merits of Stephen it is sufficient if we can assign to him that highest privilege of all, the power of converting unbelievers to the faith.” 45 Your privilege as a deacon might be greater than you realize. In your annual report to the bishop, you needn’t report how many sick you have restored, or blind you have cured, or dead you have raised to life, so long as you can report responsible use of your power of converting unbelievers to the faith.

All people are a combination of inward and outward: every human being is the living unification of an interior and exterior life. This leads me to conclude that a monk could not minister as well as a deacon, because the monk is especially concerned with the interior life. And an activist could not minister as well as a deacon, because the activist is especially concerned with the exterior life. But the deacon is concerned with both the interior and exterior of persons. The people you love can be considered a divine poem in their simplicity, according to Faber, because they have what he calls a secret and individual biography. “When a man is living in a state of grace, and is giving himself up to God and leading an interior life, then his secret biography becomes still more wonderful, because it is more consciously supernatural. Most inward-living men have some special attraction of grace, some divine mold in which their spiritual lives are cast, a mold which God uses, not for classes, but for individuals.” 46 All of us live secret biographies. Most of us will not have inspired pens recording them, but many of us will have the good fortune of encountering an inspired deacon who sees them by looking behind our life in the world and discovering the interior life we are at pains to live. He can then encourage them. Organizing the soup kitchen is easy compared to perceiving, revealing, and then assisting the autograph God is writing on a person’s interior biography.

We know that the Lamb of God whom John the Forerunner saw coming to take away the sins of the world will come again on a day which no man, no angel, not even the Son himself knows (Mark 13:32). But between that first historical coming and the last eschatological coming, there are many spiritual arrivals of Christ, and each of his approaches need to be heralded so that a person can prepare. Francisco de Osuna says a man would be greatly to blame if when some high dignitaries were about to visit him, [he] left his home at the time they were expected. It would appear insulting, and the guests might seek some other dwelling, leaving their indifferent host to himself.…Every devout soul [should] be spiritually solicitous while awaiting to welcome within itself God, who is to be its guest.

We are certain and know by the mouth of the Son of God himself that he and the Father and the Holy Spirit will come to dwell with one who loves them and will make their abode with him in no other place but in his soul, which is the dwelling-place of God; but the man himself must be there to receive him. 47 The Trinity will come to take up its abode in our hearts, but we must be home when God comes. Such an easy solution to the perennial problem of grace and works! God’s approach is pure grace, pure gratuity, pure favor, and we do not cause it—but we must be home! “Unless he sees that we are there, he will pass on, seeing that we are perturbed with harmful and worrying distractions.” 48 Richard Challoner reminds us that God is a living fire that ever burns, but why, then, do we feel so little of his flame? “It is because we will not stand by it. It is because we will not keep our souls at home, attentive to that great guest who resides within us, but let them

continually wander abroad upon vain created amusements.…Turn away, my soul, from all these worldly toys which keep thee from God; and return to him, thy true and only happiness, and in him repose for ever.” 49 Scripture says Christ approaches in two manners. On the one hand, he is coming like a thief, so stay awake (Rev. 16:15). On the other hand, he stands at the door and knocks (Rev. 3:20).

What is the difference between the thief and the patient would-be guest? De Osuna answers, the robber is most anxious to enter the house when its master is absent; but our Lord God, who is exceedingly courteous, does not choose to come into our heart unless we are within, awaiting him. [He knocks] at the gate of our consent with his holy inspirations—in order that we may receive him more willingly. Yet when a man is not recollected nor dwells within his own heart, he makes Christ stand at the door and seems to mock him while he calls to the soul. 50 The Gospel upsets normal religious etiquette. We ought to be the ones soliciting God’s presence, and, instead, the Lord God Almighty humbly requests us to accept the honor of his presence.

The Deacon as Herald of God’s Conversation with Us I began this talk with an etymology of heralding; I will end it with one more etymological discovery. It occurred when I had to make sense of the grammar of sentences like the following.

De Ponte advises “renouncing all earthly things…that my conversation may be in heaven with the holy angels.” 51 Ullathorne says the Son and Spirit give a power to love “even whilst tied to this earth by the corruptible body, that we may have our conversation in Heaven.” 52 And Gertrude More says our disposition should be “to that which St. Paul wishes to see in us—namely, that our conversation be in Heaven.” 53 Did they simply mean having a celestial chat with God in heaven?

A palaver in paradise? Then I saw Blosius give reference to Philippians 3:20 when he wrote “The conversation, therefore, of this soul is in heaven.” 54 You know the verse as “Our citizenship is in heaven,” because the Greek word is politeuma, which means citizenship. But King James translates it as a “conversation in heaven” because the Vulgate presents it as “Nostra autem conversatio.” Conversari means “to dwell, live with, keep company with”; “the place where one lives or dwells”; the “manner of conducting oneself.” The background of the word is “turning toward.”

So I can conclude that “a cleric living a lay life” means a cleric whose conversation is in the world. You dwell in the world, for the purpose of heralding God’s desperate desire to converse with his children—to dwell in their interior.

The deacon gives a sign that something is about to happen: you proclaim the coming or arrival of a notable event; you champion the Savior; you announce that something good is about to happen; you serve the kingdom with book, blood, and beneficence. All these require roots in the interior life. The heralding of the Savior’s arrival should also be made from Rome, and from diocesan headquarters, and from the pulpit, but you announce it on the street, in the home, from next door, in places where you converse. The deacon bids us to be home when Christ knocks at our interior life.

Since many of the persons quoted are unfamiliar, I give these very brief identifications for reference: Blosius (Louis of Blois). 1506-1566. Flemish monk.

Bona, Giovanni. 1609-1674. Italian Cistercian, cardinal.

Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne. 1627-1704. French bishop of Meaux.

Boudon, Henri-Marie. 1624-1702. French abbot.

Bourdaloue, Louis. 1632-1704. French Jesuit preacher.

Challoner, Richard. 1691-1781. English bishop. de Bernieres-Louvigny, Jean. 1602-1659. French contemplative. de Caussade, Jean Pierre. 1675-1751. French Jesuit. de Osuna, Francisco. 1492-1540. Spanish Franciscan.

Eudes, John. 1601-1680. French founder of the Congregation of Jesus and Mary (Eudists).

Faber, Frederick. 1814-1863. English Oratorian.

Fénelon, François. 1651-1715. French Archbishop of Cambrai.

Gay, Charles-Louis. 1815-1892. Auxiliary Bishop of Poitiers, preacher.

Grou, Jean. 1731-1803, French Jesuit.

Lallemant, Louis. 1588-1635. French Jesuit.

Libermann, Francis. 1802-1852. French Spiritan.

Massillon, Jean Baptiste. 1663-1742. French Orator, Bishop of Clermont.

More, Gertrude. 1606-1633. English Benedictine Abbess of Stanbrook Abbey.

Olier, Jean-Jacques. 1608-1657. French founder of the Sulpicians.

Segneri, Paul. 1624-1694. Italian Jesuit preacher.

Ullathorne, William Bernard. 1806-1889. Bishop of Birmingham.

1 This paper was delivered as the St. Ephrem Lecture on July 9, 2023, for the Institute for Diaconate Renewal, Franciscan University of Steubenville. Submitted here with permission. https://steubenvilleconferences.com/institutefor-diaconate-renewal/. In consultation with the author, the editor has chosen to preserve, in large part, the manner of direct address to deacons throughout the piece.

2 Louis Lallemant, The Spiritual Doctrine of Father Louis Lallemant, ed. Frederick Faber (London: Burns & Lambert, 1855), 169.

3 See the English translation of the Rites of Ordination of a Bishop, of Priests, and of Deacons, second typical edition (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2003), no. 210, page 143, emphasis mine.

In Latin, the line reads, Accipe Evangelium Christi, cuius praeco effectus es.

4 See the entry in the Online Etymology Dictionary at https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=herald. The word dates back from the late 14c. and the verb form means “to sound the praises of” and is from herald (n.); related words include heralded and heralding. Also see https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/herald. The Middle English herauden means “to sound the praises of” and is borrowed from the Middle French hirauder, herauder (of a herald), which, in turn, means “to proclaim publicly, to praise unreservedly” and is a derivative of hiraud, heraud.

5 “The specific theological identity of the deacon: as a participation in the one ecclesiastical ministry, he is a specific sacramental sign, in the Church, of Christ the servant.” The Congregation for Catholic Education, Basic Norms for the Formation of Permanent Deacons (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998), 5.

6 Louis Bourdaloue, Sermons and Moral Discourses, on the Important Duties of Christianity, vol. 1 (Dublin: James Duffy, 1843), 289-90.

7 Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, Devotion to the Virgin Mary (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1899), 92.

8 Bourdaloue, Sermons and Moral Discourses, vol. 1, 39.

9 Congregation for the Clergy, Directory for the Ministry and Life of Permanent Deacons, 22.

10 Frederick Faber, Bethlehem (London: Thomas Richardson and Son, 1860), 201.

11 William Bernard Ullathorne, The Endowments of Man Considered in Their Relations with His Final End (London: Burns & Oates, 1880), 2.

12 Lallemant, The Spiritual Doctrine of Father Louis Lallemant, 209-10.

Francis Libermann, Letters to Clergy and Religious, Spiritan Series 8, vol. 4 (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1964), 184.

14 François Fénelon, The Interior Life, in Spiritual Progress: Instructions in the Divine Life of the Soul from the French of Fenelon and Madame Guyon (New York: M. W. Dodd, 1853), 82.

15 Jean Grou, The Interior of Jesus and Mary, vol. 2 (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1893), 86.

16 Libermann, Letters to Clergy and Religious, Spiritan Series 7, vol. 3 (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1963), 52.

17 Giovanni Bona, Guidance to Heaven: On the Catholic View of Life (Rockford, IL: TAN Books and Publishers, 1995), 112.

18 Jean de Bernieres-Louvigny, The Interior Christian in Eight Books (New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 1843), 240.

19 Jean Baptiste Massillon, Sermons (London: Printed for Thomas Tegg, 1839), 105-6.

20 Jean Grou, Manual for Interior Souls (London: St. Anselm’s Society, 1890), 109.

21 Charles-Louis Gay, The Christian Life and Virtues Considered in the Religious State, vol. 2 (London: Burnes & Oates, 1878), 38.

22 Henri-Marie Boudon, The Hidden Life of Jesus (London: Burnes & Oates, 1869), 143.

23 Jean Grou, The Interior of Jesus and Mary, vol. 2 (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1893), 86.

24 Paul Segneri, The Manna of the Soul: Meditations for Every Day of the Year, vol 2 (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1892), 117-19.

25 Massillon, Sermons, 176 26 Jean-Jacques Olier, Catechism of an Interior Life (Baltimore: Murphy & Co., 1852), 154-55.

27 Olier, Catechism of an Interior Life, 228.

28 Boudon, The Hidden Life of Jesus, 105.

29 The National Directory for the Ministry and Life of Permanent Deacons says it is an “active ministry of the Church” (preface); deacons have an “active presence in places where public opinion is formed and ethical norms are applied” (31); he promotes lay apostolates in an active fashion (57); he is prominent and active in secular professions and society (89).

30 Boudon, The Hidden Life of Jesus, 152.

31 William Bernard Ullathorne, The Groundwork of the Christian Virtues (London: Burns & Oates, 1890), 74.

32 François Fénelon, Dissertation on Pure Love (London: Sold by G. Thomson, 1750), 15.

33 William Bernard Ullathorne, Christian Patience: The Strength and Discipline of the Soul (London: Burns & Oates, 1886), 45.

34 Boudon, The Hidden Life of Jesus, 114.

35 Boudon, The Hidden Life of Jesus, 165-66.

36 Jean Pierre de Caussade, On Prayer: Spiritual Instructions on the Various States of Prayer According to the Doctrine of Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1931), 266-67.

37 Grou, The Interior of Jesus and Mary, vol. 1 (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1893), 166-67.

38 Grou, The Interior of Jesus and Mary, vol. 1, 48-9.

39 Grou, The Interior of Jesus and Mary, vol. 2, 145.

40 De Bernieres-Louvigny, The Interior Christian, 47.

41 De Bernieres-Louvigny, The Interior Christian, 187.

42 John Eudes, The Priest: His Dignity and Obligations (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1947), 74.

43 Ullathorne, Sermons with Prefaces (London: T. Jones, 1842). Ullathorne almost certainly has in mind the priest preaching, but I remind the reader that the deacon also wears the “stole of authority.”

44 Paul Segneri, The Panegyrics of Father Segneri, of the Society of Jesus (London: R. Washbourne, 1877), 147.

45 Segneri, The Panegyrics, 152.

46 Faber, Bethlehem, 245-46.

47 Francisco de Osuna, The Third Spiritual Alphabet (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1931), 147.

48 De Osuna, The Third Spiritual Alphabet, 148.

49 Richard Challoner, Think Well On’t: Or, Reflections on the Great Truths of the Christian Religion, for Every Day in the Month (Manchester: Printed by R. & W. Dean & Co., 1801), 77.

50 De Osuna, The Third Spiritual Alphabet, 147.

51 De Ponte, Meditations on the Mysteries of Faith, vol. 5, 29.

52 Ullathorne, Christian Patience, 80.

13

Gertrude More, The Writings of Dame Gertrude More (London: R. & T. Washbourne, Ltd., 1910), 226.

Emphasis in original.

54 Blosius, Book of Spiritual Instruction: Institutio Spiritualis (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1800), 107.

53

Connecting Liturgy and Life: Themes of the Liturgical Movement and Catholic Action in the Liturgical Formation of Youth

By Kevin D. Magas, Ph.D. Introduction The final document of the 2018 Synod on Youth, Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment, points to the desire of young people for a “living liturgy” that would impact their daily lives and serve as “a privileged moment of experience of God and of the ecclesial community and a point of departure for mission.” 1 Nevertheless, while the document highlights young people’s sensitivity to questions of social justice, community activism, and human solidarity, 2 it does not explicitly develop how these concerns can be related to and rooted in the liturgical life of the Church. Likewise, in his encyclical on evangelization, Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis notes that “many young people are making common cause before the problems of our world and are taking up various forms of activism and volunteer work,” as they “search for a deeper spirituality and a sense of belonging,” but he does not dwell at length on the role of liturgical life in Christian evangelization or as a response to these legitimate desires. 3 Indeed, many young people today categorize those concerned with rectifying injustice in the real world as “social justice” types or “social justice warriors” in opposition to “liturgy” types immersed in ceremonial, ritual, and aesthetic concerns, especially as they appear in various digital forms on social media. This paper will seek to address this false dichotomy through a retrieval of voices involved in the youth apostolate in the twentieth-century liturgical movement and Catholic Action. 4 It will explore how insights from these movements could serve as resources to address this lacuna of reflection on the integration between liturgy and life in recent magisterial statements on the experience of young people and the liturgy.

Two Movements, One Goal: To Restore All Things in Christ One of the highlights of these movements is that they both called for a deepened reflection on the necessary and organic interrelationship between questions of liturgy and social justice. While the liturgical movement was primarily a movement “towards the liturgy,” a “spiritual renewal and intensification of Catholic life through the primary and indispensable source, the sacred liturgy,” its pioneers all called for a deeper integration between liturgy and life that would regenerate the social order. 5 Catholic Action, officially defined as “the participation of the laity in the apostolate of the hierarchy” by Pope Pius XI’s Ubi Arcani (1922), was more broadly concerned with the various ways lay faithful took initiative in enriching the faith life of their communities and transforming their relevant social spheres, often through an apostolate of “like-to-like.” 6 Nevertheless, they were concerned with the promotion of liturgical renewal as the spiritual “powerhouse” and animating source of this transformation. One leader in Catholic Action, John Griffin, saw the profound unity of both movements as complementary expressions of the Spirit in renewing the Church: “Is not the purpose of Catholic Action the renaissance of the primal spirit in Catholicism and a fuller unfolding of the active life of the Church? The Liturgical Movement is a return to virginal Christian spirituality vivified by paracletic charity, and Catholic Action is a remanifestation of the zeal of Pentecostal apostolicity.” 7 It is revealing

that the index for Orate Fratres/Worship, which addresses the years 1926-1956, includes 185 entries under the term “Catholic Action” alone, with related entries under “social action” and “apostolate.” 8 The shared goals and animating spirit of both movements were inspired by thinkers who sought to integrate liturgy with the rest of Christian life, such as the American liturgical pioneer Virgil Michel. Michel connected the twentieth-century papal initiatives to foster liturgical participation with the modern social encyclicals, most notably Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (1891) and Pius XI’s call for economic and social reform in Quadragesimo Anno (1931). He combined them in a syllogism that would serve as the defining “thesis statement” for the liturgical movement: “Pius X tells us that the liturgy is the indispensable source of the true Christian spirit. Pius XI says that the true Christian spirit is indispensable for social regeneration.

Hence the conclusion: The liturgy is the indispensable basis of Christian social regeneration.”9 Elsewhere, Michel notes that Pope Pius X is called “the Father of the Liturgical Movement,” and Pope Pius XI the “Pope of Catholic Action.” And so he observes: “as XI follows X, so Catholic Action is but the further development of the liturgical life; as we must have ‘X’ before we can have ‘XI’, so we must have the liturgical life before we can have true Catholic Action.” 10 David Fagerberg encapsulates the fundamental ethos of the two movements when he describes Michel’s treatment of liturgy as less like a “hothouse orchid…isolated for its own protection” inside the four walls of the sanctuary because it is “too fragile to survive out in the world,” and more like a weed taking root in any amount of soil, even as “little as you find in the crack of a city sidewalk,” because liturgy “mimics the movement of God…who will go to any lengths to insinuate himself into the life of mankind in order to raise it up to himself.” 11 To illustrate the value of retrieving such a vision, I will pursue three themes undergirding these movements that merit recovery today in the liturgical formation of young people: (1) an integrated understanding of liturgical participation, (2) cultivation of a liturgical vision of the world, and (3) the rediscovery of a lived spirituality of the Mystical Body of Christ.

Active Participation—In Liturgy and In Life The pastoral goal of greater active and intelligent participation in the liturgy was a central dimension of the liturgical movement, forming the background and doctrinal basis for the Second Vatican Council’s call “that all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the Liturgy.” 12 For this reason, especially in the context of the youth apostolate, many pioneers advocated for various forms of external participation in the liturgical rites themselves, particularly through the missa recitata, or dialogata, where the congregation made the responses alongside the altar server. The Young Christian Worker movement, a form of specialized Catholic Action founded by Cardinal Cardijn to prepare young workers to become lay apostles and minister to their peers in an effort to solve common labor problems, formed its leaders in a liturgical ethos through retreats and frequent contact with the Benedictine monasteries that were at the heart of twentieth-century liturgical renewal. Bernard Botte argued that these assemblies of “young workers, with responses made to the priest, with singing the ordinary parts of the Mass, with participation in the offertory and communion, helped the liturgical movement to gain more ground than many [journal] articles.” 13 Nevertheless, according to the pioneers of the liturgical movement, active participation was not principally an external reality of “doing things” but a dynamic participation in the act of

Christ’s self-giving love in a way that is both internal and external, individual and social.

Participation in the liturgy was never seen as an end in itself but situated in a broader, more inclusive context as a means of koinonia, of participation in the divine life and entering into fellowship with all whom Christ is in communion with. “This then is the sublime function of the liturgy of the Church,” Virgil Michel writes, “to assimilate us unto Christ, to make us partakers of the Christ-life, of the eternal life of God.” 14 As Monsignor Reynold Hillenbrand, former rector of Mundelein Seminary and prominent leader in the American liturgical movement, explains: “The Mystical Body makes Christ’s life my own and makes my interior life a reproduction of Christ’s. The more I participate in the liturgy, the more I live in Christ and Christ lives in me.” 15 This makes the word “liturgy” less about ritual etiquette than the mystery of how divine life is inscribed upon us. For this reason, the liturgical pioneers insisted that the understanding of and participation in liturgy must not be reduced to merely its cultic dimensions or ceremonial, external trappings. Instead, the telos of the liturgical act was at service of a deeper, more active participation in transforming the world in light of the kingdom of God epiphanized in the liturgy.

The goal was not merely to restore the liturgy itself according to an archaic ideal or aesthetic style, but in its fullest sense of restoring all things in Christ, as the papal motto of Pius X suggests—“instaurare omnia in Christo.” Virgil Michel again sums it up well: “If the first purpose of the liturgical movement is to lead the faithful into more intimate participation in the liturgy of the Church, then the further objective must also be that of getting the liturgical spirit to radiate forth from the altar of Christ into every aspect of the daily life of the Christian.”16 Consequently, the pointed question asked by the liturgical movement is simply this: if we are a passive Christian at the altar, how can we be an active Christian in the world? 17 For this reason, the liturgical movement and Catholic Action also emphasized the vocation God has given to every baptized member to play an active role in building up the body of Christ through a share in his priestly ministry. By associating us with the priesthood of Christ, baptism incorporates us into his divine life and transforms us into “other Christs” capable of bringing Christ’s healing love into a hurting world. Confirmation was frequently referred to as the “sacrament of Catholic Action” by empowering one to fulfill a vocation as an apostle of Christ called to restore the social order. As Hillenbrand explains: “[Confirmation] conveys a new seal and is an intensification of the priesthood of Christ and a fuller consecration to bring the effects of that priesthood of redemption to the world.” 18 Moreover, every time we participate in the Eucharist we encounter Christ’s redemptive love and are empowered to bring his justice into the world. Hillenbrand underscores the importance of a dynamic Eucharistic spirituality, for he believed: We cannot stand at that renewal [of redemption] and not be interested in bringing the effects of that renewal into all of life…The Mass is the action, the redemption, the renewal of the world and it is exactly that which is Catholic Action. All supplementary apostolic action is derivative. Therefore, we can’t act with Christ at Mass without translating that act into life through the apostolate. 19 Therefore, the concern of the liturgical movement and Catholic Action introduces a deeper, “thicker” notion of liturgical participation beyond which we often find in discussions about getting young people to “participate” in the liturgy, which is often reduced to getting them to sing a hymn they enjoy or enlisting them to lector at Mass. By rooting ritual participation in the wider context of participation in divine life through grace and the actualization of our

baptismal priesthood, coupled with a dynamic understanding of liturgy as redemptive action, these mid-twentieth-century movements were equipped to underscore the inseparability of liturgy and social action in a more organic, complementary way.

Looking Through Liturgy Dynamics of the Liturgical Act: Rehearsing the Kingdom To again adapt an analogy of David Fagerberg’s, the liturgical movement was not merely concerned with looking “at” liturgy as an object to study under a microscope but rather looking “through” liturgy like a lens through which to see God, creation, social action, and every aspect of daily life. 20 Robert Taft, the eminent liturgical historian of the Byzantine rite, writes that “the purpose of all Christian liturgy is to express in a ritual moment that which should be the basic stance of every moment of our lives.” 21 Such an understanding was also at the heart of the liturgical movement. Virgil Michel expresses it this way: To repeat, what the member of Christ does in a concentrated way in the Mass must also be done in a wider way in all his actions, in all his contacts with even his material environment. The manner in which the material goods of earth play a part in the liturgical worship must also be a model for the way in which they play their part in all his daily life. 22 In other words, liturgy functions as an icon of what restored, eschatological life in Christ looks like, and the liturgy “rehearses” certain attitudes and ways of being in the world through sign and symbol, rite and prayer. 23 By these means, liturgy rehearses and apprentices us in what a “just” world looks like, illustrating what it looks like to be in right relationship with God, with others, and with creation in God’s just kingdom. Or, as Aidan Kavanagh always used to say, “the liturgy is doing the world the way it was meant to be done.” 24 For this reason, when pioneers in the liturgical movement seek to describe the main dynamics of the liturgical action, they do not fail to link them to the love of neighbor that must stream forth from the altar. For example, the offertory was seen by figures in the liturgical movement as a significant point of intersection between liturgy and life, for here the daily sacrifice of the hands and muscles of the worker or the daily toils of the housewife or student could be united and offered in union with Christ’s self-gift in the Eucharist. Reynold Hillenbrand comments that the offering of self is not limited to the time spent in Church but characterizes the way the Christian should live in the world so that “a desk in an office, a table in a kitchen, a machine in a factory, a sales counter in a store, or a mangle in a laundry become in a feeble but helpful sense, an extension of the altar, because it is upon these that the lay apostles are carrying out the offering they made of themselves at Mass.” 25 Vincent Giese saw the offertory as a privileged moment of continuity insuring that the social nature of the sacrifice of the Mass would be communicated to other parts of everyday life, for “the actions of one day become the offertory gift of the next day’s Mass.” 26 Liturgical pioneers stressed that the Mass was not merely a clerical act done on their behalf, but a common act of sacrifice offered by all the members of the Mystical Body of their hopes and fears, joys and sorrows—their very selves. A sense of oneness and corporateness realized in this moment of self-offering should have implications in all other daily activities. 27 For example, Msgr. James Morrison, in a talk given at the 1943 Liturgical Week, believed the

spirit of sacrifice embodied in the liturgy was a rich resource for addressing racial inequality, for it heightens awareness that one is truly united with everyone who was offering Mass along with them, whatever race they may be, and that they “must for the good of the Mystical Body make a true holocaust of personal prejudices.” He argues that by incessantly preaching the doctrine of the Mystical Body and the spirit of sacrifice “we must first learn ourselves and then teach others to look around the church at Mass and say: ‘In the sacrifice of this Mass I have become one with these people.’” 28 In many places, liturgical pioneers sought to ritualize this rich theology of a common offering through a restoration of the offertory procession, whereby laity would bring forth bread, wine, and other gifts intended for the needs of the poor. 29 Just as the offertory rehearses us in dispositions of sacrifice and self-offering that impact our lives outside the liturgy, the rites of communion form in us attitudes and habits of mind shaped by Christian fellowship and solidarity, for rich and poor, learned and unlearned, “approach the same altars without distinction.”30 Against a private, individualistic understanding of receiving communion which simply emphasized a vertical (God and me) spirituality common at the time, the liturgical pioneers stressed the social, horizontal dimension of the act of receiving communion. For we are brought not only into communion with Christ but with all whose sins he has taken away and washed in the blood of the Lamb. By walking up to communion together and taking part in eating the Lord’s Body and Blood, we are more closely knitted together into the Mystical Body of Christ. The fraction rite reminds us that we too are called to be bread broken and shared for others, for the life of the world. In an address at the 1947 Liturgical Week, Mother M. Jerome argues for a lived spirituality of St. Augustine’s exhortation to “become what you receive” by embracing the spiritual-social implications of communion: The realization that the Eucharist is a sacrament of unity and peace will sharpen our social conscience to the point where we will examine what is our attitude toward our neighbor, which means every other member of the mystical body who eats the same Food that I eat. We cannot love Christ in one person and despise him in the other. We cannot serve him in those who have influence and neglect him in those who are poor or a burden to us. We cannot love him in the white man and be indifferent to his needs in the colored person…In other words, once we develop a keen social consciousness, the whole tenor of our life and conduct is lifted…We learn to respect ourselves more highly because of our awareness of Christ living in us, and respect others because we know that He dwells in them with equal love. We no longer approach holy communion to have Christ for ourselves. We praise and love and petition him in others. They are all other Christs, the man two houses down the street, the janitress in the office building, the banker…And so, as we come back from the holy communion table and see all these other people united to us in praising God, our enmities fall away. We cannot see Christ in others and be rude or fussy about trivialities. There is greater union among Christ’s members because of Communion. 31 The communion rites, in other words, provide us with a revitalized vision, an icon of a restored life of communion. They allow us to see each other with new eyes, increase the sense of our oneness in putting on the mind of Christ, and empower us to live in communion after the liturgy has ended. Catherine de Hueck believed that the liturgical movement sought to enhance our liturgical participation in order to improve our collective sight and better recognize the Christ in our midst who continues to “walk the earth in His poor”:

In the liturgy we learn to know Christ. And if we truly know Him, we shall recognize Him everywhere, but especially in His poor and we shall set our faces toward liberation of Him from the yoke of injustice and pain, helping to bring about the reign of Christ the King in this world. And with it order, peace and love, so that we shall be able to say: “I saw Christ today, and He was smiling.” 32 The liturgical movement recognized that we are called to see the world with a new set of Eucharistic eyes, cleansed from the cataracts of sin that obscure our vision, in order to be dismissed into the world and bring it into communion and right relationship with God. So too, the devotee of Catholic Action recognized that the personal formation essential to the apostolate must come through study of and participation in the liturgy—for nobody can give what they do not have, and thus the “actionist” must first be formed in Christ and acquire the Christian spirit through liturgical participation. In an important address at the 1941 Liturgical Week, Fr. William Boyd, a leader in Catholic Action in the United States, highlighted the inseparability of ora, the church’s prayer, and the labora, her work in the world. Each part of the Mass serves an important lesson in the school of formation in Christ, preparing us to live out the spirituality of mission embodied in the rites of dismissal. The member of Catholic Action …finds his inspiration in the Mass, which he carries out into his environment. His Mass never ends. The Ite Missa Est tells him to go out into his own environment, his factory, school and office; to sing an introit as he goes, not physically but in his heart; to sing for mercy with his Kyrie; to collect things for the prayer and adoration of God, and not of man and things; to bring the epistle and gospel to his milieux; to make a corporate “I believe”; to overflow that paten with the individuals of his environment and the environment itself; to join with Christ’s Passion and Death; to receive back—God. He is offering as he works in the Apostolate. And Christ is with him in his milieux just as Christ is with him in the offering of the Mass. 33 See-Judge-Act: A Liturgical Methodology The notion that liturgy trains our sight was reaffirmed in the methodology of See-JudgeAct fostered in the Catholic Action youth apostolate pioneered by Cardinal Cardijn’s Young Christian Workers. Adapted from Aquinas’s writings on the virtue of prudence in the Summa concerning counsel, judgment, and command, Cardijn advocated first observing a particular situation in the workplace, finding out its condition as it is; next, they explore what that condition ought to be, searching through what the workers should be doing in regard to that particular issue in light of Christian doctrine; and finally, acting: having seen what is wrong, the worker decides to do something concrete about it. 34 All forms of the specialized lay apostolate, such as the Christian Family Movement, Young Christian Workers, and Young Christian Students, shared Cardijn’s methodology of Catholic Action cells (small groups of twelve to fourteen people) meeting weekly with the following format: a short Gospel discussion, a discussion on the liturgy (on Mass, Sunday, liturgical year, Mystical Body ecclesiology, baptismal spirituality, confirmation as a sacrament of Catholic Action, connection between liturgy and social justice, etc.), inquiry into some social problem using the See-Judge-Act methodology, and a report on actions taken. The help of a chaplain was used to prepare the discussion leaders and to speak

twice at the meetings: after the Gospel and liturgy discussions and at the conclusion of the meeting. In the United States, Monsignor Reynold Hillenbrand created four-year training programs which covered aspects of lay apostolate such as marriage and family, economic life, political life, international life, parochial life, leisure time, and the racial question. 35 The format of the Catholic Action youth apostolate molded by Cardijn not only looked at the liturgy as a constitutive aspect of its meetings but also looked “through liturgy,” resulting in the liturgical orientation of the programs as a whole. Liturgy was the lens through which the SeeJudge-Act methodology functioned, for the liturgy gives us a restored vision, an icon of another world through which to compare our own and empowers us to act justly after we are dismissed into the world. As Fr. Boyd pointed out in his presentation on Catholic Action, the worker “offers himself on the paten, his labor, his sweat, his fatigue.” Nevertheless, he …realizes that not all of that environment is on that paten…he wants to put it there, for it is included in the “all things” to be restored to Christ. In this milieux there are sick members of the Body which must be healed. There are dying members whose life must be augmented. There are potential members who must be given life if the body of Jesus Christ is to grow to its full stature. 36 Hillenbrand noted that the purpose of the meetings and their methodology were intended to form an identity in Christ in a complete, holistic way that incorporated both the vertical dimension of relationship with God and the horizontal implications for one’s life in community: The Gospel discussion brings the historical Christ’s words and actions into our minds; the liturgy discussion shows them Christ in the Mystical Body, active now, bringing the redemption to our time; the social inquiry can be summed up in Christ—seeing the departure from Christ in some problem (e.g. immorality in dating, hostility to labor union, etc.) judging it according to the doctrine of Christ, and acting for Christ to set it right. 37 At the heart of both the liturgical movement and Catholic Action is the recovery of a liturgical vision of all things restored in Christ, a vision capable of inspiring young people to see how the liturgy should impact their daily lives and serve as a point of departure for mission in the world.

The Mystical Body: Bridge between Liturgy and Life One of the foremost points of synthesis between both the liturgical movement and Catholic Action as well as between the liturgy celebrated and the liturgy lived, lies in the theological retrieval of the Mystical Body. 38 At a time when many Catholics gravitated toward privatized devotional prayer, liturgical pioneers insisted on the recovery of the liturgy as the corporate worship of the entire Mystical Body, head and members, as an antidote to modern individualism. For Virgil Michel, in the liturgical movement Christians are called to see how liturgy is the power that creates the Mystical Body, and Christians at liturgy see themselves as members of a body and branches on a vine. Catholic Action springs from the awareness that Christ as Head of the Body is doing the work of reconciling God and man and between man and his neighbor and he expects his Body to share in this work. 39 The ecclesiology of the Mystical Body served as a model for a regenerated social order based upon the social nature of the human

person. Virgil Michel argued that “since the mystical body of Christ is the supernatural society instituted by Christ among men for their greater good, and since it was constituted by Christ as to be best adapted to human nature, it may well serve as the model of social life and social relations for mankind.” 40 The famous twentieth-century historian, Christopher Dawson, likewise noted that the doctrine of the Mystical Body embodies the essential link between liturgy and life, and Michel approvingly quotes him when he says: The Mystical Body…is the link between the liturgy and sociology; and in proportion as men are brought to realize through the liturgy, their position as members of that Body, will their actions in the social sphere be affected thereby…A visible manifestation of incorporation into Christ, a visible unified action on the part of the members, cannot fail to revive and foster in them a determination to carry their Christ-life into the social and economic sphere. 41 As a model for human societies, Michel and others identified the Mystical Body as resistant to the disastrous twentieth-century social anthropologies of collectivism and individualism, for it illustrates how individuals are situated within a community without absorbing the individual in the community. The Mystical Body models what it means to be in right relationship with God and others in a community through the integration of solidarity and personal responsibility: The grace of God is given to man through his membership in the mystical body of Christ; and it flows from and operates at its best in the liturgy, the sacramental life of the Church, which is in truth the supernatural life of the mystical body, of the holy fellowship of souls in Christ their Head. While grace thus binds the individual member intimately to his fellow members in Christ, it never does anything to diminish the individual’s dignity as a person or his own personal responsibility in either his natural or his supernatural life. 42 The central methods of Catholic Action—observing, judging, and acting—were seen to be learned most effectively in the context of the corporate worship of the Mystical Body. One cannot be a passive, useless member of the body, for once one learns to participate in the prayer of the Mystical Body, the lay apostle learns to act with the Mystical Body: No boy, no girl, no man or woman can be smug and a spiritual defunct, lifeless and inanimate in the apostolate once he has learned to act in the pew. He sees the Body with Christ as Head. He sees the same Life pouring through all these other members. He is alive and life means movement. So he must act—with the Hierarchy, with the Church. He is alive at Mass—at least actively offering himself at the Offertory, if circumstances are such that he cannot participate further. 43 In short, the faithful’s awareness of responsibility, dignity as a member of Christ, and corporate identity learned in the liturgy would prepare them to respond to social needs in the modern world and renew the social order through the methods of Catholic Action. For this reason, nearly every single social concern the liturgical pioneers addressed was anchored in the theology of the Mystical Body and its implications for human solidarity and universality. 44

Many liturgical pioneers believed the doctrine of the Mystical Body naturally flowed from a robustly incarnational spirituality rooted in the sacramental principle. For God did not simply reveal himself as an abstraction, or as a communication of the articles of dogmatic truth but took on flesh in his very Person and extended his saving work through the visible, material, and tangible. For Hillenbrand, this means we must imitate Christ who “thrust himself into human life and into human affairs,” dealing with “flesh and blood and with actual situations.” He concludes that this is “the kind of spirituality we must have, an incarnate spirituality, like our Blessed Lord: thrust into life, dealing with people, dealing with human authority, dealing with flesh and blood.” 45 “The fact that the Mass is an action,” he reminds us, “should drive us to apostolic action. Otherwise we leave our religion, and the greatest thing it has, Mass, in the realm of the purely spiritual.” 46 Conclusion: Live the Mass Rather than a privatized action done simply by the clergy on their behalf, the liturgical movement sought to cultivate intelligent participation in the Church’s worship in order to inspire the laity to actualize their baptismal priesthood in its call to consecrate the world to God, a consecration which extends the redemptive influence of Christ encountered in the liturgy to every area of human existence, including the domestic, racial, economic, and political spheres.47 The liturgical movement pushed back against a reduction of liturgy to rubrics or aesthetics—a mere ceremonial etiquette—for this would short-circuit its ultimate vision of restoring all things in Christ. 48 The genius of both the liturgical movement and the various manifestations of Catholic Action lies in their affirmation that liturgy and social issues need to be held together and that such social consciousness is a key component to authentic liturgical formation. The United States Catholic bishops have recently embarked on a Eucharistic revival that has frequently drawn attention to cultivating belief in Christ’s Eucharistic presence in response to research indicating the extent of Catholics’ declining Mass attendance and diminished belief in the Real Presence. 49 The liturgical pioneers complement this vision in their emphasis on how the Eucharist helps us see Christ in others and empowers us to act justly in response to their needs.

As Godfrey Diekmann reminds us, “We must not only find Christ in the Host in Mass; we must find Him in the hosts in the masses.” 50 The liturgical pioneers remind us that liturgy cannot be seen as simply an insular, selfreferential activity relegated to the sanctuary, for one cannot be concerned only with the Mystical Body at prayer without being touched by the plight of the members of the Mystical Body in their struggles in the world—rather, we must attend to the Mystical Body on both its “inside” and “outside,” so to speak. 51 Pius XI concluded that “in the final analysis all permanent Catholic social reform begins in the sanctuary” 52 and if this sounds strange to the ears of young people it might be because they have been formed in an understanding of liturgy that is too thin and superficial. Retrieving the holistic vision of the liturgical movement and Catholic Action can challenge both the young person who thinks that liturgical renewal is simply about the aesthetic perfection of our ceremonies as well as one tempted to expect to redeem the temporal order merely by temporal means or merely by spreading the abstract principles of social justice and political ethics. These movements provide a helpful corrective by rooting authentic social change in supernatural transformation in Christ. 53 The movements’ synthesis of liturgy and life remains a vision still largely “unread, unfulfilled.” 54 Individualism, the great scourge which the liturgical movement and Catholic Action sought to address, continues to be a prominent characteristic of

young people today. 55 For this reason, a vision of the Mystical Body united in ora and labora remains ever timely.

In addition to catechesis on reverent, dignified celebrations of the liturgy according to the current liturgical norms, our liturgical formation of young people ought to stress key notions recovered in the liturgical movement, such as the importance of actualizing our baptism, living in solidarity as a member of the Mystical Body, seeing our daily lives as one unceasing act of sacrificial worship, and looking upon all things in light of their liturgical consummation in Christ. As the pioneers rightfully stressed, the liturgy not only teaches us but forms us into Christlikeness, for it is in and through the liturgy that we put on the mind of Christ, that his priorities become our own, that his mysteries become our mysteries. To adapt Guardini’s closing thought in his classic work The Spirit of the Liturgy, we must remind young people that by living the liturgy they “will be true and spiritually sound and at peace to the depths of their being; and that when they leave its sacred confines to enter life, they will be men [and women] of courage.” 56

Synod of Bishops, Final Document: Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment, Vatican website, 27 October 2018, 51, accessed 19 July 2023, https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20181027_doc-final-instrumentumxvassemblea-giovani_en.html.

2 Synod of Bishops, Young People, 46, 52, 74, 126-27, 151.

3 Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, encyclical letter, Vatican website, 24 November 2013, 105-06, accessed 19 July 2023, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazioneap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html.

4 For a historical background and introduction to these two twentieth-century movements of ecclesial renewal and their points of intersection, see Rev. Martin Zielinski, “The Liturgy and Catholic Action,” Chicago Studies 48, no. 3 (Fall/Winter 2009): 258-74; Keith Pecklers, The Unread Vision: The Liturgical Movement in the United States of America, 1926-1959 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998); Debra Campbell, “The Heyday of Catholic Action and the Lay Apostolates,” in Transforming Parish Ministry, ed. Jay P. Dolan et al. (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 222-52; Katharine E. Harmon, “The Liturgical Movement and Catholic Action: Women Living the Liturgical Life in the Lay Apostolate,” in Empowering the People of God: Catholic Action Before and After Vatican II, ed. Jeremy Bonner et al. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 46-75; Robert Tuzik, Reynold Hillenbrand: The Reform of the Catholic Liturgy and the Call to Social Action (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2010). The entire issue of Chicago Studies vol. 48, no. 3 is dedicated to the topic of liturgy, justice, and social regeneration.

5 Virgil Michel and Martin Hellriegel, The Liturgical Movement, Popular Liturgical Library, series IV, number 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1930), 7, 9. This integration of liturgical renewal with social concerns was viewed as a hallmark of the American contribution to the liturgical movement. See Godfrey L. Diekmann, “Is there a Distinct American Contribution to the Liturgical Renewal?,” Worship 45, no. 10 (1971): 578-87. For example, Michael Marx, O.S.B., observed during the 1955 National Liturgical Week that “very early [in the United States], the liturgy was made part of the lives of the people…As far as I can figure out, the leaders of the liturgical movement in this country through the years, have not been sanctuary people. They have always tried to relate the liturgy to life, the Christian life.” See Michael Marx, “Discussion,” in 1955 National Liturgical Week Proceedings (Elsberry, MO: The Liturgical Conference, 1956), 139.

6 Catholic Action was frequently organized into “specialized” groups based upon shared age, profession, or state in life. These groups pioneered the notion now commonplace in many forms of youth ministry that evangelization by one’s peers (“like-to-like”) can serve as a powerful way to spread the Gospel. The main forms of specialized Catholic Action apostolates popular in the United States were the Christian Family Movement, Young 1

Christian Workers, and Young Christian Students. For an overview of these movements and their integration of liturgy and justice, see Pecklers, The Unread Vision, 81-149.

7 John Griffin, “Catholic Action and the Liturgical Life,” Orate Fratres 9 (January 1935): 366.

8 Katharine Harmon, “‘That Word ‘Liturgy’ is So Unfortunate’: Learning the Mystical Body and Practicing Catholic Action in the U.S. Liturgical Movement (c. 1926-1955),” American Catholic Studies 127, no. 1 (2015): 39.

9 Virgil Michel, “The Liturgy the Basis of Social Transformation,” Orate Fratres 9 (1935): 545.

10 Michel, The Liturgical Movement, 19.

11 David Fagerberg, “Virgil Michel on Liturgy and Social Justice: A New Appraisal,” Chicago Studies 48, no. 3 (Fall/Winter 2009): 277-78.

12 Vatican Council II, Sacrosanctum Concilium: Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Vatican City: Vatican Council II, 1963), 14, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vatii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html.

13 Bernard Botte, From Silence to Participation: An Insider’s View of Liturgical Renewal, trans. John Sullivan, O.C.D. (Washington, DC: The Pastoral Press, 1988), 38. Michel de la Bédoyère highlights the connection between the young industrial worker’s challenges in the world and Cardijn’s advocacy for liturgical formation: “To these new masses…the Church was bringing what Cardijn had taught from the beginning: a living relationship between liturgical and sacramental life and the daily sacrifice of their hands and muscles on the altar of industrial work. The Mass is ended: go and make your day a continual Mass in union with the Mass offered by the pope, the bishops, the priests, the Mass whose effects are confirmed in your lives.” See Michael de la Bédoyère, The Cardijn Story, A Study of the Life of Msgr. Joseph Cardijn and the Young Christian Worker’s Movement Which He Founded (London: Longmans, Green, & Company, 1958), 182; quoted in Tuzik, Reynold Hillenbrand, 129.

14 Michel, The Liturgy of the Church: According to the Roman Rite (New York: Macmillan, 1939), 46.

15 Reynold Hillenbrand, Liturgy Course Notes; quoted in Tuzik, Reynold Hillenbrand, 103.

16 Michel, The Liturgical Apostolate (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1927), 7.

17 Michel, “Liturgy and Catholic Life,” unpublished manuscript; cited in Paul Marx, O.S.B., Virgil Michel and the Liturgical Movement (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1957), 190.

18 Hillenbrand, “The Theological Bases of the Apostolate,” August, 1948 lecture; quoted in Tuzik, Reynold Hillenbrand, 123.

19 Tuzik, 123.

20 Fagerberg articulates this analogy in multiple places, particularly in a collection of his essays. See David Fagerberg, The Liturgical Cosmos: Looking Through the Lens of the Liturgy (Steubenville: Emmaus Academic, 2023).

21 Robert Taft, “Sunday in the Eastern Tradition,” in Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding (Washington, DC: The Pastoral Press, 1984), 32.

22 Michel, The Christian in the World (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1939), 104.

23 This language is drawn from the thought of postconciliar liturgical theologian Mark Searle on liturgy and justice, although his work was rooted in and inspired by the ideals of the twentieth-century liturgical movement. See Stephen S. Wilbricht, Rehearsing God’s Just Kingdom: The Eucharistic Vision of Mark Searle (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013).

24 Although Kavanagh articulates this idea in different manners throughout his writing, this phrase is the way he often described it in class according to David Fagerberg. See David Fagerberg, On Liturgical Asceticism (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 26.

25 Hillenbrand, “The Mass as the Source and Center of the Lay Apostolate,” in National Liturgical Week 1955, 178.

26 Vincent J. Giese, The Apostolic Itch (Chicago: Fides, 1954), 19.

27 Hillebrand writes that “this sense of our oneness and corporateness realized at the supreme moment of life, the moment of Sacrifice, must be brought into every phase of life. We are one at the altar, doing the greatest of actions together; we must sense our oneness at all other times, in all other actions of our lives.” See Hillenbrand, “The Spirit of Sacrifice in Christian Society: Statement of Principle,” in National Liturgical Week Held at the Cathedral of the Holy Name, Chicago, October 12–16, 1943 (Ferdinand, IN: The Liturgical Conference, 1944), 103.

28 Joseph P. Morrison, “The Spirit of Sacrifice in Christian Society: The Racial Problem,” in National Liturgical Week Held at the Cathedral of the Holy Name, Chicago, October 12–16, 1943 (Ferdinand, IN: The Liturgical Conference, 1944), 115-16. Morrison believed that the doctrine of the Mystical Body was the ultimate key to addressing the “racial problem” from a theological perspective, for it models an authentic unity in diversity through a mutual sharing in Christ’s life and grace. Racism injures the health of the Mystical Body. Respondents to

Morrison’s paper wholeheartedly agreed. Abbot Columban Thuis of St. Joseph’s Abbey in St. Benedict, Louisiana believed “the greatest progress in solving the race problem has come through the liturgy…Just as no solution of the social problem can come until mankind is acting out once more its true role in the unity of Christ’s Mystical Body (and liturgy is this Body in Action), so too we cannot succeed in the solution of the negro problem, until we have ‘also restored all things in Christ’ in this matter and manner.” (118) John LaFarge, S.J., also reaffirmed Morrison’s thesis: “I believe that in the racial question, all the difficulties come from an inadequate concept of our theological and social doctrine. When people are acquainted with the Encyclical [Mystici Corporis], when they are thoroughly familiar with the theology regarding the Mystical Body and its relation to justice and charity, then these things will solve themselves.” (119) 29 For descriptions of this practice in the liturgical movement, see Gerald Ellard, S.J., The Mass of the Future (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1948), 280-89. Very early on in the liturgical movement, Virgil Michel pointed to the example of the offertory processions in the early Church as a crucial link between liturgy and concern for the poor. Everyone brought something of his or her own to the altar—bread or wine, olive oil, or some other product, which represented the individual’s work and very self. The fact that these various gifts were brought together in a single offering to God from all and for all through the offertory procession represented a living example of Christian fellowship and solidarity. While the bread and wine were used for the liturgy itself, the rest of that one offering was set aside on tables for the poor and needy, a common act of charity witnessing to the interconnected service of God and neighbor at the heart of liturgical worship. See Michel, “The Liturgy the Basis of Social Regeneration,” 542-543.

30 Leo XIII, Mirae Caritatis (1902); quoted in Tuzik, Reynold Hillenbrand, 114. This realization of the solidarity of the masses, both rich and poor, in the praise and adoration of God at Mass was a significant factor in the conversion and spirituality of Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day. Day’s Catholic Worker Movement likewise shared a strong liturgical ethos in the early years. Day was formed in the connections between liturgy and justice through her encounters with Virgil Michel. See Bryce A. Wiseman, “What Blasphemy! Liturgy and Social Justice: Virgil Michel, Dorothy Day, and the Early Catholic Worker Movement,” in Lance Richey and Adam DeVille, eds., Dorothy Day and the Church: Past, Present, and Future (Valparaiso, IN: Solidarity Hall, 2016), 5162.

31 Mother M. Jerome, O.S.B., “We Eat Together,” in Christ’s Sacrifice and Ours: National Liturgical Week Portland, Oregon, August 19-21, 1947 (Boston, MA: The Liturgical Conference, 1948), 96-7. Not only did many Catholics hold an individualistic understanding of receiving communion, but the very act of receiving communion regularly was rare at the beginning of the twentieth century, largely as a residue of Jansenistic standards of worthy reception. Communion was often received separately from the Mass; consequently, one of the first goals of the liturgical renewal was to increase the frequency of communion received as an intrinsic part of the Mass itself. This initiative was given papal impetus by Pius X’s 1905 decree Sacra Tridentina, “On Frequent and Daily Reception of Holy Communion.”

32 Catherine De Hueck, “I Saw Christ Today,” Orate Fratres 12 (1938): 310. De Hueck founded the Friendship House movement, which, like the Catholic Worker movement, rooted its service to the poor and destitute in the liturgical life and Eucharistic charity. Like Dorothy Day, her vision of the integration of liturgy and justice was inspired by her encounters with Virgil Michel. See Pecklers, The Unread Vision, 115-18.

33 William Boyd, “Liturgy and Catholic Action,” in 1941 National Liturgical Week Proceedings (Newark, NJ: Benedictine Liturgical Conference, 1942), 226.

34 Tuzik, Reynold Hillenbrand, 63; see also the description in Boyd, “Liturgy and Catholic Action,” 222.

35 Tuzik, Reynold Hillenbrand, 63-4.

36 Boyd, “Liturgy and Catholic Action,” 225.

37 Hillenbrand, “Spiritual Formation of the Lay Apostle,” August, 1950 lecture; quoted in Tuzik, Reynold Hillenbrand, 146.

38 See, for example, the attention to chapters on both liturgy and Catholic Action synthesized in Fulton Sheen’s popular account of Mystical Body theology: Fulton Sheen, The Mystical Body (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1935).

39 See David Fagerberg, “Liturgy, Social Justice, and the Mystical Body of Christ,” Letter & Spirit 5 (2009): 193-210.

40 Michel, The Liturgy of the Church, 142.

41 Quoted in Michel, “The Liturgy the Basis of Social Regeneration,” 544-45, but Michel does not cite the source for Dawson.

42 Michel, The Christian in the World, 57.

Boyd, “Liturgy and Catholic Action,” 224.

To draw attention to but one example, the famed priest-sociologist Paul Furfey concluded that “the Mass outlaws economic injustice and race prejudice and war. It leads us to see these social problems in the true light, as foolish sins against the Mystical Body. Moreover the Mass, as an inexhaustible source of grace gives us the strength and courage to overcome our own selfishness and practice heroic charity.” See Paul Furfey, “The Liturgy and the Social Problem,” in 1941 National Liturgical Week, 186.

45 Hillenbrand, “The Spirituality of the Young Worker,” August 1951 Lecture; quoted in Tuzik, Reynold Hillenbrand, 126-27.

46 Hillenbrand, “The Mass as the Source and Center of the Lay Apostolate,” 176.

47 The expansive scope of the liturgical movement, viewing the concerns of the modern world in light of the liturgy, is excellently illustrated in the variety of talks in the 1943 Liturgical Week, which includes reflections on liturgy and the racial problem, liturgy and the rural problem, liturgy and the labor problem, liturgy and the armed forces, and the spirit of Christian sacrifice and world peace. See National Liturgical Week 1943, 100-73.

48 Here again Fr. Boyd speaks eloquently: “No, you who are Christed, we are not devotees of the liturgy if we look on the liturgical movement as something accidental, affecting accidentalists, something concerned with Missa Recitata as Missa Recitata, or chant as chant. The liturgical movement is something essential. It is a corporate thing. It is an act of adoration with the whole Mystical Body, an offering of self with all those other selves, and with Christ, a receiving of Christ with all the others who receive Him. We cannot offer ourselves with others simply by doing so at Mass. We have to do it outside, in that world of ours. We have to live it. If we live it outside, we will want the rest of that world to be there with us…By all means, when you go back to the four corners of the United States, pray the Mass. By all means, when you go back to the four corners of the United States, live the Mass!” See Boyd, “Liturgy and Catholic Action,” 226-27.

49 See Pew Research Center, “What Americans Know About Religion,” Pew Forum, 23 July 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/07/23/what-americans-know-about-religion/, accessed 2 August 2023; Pew Research Center, “In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace,” Pew Forum, 7 October 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/, accessed 2 August 2023.

50 Godfrey Diekmann, O.S.B., Lecture, Catholic University, Summer Session, 1944; quoted in Mother Jerome, “We Eat Together,” 97.

51 Fagerberg, “Virgil Michel: A New Appraisal,” 295.

52 Pius XI, “Mit brennender Sorge,” AAS, XXXIX (1937): 154; quoted in Marx, Virgil Michel, 208.

53 See especially Dietrich von Hildebrand, “Liturgy and the Cultural Problem,” in National Liturgical Week 1941, 190-97, and Paul Furfey, “Liturgy and the Social Problem,” in the same source, 181-86. The theme of divinization and spiritual-social transformation was central to the liturgical movement, and the talks of the 1948 Liturgical Week vividly illustrate this focus. See The New Man in Christ National Liturgical Week, Boston, Massachusetts, August 2-6, 1948 (Boston, MA: Liturgical Conference, 1949).

54 Pecklers, The Unread Vision, 287.

55 See, for example, the sociologist Christian Smith’s extensive portrait of the spiritual lives of American teenagers in Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). A helpful distillation of research on young people and trends towards individualism and a therapeutic mentality can be found in James L. Heft, S.M., Catholic High Schools: Facing the New Realities (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 37-60, 143-67.

56 Romano Guardini, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. Ada Lane, Milestones in Catholic Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 95.

43 44

Funeral Homily for The Reverend Martin Zielinski

By Rev. Lawrence Hennessey, S.T.L., Ph.D.

(Scripture Readings: Wisdom 3:1-6, 9 / Romans 8:18-25 / Luke 24:13-35) Dear Chris and Steve and Kate, Dear Family, Dear Friends, My Dear Sisters and Brothers: This morning, we offer this Eucharist in memory of Fr. Martin Zielinski, and in prayerful petition for God’s limitless mercy and unconditional love. We do this in faith, in hope, in love. We do it with full awareness that nothing can make up for the absence of someone we love. In fact, we know it would be wrong to try and find a substitute—as if that were even possible! This morning, we simply hold out our loss, and see it through.

This sounds very hard, perhaps even harsh, at first; but at the same time, it is a great consolation. The holy space of Fr. Marty’s absence, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds of life and love between us. God dwells in this holy space, but He doesn’t fill it. In fact, God’s presence keeps it empty, and so helps us keep alive our communion with Fr. Marty and with each other—even at the cost of our pain.

This is our faith. And so, in hope, we give thanks; in love, we remember.

In the beautiful story we have just heard, St. Luke reminds us of the difficulty we all have in coming to understand the reality and meaning of our Lord Jesus’s resurrection. Here are two close disciples of His, who had heard Him preach, saw His works, and shared His life, yet now they don’t recognize Him. They not only misunderstood the meaning of His life, but even after an explanation, the significance of His saving death and resurrection still totally escapes them too.

But then, what happens?

And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. (Lk 24:30) Suddenly, there is recognition: in the breaking of the bread all is surprisingly clear. And this is the way it should be, for this is the sign of thanksgiving, the sign we call Eucharist, the way the Son of God comes to us in all power veiled in weakness. For what we have in Eucharist, in the bread we break, is precisely this: Jesus the Christ in the moment of supreme power hidden in terrible weakness; this is our Jesus as He dies on the cross and rises from the dead. The terrifying weakness of death is inseparably bound to the overwhelming victory of life—a life that now is stronger than death. There is no Easter without Good Friday; yet the darkness and death of Good Friday surrender inexorably to the brightness and life of Easter Sunday.

As witness to this holy fact, this morning, we too break bread, just as did the Lord Jesus on the night before He died, and again on the first night He is alive again.

And as the Lord Jesus would have it, this is also the way that the life of one called to be the Lord’s disciple and priest is described and defined. The life of a priest, of one who is responsible for the presence of the Eucharist in the life of the Church and in the world, is, in fact, described and defined in terms of death and resurrection—for only in this way can a priest claim truly his share in the life and love of his gracious Lord.

But is this indeed so? Is the life of Eucharist, that is to say, the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, is this the true pattern and rhythm of the Christian life? Does such overwhelming life and power indeed lie veiled behind the apparent weakness of the everyday life of every disciple of Jesus Christ, and especially one He calls as His priest? Let’s draw closer and see if this is so.

Let’s take a priestly life and see what it discloses of God’s life hidden in the everydayness of our own.

I came to know Fr. Marty over thirty years ago, when I returned to Chicago to teach at Mundelein Seminary. He was on the committee that interviewed me for my position on the seminary faculty. After those formalities, we became fast friends.

In addition to our seminary work as teachers and spiritual directors and administrators, we both served as assisting priests at two parishes, both named in honor of St. Patrick—Fr. Marty’s was in Wadsworth, Illinois; mine was in Lake Forest.

Every Sunday at supper, we shared our ministerial adventures from the Sunday Masses.

In this context of the breaking of that bread, I came to know a man, who despite his weaknesses and limitations—which we all share—desired to grow as a genuine priestly disciple of Jesus Christ.

Fr. Marty certainly knew death in his life: the limitations of time and circumstance; plans and dreams that were unfulfilled. Like any conscientious seminary professor, the growing pains of a diverse community sometimes put him at his wits’ end. As a thoughtful priest, he wrestled mightily with doubts and fears about God’s purposes. He was not unaware of the casual cruelty and betrayal weak human beings can inflict on others. He suffered both anguish and humiliation in the course of these past grinding months. And this past Sunday, Fr. Marty came to know the death from the terrible, cruel disease that cost him his life. This picture of his life, however, is far from complete: it is a holy fact that the shadows and darkness of these deaths must always yield to the fresh dawn light of even greater resurrections.

Fr. Marty knew the beauty and the power of the resurrection in his life: goals that were reached; promises he could fulfill; the glow of satisfaction in work well-done, especially his ministry with the people of St. Pat’s parish whom he cherished with unfeigned love; and the deep comfort and security of family and good friends. One holy thing I came to know: Fr. Marty loved the Lord Jesus, especially in the sacrament of His Holy Eucharist and in teaching and preaching the Word of God. Let me share with you one holy, eucharistic moment to show you what this means.

A few weeks ago, the last time Fr. Marty and I were out to supper, he was uncharacteristically quiet and withdrawn. I asked him what was the matter. He confessed that, like all of us, he was afraid at the approach of death; in fact, he was suddenly frightened and deeply saddened in the face of what seemed to be coming. As we sat and talked together, we came to see that deep sadness arises from profound memories and past joys and loves, and thoughts of what may be missed in times to come. Fears arise as we approach what might be, and the thought of crossing an unbridgeable gulf into the unknown, where we are cut off and alone.

We came to see that if our fears were real, they would have crushed us long ago. But our fears still do one valuable service: If we move through their murky, heavy fog, we step into life.

Underneath the oppressive burden of their insubstantial weight, we find love. The same is true of sadness: If we were not attached to life, if we did not love life’s grace, how could we be sad? I can’t know the deep well of sadness, if I’ve never known deep love. Falling through sadness, I find joy and love—first of all from memory and its rich storehouse of grace.

But will all of this grace now be gone, will I truly be simply cut off from what I know and love? Let’s return for a moment to the Emmaus road:

By now, they were near to the village to which they were going....They pressed him: “Stay with us for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So Jesus went in to stay with them. (Lk 24:28-29) To be at home anywhere—most of all in our Father’s house together with our Jesus—is to be alive and in love with those closest to my heart. How else can I know God? Love, like life, lasts forever. In the end, you see, it’s not death that comes for us; it is God. My dear sisters and brothers, I hope it is more clear now, at least in part, how it is that the most significant and special act of our Lord Jesus—His saving death and resurrection—is still alive in our world in the deaths and resurrections of everyday disciples like Fr. Marty. Behind the sign of the breaking of the bread is this wider human tissue, which only veils the inexhaustible splendor of God’s love. But when the bread has been broken for the last time, when the wine has been poured out—as it has been for Fr. Marty—it’s as if the veil is momentarily lifted, and we glimpse, however fleetingly, the true beauty that is always there. For it is God Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, infinitely gentle, infinitely merciful, beckoning us to Himself.

And so, Marty, dear sweet brother, be at rest. Every pain is now lifted, every limitation is now healed. May God give your good and holy soul endless peace!

Amen! So may it be!

Peace be with you, my sisters and brothers, on this holy day, and with all who love the Lord in simplicity of heart!

This homily was given in the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, on the campus of the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary, on June 29, 2023.

Authors’ Page Most Rev. Robert E. Barron

The Most Reverend Robert E. Barron is the Bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester and the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. He received an M.A. in philosophy from the Catholic University of America in 1982 and a S.T.D. from the Institut Catholique de Paris in 1992. Bishop Barron was ordained a priest in 1986 in the Archdiocese of Chicago, and then appointed to the theological faculty of Mundelein Seminary in 1992. He has also served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame and at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. He was twice scholar in residence at the Pontifical North American College at the Vatican. He served as the Rector/President of the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary from 2012 until 2015. On July 21, 2015, Pope Francis appointed Bishop Barron to be Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He was ordained Bishop on September 8, 2015. On June 2, 2022, he was appointed the ninth Bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota. Bishop Barron’s recent publications include This is My Body (2023), The Great Story of Israel: Election, Freedom, Holiness (2022), and Redeeming the Time (2022), all published by Word on Fire.

Rev. Brendan Lupton

The Reverend Brendan Lupton is an alumnus of the University of St. Mary of the Lake and a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago. He was ordained in 2005. A patristic theologian, he earned a S.T.D. in historical theology from the Catholic University of America in 2013. He has served on the faculty of Mundelein Seminary for ten years, and currently is President of the Pontifical Faculty.

Rev. Lupton is author of the book St. Paul as an Exemplar of Holiness and Pastoral Leadership in the Writings of Pope Gregory the Great, published by Edwin Mellen Press in 2017. He also has published scholarly articles in several journals, including Chicago Studies, Downside Review, and Studia Patristica.

Patricia Pintado-Murphy

Patricia Pintado-Murphy is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a licentiate in philosophy from the University of Navarra. Prior to joining the faculty at Mundelein Seminary, she was Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical College Josephinum and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at DeSales University. As a graduate student, she also taught in the Religious Studies Department of the Catholic University of America. She was the director of a program on the New Evangelization at The Athenaeum of Ohio and also served as the managing editor of the Josephinum Journal of Theology. She recently obtained a S.T.L. degree from the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary with a thesis on Ratzinger’s thought. She is a member of the Committee for Priestly Formation of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. She is coeditor of the book published in 2023 by the Institute of Priestly Formation entitled As a Priest Thinks, So He Is: The Role of Philosophy in Seminary Formation. She has articles published on modern philosophy, its impact on the relation of faith and reason, its influence on theology, and the nature of secularization. She is also very interested in the history and experience of Hispanics in the Catholic Church in the United States, particularly now that she also teaches for the Escuela de Liderazgo para la Evangelización of the University of St. Mary of the Lake.

David W. Fagerberg

David W. Fagerberg is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, where he taught for twenty years. He was on the faculty of the Liturgical Institute at the University of St. Mary of the Lake for two years immediately prior to that, and he delivered the Paluch Lectures at USML in 2015. He holds an M.Div. from Luther Seminary; an M.A. from St. John’s University, Collegeville; a S.T.M. from Yale Divinity School; and a Ph.D. from Yale University. He has explored how lex orandi is the foundation for lex credendi (Theologia Prima, 2003) and integrated the Orthodox understanding of asceticism into this (On Liturgical Asceticism, 2013). He applied liturgical theology to daily life (Consecrating the World, 2016) and to personal spirituality (Liturgical Mysticism, 2020). He has treated liturgy’s foundation for dogmatics (Liturgical Dogmatics, 2021) and for various theological questions (The Liturgical Cosmos, 2023).

His recent work has turned to “theologians of abnegation,” i.e., Catholic spiritual writers who wrote between 1500 and 1900, as reflected in the essay featured in this volume. His forthcoming title is Desiring to Desire God.

Kevin D. Magas

Kevin D. Magas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dogmatic Theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary, where he teaches in the areas of sacramental theology and liturgical studies. He has also served as the Director of the Liturgical Institute at USML. He holds an M.T.S. and a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Notre Dame with a concentration in liturgical studies. His research interests include modern liturgical history, especially the nineteenth and twentieth century Liturgical Movements, biblical and patristic ressourcement, and liturgical theology. His articles and reviews have appeared in Worship, Antiphon, and Adoremus Bulletin. He is a member of the Academy of Catholic Theology and Societas Liturgica, and he has served as a board member of the Society for Catholic Liturgy.

Rev. Lawrence R. Hennessey

The Reverend Lawrence R. Hennessey is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Dogmatic Theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary, where he served in a variety of roles, both academic and formational. He holds a S.T.L. in dogmatic theology and a Ph.D. in early Christian theology and literature, both from the Catholic University of America. He is a member of the North American Patristic Society, the Catholic Historical Association, and the American Society of Church History. Over the years he authored a number of articles for Chicago Studies and served as the journal’s main editor, assisting editor, and editorial board member.