The Autumn has come. A succession of glorious sixty-year old sugar maples leads along a path that I, being alive still, am privileged to walk. I am thankful again for another Autumn. The crisp in the air is making me think of hooded sweatshirts and piles of crunchy leaves. Those leaves, yet to fall, are being made gold, ruddy, scarlet, and orange on their branches by a long forgotten painter of the Renaissance tradition. God does it every year.

Leaves turning random colors is not random at all when one thinks of the world as art and the painter as an artist. In fact, their many months of glorious green are no accident either. Green is a deliberate choice. It is an artist's choice. And I cannot help but feel an overwhelming melancholy pitted in the depth of my soul when I hear the acceptable wisdom of the modern world that the reason for greenness in leaves is chlorophyll. That is not a reason. What, then, if we must persist, is the reason for the greenness in the chlorophyll? An artist, when asked, "Why did you paint the queen's hat red?" does not answer "The reason it is red is because of the pigment in the paint." No, the artist answers "Because red indicates her passion, her desire, and the strength of her royal blood."

The Autumn colors remind us that leaves could have been any other color, even colors that God never invented. We could have been shamefully accustomed to the Springtime emergence of purple leaves and purple landscapes. We very well could have been taking for granted the purpleness of the grass we mow every summer. Those who think of themselves as environmentally conscious might have been speaking of "Going Purple" these days. The fact that we live in a green world and not a purple one is not a matter of chance but of choice. It certainly can't be explained with invented nouns like chlorophyll. That chlorophyll exists is just as phenomenal as leaves existing. But chlorophyll cannot explain the greenness of leaves. It only begs the question - why green?

We can ask questions like that to poets and theologians, but scientists ought not be asked such questions lest they inform us of strange new nouns that appear to be explanations for things. But why can't scientists be poets? I always thought that scientists would make the best sort of poets, and poets the most illustrative scientists. A scientist who explains greenness by saying that green is God's favorite color ought to be heard. That at least is a reason. That at least gives meaning to leaves. And it need not preclude him from the business of discovering things like chlorophyll. It would, I suspect, keep his mind from being pitted with melancholy and save him from resorting to non-explanations for things he finds hard to explain. Science books, then, would be like poetry, and learning about the world would be what it ought to be: the discovery of God.

A man in Germany has fathered some 25 children after a number of women purchased his sperm from some pseudo-medical establishment in Virginia named Fairfax Cryobank and had themselves inseminated. He is anonymous (how nice), and misnamed "Donor 401". These sperm "donors" are not donors at all. Besides the fact that the idea of what a true donation is has been completely misunderstood, it will suffice to say that no donation was made in this case. Rather the man was paid around $9,000 for his semen. He sold, not donated, his sperm after emptying himself in a vial twice a week for six months and went on his merry way back to Germany. He has no legal (let alone moral) obligation whatsoever to whomever has been conceived (those 25 children) through his paternal merchandise. The women who patronize the clinic pay for his body fluids and then sign a legal document releasing the man from having to own up to his fatherhood. Along with a host of other inhuman implications, that means that those 25 children have no legal recourse in finding their father - that is, if they are ever told the truth about their father.

One of the mothers of the children, Kimberly, has not disclosed all the relevant facts to her little ones but instead she is awaiting another time, saying, "As they get older and understand better, I can give them more information." Will she give her children all the information? Will the child in question know that her father, who never knew her mother nor cared to, was paid money to ejaculate in a vial and then that fluid was inserted into her mother artificially at some clinic? Or perhaps she was conceived in a dish with several more brothers and sisters and then by some awful fate she survived the holocaust of a petri dish, but most of her siblings did not? Waiting until she is "older and [can] understand better," to me means that Kimberly is waiting until the child is old enough to be misinformed. At least it means when she is old enough to be convinced that she is supposed to be alright with her absentee father and even find his actions honorable. All 25 children may be convinced of the nobility of the Saxon that "created" them when in fact the man prostituted part of himself - a sacred part of himself - for $360 per surviving child.

The story emerged when Kimberly's children stumbled upon a talk show where several children with their mothers were being featured. The paternal DNA of these children was also bought at the Fairfax Cryobank. It was Kimberly's child, while watching the program, who said something to the effect of, "Hey, Mommy, those kids look like us!" Sure enough, the kids being featured on the talk show looked much like Kimberly's children. She later confirmed that the children on TV and her own children all came from Donor 401 and apparently they all looked similar. I suppose it a good thing that these children found out about each other so young and not after adventitiously marrying one another later in life.

Human life is sacred. So is the transmission of it. So are the bodies and fluids that make it happen. Human life is not for sale, nor are its parts. In fact, the buying and selling of our bodies is the ultimate testimony that we are well entrenched in the business of degrading ourselves and are convinced, even those of us who are "older and can understand," that humanity - in its flesh - has no real dignity. If it's merely biology - then Donor 401 has done a thing neither good nor bad. But recalling our divine image means elevating biology to the sacred and not demoting it to the sacrilegious.

The physical embrace of sexual love has sacred meaning. When it is emptied of its sacredness it actually becomes demeaning (de-mean, emptied of meaning). It actually renders the sexual act incapable of communicating love. This is why we call it "making love". It means fidelity. It means commitment. It means that the child that comes about is the fruit of biology and the fruit of love - (its a 'both, and'). Both must be present to speak the true meaning of sexual love. The children that results from the normal biological functions void of love-making (as in our 25 siblings) are everything that all children are - precious, good, pure, loved by God. But they have been wronged.

The clinics call it "artificial insemination." Well, what do they mean, artificial? What is artificial about such procedures? Where does the artificiality lie? The biology that results in a child during normal sexual intercourse among loving spouses is the same biology that results in a child in a petri-dish, or when sperm is inserted into the woman. The artificiality of it all has nothing to do with biology. The piece that is missing - the piece that is artificial - is the piece that has been left out: love. Artificial insemination is by its own title without love. This is the sin that we commit against the resulting child. This is the wrong that has been committed against those 25 American siblings. They have been given artificial love.

You cannot have watched TV in the last few months and not be aware that a type of doomsday is forecast for February, 2009 when the United States will make the exciting transition from Analog Television (listen to it, it already sounds archaic) to Digital Television. The scrolling marquee across the top of our beloved TV shows distracts us and makes us wonder - are we ready? Did we buy the box? Do we already have digital - do we need anything else? HDTV.GOV even has an official second by second countdown. The world will be changing. Will you be left behind? We are going officially digital and anyone who is unprepared will...will...well what would happen to me if I didn't join the crowd in February 2009?

What would happen if I let my subscription to addictive, unhelpful, misguided, superficial, and often mind-withering television programs expire? What would happen to me if I just didn't catch the digital fever? What would happen to my soul if I chose a different road? May I speculate? Perhaps my soul will awake from it's comatose digression within reality TV and find, thank God, that I am actually still alive and that it has been about six years since I tried swing dancing, or two years since I spent the evening on the back porch smoking a pipe, three months since I last played wiffle ball, since high school that I read a book (well, no, I didn't read any books in high school), and that I have never even so much as knocked on my neighbors door to introduce myself.

None of these experiences are digital and so I can't imagine that a transition to an all-digital age will do anything more for my soul than would a transition away from it. In fact, the latter option I believe would point me towards soul fulfilling options in my life.

I am not anti-TV or anti-technology or, for that matter, anti-the digital transition in 2009. That would not be my point. I merely suggest that the option is on the table to totally ignore the panic that our TVs won't be working or that we won't be linked into the digital world, and to totally ignore the idea that somehow we will lose ourselves if we did not upgrade immediately, before its too late. I, for one, would like to try a month, or two, or seventeen, without digital cable, and see what happens to my soul.

Again, I would not be one to de-value technology - technology makes you able to read these words. What I would simply like to do in February 2009 is re-value our souls and reestablish the very real idea that human beings have flourished in non-digital ages. Our souls can equally flourish in the Digital Age - but it won't happen on the couch. It won't happen if the best part of our family lives is spent watching digital television surrounded by the loved ones that we haven't loved in quite some time.

In the least we must ask ourselves the question of whether digital television is making us more human or if it is making more humans less so. The answer to that may help us decide what to do in February 2009.

I for one will try wiffle ball, or fishing, or visiting an old church, or growing garlic, or....

When I began confessing my sins many years ago, I approached the confessional with some unknown fear. I did not want to confess my sins. I did not want to tell them to some priest. I found very well argued Protestant reasons why I need not go and I tried to cling to them. I was sometimes embarrassed. I was often too proud. I found it a nuisance, the very idea nagging my mind all the time. It wouldn't work, it never changed me. The feeling grew into an aversion for the sacrament.

I struggled to confess and admit - but it was my confession and my admittance that brought the forgiveness - and that I longed for. The more I went to the confessional, the easier it became to confess my sins. The fear began to dissipate after I began submitting to the idea that my sins really were sins, and that I need not have the burden of deciding whether or not I was in a state of grace. That burden I could leave to God, to Christ, to the Church, if only I freely confessed.

The aversion I had developed was sorely misplaced. I had for a long time felt sick with the very place that I could feel satiated. Over time the locus of my aversion changed. It was no longer at the entrance of the confessional, but at the exit. I began having not this irrational aversion of entering the confessional but the very rational aversion of leaving it. Forgiveness existed on the inside, but sin, my sin, existed on the outside. Which did my soul desire? My aversion for the sacrament was replaced by an aversion for sin, and because of that I found the confessional an extremely safe place to be. It is Golgotha. It is where that ancient wood holds the merciful God. It is where the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world.

It is not the ingression, but the egression of my soul from the confessional that brings the most fear. I think perhaps the only place that I can trust myself is in the confessional, because there I am most honest, most transparent. But in reality, it is not about trusting myself, but rather entrusting myself to the care of a forgiving Christ. My whole life should be lived like that - but my life outside the confessional is sin, and to its lure I constantly return.

My aversion to sin is not yet strong enough. But the aversion is present in a way that makes the confessional habitual. I no longer see confession as an antidote to sin (which it may still be), but rather as a path - a spiritual path - to learn the ways of averting sin. Inside the confessional I am learning the way of the cross - and it always, always, always ends in that miracle of Golgotha called forgiveness of sins. The cross slices open heaven and allows the blood of a forgiving God to bleed me free. Why am I afraid of being there? How am I not afraid to leave?

The priest finishes that beautiful prayer that I have heard too many times but then not enough times - that prayer which at first was strange, then was repetitive, then was boring, then was moving, and then was all I desired to hear. "...through the ministry of the Church, may God give you pardon and peace. And I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit..."

Amen! Egress, my soul, and fight!

A recent headline on a news webpage refused to go without a commentary: You're dead: where's your 401K? A guide to retirement.

I was thankful for my Catholic upbringing. When I thought of my death my 401k did not come to mind, but rather the state of my soul and the spiritual location of my eternal self which was made for God but which is constantly tempted away from God in this life. That is what I think of when I think of my death. The headline could have read: You're dead: where are you? The headline instead suggested that your eternal worth was somehow linked to your 401k and its location after your death.

Perhaps it goes without saying in my family and among my friends - but in our society it needs repeating: What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? If in fact you are pouring your life into your 401k then that is exactly where your life may be after your death: lost. And being lost in the after life means wailing and grinding of teeth and burning flames - all images used by Christ. There is good news though: your eternal happiness does not rest upon the size of your 401k nor on its proper allocation amongst your family after your death.

There is ample reason to contribute to a 401k and any other retirement account and to be financially responsible. Proper handling and planning of your financial stability in the Christian tradition is called stewardship and it is, when done in the Lord, virtuous. But it is easy and even probable that we fall into the trap of somehow linking our life, or our death, to something as lifeless as a retirement plan. It is the age-old temptation to serve mammon.

The webpage I found the headline on was entirely secular in its outlook, so I wasn't surprised to see the message framed the way it was. But because we are constantly concerned with our mammon - even to the point it seems of wondering where our mammon might be after we have gone - we have replaced our eternal self, our very humanness, with emptiness. Death is not the end, but perhaps we don't believe that anymore. If the world has convinced us that death is in fact the end of you, then the message of Christianity is all the more poignant and needed right there. Christ rose from the dead. Christ rose from the dead. The Church will say it as long as she has breath: Christ rose from the dead.

So, yes, save your money. Invest. Plan. Retire. But do not forget charity. Do not forget the poor. Do not forget about life while your busy trying to get to retirement. And do not forget your worth, which cannot be measured by monetary returns. The Gospel promises a return greater than any market, and greater than any investment. Every time you think about your retirement, you should think doubly about your eternity.

Two weeks ago the bishops of the Anglican Church voted to allow women to become bishops. The vote comes after many weeks of controversy within the Anglican Communion over the issue, with so-called "liberal" supporters and so called "conservative" detractors. The event also follows the 2003 controversy concerning the ordination of the bishop in the US Episcopal Church (a branch of Anglicanism), Robinson, who is described as "openly gay"- which is a confusing and unhelpful phrase.

Following the vote to allow women bishops, arguments and discussions from both sides began to emerge. Some "conservative" bishops even expressed a desire to return to communion with the Catholic Church, even to the point of bringing whole congregations of parishioners with them. Whether or not that is a possibility remains to be seen. But the idea that there are some within the Anglican Church who view a return to Rome as a solution to the problems that are dividing their church does get to the heart of the matter.

The vote to allow women to be bishops really has nothing to do with whether or not women should be bishops. And the allowance of an "openly gay" man in America to become a bishop really has nothing to do with the debate surrounding homosexuality. These issues, when they are simply debated and discussed under the rubrics of popular vocabulary, i.e. "liberal," "conservative," "vote," etc., simply become political issues and the bishops become politicians. The "votes" that the bishops cast are seen as an exercise in democracy rather than a prayerful casting of lots. Casting of lots is not a form of democracy; well, it's not supposed to be. It is at least something resembling cleromancy and at most something resembling divine decree.

The office of Bishop certainly has political elements but the temptation to practice the office as primarily a political post has certainly lured some historical figures. Many American Catholic bishops of the last thirty to forty years have opted for the more political route, leaving their flocks searching for shepherds. But from the beginning it was not so. More often than not, bishops carry out their duties because they believe they are representative of the apostles and that their primary mission is not to maintain political order but rather to preach and teach Jesus Christ. I imagine that like the Catholic Church, a majority of Anglican bishops are attempting to carry out their episcopacy with the goal of bringing Christ to their flocks and to the world. But the bishops, having governing responsibilities as well, exercise that governance in the name of...well, in the name of whom?

The Catholic Church has always maintained that the Pope and the bishops in communion with him exercise their "power" in the name of Jesus Christ. By virtue of the office of Peter and the office of the Bishops, the Church exercises its power in the name of God. Now, you can think the Church crazy or arrogant or narrow-minded for claiming something like that, but if the Catholic Church is not carrying out the will of God then it is simply carrying out the will of human beings. If the Church is not the visible reality of God working in the world, if it is not the sacrament of salvation, then it is meaningless. If the Catholic Church did not claim to be God's handiwork then everything she says is rubbish and a sham. Therefore the only reason I would give an ear to the Church at all is if she claimed some kind of divine beginnings. Otherwise, she is not worth a minute of my time.

But this is exactly what makes the Church credible and worth all of our minutes - that she claims divine ordinance. Most people who deny that the Church is divinely ordained do so with a claim to the same ordination. A man denies that the Church was founded by Christ but the man expects us to believe his word as divine. He uses the Gospels to argue against the Church but fails to see that it was the Church who told him that what he was reading was the Gospel. The Church does claim to speak in the name of Christ, and the bishops in communion with the Pope exercise their authority in his name as well.

Now the Anglican Church has that unfortunate historical nascency that places its authority to exercise ecclesial power in question. Henry VIII adopted total and supreme power over the Catholic Church in England in an attempt perhaps to take the keys from Peter, or really from Christ. Later monarchs would re-distribute that power among bishops, and retain some of it to one degree or another, but the keys would often not fit the locks. What changed after the Church in England became the Church of England was that spiritual authority instead of residing in a divine office, like the Pope or Bishop, resided now in a temporal office, like the King or Queen. This brings the question of authority to the fore. It is not really the vote allowing women to become bishops that matters. It is whether or not that vote has any correlation to divine decree. No doubt that because of their vote, women will become bishops in the Anglican Church. But do the Anglican bishops believe that they are exercising this power in the name of God? If so, where did they get this authority? From Jesus? From Peter? From the Pope? From Henry VIII?

Those within the Anglican Communion that look to the Catholic Church as a means of unifying and preserving the best of the Anglican tradition are looking to the right place. This may be too early to see any real steps towards a reunion of Canterbury and Rome, but at least this difficult time for Anglicans may help to open their eyes to what history and the Holy Spirit can teach us: the Church ought to be One.

I once attended a large, weekend-long Christian concert series made up of many of today's contemporary Christian artists and attended by thousands of mostly Protestant teens and young adults. The music was great and the concerts were fun.

One night during the weekend, the idea of performance was set aside and an artist led the crowds with worship and prayer through music which allowed the young people for some time to adore God and not the musicians. It worked: the crowds were praying and singing to God with all of their hearts.

But towards the close of our time in worship, the musicians began playing and singing U2's "Pride, In the Name of Love" and swaying a huge American flag across the stage, working the crowd up into a frenzy. The people continued to sing along to the familiar pop lyrics, saluting the American flag through song, and, I suppose, continuing to adore God in heaven at the same time. But for me, the introduction of our great national symbol, the flag, combined with a song written by an Irishman for Martin Luther King, and the subtle transition from worship of God to patriotic salutation of America did not quite work. It seemed we had gone in the wrong direction. We worshiped God, and then reached our spiritual pinnacle with national allegiance - should it not be the other way around? It was difficult to tell if we were still adoring God or if in fact we were now adoring the flag and perhaps even saluting God...either way I was a bit confused.

Our day of Independence will be celebrated in a few days. It would do us very well to celebrate it: with American flags, music, remembrance of our nation's past, and thanksgivings for our liberty. But the culmination, the spiritual pinnacle of that day, at least for Catholics, should be our adoration of the God who transcends nationality.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar reminds us of the catholicity of God when he suggests that any church which breaks from Rome (not Italy, but from Pontifical headship) becomes nationalistic and always tends towards the dangers associated with a State Church. Germany had no choice after the Reformation - the state would now be one with the church and without a center in Rome it would now be centered in Germany, and in Switzerland, and in whatever nation the Christians found themselves. Christianity would no longer be manifested as a catholic reality, but rather manifested in national realities, more and more localized. Henry VIII's break with Rome left the Church there no higher appeal than the King, who became its spiritual head. The Church of England is just that. The power of the Pope has never really been dissolved, but rather transferred to Kings, and eventually pastors - and even in some cases, to individuals, who take it upon themselves to loose and bind whatever they will. In any case, Christianity was no longer universal, but local.

But since the Reformation contributed to the convergence of Church and State, the early Americans and their great democratic project saw the dangers of a nationalistic religion. Our founders desired to canonize the American principle that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" - this ensured that the State could not be the spiritual head of any religion because God was greater than the State. Protestant churches, already nationalistic in origin, could not depend on the State to be their spiritual head.

And so Protestants recognized that the State could not be their pastor, but they knew that without a pastor the church could not endure. Without leaders, the people would not be led. Eventually, then, the Protestant churches in America began to congregate around their great pastors - from Billy Graham to the local 'Pastor John'. But their church's nationalistic tendencies (having only American pastors) caused them to see the world strictly through the American lens. It may have even led them to see God through the American lens, leaving them dangerously close to the idea that God and flag were sometimes interchangeable. They were virtuous in their patriotism, and virtuous in their piety, but the former limited the latter, and as a result, Protestantism in America looks very American.

For Catholic Americans, the proclamation that the State should not have spiritual power did not leave them without a pastor - for, in matters spiritual, habemus papam. The Pope, no matter his national origin, represents no one nation. The lens through which the American Catholic saw the world was often checked by a view that was not tied to any national power - that of the papacy. The Church of Rome has always recognized patriotism and love of country to be a virtue - but country must never usurp God. God's banner is not star-spangled. And this principle to which Catholics are to be bound keeps our allegiances ordered. American Catholicism doesn't look American, but it does look Catholic.

Protestants and Catholics in America nonetheless, can share our founder's great vision that religion is best headed by pastors and not by politicians. We pay allegiance to our star-spangled banner and recognize the greatness of America. We can and should salute that flag under which our fathers died. We can and do worship the God that existed before America did. But there is always a danger of mixing the two. And so: salutation first for our great country, worship last and above all for our God. One of our anthems says it well:

My country, 'tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

Of thee I sing;

Land where my fathers died,

Land of the pilgrims' pride,

From every mountainside

Let freedom ring!

My native country, thee,

Land of the noble free,

Thy name I love;

I love thy rocks and rills,

Thy woods and templed hills;

My heart with rapture thrills,

Like that above.

Let music swell the breeze,

And ring from all the trees

Sweet freedom's song;

Let mortal tongues awake;

Let all that breathe partake;

Let rocks their silence break,

The sound prolong.

Our father's God to Thee,

Author of liberty,

To Thee we sing.

Long may our land be bright,

With freedom's holy light,

Protect us by Thy might,

Great God our King!

I remember journeying to Ireland hoping that the rivers there did indeed flow with rich quantities of Guinness in place of ordinary water. I got the idea from an old Irish immigrant at my church who told me that the Irish bottle the stuff right from the rivers and ship it straight to his door. Needless to say, even though I found no such extraordinary rivers in Ireland, as I climbed the small mountains of County Kerry along Conner's Pass, what I did see was the ordinary kind of river flowing with crisp, cold water. But because of the romance of Ireland, the ordinary water took on a divine quality and as I washed my face it felt baptismal; as I drank it I thought for a moment that it did in fact taste like Guinness. That old man was right.

The rivers of Ireland are romantic because we can still see the divine quality of water when we travel to a foreign land. I know however, even after those ethereal days on the Emerald Isle, that I could find the same water - crisp and clear - in any of the great spring fed waterways in Pennsylvania; certainly I could find it among the rivers and creeks of the Appalachian Trail or the Rockies out west. But I went to Ireland with a child's mind, with an eager heart, with a lack of boredom - with the hope of divine rivers. And I found them. I was satisfied because it was the first time I looked at a river again. It tasted like Guinness because for a moment I forgot what Guinness tasted like. It was baptismal because I approached the river bed as if with original sin.

There is nothing ordinary about water. It may be common - but it is far from ordinary. What creates boredom in the human heart is not that we are constantly dealing with ordinary things. It is that we are constantly missing the extraordinary in what is common. We seek uncommon things in order to fulfill our need for the divine. But God, it seems, is often found in the ordinary. In reality, what seems ordinary is always extraordinary.

My three month old son is fascinated by white walls with slight dancing shadows. He will stare for minutes on end at a blank wall - even smile at times at the change from light to shadow that the swaying curtains behind him are creating on the wall. What is his fascination?

Consider now the glory of a river - and the first time you saw one. Fascination cannot even capture the human response to a majestic river. It has always lifted our souls to heaven; at every first experience of a rushing, refreshing river the human rises to ponder divinity. No wonder we baptize with water and bless ourselves too - God must swim in the holy liquid. We know it and we take advantage of it. But it sometimes becomes ordinary. It sometimes becomes all too common. We sometimes walk through the church doors without a second thought to the glory of the gift of water; we dip our fingertips into the bowl, bless ourselves, and get bored.

If the rivers were suddenly Guinness, or milk, or some other substance for a day - all of humanity would rush to their rivers again. We would find sustenance, refreshment, a cure for our boring hearts; we would find God again and thank him for the river, so rich like Guinness, or so gleaming white like milk. But because our rivers rush with the ordinary, most of us forget that they even rush at all. Most of us forget about the glory of a river - and most of us begin to forget about God.

Chesterton said concerning the greatness of fairy tales: "They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water." This is the essence of my trip to Ireland. But, I have learned, it should be the essence of my trip to the backyard.

Weeks ago at a Wednesday audience in St. Peter's Square, the Pope reminded us of St. Benedict of Nursia who lived some 1500 years ago. To a nation such as the U.S. approaching 250 years of age with a citizenry that has at best a hazy understanding of its own origins, seeing the significance of a 1500 year old monkish man from across the Atlantic may be impossible. Europe, on the other hand, is just as old as that memory, and I think the Pope was trying to remind the Europeans of how old their continent really is. Neither the Reformation nor the French Revolution, nor even the re-mapping of Europe after WW II can claim to be the origin of what is Europe today. These were events along the way and part of their history. But by listening to one of her founding fathers, Europe would do well to learn the lessons of the life of St. Benedict. And America would do well to remember that St. Benedict, one of our founding grandfathers, was as essential to our existence as he was to Europe's.

For while the modern world would rather bury St. Benedict as insignificant history in a dark time of a superstitious past, the saint rises from his muddy grave and reminds us once again that there was a time when Europe wasn't, a time when she did not exist. And it was also not inevitable that Europe would exist. Men and women like St. Benedict cared enough about civilization to keep it civil. For while the barbarians sought to bring disorder and chaos by scorching books rather than scribing them and burning libraries rather than building them, their attempt to vitiate civilization during those early centuries brought us into a dark age. It was the successive invasions of the Vandals and the Goths, the Vikings and the Visigoths that threatened to destroy what Athens and Rome had given the world: culture, civilization, and political order. The people of the falling Roman Empire, no longer protected by the power of the centurion were at the mercy of the barbarian. They lost their freedom when the rulers were destroyed. But it was Benedict and his spiritual offspring - the monks of Western Catholicism - that saved culture. Benedict was able to achieve this not by becoming a political ruler but by simply writing a Rule.

And generations of Benedictine monks - priests, lay people, kings, peasants - ordered their life around that Rule, praying, worshiping, working, and living under the banner of Christ the King. And while the countryside was being burned by the horde, in the monastery monks were burning with intellectual and cultural fervor. The candles that lit the monastery halls, archways, and chapels gave light to those monks that sought to restore order and knowledge to the European countryside. The monastery candle was the light of the dark ages.

For within those monasteries, often themselves the object of warring and destruction, monks were busy copying ancient texts - the whole wealth of antiquity - in order that they would survive that dark age. All of the great literature of the ancient world survives today because of the scribal work of humble monks - hours and hours of copying and restoring in order that the knowledge and intellectual treasure of antiquity would not be lost.

And besides that great task, they found time to run farms with new and greater technological advances; they taught and restored literacy to the poor; they mined for elements; they invented champagne, brewed beer, and made wine; they took in lost travelers and the shipwrecked; they perfected water powered technologies; they found ways to produce iron, build gliders, make clocks, and store spring water for drought seasons. They created a universal written script which replaced the numerous, illegible scripts of the empire. They did much more. But in short, the monks preserved the very culture and civilization that was in danger of being wiped out by the lawlessness that was enveloping the world.

St. Benedict could not have foreseen what his Rule and his dedication to Christ and the Church would do for the West. His own holiness of life was an example for the peasant and noble alike, and an impetus for restoration. For in addition to the many efforts of the Church and dedicated state leaders besides - it was his efforts that saved culture and restored the world. It was his efforts that laid the foundation for a civilization that we now take for granted, but may be losing: Europe. And Europeans are losing themselves in part because they have forgotten one of their fathers.

Who better to remind them of that father than a Pope of the same name?

There are times when we have a fear that at any given moment we are not quite where we would like to be. We somehow feel distant from our true place in the world. We feel as though we are missing some very important or significant opportunity that is taking place elsewhere and by uncontrollable and pernicious circumstances we are prevented from being in that place where we would find fulfillment and happiness. We instead look at our situation as gloom and we think we are victims of fate.

That feeling, which I have often had, is nothing more than a lie and a temptation to despair. There are of course times where by our own lack of effort we fail to be where we ought to be, or fail to do what we ought to do. And there are times when circumstances prevent us from being where we would like to be. But, there is no place or circumstance in which despair is the inevitable human response. And in Christ there are no victims of fate, only opportunities of grace. Maximilian Kolbe taught us as much.

The Polish man who became a saint could not have foreseen where his life would lead him. He could not have known in his joyful childhood that he would one day find himself in the hell of Auschwitz. But in those circumstances, and in that dreadful, fearful, deadly, inhuman moment - which most of us have heard about but cannot even fathom - where he, with a starved and broken body, decided that it would be beneficial to him to offer up his life in order that a father who had been condemned to execution might live - those circumstances are likely not where Maximilian Kolbe wanted to be - but it is exactly where he knew he should be. And he believed that God's grace was present even there.

If I find myself despairing of my circumstance in life I try and think of the joy that Kolbe had in much worse circumstances. If I had been in that moment, would I have joy? Would I have courage, as he did? It is likely that I would not, since I now despond of circumstances that any Pole of the early twentieth century would have been overwhelmingly grateful for.

And so I cannot forget the memories during the first week of April, 2005 when I sat with the children and grandchildren, now adults, of many of those forgotten Poles. It was not at Auschwitz or Birkenau, or even in Krakow that I enjoyed their company. Rather, we found ourselves together on the Via della Conciliazione - the road leading to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The occasion for our chance meeting was the funeral Mass of the great Polish Pope John Paul II, who canonized Maximilian Kolbe in 1982.

The faces of these Polish people were severe - an indication that the story of their murdered countrymen had been passed along to successive generations with all its gravity. But they cheered with jubilation in memory of their Polish Pope. They even looked skeptically at me -the young, ignorant American - who at the time was still learning of the horrors inflicted upon that nation during WW II. Yet, when our group offered to say the Rosary with their group, alternating by bead from Polish Hail Marys to English, they accepted, some with smiles. And there on the doorsteps of St. Peter's, at the funeral Mass of one of the Church's greatest Popes, praying with some of the centuries most suffered people, I could not help but realize that I was exactly where I was supposed to be - and I thanked God for the blessing of being alive.

I knew that moment would not last. And days, weeks, and now years have gone by, and the only memory of those moments with the Polish pilgrims is a small book of Polish prayers that one of them had given me. The circumstances of my life have changed and some of them are difficult - but none are without grace and so I must remain joyful. Perhaps somewhere in Poland there are pilgrims, sons and daughters of JP II, who remember me when they recite their Polish Hail Marys. I must return the favor of their prayers.

The rain had begun to fall heavily, pounding the roof of the taxi cab, and quickly forming small rushing streams along the roadways of Rome. The taxi driver seemed indifferent to the change in weather as he continued to drive too fast and brake too late. But the confidence that poured out of his dark eyes and benevolent Italian smile in the rear view mirror calmed my fears that we would soon hydroplane off into the street vendors and shops.

"Tre Fontane?" Massimiliano asked again.
"Si, tre fontane, di San Paolo," I said. Three Fountains, the Church of St. Paul.

I had been in Rome for several weeks now, and I had seen many of the glorious churches that make Rome glorious. A friend had suggested this little known church of St. Paul, since it was less ornate and hidden in the woods. I woke up that morning to sunshine and warm weather, and decided to make the trip to see it for myself. But the rains come suddenly in Rome; suddenly like the sword.

The taxi driver made his way through Rome and we soon found ourselves in more of a wooded area. We passed a sign that probably read TRE FONTANE, but with the rain and Massimiliano's speed I couldn't be sure. At the next hidden driveway, familiar to the driver it seems, we quickly veered off the road and up a hill that brought us to a small building. Behind the building and everywhere else trees covered the property. In the distance, about fifty feet away, I saw what looked like a Marian grotto.

Massimiliano mumbled some Italian numbers, and I gave him too much and told him "Grazie!" I am not even sure if I had closed the door before he was again driving down towards the road. I would never see Massimiliano again.

Within seconds, I was drenched. I ran over to the building and went inside. It was a gift shop, but no one was at the counter and no other pilgrims were around. I looked around to find a map of the grounds. When I finally did, I realized that on this side of the main road was the site of a Marian shrine, hence the grotto, but the church of St. Paul that I was looking for was on the other side of the road. I quickly thought that perhaps I could catch Massimiliano, but realized that he was likely back into the heart of Rome by now. I would have to walk.

There were umbrellas in a box with some random price tags. I thought maybe I'd purchase one to make the trek over to the church. I rang a counter bell in order to pay - but no one came, and no one responded. I rang it several times more, but nothing. I decided just to leave some money on the counter with a note that said "Ombrello."

I walked out of the building, glancing towards the grotto where I did in fact see a few people praying. I continued down towards the road. By the time I got to the main road, the rain had subsided. This was my third unnecessary umbrella purchase in as many weeks.

I carefully crossed the road and finally found the church of St. Paul of the Three Fountains. It was a medieval looking church, with a Roman portico at the entrance. With a simple exterior the church was extremely inviting and prayerful. I entered and the sounds of the outdoors faded to memories. The deep resonance of chanting filled the old, sacred building; Trappist monks were chanting midday prayer behind a gated sanctuary. The building smelled like the good earth and in fact much of it had no marble or stone floor, but only the dirt. The walls were mere stone; in the apses of the few windows there were centuries old frescoes, but these served as the only artwork in the church. With the monks chanting, many candles flickering, and the dirt beneath my feet, I was instantly transported into the Bright Ages of the medieval church. Even the musty air seemed to have lingered there for ages, awaiting my own presence and filling my lungs with some ancient spiritual spright.

I sat in a creaky walnut pew. Two, perhaps three other pilgrims prayed there in the church. I asked for the intercession of St. Paul, whose legendary death took place here on these grounds. The sword of a Roman executioner likely relieved St. Paul's body of its head, and our first great Catholic theologian bled the ground red with his witness to the Risen Christ. Three fountains are said to have sprung from the ground where his head rolled - hence the name Three Fountains. I had a sense while praying that day of how much St. Paul contributed to the universal church, the catholic Church. His life and death were not just about these three fountains of water that sprung from the ground at Tre Fontane, but the testimony of his life, freely given for God. It was because St. Paul had drank of that life-giving water that springs from the fountain of Christ, knowing that no other water could satisfy, that he died in the hope of eternal life.

There in that church, that simple, quiet church, two thousand years after St. Paul heard the sword unsheathed, preparing himself to meet Jesus face to face, I asked him to pray on my behalf, that I might remember what it means to drink from the fountain that Christ offers. I prayed that I would be as prepared as he to meet the Lord in the air and to hold on to the hope of God's promises - for I know that in the face of death, God's promises are all I have.

This coming weekend we will baptize our newborn son. Although that seems like a familiar event, and a common thing to do to a newborn, my wife and I attempt to make it as uncommon and unfamiliar as possible. We attempt to see baptism as the pagans saw it: a strange, new action, whose ritual of pouring water is common enough, but whose characteristic formula sounds like something out of a spell book: "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." Who is this Father? Who is this Son? Who is this Spirit?

We try and recall the moments in history when the promise of Christ could be accepted as something which everyone longed for but could not find in the gods of the pantheon, or the philosophies, or the mystery religions, or the natural world. We try and see Jesus for the first time again - the hope of eternal life - the god who was man - the god who died - the god who rose from death - the god who is three yet one - the god who promises that my son will live in newness of life, and one day, be saved from death. Nothing has brought us greater joy than the birth of our son - but we do not mock death, we face it head on. We know that our son, now alive, will also die. That terrible truth, that unnatural truth, is why we stand in need of the promise of baptism. If Christ's death is to mean anything, it will mean life for our son when his life is gone.

It brings us to a moment of commitment in our own lives. For we do not baptize him because of tradition, or because that's what everyone does, or because our families would be upset if we didn't, or because that's what our parents did. The last thing we desire is to go through the motions. If we did not believe, we would not baptize. For how strange a thing to do to a child - to dress him in white, to anoint him with oil, to pour water over him and recite the spell - how strange a thing to do to a child if we did not believe that by this very act our son becomes changed? And not just the physical change of becoming wet with water, but the ontological change of being adopted by God?

Late at night on some nights this week, I laid awake in my bed, pondering the mystery of the faith I profess. Doubt cast a shadow on my mind. Is it real? Do I really believe this? Do I really want to baptize my son? The priest will ask us again if we believe in God, in Jesus, in the Church. Saying yes will not be easy. It will be again a commitment to Christ in my own life. It will be nothing less than an act of faith.

There is hope in Christ. My son can live forever in glory with God. This weekend, through water and prayer, he takes his first step towards Paradise.

The Roman Empire had for centuries united the ancient world with everything that made her great: the cult of the gods, common monetary units and a unified economy, free trade and travel, well-engineered roads and public buildings, clean water, military protection for its citizens and peasantry alike (after taxes, of course), stunning architecture and artistic production, Roman law and justice, an imperial system that sometimes ruled justly and often kept the peace, and thousands and thousands of common men and women who, to borrow Chesterton's phrase, made Rome great by loving her. And yet, peasantry and nobles alike began to see the Roman Empire lose her brilliance and begin to fade away. Our Roman mother was dying. But in her womb her progeny was being formed. Yet it was not inevitable that she would be born. Would the Empire have an heir, or would the child die with antiquity?

When the Romans had put an end to the remains of Alexander's dominion, they did not abolish Greek culture. The influence of the Hellenes and all of their cultural richness could not be abolished. We still are affected by Greek culture today. And whatever those heady philosophers had been discussing during the Athenian twilight, it seemed worth discussing again. And interestingly enough, in the great capital named for its founder, Alexandria, there were already sects of the Hebrew nation speaking Greek and reading Aristotle - all while continuing to worship Yahweh. These Hebrews probably would have seen a connection between the Philosophers' God, whom the thinkers described as "being itself," and their own Biblical God, who called himself "I AM" - the only human words that aptly designate pure being.

And across the sea, along the banks of the Jordan River, a man in the Biblical tradition was also calling himself I AM. But his message was not left merely for those who knew Yahweh. His message was also for those who knew Zeus. And even those skeptical philosophers who realized that the old gods were of late failing to show up at prayer time were able to recognize something greater than a man in the Galilean. That Galilean may have impregnated the Hellenized Roman Empire with the idea that the Greek world, in its search for beauty, truth, goodness, and divinity, could be understood within the Biblical tradition. There could be a fusion of Greek culture and Biblical faith. This is the progeny that was stirring in the womb of the dying Empire. This was the heiress of that great heritage of antiquity. When she was born, the child's mother, the dying Roman Empire, may have spoken her last words as her daughter was placed upon her bosom. She gave her a name: "Europe."

This idea, that Europe is not just a name but something more like an heiress, is part of what Pope Benedict was trying to get across in a lecture he gave at Regensburg in September of 2006. The Pope boldly states in his lecture that the harmonious convergence of Greek philosophy and Biblical faith was not merely the circumstance that Europe was founded upon, but rather that this convergence of faith and philosophy, faith and reason, is literally what created Europe. The Pope even says that this amalgamation of Hebraic faith and Hellenistic reason, along with the adoption of the Roman heritage, is and "remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe."

Modern Europeans are on a desperate search for something that can unify the continent once again. They are searching for an identity. After the bloodiest of centuries in which war and communist atheism had sundered Europe's religious identity by targeting the Judeo-Christian heritage, it was exactly that heritage that was wounded. The European Union, in attempting to live up to its name, is trying to unify itself with a constitution that can re-found Europe. And yet, in a strange denial of the history I have expounded here, the drafters of that constitution refused to make any mention of Europe's Christian heritage. The very thing that gave rise to Europe, according to Benedict, was being ignored. How can Europe live, if she denies that she was ever alive?

The constitution, as first drafted, did not pass. Perhaps the writers may some day come up with a draft that gets the go-ahead vote. But if that document does not make mention of the Christianity which at the close of antiquity was one in the same with what we call Europe, then what will emerge upon that continent will need another name. It will not be Europe, for Europe will have followed her Roman mother to the grave - her headstone ironically marked with a granite cross.

In September of 2006, Pope Benedict spoke before a group of university scholars and students, speaking from the podium where he once lectured as a professor at Regensburg in Germany. The topic of this particular lecture was something he called the reasonableness of faith. Ultimately, this was furthering the discourse on the relationship between faith and reason, a relationship which the Church, not just this Pope, has described as a relationship that is without contradiction. There can be no contradiction between faith and reason. The Pope repeated this idea on Thursday in Washington DC as he spoke to the leadership of the nation's Catholic universities.

For all the critiques against the Catholic Church, one continually leveled against her is that she is opposed to reason. But ever since I started listening to Popes, I have heard two of them speak on the topic, and both have never ceased in speaking of this important relationship between faith and reason, which upholds both as necessary for a full understanding of the human being. And research confirms that John Paul II who became Pope shortly after I was conceived wasn't the first to uphold these ideas, but that the notion can be traced much further into history. Indeed, at Regensburg, Benedict XVI spoke more poignantly about the reasonableness of faith through just such an example in history. His point, in the end, was that having faith is reasonable. That is, a person can assent to religious belief using his or her reason, not just as a superstition, and certainly not as an abandonment of reason.

The world remembers this Regensburg lecture only as the media covered it and the Islamic world overreacted to it. Part of the Pope's lecture recalled a dialogue between an Eastern Roman Emperor and an educated Persian. The topic of this discussion was manifold, but the Pope was concentrating on one particular issue that came up in this dialogue during the year 1391. This particular topic concerned whether or not spreading faith through violence is reasonable. The Eastern Roman Emperor laid out several reasons why spreading faith through violence is unreasonable, that is, it is an act contrary to reason itself. The emperor says, "God is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and reason properly, without violence and threats..." Remember, this is coming from a Christian Emperor in the year 1391, shortly before the Islamic siege of Constantinople. The emperor also said that Mohammad commanded that the faith be spread by the sword. The emperor argued that this is unreasonable, using the Greek "λογω" (meaning "reason") and it is contrary to God's will. The Greek logos is identified with reason. This last statement by the emperor concerning Mohammad, recalled by the Pope, is what the media and the world got all hot and bothered about. But the Pope wanted to draw something else out of this dialogue, something that would aid in understanding Christianity and Islam, and some of the differences.

The argument the emperor makes against violent conversion, whether committed by Christians or Muslims, is that "to not act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature." God is reasonable; we know this in the Christian tradition beginning with God's word creating the world. Then the God of the Hebrews reveals himself as "I am", that is "being itself". Finally (among many other biblical and historical developments), St. John the Evangelist tells us that God is logos, the Word is God. These Greek terms and ideas, developed in the height of the Greek philosophical enterprise, were a part of the vocabulary and thought process of the Eastern Roman Emperor. On the one hand, we had biblical faith testifying to the nature of God, and on the other we had philosophy testifying to the nature of God. In Christianity, the two were fused, thus, the Christian understanding of God is explained in Greek philosophical concepts: God is being itself, God is logos, the logos is God, God's logos (reason) creates the world. All this leads us to the understanding that God is reasonable and he acts in accord with reason.

This is how the Christian emperor of 1391 was explaining and understanding things, but his Muslim interlocutor could not agree. The Muslim understanding is that God is not bound by any human categories, and Greek philosophical concepts cannot bind God. God, therefore, if he chose, could act unreasonably. But in the Christian understanding, God could not act unreasonably, because to do so would be against his very nature. It follows then, in the Christian understanding, that we, too, ought to act in accordance with reason. Since we are created in the image and likeness of the reasonable God, we, with our God-given reason, ought to act reasonably. The Muslim world had difficulty in accepting this idea of God, because the Christian understanding describes God using human concepts and categories. Muslims view this as binding God, who in their view is fully transcendent, fully other. The revelation of Jesus Christ is that the transcendent God makes himself reachable, tangible, and even reveals that his very nature is in accord with our understanding of the world: God is goodness, God is love, God is reason. These Christian concepts of the divine, which we gain from the fusion of biblical faith and Greek philosophy, frame our understanding of God's nature and thus our own very nature: we ought to be good, we ought to love, and we ought to act reasonably.

That is the first idea expressed by the Pope at Regensburg. But the world condemned the speech and much of the media labeled it as anti-Islamic.

There were moments in the Galilean countryside that have been forgotten. I remembered some of them this week, though I had never been told about them by any wise men, and had never read about them in any book. Even the Scriptures are silent about these moments. But they are moments that I know to be true. They are history. They are a part of the tradition about Jesus that has come down to us, but only this past week had I recalled this tradition and knew it to be authentic.

At three o'clock in the morning one night this week, my wife and I attempted to coddle our newborn child who cried and would not sleep. I watched as my wife tenderly spoke to him, held him to her breast, and tried everything she could to keep her own eyes from closing from fatigue. I changed his dirty diaper, helped to burp him, and wrapped him in a blanket to keep him warm. When we finally were able to calm him, we laid him in his bassinet and turned off the light. That was when the fear that every new parent knows filled the room and there in the dark neither of us could sleep, despite our lack of it and need for it. Worry over the infant, startled at every gurgling sound, holding our breath if only to be able to hear his, the night progressed much slower than before. And though the worry is as deep as our souls, the joy ran deeper. It is the joy of seeing his tiny little face and his perfect feet and the smell of his newborn head. We cannot help even in these restless moments from feeling this ever abiding joy at the blessing that sleeps in the bassinet by our bed.

Mary and Joseph surely knew such moments, though the bassinet may have been a cattle trough, and their own bed the earth, and those nights perhaps more restless than ours. The Gospel writers make no mention of such restless nights, but they are a truth about Christianity that should not be forgotten. Even when I think I have heard all there is to hear about the faith, a night like this passes and I remember that as much as the story of Bethlehem is a divine story it is also a very human story filled with the stuff of ordinary life. Ordinary life is exactly what Jesus entered into. So ordinary, in fact, that God placed himself at the mercy of young parents. The infant laying next to Mary and Joseph was helpless and fragile. If neglected in the manger, Jesus was as near death there as he was hanging on the cross after being neglected by the people. Jesus cried, and fed at Mary's breast, and was burped, and soiled his ancient diapers, and fussed, and searched for comfort in the arms of Mary. Joseph sat up pondering the child's very presence, revisiting his dreams over and over, fearing for the baby's life, and trying to find ways to protect the family. They too lay restless in Bethlehem, holding their very breath in order to be sure that God had not by chance stopped breathing beside them. This is a forgotten moment in Christianity. It is what makes Christianity unique. God is at the mercy of young parents who hardly know how to comfort a crying infant.

It helps to pause and remember the nights upon the Galilean countryside, when the stars shone bright overhead, and the night was deep, and the sounds of lone cattle bells and shepherds moving through the night gave way to the sounds of a fussy baby. What a joyous sound it was! It was the cry of God.

A friend of mine, attending a public University in Pennsylvania, relayed the story of a particular day during one of her classes. The professor asked the following question to the students: "Who here thinks that human beings should be the dominant animal on the planet?" Only one hand was raised that day, and it belonged to my friend, and all the others, agreeing with the professor, thought that humans should not dominate the planet. Now, the particulars of how best to prevent human beings from dominating the planet were not discussed that day, and I am afraid to think of what possibilities might emerge from such a discussion. But nevertheless, it does reveal that the professor, and apparently an overwhelming majority of his students, have not only a pessimistic view of the human, but suffer simply from blindness to reality.

I decided to conduct a similar poll. I went out onto a local farm, with the permission of the farmer, of course, in order to propose the same question to a group of bovine. "Who here thinks that cows should be the dominant animal on the planet?" I asked. And would you believe, the results were stunningly similar to those of the classroom, but without the lone dissenter: not one cow raised a hoof. All were opposed. I asked the same question in the chicken coop, although it was difficult to keep them quiet long enough to even hear the question. But the same result: chickens don't believe chickens should dominate the planet. I asked the same of two horses, a group of pekin ducks, a rather fussy bundle of swans, and even, from a distance, some black bear. Not one of these animals, in response to my poll question, raised an appendage.

The fact that this question was asked at an institution of higher learning indicates to me that this institution has forgotten about the very important lessons of lower learning, which can be done on farms. For instance, when I was very small my mother read me books with pictures of horses and cows, teaching me about horses and cows. And perhaps somewhere in my youthful imagination I envisioned that all animals teach in this way. But as I got older, I noticed that young horse mothers do not have books with pictures of cows and humans, teaching their yearlings about cows and humans. Nor do bulls write calf's books in order to teach them about the proper techniques of grazing. I started to notice and understand that there is a difference between humans and all the other animals. The first lesson about the human is that he doesn't belong in the same category as cows and horses, nor indeed, even apes. There is something terribly different about the human, something which compels him to do something as crazy as categorize the other animals, and write books about them, and give them names.

The question of dominion over animals need not start with violence, animal cruelty, or whether or not we should eat them. These discussions have their place. The question of dominion begins with the fact that we write books about animals. It begins with the fact that we name the animals: cow, horse, pig. Why isn't anyone complaining about the cruelty of calling that fat, pink creature pig? Perhaps he doesn't want to be called pig. Perhaps we should let pigs name us instead.

This all seems absurd. But this is exactly why I can't understand that a class of thirty young minds has only one that can see the very present reality that human beings are made to dominate the planet. If human beings are not supposed to dominate the planet, then there are not supposed to be human beings. This may just be what the professor believes: that human beings are some tragic evolutionary mistake and that our domination will ruin the planet. Certainly we have the ability to ruin the planet. Certainly we have the ability to save the planet. What the professor seems to ignore is the very extraordinary fact that we have the ability at all. Our abilities, which when compared to the animal world look like supernatural gifts, are those very things which enable us to understand ourselves as having some sort of dominion. If we cannot recognize this, if we cannot respond to the poll question with a raised hand, then we are in some way admitting that the fact we are here is a mistake.

But there is another view of things. There is the view that we are not a mistake, but rather, we make mistakes. There is the view that our very presence is very purposeful, that there is meaning in our existence, and that there is meaning in our dominion over the world. The ancient Hebrews seemed to recognize this, and the ancient Christians followed suit. Whether or not we use our dominant status to build up the world or destroy it is a question that needs to be addressed. But the fact that we have dominion, and ought to have it, is something that shouldn't be unlearned, despite the efforts of pessimistic professors. If you want to learn about it again, read to a child from a child's book. You will quickly learn that the child's fascination with learning about a dog comes from the very fact that he can recognize that dogs are for some reason made for him, and not the other way around. He knows that he can ask his mother if he can get a dog, and has no fear that any dog will be getting him. These are lessons learned when we are very young, and we do well not to forget them.

There is a feeling that resembles embarrassment when we hear the Gospel story about Jesus making his triumphal entry into the holy city of Jerusalem riding on an ass. We feel pride because he is our king. We feel obliged to join the crowd in laying down our coats onto the ground, to make a path for him. We feel compelled by the nobility of Christ and we to this day carry palm branches in our hands at church and symbolically wave them before our King, or fold them into neat little crosses or other patterns. We even manage to make an attempt at the "Hosanna" when the choir leads us in a sometimes rather off key song of praise, remembering that holy day, remembering the day that our Lord, the King, came riding into Jerusalem. But on an ass? Wait a minute. Certainly the founder of Christianity deserves something more than an ass to make his grand entrance on the religious stage of the world. Please, get the man a horse, or even an elephant. Anything but the ass. It's just embarrassing. And yet, every Palm Sunday, we find Jesus quite content with this lowly beast of burden, and he rides in with his head high, and accepts the formal praises of that perfidious crowd.

But, while most of us are indeed concerned with the dignity of Christ, and our best instincts tell us that he deserves a more noble animal to ride in on that great day, it may do us some good to change perspective. For while we will quickly label Jesus' act as one of humility in order that all the churchmen nod their heads and the good sisters smile with approval, we often fail to label the ass's act with something like nobility, or exaltation. In fact, we don't label the ass at all. We try and stay away from referring to the smelly thing. Our quickest explanation of the embarrassing scene has all to do with explaining it with a reference to the deference of Christ. But I find it an equally important explanation to reference the ass.

For in all of human history, or should I say, in all of ass history, I don’t think the ass has had a more magnificent moment than that moment. And no other animal can claim what he can claim. The horse has carried some of the greatest heros, and the greatest warriors, from Cleopatra to Napolean, from kings to cavalry. But the horse has nothing on the ass. Elephants have seated the greatest Persian royalties, and have felt the weight of the mighty Huns, even perhaps Atila himself. But the elephants never had as great a day as this. The humble ass became noble that day, and for once looked with pride at his fellow animals. It was the day God mounted his back, and for a few brief moments in history, he became the greatest of the beasts.

Jesus is perhaps teaching us many things on Palm Sunday, but a forgotten lesson might be that he exalts those who exalt him. He says as much in the Gospel, but this is an example of this teaching through his actions. We have many examples of Christ’s humility, and we need not belabor that point. But let us take this lesson of exaltation as we observe the ass on his greatest day, and recall the dignity of what it means to be a bearer of Christ. If we are chosen, it is not necessarily because we may be fit for the job, or because of our grandeur, or because of our size. It may just be because God knew we were tethered to a pole somewhere, and we were in need of a task. The task of bearing God on one’s back sounds too grand, but Jesus assures us that this is just what he desires from the least of us. And in the process, he brings us a higher dignity than our nature alone achieves.

I do not know what the owner of that ancient ass named his beast. But I like to guess what Jesus may have called him. I imagine the untold moment during that glorious ride into Jerusalem when Christ himself, amidst the cries of the excited crowd, and the blast of trumpets before him, leaned down to the ear of his chosen carter and whispered, with a smile, the first instance of the noble name, saying gently,“That a boy, Christopher.”

When it comes to casting one's vote, "sitting out" is not an option and it is not morally acceptable for a Catholic to stay at home on election day.

Fr. Frank Pavone, leader of the Priests for Life, reminds us that there are those who have fought and died in order that the common person might have a vote. Not to mention the fact that all of history has been a struggle over who has power and the very costly toil through which peasants have gained the dignity of a voice. It is no small or insignificant fact that you can go to a local polling place and "transfer [your] power," as Fr. Pavone puts it, to your candidate of choice. America is different in the history of nations. Perhaps Athens compares and even supersedes, but America remains a treasured state. It is the place where every citizen has his/her due power. Any discussion concerning Catholic standards about voting should begin there: you must vote because you are otherwise an affront to all those millions that have never had the chance to influence how they are governed, and have suffered for it. You must vote because it is your duty as a Catholic to participate in preserving the common good, and keeping watch over those who will attain your power. Sitting out does not withhold that power transfer, it merely leaves it up for grabs.

But Father Pavone, speaking from a Catholic perspective, goes on to say that when it comes to elections, pragmatically speaking "what matters is not how closely a candidate measures up to 'my' preferences and convictions. Instead, it's a question of who can and will actually get elected." He further states that "having the right positions on an issue does little good unless the candidate with the right positions actually gets elected." So for Father Pavone, taking into account the probability of a candidate being elected is of superior importance to how closely a candidate resembles your values, at least when it comes to presidential elections.

But how can the candidate with the right positions actually get elected unless the voters actually elect him? The only way to influence whether or not a candidate will get elected, insofar as one has the power to do so, is to either elect him or not, to vote for that person or not. "Having the right positions on an issue" is exactly what matters to a Catholic voter. But Father Pavone suggests that this does little good unless the candidate gets elected. Of course it does little good unless the candidate gets elected! But by all means, the way to get him elected is to vote for him!

Father Pavone does explain that elections are seasonal, and that there is ample opportunity for Catholics to press their influence in the electoral seasons that lead up to a major election. But when it comes to that day in November, Catholics should not vote for a write in, third party, or otherwise insignificant candidate, even ones that uphold Catholic teachings, because these candidates lack the potential to actually become elected. All that Father Pavone is saying here, though, is that serious Catholics are a minority, and have little influence in the overall election outcome in the United States. That is merely recognition of the state of affairs: serious Catholics are in a serious minority.

But come November, is it morally licit for a Catholic to vote for a candidate who has a high probability of being elected, but who takes a position contrary to fundamental Catholic moral teachings, even if he/she is the best of the lot? Is the one taking the least immoral stands or the one with the least possible chance of implementing immoral legislation the right candidate for the Catholic vote? Or are there standards which a Catholic voter must not compromise on in order to vote morally?

It is true that come November, there will only be two, perhaps three possible candidates for America's highest public office. But to me, this indicates a broken system, a system in which rigmarole primaries and caucuses taking place in states I don't live in, heavily influenced by media coverage, dependent upon the power of millions of dollars, shaped by popularity, and driven by two political giants we call parties, leaves the average voter stripped of his/her voting power long before November.

And though this system is worth fixing, the discussion here concerns the practicals of voting within that system. Father Pavone expects one to accept that there will be only two or three possible candidates for election in November, and to choose the least immoral. But if each of them takes stands contrary to Catholic moral standards, how can one licitly vote for any of them? And if sitting out is not an option, isn't a third party, write-in, or other viable candidate with a record corresponding to the high moral standards of the Catholic view worth voting for? How else will the minority Catholic voting block be heard? If candidates are assured of our vote come November, once we get over their immoral stands, then what would compel them to change their stances? What will compel candidates to court the vote of serious Catholics if in the end, serious Catholics aren't so serious?

When we do go to transfer our political power to a candidate in November, as Catholics we must remember those fundamental moral issues which cannot be compromised. We are not speaking of the economy, or tax policies, or health care policies, or whether or not Iraq was a good idea, or what is the best way to care for the poor. We are talking about those intrinsically evil things which American political rhetoric has reduced to the level of coffee house chatter. It is good to remember that Catholic teaching is not a political agenda, but it is decidedly a religious agenda, and therefore a human agenda. Abortion is always wrong, not because of any political point of view, but because it kills humans. Creating a human being, renaming it "embryo", doing some experiments with him/her, and then throwing him/her into the trash is intrinsically evil. Sexual acts outside the context of a covenantal marriage of a man and a woman are intrinsically evil, whether they are committed by two men, or two women, or a man and a woman, or me, or anyone.

These issues, and others, guide the Catholic vote, even in November. If they do not, or if they can be set aside in order to choose the least harmful candidate, we have already lost the reason why serious Catholics are different than serious non-Catholics.

What if candidates for the presidency faced the problem that Catholics won't vote for them unless they aligned themselves with these high moral standards? What if they faced the problem that neither Catholics or Protestants would vote for them unless they align themselves with these high Christian standards? Would we start seeing more candidates that represent the values that we hold dear? If we can't prove that these issues are serious enough that they determine whether or not one votes in favor of a candidate, then we have no political leverage, and even less influence.

Fr. Frank Pavone does amazing work and his organization Priests for Life is an irreplaceable stronghold for the pro-life movement. This article is meant to take issue with one aspect of his public addresses, albeit a significant one. No doubt the pro-life cause and other morally crucial movements within our country will be victorious through the prayers and efforts of such men as Father Pavone. His blog where I have quoted him can be found here: http://www.priestsforlife.org/blog/

A man with a compass knows which way is north. That is, he is oriented.

But, in fact, even without a compass, a man who can see the sun or the stars can orient himself, as sailors and travelers have been doing forever. This orientation is what guides his life, his decisions, his beliefs. The sailor who embarks upon a trip to the high seas decidedly believes in the sun, because if the sun were to one day rise in the north instead of the east, if the sun were to lie, then how could that sailor direct himself? How could he re-orient himself? He would be lost at sea. But the sun tells the truth, and the stars do not lie. And the sailor depends on this celestial honesty since it is what moves him to turn the wheel this way or that, or raise the mainsail and catch a driving north wind.

A sailor's life depends on key celestial truths which he apprehends with his mind. Without these orienting truths, he sails no where. He may be sailing everywhere, but he does not know where he is. And without guidance, that is, the authoritative directive of sun and stars, he has the appearance of sailing freely, because he is sailing at random, any which way he pleases. But he knows he is lost. He cannot find his way back to shore without some truth to guide him, without some star to plot his course. When he finds his star, he can orient himself, and direct his vessel.

Now, he may, in some forlorn escape from the world, direct himself onto the high seas. And he may, in some hopeful return to his native land direct himself to the coast. Both are free decisions, because by the little shiny prick of light we call a star, he knows where he sails, either to gloom or to home. But often, through the influence of lost seafarers he meets along the way, the oriented sailor begins to wonder what would happen if the sun were to lie by rising in the wrong spot; how would he find his way home? He knows that the sun has never lied, and she stubbornly holds fast to the unwavering conviction that the best place for her to rise is in the east. But what if she did lie? What if she is right now, lying? How can he discern truth from lies? Is the sailor even able to apprehend the truth about the sun?

This disorientation arises in the man who disbelieves the sun when she dogmatically rises in the east. How can he orient himself if he cannot trust her? If the man clouds his mind by unsettling his presumptions about the sun, or by defamiliarizing himself with the map of the stars, or by questioning the sun's motives and proudly accusing her of deception, where can he find re-orientation? How can he return to his homeland?

The convictions we have about the world, the truths we have learned to presume in order to make decisions about the direction we go in life are necessary for orientation. To rid ourselves of these convictions, to unsettle our deepest presumptions about the truths of the world leads not to orientation but to disorientation. It leads not to freedom but to randomness. It leads not somewhere, but to anywhere, perhaps to places where a ship ought not be, like on the rocks, shipwrecked. Disorientation does not tell us where or who we are, but rather leaves us lost and alienated from ourselves.

Education should be, then, the transmission of truth from one generation to another. It should be passing along what is true in order for the young to orient themselves. GK Chesterton said that education is dogma, and that dogma is the only thing that cannot be separated from education. For as soon as dogma is removed from the business of educating the young and replaced by things like defamiliarization and the unsettling of presumptions, there is simply no learning going on. Chesterton said that "a teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching."

And so a mother will teach her little boy dogmatically that he ought not to hit his sister because it is wrong. But these days, a teacher might unsettle the boy's conviction by saying "Do not hit your sister, unless you are in a different culture where it may be acceptable to hit your sister, then, who am I to tell you not to do such a thing." The boy will surely become disoriented. And in the worst cases, the boy, when he grows, may find it convenient to switch cultures and start hitting women.

It should be the purpose of education to orient young people by giving them truths to build a life on. Harvard University, a prestigious, costly, and esteemed institution of higher learning, has produced a document through a certain Task Force outlining the college's views on what constitutes a liberal education. As a main tenet, it states that "the aim of a liberal education is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them find ways to re-orient themselves."

As I have demonstrated above, how is unsettling presumptions, defamiliarizing the familiar, or disorientation going to help young people learn anything? In fact, this may constitute the very way in which we might de-learn things. If you go to Harvard with a conviction, check it at the door, there is no need for convictions. If you are familiar with a truth about the world, say for instance that freedom of religion is a good thing, or democracy is a good thing, or even that there is such a thing as a good thing, you must relinquish your trust in such truths. For, silly young person that you are, those are things which you have learned from your dogmatic ancestors, but we have Teachers here, and we will teach you that there is no truth in the world, and that the sun may be a liar for all we know, and what is north to you may be south to another person.

How will Harvard be able to "re-orient" the young after they have convinced them that there is no such thing as due-north? How will young people find their way in the world, if all they have learned is a systematic way to disorient themselves? Will they not be lost on the high seas? Perhaps Harvard students sail in every direction, but unless they hold fast to some of their convictions, unless they have a direction, unless they can see a truth that will lead them, they may each be as lost as the other. If you cannot see universal truth in the world, a directive, a beacon, a foundation, then progress heads in every direction and goes all over the sea until it becomes shipwrecked.

The oriented traveler knows there is truth in the world, and a human being can grasp that truth. It takes humility, and open-mindedness, though, to see the truth in the world. The traveler must rid himself of the fear that the truth may lead him to redirect his travels. But he must learn to trust the stars. I have heard that long ago there were men from the Orient itself who were able to direct themselves by the guidance of a star. Those travelers knew what it was like to trust their convictions that truth could be found, and when they did complete their journey, they found truth in a cattle trough. From the Orient, from the place where the sun still rises, they were led to truth. No doubt they passed that truth along to their children.

Back in January, Pope Benedict XVI canceled a planned visit to one of Rome's largest and oldest universities, La Sapienza University, where he was going to speak at an inaugural event at the start of the academic semester. The reason for his cancellation was in response to a letter signed by a group of professors from the University, condemning Pope Benedict as the enemy of science, and specifically inserting a quotation of the Pope concerning the trial of Galileo. The quotation, however, lacked the force of context, given that the Pope said the quoted remarks, not last week, or last year, or even while he was Pope, but rather 17 years ago in an academic lecture. And the quote was not even his own words, but rather the Pope himself was quoting an agnostic philosopher who said that the Church's treatment of Galileo was "rational and just." But who needs context when you can just throw dirt on your opponent?

A group of students, fueled by their professors' fervor, managed to organize a small protest, and an entire week dubbed "anti-cleric week." In the end, the protests were enough to give the Pope reason to avoid further conflict, and so he canceled his scheduled speech. After all, how fruitful would it be to visit a university to speak on issues such as faith and reason in education, when the atmosphere of many at the University is dogmatically anti-faith, and thus in many ways anti-reason? The intentions of the professors were achieved, that is, they intended to silence the Pope, and for that matter, they represent those who wish to remove any religious voice from the public square. Isn't it the motto of the modern academic scene that all voices should be heard, and all ideas are relevant? Why are they in the business of silencing people?

The professors have this idea that faith and reason are enemies, and are in all ways antithetical, and in fact, reason alone can lead a person to knowledge, and faith is useless. Therefore, religious voices are to be extricated from the public square. Sorry, Papa Benedetto.

The Pope has this idea that faith and reason are not enemies, but as his predecessor put it, are the "two wings on which the human spirit soars to the contemplation of truth." Therefore, scientific voices are welcome, but so are religious voices. This sounds like the kind of environment where actual thinking is done, and people actually use their entire being to contemplate truth. Thinking is not just in your brain, fellas, it's in your soul, too.

So is it wise to silence the voices of those who disagree with you academically? Is there any room for religious voices, especially ones that have given a large portion of their lives to academic study and the pursuit of wisdom? According to these professors and students of a university that is named "Wisdom" (Sapienza), there is no room for popes in academia.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, La Sapienza University was founded by Pope Boniface VIII in 1303.

Nothing says "You're gonna die" like pressing dirty black soot onto our forehead and reminding us that we are dust, and unto dust we shall return. Why such a morbid message? Why does the Church have such a harrowing holy day such as Ash Wednesday? I much prefer Fat Tuesday (fastnacht?) or as it happened this year, Super Fat Tuesday. No doubt the average person, let alone the average Catholic, was caught up more in election attention than anything else. And while politics deserves its proper place, Thursday morning came and I realized how easily I had gone through the motions of Ash Wednesday. But when the black ash still crowned my forehead as I looked through sleepy eyes into the mirror early this morning, I remembered the words, "Remember you are dust, and unto dust you shall return."

Of course, some priests use the much more agreeable phrase, "Turn away from sin, and be faithful to the Gospel." And while this commandment is nonetheless a Lenten mandate, I still find rich meaning, even in its morbidity, with the dust unto dust diction. Where else can one go to be reminded of the fact that one's body will one day be in the mud? Where else can one contemplate the meaning of death, if not in church? The rest of the world scoots around death, what with their "ageless facial creams" and promises of youth fountains. Graveyards don't make for pleasant afternoon walking trails, and planning for retirement is of far more importance than planning for eternity. Death is always sudden and unexpected. But really death is the only thing you can expect, and by placing ashes on my forehead, the Church reminds me that I should expect it today.

But this doesn't add up to gloom. Rather, if understood within the greater teaching of the Church, the reminder that you will be compost is trumped by the reminder of what Christ really did: conquer death. The message must be twofold. Lent teaches us about our mortality, Easter teaches us about our immortality. But you must teach both in order for either to have its true meaning.

For without the promise of the Resurrection, death has no meaning. This is why all of mankind, in every age, and in every civilization had to deal with the question of death, and ultimately the question of God. Why do we die? What does it mean? Is it really the end? When Christ rose from the mud of the grave he destroyed death, not by making death go away, but by giving it meaning. For those who believe in the Son of God, death is not the end, it is now a path from our mortal life to eternal life. But equally true, and this is what Ash Wednesday recalls, is that eternal life has no meaning without death. What Christ did was not just a fancy display of divine power, showing his uncanny resistance to earthworms. Jesus does not say, "Oh don't worry about death, just try to ignore it and live a good life." But he does say, "Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live." Jesus' death and Resurrection are for us, so that we too can go into the mud with the hope of rising out of it again. Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.

Jesus adds, and unto life you shall return...but we must wait until Easter to celebrate that. For now, in ashes, let us remember our mortality by feeling hunger (fasting), reaching out to God (prayer), and turning away from sin (repentance).

Modern science refuses to ask metaphysical questions. And this is no surprise, given that modern science has defined itself as limited to the scope of the physical. Anything that goes beyond the scope of the physical (metaphysical) can be brushed aside without a second thought. This is dogma, by the way; science will not admit that any knowledge can be gained outside of empirical experiment. Thus, concepts that were up to modernity considered realities are now not even considered. And so we can explain fear merely as an increase in adrenaline, because the adrenaline can be measured but the fear cannot. We can define love merely as an increase in testosterone because we can bottle testosterone but not love, despite the efforts of the greatest poets. After all, the poet is a metaphysicist because he thinks love is real, which is absurd to the scientist, who thinks the poet is loony. But aren't both the poet and the scientist trying to explain the same thing, namely, love? The scientist seems to say something like this, "I will explain love by demonstrating that it is really just chemical reactions occurring in the body, and that love does not really exist." But the poet says something like this: "I will tell you of love. It is like a calm, evening twilight, when the earth is still, and the day yields to night, and the air is full of memories of someone long ago." The scientist's explanation I understand, but the poet's I experience. I am not against science, I am against dogmatic science.

But even in modernity scientists have trouble escaping the metaphysical. In a recent article in TIME magazine, entitled Scientist Creates Life - Almost, by Alice Park, there are the details of the very impressive work of J. Craig Venter, a scientist who has, apparently, mapped his own entire genome. The article's title is preemptive, in that Venter's goal is to create an entirely new genetic code, insert it into a cell, and see if the thing comes to life. This he has not yet done. But the undertone to the title also mimics (always purposefully from TIME editors) the idea of God creating life, such as found in the Bible, or in the doctrines of Christianity. In dogmatic science, where there is no room for knowledge about God, the idea that God created life is absurd. God cannot exist in dogmatic science, because he cannot be proven with a lab test. Therefore, as in trying to solve the problem of love, we have to solve the problem of life. Just who created life? Well, of course, the scientist did...well, not yet. But he will. And then all the religious people of the world can slowly transfer their very abnormal belief in God t