Marriage As a Creative Work by Louise Cowan

This is the article by Louise Cowan that Toby recommends to be read in advance of the meeting on Sunday night. It is not essential to listening the talk so if you can't read it don't worry you will still be able to follow his talk. Just to cover citation rules, this is taken from the Newsletter of the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts Volume 21, Number 1 on November 2003.

Marriage as a Creative Work
by Louise Cowan

I want to talk about marriage in all its senses this evening: first, to see it as a metaphor for the proper relationship with the universe; second, to look at its implications as myth; third, to consider its metaphysical significance and, fourth, its Christian meaning as sacrament; and, finally, to come to see it as the major work of a person’s life. You realize that I speak from the discipline of literature and not as a theologian or a philosopher. Marriage, of course, is one of the central concerns of literature; and if, as I maintain, literature is a mode of knowledge, then surely it must shed some genuine light on this important sacrament. As a metaphor, it represents the union of different aspects of being: the individual soul and the soul of the world. This is the sense in which Zora Neale Hurston presents it in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God:

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees,
the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze, when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister calyxes arching to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight.
So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation.


There is something of the mystical marriage here, a yearning of the soul for union, a desire to
give one’s inner being in ecstasy to the divine presence that is to be sensed in both inner and outer reaches of the universe. This kind of eros may be consummated either in marriage or in the committed single life. The person who chooses celibacy, then, may live life as fully as those in marriage; and this is the profound spiritual aspect of the concept that applies to all of us. Our souls must have erotic communion with the divine as it manifests itself in the world. Shakespeare’s sonnets, Donne’s love poems, Marvell's apparent poems of seduction—the carpe diem theme—all of these urge us to a giving of self, to a generous bestowal for which the paradigm is marriage and the opposite is coldness,
self-centeredness—what might be called “the economy of the closed heart.” We need in our time to redeem the concept of celibacy by refusing to consider it a narrowly restricted life, recognizing in it not a denial of love but a marriage to a reality sought and found in a spiritual ideal— for Christians, in a union with Christ himself.

Mythically, we need to awaken in ourselves the sense of a marriage between earth and sky. Nearly all ancient myths express a sense of this dynamism in existence: pre-Scriptural accounts of creation depict the original source of being as not a single entity, but a conjunction. Two things came together to produce the vitality that is life, the living organism that is the universe our home. The Greek myth, of course, posited Gaia and Uranos in the first hieros gamos; and their offsprings were the Titans, the natural forces that control our physical existence. The access of Zeus and Hera to the throne of Olympus perpetuated the hieros gamos on another level: it represented the coming into being of intellect and emotion. One stunningly beautiful passage in the Iliad portrays something of the splendor and mystery of the hieros gamos. The lyrical celebration between Zeus and Hera on Mt. Ida, even though Hera has contrived by means of it to seduce her husband away from his watchfulness of the battle, is a high point of the poem. It establishes the generative effect of their union on all the vegetative life of the cosmos. Hera has borrowed Aphrodite’s loveliness and desirability (these aphroditic qualities no doubt symbolizing a distinct change from Hera’s usual regal pride) for
the purpose of enticing Zeus, who when he looks upon her feels desire as “a mist about his close heart as much as on that time they first went to bed together and lay in love, and their dear parents knew nothing of it.” (This is a reference to one version of the story in which the two, from the beginning, are lovers.) Zeus feels a resurgence of that early love and entreats her, “Hera, . . let us go to bed and turn to lovemaking/ For never before has love for any goddess or woman so melted the heart inside me, broken it to submission /as now”—and then he proceeds, rather ingenuously, to enumerate his many loves, including, finally, Hera herself: “not [even] yourself,” he says, “have I loved so much as now I love you, and the sweet passion has taken hold of me.” Then,

. . . the son of Kronos caught his wife in his
arms. There underneath them the divine earth
broke into young, fresh grass, and into dewy clover,
crocus and hyacinth so thick and soft it held
the hard ground deep away from them. There
they lay down together and drew about them a
golden wonderful cloud, and from it the glimmering
dew descended.

Here Homer has allowed himself to portray the generative power of the marriage bond Between Zeus and Hera, showing it as an analogue to the original hieros gamos, in which, as the Theogony tells us, “great Uranus came, bringing on night and longing for love, and he lay about Gaia, spreading himself full upon her.” The union of Zeus and Hera, despite their quarrels, is a genuine Incarnation of the original holy marriage, and it is through this Olympian pair that the very face of the earth is renewed.

In the Old Testament, the paradigmatic marriage, of course, is that of Adam and Eve.
Karol Wotyla, Pope John Paul II, describes their creation in his Original Unity of Man and Woman,
where he speaks of the original “solitude” of adam (mankind), as being pertinent to the original unity of male and female, who, unlike the other creatures, have a self-consciousness and so become “Partners of the absolute.” This original solitude, in which man, adam, is both male and female, is a solitude before all the other things of the universe and before God. But this original solitude is not destroyed when the separation of the sexes occurs. “In the second account, the man (adam) falls into that deep sleep in order to wake up male and female.” The word for this sleep, tardemah, Wotyla points out, is used only one other time in the Pentateuch (when God passes mysteriously over the fire with Abraham, and the full revelation of the covenant is given). The tardemah, the deep sleep into which Adam fell in his longing for a companion in the action of love is translated in the Septuagint as ekstasis, ecstasy, standing outside the body. And this ecstasy is the realm accessible to human beings in marriage. Jesus spoke (Mt 19:3ff) joined to his wife, and “the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh.” When Christ speaks of marriage in this way as “forsaking all others” (marriage is the only tie that he seems to consider absolutely binding; the biological ties are not), they achieve this mysterious henosis, this state of being one flesh, by returning to that original unity. According to Wotyla, “Man and woman, uniting with each other (in the conjugal act) so closely as to become ‘one flesh’ rediscover every time and in a special way the mystery of creation.”

I am maintaining that this mysterious phenomenon of becoming “one flesh” occurs only
in marriage, not in any relation outside marriage. It is not a property of sexual love, then, but of
marriage. Marriage is an actual, very real vocation: its task, primarily, is not just the happiness
of two people, or the establishment of a family, or even the salvation of two souls; but the construction
of an entity, which constitutes a sacred area within society, a territory within which the divine may pitch its tent. (Recall Abraham and Sarah; the Holy Family.)

Now marriages can be characterized in no other way except to say that they have been made by the decision to “cleave to one another” as long as life lasts. Each marriage is a unit, having its own character; there can hardly be any standardized measurement for quality, nor any prescribed roles that either partner must invariably play (Men may do the housework; women may earn the living.) Its single requirement is the shared intention of mutual bestowal of self to the end, through whatever pleasures or ordeals circumstances may bring. Each marriage has its own arcane discipline, its secret wellsprings. Yet each shares in being an alliance recognized by legal, political, social, and religious institutions. Matrimony as legal contract, as social custom, and as sacred ceremony are institutional ways of dealing with a fundamental and private joining that Church and state acknowledge as occurring—in whatever circumstances—when a man and woman pledge themselves to each other, body and soul, with a lasting commitment. Customs and mores change; but the reality represented by
marriage, from as far back as human investigation can determine, is unchanging.

In considering this fundamental conjunction into which a man and a woman enter with the aim of permanence, we are speaking not simply of a relationship but of a union. Outside marriage there can be, of course, and are quite profound relationships, according to the disposition of the persons involved: some may be deep and lasting friendships; some, bonds of piety, or romantic passions; others may be based on a connaturality—not necessarily eros or philia—but a special agape—a bestowing love in which the two partners “recognize” each other and discover an intimacy in which they feel they know each other's total being, so that they seem to be two halves of one whole: “soul mates.” (Faulkner depicts this relationship in Gavin Stevens and Linda Snopes, who appear in The Town and the The Mansion.) Theirs may be a truly I-Thou relationship, in which the beloved is known from within. And though, according to the ways of the world, one would expect this relationship to result in a sexual consummation—and though it would seems, ideally, that it should issue in marriage—still it need not necessarily do so. (We oversimplify the human heart in our day. Human beings are capable of all sorts of loving relations.)

Marriage does not require as its basis this sort of affinity, though ideally the union should be founded on a genuine empathy. This truly mutual love of the soul is a gift—and, when it occurs in marriage, a very great blessing to a wedded union. But fundamentally marriage should be founded on something else: on one’s sober estimate of the other person as a life partner, on his or her character, on his ability to grow, his willingness to enter fully into a life adventure. And the marriage is initiated by a decision: a vow, a pledge. For the promise creates the reality, or at least opens the way for its creation. Married love will be given as the result of the pledge.

Love is a gift: marriage is a work. The feeling of belonging to another person comes of its own accord; marriage, in contrast, is a free act like any act of choice. It marks the beginning of a new status. Once established, marriage creates a metaphysical reality shared by two people; the two partners give themselves to each other, fully sanctioning this new conjunction for an entire lifetime. Their bodily union consummates this pledge. In this manner a freely willed act can bring into being an objective status which, once founded, is no longer limited to or dependent upon the will of either person. (It is something like having a child; one cannot undo its existence.) For a marriage to exist at all (in the ontological sense), it must be entered into as something that cannot be revoked—and herein lies the reason for the failure of so many matrimonial ventures launched with such high hopes in
our day. In the inevitable disappointments that follow—the disagreements, the hardships and disappointments—the sins, possible infidelities, psychological aberrations—both partners at times, no doubt in most marriages, look for a way out. And for many, the desire to start over, to rid oneself of the painful imperfections of the past, takes on the semblance of a high moral cause—divorce becomes almost an obligatory rite of purification.

For how can one go on with something so marred as most human lives turn out to be? How can we bear having a witness to the mistakes and failures in our lives, the vanity and littleness uncovered—
our own and our spouse’s? Only by holding to the belief that matrimony seriously entered into is irrevocable can marriage partners grow beyond the natural repugnance that any two people at times feel for each other—the sense of being trapped by something alien, the wild desire that comes intermittently to be absolutely free to choose one’s own path, completely alone. Only by encountering, sometimes in violence, the permanence—and the sacredness—of the union and its enduring ability to heal and be healed can conjugal partners surmount their sense of injury—to go beyond even the sense of their own virtue. And in doing so they consent to enter by stages into a realm that has little to do with virtues or vices, but more to do with giving and forgiving; a realm governed by a deep and pervasive presence that is not simply love of each other, but a love far superior to that of either partner—a love that instructs.

Now let me make clear that I am not speaking of an ideal state, or of a lyrically happy situation. I mean to be describing what has heretofore been taken as actuality: for in every century before this one and, as far as we can tell in every society, marriage has been considered not simply as a contract between two separate parties, nor a fulfilling romantic relationship in love, but a solemn union, celebrated by a joining, that is always recognized as sacred and connected to the primordial. The new life of marriage is a being in itself; and it need not necessarily be a happy one. For just as not every individual in him or herself is happy or fortunate, so too with matrimony. Many marriages are, one recognizes, quite miserable; most are neutral, neither happy nor unhappy; but if they have been genuinely entered into with the intention of permanence, they all become a source of grace to the participants. Happiness is not the goal of marriage: the work of creation and redemption is.

In the unity of marriage, there are still two separate minds, two hearts, two imaginations, two proclivities; there is no mystical transformation into one substance. It is not, as Catherine declares in Wuthering Heights: “I am Heathcliff!” The union does not produce sameness in its two halves; it is more as the myths would have it: Earth and sky, yin and yang, etc. These make an ontological unity—a whole—that is not composed of similitudes but contrasts. Indeed, if we look back at ancient myths, we shall see that this diversity—the difference in the two sexes—is the precise reason for their existence. For ancient myths speak of one originary sex: split into two for punishment, as some accounts have it; for joy, as the Genesis myth tells it—divided in order that the creature ha-adam, man (both male, ish, and female, ish-shah) could be provided with a companion: in order, as I would put it, that the dynamic of love might be exercised in action, over and over again. “Bone of my bone, flesh of
my flesh,” Adam exclaims joyously on awakening from his creative sleep.

Few poets have written of marriage per se: epithalamia, prothalamia, peripheral lyrics commemorate
events in the wedding or the married life, but very little in the poetic tradition expresses its inner content. Most love poems in the ancient and medieval world celebrate extra-marital amours, particularly courtly love and medieval romance, both of which glorified a passion outside of wedlock. It was not until the Renaissance that an attempt was made to unite romantic love and matrimony. Shakespeare might be said to devote his entire body of work to the establishment of the priority of love in marriage and the right of a young woman to choose her mate. The tragedies Hamlet, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet depict the death of the daughter because of the father’s interference with this choice. A Midsummer Night’s Dream portrays the way in which the tyrannical father may be outwitted by fantasy and imagination; The Merchant of Venice shows marriage to be a sacrament of sacrifice—“Give and hazard all” is the inscription contained with the leaden casket. In his problem comedies Shakespeare testifies to the indissolubility of marriage; Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well show its perdurance even when it is repugnant to the husband (the bed trick); and in Much
Ado About Nothing Shakespeare works to separate wedlock from the romantic love tradition that both Beatrice and Benedick find so demeaning. Only in the Tempest does Shakespeare firmly unite love and marriage; and in this final play he distinguishes between amor and married love, calling up Juno, Ceres, and Iris for Ferdinand and Miranda's nuptial pageant, omitting Venus and her unruly son, Cupid. Prospero delivers a serious speech to the young lovers that is an injunction not to consummate their love before the ceremony, with the implication that marital love is something that, ideally, ought not begin in dalliance.

The supreme poet of the existential reality of marital love, I would suggest, is John Donne, who, a little after Shakespeare, writes boldly and directly of this sacrament—though his fundamental fiction as poet, his “cover,” so to say, is the illicit union of the sexes. We know of his own marriage to Ann More and the stint he served in prison for marrying her in secret. (“John Donne, Ann Donne, Undone,” as he ruefully wrote in one of his letters.) We have the biography by Isaac Walton, which pictures an extraordinarily happy marriage, though one much plagued by poverty and illness: the couple produced twelve children, of which only three survived into adulthood. After Ann’s death, we know that Donne almost immediately entered the Anglican clergy, to become the great Dean of St. Paul’s, the most famous preacher England has ever known. We can read his sermons and meditations; we have evidence of his profound religious thought. There is no corresponding evidence of any extra-marital affairs; the legend of John Donne the Rake, a biographical fallacy, had to be invented, deriving
from the intense and sensual nature of his love poems, which were not ostensibly directed toward his wife.


What I am saying, I suppose, is that the actual connubial intimacy cannot be expressed overtly: one has to write of it under another guise. It is not a “sex life” that a married couple have: the marital act probably ought not even be called “sex” if what we see and hear in movies and television and which many people apparently enjoy as a fairly exhausting but addictive sport is to be designated by that name. What happens in the bodily communion within marriage is a physical and spiritual joining that is part of a primordial integrity; it is not just that the two halves of one whole are rejoined but that in the joining, to speak in theological terms, the union becomes the human “image of God.” To borrow Coleridge’s phrase—there occurs in this conjugal act “a repetition in the finite [person] of the infinite I AM.” As William Faulkner has Isaac McCaslin say, in Go Down Moses, “every man and woman, at the instant when it dont even matter whether they marry or not . . . at that instant the two of them together are God.”

Donne’s superb love poems of consummation—“The Canonization,” “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” and “The Ecstasy,” among others—express the metaphysical mystery of faithful love, in which the two lovers become one flesh. In a poem that we know was written to his wife just before he undertook a journey, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” Donne designates the permanence and indissolubility of their union by means of his characteristic “metaphysical conceits.” He speaks of “a love so much refined/ That our selves know not what it is,” and goes on to say that “our two souls, which are one/ . . . endure not yet/ A breach, but an expansion/ Like gold to airy thinness beat.” And then in the very process of poiesis, his thought moves on: “if they be two, they are two so/ As stiff twin compasses are two;/ Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show/ To move, but doth, if th’other do.”


In “The Canonization” he speaks of the absolute withdrawal from the world that a couple must make if they are to enter into the task of their love (which, ultimately, is to redeem the world—that world that urges him to take up something practical). “Call us what you will,” he says, “we’are made such by love;”

Call her one, me another fly,
We’are Tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find the’Eagle and the Dove;
The Phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us, we two being one, are it,
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by our love.

After we are dead, he tells us, the world will recognize our value as ones who have loved truly: they will invoke us, he says, as the saints of love:

. . . . You whom reverend love
Made one another’s hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world’s soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes,
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize,
Countries, Towns, Courts: Beg from above
A pattern of your love!

This is the portrait of a marriage: something pointed beyond itself—toward the redemption of the world; something that supplies a “pattern” for love. Donne’s chief fiction is that of an impassioned
lover persuading his mistress to yield—and usually succeeding in his persuasion. (This fundamental fiction, I would maintain, is the archetypically proper diagram for the intimacies of marriage: the male partner continually seeks out the female: she remains perpetually virgin though nonetheless mother, mistress, nurse, coworker, counsellor.)

It seems a hardy undertaking: this bringing together of love and marriage. It is a task still going on in our own day. In its deepest sense it is a prophetic work, based on a vision of the future rather than the past. It is something to come, perhaps only at the end of time, when the whole of creation will be united to God in a marriage feast. And it is of this that Dostoevsky writes in The Brothers Karamazov, when Alyosha has his vision of his blessed elder Father Zossima at the marriage feast of the Lamb.

Marriage is the community in which love can grow beyond personal feelings to reach its full dimension. But that love is not turned inward to each other, though the nuptial gaze is face to face. Instead, this contemplation, in a mysterious way, yearns outward—to the world— and upward—to the numinous reaches of the divine life. An early twentieth-century edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia has something rather daring to say about the task of marriage: “The original marriage, and consequently marriage as it was conceived in the plan of God before sin, was to be the means not only of the natural propagation of the human race, but also the means by which personal . . . sanctity should be transmitted to the individual descendants of our first parents.” It was, therefore, a great mystery, intended not for the sanctification of those united by the marriage tie but for the sanctification of others.

This can be so because the two souls of the married couple enter into the same metaphysical space: the intimacy of marriage comes from a shared interior habitation. And it is not just that one knows the other from within, having exchanged one limitation for the other: it is that between the two a space, a sanctuary, is dedicated which both can inhabit. Hence the two may be quite distinct personalities, with separate and differently directed careers; they may be physically apart, if need be, a great deal of the time; but the sanctuary of marriage is large enough and high enough and expansive enough to contain them both, with all their noblest aspirations and all their most unlovely faults, their sins, and it may be even their betrayals. It is a house not built with hands, a house in which the two may dwell and within which they dwell with an awareness of eternity. The pledge for eternity brings into view the entire life cycle of the partners—their complete myth, its orientation toward the end, the telos, of their union. And this presence of final things remains and deepens over the years, strengthening two perhaps quite ordinary people, gradually transforming them into heroes (or, we might put it, saints). The work of art that is the conjugal union takes on a form far superior to the mere cooperation of two selves, or even their mutual love. It is this art form that provides the free field for the great abundance of the nuptial state, far beyond the imaginings of either member of the partnership.

From within this microcosm, the two reenact the progress from Eden to the New Jerusalem: all the myths are present; the darkness of the underworld is a very real part of the topology, as is the region of light into which Dante enters in the “Paradiso.” (As the mark of the underworld is a heavy darkness through which one must make one's way alone, so the paradisal regions manifest themselves in mutual laughter and delight.) From within this cosmos, the two may look out upon the world and share a commonality of feeling— about art, music, poetry, education, life, death, God; their cosmos extends, “like gold to airy thinness beat,” so that they are free to do whatever individual work they are called to do. Within the center of the structure, there are moments of sacramental union, of conversation, celebration, joy, suffering; sometimes a probing of each other’s minds and imaginations. Each comes to understand, so to say, the divine plan for the creation of this particular “team”; and each participates in the working out of this plan: it becomes the most serious work of both. On its most basic level, marriage is a work; on a little higher level it is a mission. But on its highest level, marriage is a metaphysical creation: its task, ultimately, is to make a dwelling place for grace in the midst of human culture. The presence of a third thing, a brooding presence that seems intimately involved with the well-being of this union, makes itself manifest in the dark times as in the light.

The intimacy of marriage consists, then, not in the constant baring of souls or the sharing of every thought and feeling, but in dwelling within this sacramental cosmos that the two partly build and partly simply enter into—a structure that the two recognize as a channel of grace not so much for themselves as for the world. When we speak of healing the wounds of society—the crime among youngsters, the violence on all sides of our lives, the inadequacies of our schools—we tend to turn to the decline of the family as their causes. Families change as cultures change, and we can do little from the outside to restore the coherence of the family. But marriage is an eternal resource, and every new marriage undertaken with the intention of making an indissoluble union recovers the primordial freshness of a world lost in callousness and self-centeredness. We need to bring up our young with a renewed understanding of what William Faulkner has called the “fire on the hearth”—that fire of the creator’s love for humanity that is rekindled among us by good marriages, even in the midst of injustice and suffering, in hidden places all over the world.

Mark Duggan in the Reveille

Mark Duggan, a member of the Parousians, writes in the letters to the editor about the need for Americans to become more educated about foreign cultures. A note on the link; you will have to scroll down for Mark's letter to appear and then click to the next page to get the rest of the letter.

Mark Duggan on the Need for Greater Cultural Awareness

Emily Byers Discusses Immigration

In this week's edition of her column in the Daily Reveille, Parousian Emily Byers discusses immigration reform.

Emily Byers on Immigration Reform

The Importance of Praying for the Dead

In this month that we Catholics mark as a special time for thinking of the deceased, Archbishop Raymond L. Burke of St. Louis discusses the role and blessing of Purgatory and the importance of our continued prayers for the deceased.

Archbishop Raymond L. Burke on Praying for the Dead

Archbishop Hughes on Cohabitation

Archbishop Alfred Hughes in his weekly column in the New Orleans Clarion Herald discusses the effects of cohabitation and the Church's teachings about it.

New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes on Cohabitation

Saying The Rosary

We have set the time for saying the rosary on campus at 9 o'clock. The plan is to meet every day at Christ the King at 9 o'clock and from then go to where we will say the rosary. Hope to see you there.

The Gospel of Poverty on Sunday

This Sunday we will have Parousian Emily Byers presenting on the gospel of poverty. She will be drawing on Fr. Thomas Dubay's "Happy Are You Poor: The Simple Life and Spiritual Freedom." The talk will be focused on the virtue of poverty and its application to the lives of the laity and why the cultivation of this virtue is essential to growth in holiness. The meeting will begin at 8 o'clock Sunday evening at Ryan Hallford's house at 4463 Tupello St. As always, directions can be obtained by calling (504) 952-0247.

Bishop Thomas Wenski on the Body

Orlando's Bishop Thomas Wenski writes on the importance of the body in Catholic theology.

Bishop Thomas Wenski on the Importance of the Body

Conscience Presentation This Sunday by Father Bryce Sibley

This Sunday the Parousians will be honored by guest speaker Father Bryce Sibley, who will discuss the contemporary view of conscience in reference to the thought of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The meeting will be held at 8 o'clock at Ryan Hallford's house at 4463 Tupello St. If you need directions to Ryan's house, feel free to call (504) 952-0247

Synopsis of Will Newman's Presentation on the Problems of Evolution and the Possible Catholic Solutions

As presented to the Parousians by Will Newman on Sunday November 5. Transcribed by Will Newman and Michael R. Denton.

The Problems Associated with evolution and the possible Catholic solutions

The problems of evolution can be classified into two broad categories: the exegetical and the theological. The exegetical problems are those seeming conflicts between the facts of evolution and the text of scripture, such as the order of creation, man’s descent from living creatures, and the age of the earth. The theological problems are those concerned more with doctrines of the Church, such as the Fall, Original Sin, Providence, etc.

Throughout the Bible, there are several revelations concerning creation. We are all familiar with the account in Genesis, but they also exist in Job and the Psalms. As Pope Benedict XVI reminds us in his book In the Beginning the normative Creation account for Christians is to be the one found in the Prologue to John’s Gospel. (In the beginning was the Word…) While this does not mean that Genesis or the other texts are dispensable to the debate (for no text of Sacred Scripture is dispensable), it means we must look at Genesis with John’s account in mind.

Also in reading Genesis we have to be careful that we are reading according to the proper literary genre in which Genesis was written and meant to be interpreted. Too often there is a division between the literal and spiritual interpretation of Sacred Scripture which suggests that spiritual interpretations undermine literal ones. This is only true under a misunderstanding of literal. A Literal sense ought not be confused with literalistic sense, which holds that Genesis is a scientific explanation of creation. Literal instead in the ancient sense means the message that the text is trying to convey, not a scientific account. So to discover the literal sense of a passage in Scripture we must first understand the genre in which it was written. There are many genres found in the Bible, including historical records, legal codes, poetry, prophetic visions, biographies, parables, and myth. Myth is not a fairy tale, or even legend or allegory. Myth might use allegorical, poetic, and symbolic elements but that does not make it only allegory, poetry, or symbolism. Instead, myth utilizes these elements in order to better convey theological, moral, prophetic, and even historical truths. It is with this in mind that both Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI have at times used the word “myth” to describe the primeval history found in Genesis.

Furthermore it is myth which draws on and transforms the myths of the surrounding cultures, as suggested in Humani Generis. However, Pope Pius XII points out while there are similarities the ancient Hebrew authors, guided by the Holy Spirit, transformed the work in order to expound on the theological and historical truth. Benedict picks up this theme in In the Beginning. For instance, in the Babylonian Enuma Elish, which the sacred authors were familiar with, the universe is born out of the cosmic battle between Marduk and Tiamat. In Enuma Elish everything is created out of the body of a defeated evil dragon Tiamat, whereas in Genesis everything is created ex nihilo, or out of nothingness not from something else. In the Babylonian myth humans are created from the blood of the dragon Tiamat, suggesting an element of evil in human nature whereas in Genesis humans are created from dust.

It should be pointed out that this is not a simply a modern interpretation of Genesis necessitated by scientific discovery. Pope Leo XIII in his 1893 encyclical, Providentissimus Deus, points us to St. Augustine, who “warns us ‘not to make rash assertions, or to assert what is not known as known.’ If dissension should arise between them here is the rule laid down by St. Augustine, for the theologians: ‘Whatever they can really demonstrate to be true of physical nature, we must show to be capable of reconciliation with our Scriptures; and whatever they assert in their treatises which is contrary to these Scriptures of ours, that is to Catholic faith, we must either prove it as well as we can to be entirely false, or at all events we must, without the smallest hesitation, believe it to be so.” St. Augustine did in fact write a tract called “On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis,” which to our modern ears sounds like it could be a primer on creation science. Rather, St. Augustine differs from the literalistic interpretation in favor of the literal one. St. Augustine believes for instance that creation was an instantaneous event, not the 7 days, so that the seven days was not a chronological series of events but a topical rendering of the elements of creation in order of importance. While St. Augustine’s belief here does not mesh well with evolution, his method serves us well in that we prefer literal and not literalistic interpretations of the Bible and of Genesis specifically.

Having established that the Genesis as a myth relates historical and theological truths, we should note what those truths are. There are many, among the most important are that God created the world ex nihilo, that man in an original state of grace which he lost through disobedience. What is not taught is the “how” of creation, the timeframe of creation, the age of the universe, or the age of humanity. If the Church Fathers were unanimous on these issues, perhaps we could say that there is an Apostolic Tradition. However, they disagreed. On the issue of the length of creation, interpretations vary from St. Augustine’s instantaneous creation to Cyprian’s belief in 7,000 years to a seeming standard week for Basil the Great. Now, a number of Early Church Fathers believed the Human race to be 6,000 years old, but they came to this conclusion from calculations from genealogies not from Tradition. This belief was also not expressed in any council. It is worth noting that many who held this timetable used it as part of the larger framework of millenarianism which has been condemned by the church.

So while fundamentalists might raise exegetical objections to evolution, thanks to the methods of interpreting scripture laid down by thinkers like Origin and St. Augustine Catholics do not find evolution to pose insurmountable exegetical problems. Theological problems on the other hand are common to everyone who confronts this issue. There are four main problems: Providence v. natural Selection, the origin of the soul, monogenism v polygenism, and the fall & original sin (which includes problems like animal death before the fall, man’s original state, and the nature of original sin).

Before delving into the problems directly, it is useful to look at the guide provided by the encyclical Humani Genesis. Pope Pius XII in responding to many of the ideas of modernism wrote Humani Genesis. It said that the body may have its origin in preexisting & living matter, though it developed through the guidance of providence. He wrote that the Sacred authors may have used myth, but they elevated it. He wrote that there is “no apparent way” of reconciling Adam with a “group Adam” that is to say no polygenism. The encyclical also says that the soul is specially created and does simply arise out of matter, for the spirit and matter are different.

The first problem is that of Providence and Natural Selection. The engine of evolution seems to be chaotic and unguided. However if evolution is the process through which God created the world & man, it must be seen as purposeful and willful. St. Thomas Aquinas & his principle of Secondary causation might help to explain this; namely God acts through the free actions of His Creation. It is important to separate the Catholic conception from the deist belief, who takes God out of the process of creation, nor are we like some theists who emphasize the role of Providence to the exclusion of the freedom of creation, including free will. In this sense the debate over Providence versus Natural Selection is comparable to the debate over the role of Free Will.

The second problem is the origin of the soul. After the theory of evolution came out, many began to theorize that the soul arose from matter itself. However, Adam’s soul and each of our souls is specifically created by God. This debate usually arises more in regards to neuroscience than evolution, but as Pope Pius XII linked it with evolution it is worth taking a look at in this context.

The third problem is monogenism v. Polygenism. In Romans, Paul tells us that through one man (Adam) sin and death came into the world. Furthermore, our redemption in Christ, who is the New Adam, is the flipside of the fall in the first Adam. Therefore, a singly historical Adam seems necessary. However, evolution seems to suggest that polygenism is more likely, since species evolve as groups, not individuals. Therefore evolution suggests that at the time of Adam he would have had a number of relatives who were for the most part genetically identical. There are a number of possible solutions. First, there is a “No apparent” clause in Pope Pius’s encyclical. At his time, this would have been true, but since the discovery of DNA we are able to see that there is a blood unity of mankind. So now we can prove scientifically that we are one equal race, whereas back then it was not able to be proven. This was a special problem for the time of Pope Pius XII when racism based on different genealogies was prevalent, but now is no longer a problem. Second, there is the “bottleneck” theory. Adam Eve were the first ensouled hominids, the first true humans, and their offspring were the only true humans. Third, there is the Dimensional Paradise idea, which is supported by some of the mystics and was suggested by Teilhard. This argues that Adam and Eve fell in a spiritual dimension and then were brought down into the flow of evolution. Finally, there is what we may call “special pleading”, which argues that you can’t prove or disprove either the monogenism or polygenism way of evolution. Man’s evolution could have been guided in a special monogenist way unlike other species because of the special nature of man.

Fourth, there is the issue of the Fall & Original Sin. We know that through our first parents’ disobedience mankind fell from his original State of Grace. It is a point of dogma that Adam and Eve were originally immortal and lost that because of the fall. It seems difficult to reconcile this with millions of years of evolution that were propelled by a cycle of life and death. However, according to the teachings of the Church man is mortal by nature and was only preternaturally immortal through the grace of God. This is the way St. Athanasius and St. Augustine viewed the problem, and the theologian Baius was condemned for teaching the opposite, namely that man is by nature immortal. Evolution also seems to have implications for sin. Our sinful nature is a byproduct of the fall, but lust, greed, & violence are natural attributes found in the process of evolution before the existence of man as natural survival instincts. Here again the condemned teachings of Baius can be an aid to the Church’s teaching. Baius held that moral integrity is the natural state of man and not an elevation of grace. This proposition was also condemned.
A better understanding of Original Sin may resolve some of these issues. The common view is that original sin is like stain, some amorphous black mass of evil that eats away at our soul like a cancer. It is not a stain, but the opposite. It is more like a hole, a hole in soul where grace used to be. Through grace our original parents were immortal and morally upright, not by nature. Take Mary for example. She is what she is because she’s “full of grace.” Mankind was deprived of its original grace because of the Fall, which undermined our preternatural immortality and moral integrity.

Finally, there is some question of why animals would have died if our fall brought death into the world. Indeed, St. Paul tells us in Romans that Death entered the world through Adams fall (5:12) and that creation is subject to futility through Adam (8:20). A possible solution to this is that Death only refers to man. No council has declared the animal world to be originally immortal. Some, including St. Augustine, believed that animal death and predation part of the natural cycle of life. A more profound way of understanding this comes from the Church’s teaching that the world and creation is on a “journey towards perfection,” and that man’s fall hindered or interrupted that journey from its eventual Parousia or arrival at completion.

So this was an extremely brief overview of several of the problems Christians confront when engaging evolution. It is mainly defensive, and a “theology of evolution” is beyond the scope of this presentation, although a number of theologians, like Teilhard, have made some interesting moves in that direction.

A list of helpful books was requested during the presentation, so here’s a brief list:
“In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall” by Pope Benedict XVI (published while Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger)
“On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis” by St. Augustine
“Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution” by Kenneth Miller
“The God of Evolution: A Trinitarian Theology” by Denis Edwards
“Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution” by John F. Haught
“Christianity and Evolution” by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Relevant Church Documents:
Humani Generis - Pope Pius XII
Dei Verbum – Vatican II
Providentissimus Deus – Pope Leo XIII
The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church – Pontifical Biblical Commission
Fides et Ratio – Pope John Paul II

Responses to Emily Byers' column

The Daily Reveille has printed three letters to the editor today, all of which condemn Parousian Emily Byers' article about private morality in the public sphere and all of which miss the essential point of her column, namely that even private actions affect the community and thus cannot be considered entirely private. So if you have time to respond on the website or write a letter to the editor defending Emily's column, it would be appreciated.


Letters to the Editor in Response to Emily Byers

Another Strong Dose from the Dominicans

We are adding a link to the blog Domine, da mihi hanc aquam!, a product of Father Philip Powell, OP. This Dominican is a campus minister and theology professor at the University of Dallas,, one of the finest schools in the country that happens to be deeply committed to Catholicism and the humanities.

Please check out his "Exhortation on Vocations, or No Time for Fear!", and "How do we fail to love?"

Matthew Fish on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Conservatism

Young Republicans: meet the new boss, same as the old boss...

This interesting piece on contemporary conservatism as closeted liberalism and Catholicism as true liberation comes from Matthew Fish, whose blog "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita" will now have a link at the Parousian Post. He is an English teacher at Jesuit High School in Dallas who has completed graduate studies in theology. Be sure to check out his defense of the Society of Jesus as well.

From Fish's post:

"In other words, there is no liberation, political or any other kind, none at all, than the liberation brought by the grace of Christ in the Church his Body. Liberalism in a nutshell consists in replacing this unequivocal Gospel vision of liberation with secular varities (and imitations), and consequently vanquishing the theological (that is, the explicit Gospel) to a "private sphere" where it eventually dies, having become entirely subordinate to the secular political order. And what I thought would escape this, American conservatism, I found was in fact just another version of this liberalism, particularly in its enthusiastic embrace of the free market and the separation of Church and state.

In no time I began to hear typical conservative rhetoric differently. Reading magazines like National Review took on a whole new character. The more I studied the culture-changing imperative of the Magisterium in the last fifty years, the more I undestood how inimical the two approaches are. And in reading the work at the root of modernity--Machiavelli, Hobbes, Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Kant, and even Whigs like Burke--I saw how neatly they all fit together, moving from a common lot of shared principles, wholly different and antagonistic to the ones that inspired the Medieval order which they sought to replace. And in reading authors like Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, G.K. Chesteron, Hilaire Belloc, and Alasdair MacIntyre, I saw for the first time a different approach, an approach beyond the categories of liberal-conservative, and in studying Aristotle, Augustine, St. Thomas, and the modern Popes in their social teaching, I grasped the principles of such an approach, principles that indeed make a quasi-comfortable alliance with modern liberals and conservatives (i.e. both liberals at root) difficult if not impossible. For in the end, we are working and fighting for different things."

Father Bryce Sibley on Conscience this Sunday

This Sunday the Parousians will have guest speaker Father Bryce Sibley in to discuss the contemporary view of conscience in reference to the thought of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The meeting will be held at 8 o'clock at Ryan Hallford's house at 4463 Tupello St. If you need directions to Ryan's house, feel free to call (504) 952-0247.

Emily Byers on "Private" virtue in the Public Sphere

Parousian Emily Byers in today's column in the Daily Reveille takes up the issue of whether or not it is permissible to "legislate morality." If you have time to comment on her article, please do so.

“Emily Byers on Private Virtue's Role in Public Debate"

Update on Beth Reed

Joey Reed came to the Parousians meeting Sunday night. He tells us Beth has begun walking with a walker since being moved to New Orleans for rehabilitation after her last brain surgery. She is still a couple of months away from another operation to remove a brain tumor. Please continue to pray for Beth and Joey through the intercession of John Paul II.

Invitation to Lunch with C. S. Lewis

From Drew Rollins, chaplain of St. Alban's Episcopal Chapel:

"We will have "Lunch with C. S. Lewis" tomorrow at 11:30! In response to an impassioned request, we are having fried chicken.

Make sure that you check out the reading for tomorrow (November 8) on "Time and Beyond Time" from Mere Christianity. I'd like to start there. Another way to come at that same issue would be to ask,"Is time created by God?" How we answer that question has all sorts of implications for how we live.

Our LAST session of the semester will be next week (November 15). We'll resume again in the new semester with the same schedule. I look forward to continuing the group with you.

I hope to see you tomorrow for lunch."

LSU Medical Student Quoted in Boston Pilot

The Pilot, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, has a story on a Catholic medical conference, titled “The Natural Moral Law: God’s Gift to Humanity." In the second to last paragraph, commments from Ashley Sittig, a second-year medical student at Louisiana State University, are presented.

Today is Election Day

Today is the day of the federal elections and as such the bishops have a few things to say about the nature of the Catholic voter and what defines a Catholic voter as opposed to a Catholic who votes.

San Antonio's Archbishop Jose Gomez's "Voting is a Moral Act"

Orlando's Bishop Thomas Wenski on the Role of the Church in making Voting decisions

St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke against the Missouri Stem Cell Amendment

Archishop Burke has had a number of letters put out regarding the issue of Stem Cell research and why it needs to be banned. This link takes you to the page that holds them all.

Archbishop Raymond Burke's Columns on Stem Cell Amendment

Bishop Sam Jacobs on Cohabitation

Bishop Sam Jacobs of Houma-Thibodaux on Cohabitation

"What does the church teach concerning cohabitation? Basically, the church reflects the teaching found at the beginning of Genesis, which Jesus himself reaffirmed when questioned about divorce. Namely, a man and a woman should leave his/her father and mother and cling to one another. The two shall become one flesh not just for a few months or years but for life in a permanent, exclusive, sacramental union. This oneness was seen in the context of married love and commitment with openness to procreation."

Paul Cat Rebuts Shanelle Matthews's Pro-Abortion Column

Founding Parousian Paul Catalanatto's reply was in Wednesday's Reveille. we apologize for picking up on it so late.

You Don't Own Me. I Do What I Want: Abortion, Freedom, and Relativism

Ryan Hallford refutes Shanelle Matthews' Pro-Abortion Column

The Daily Reveille has published founding Parousian Ryan Hallford's response to Shannelle Matthews' column of last week that attacked Emily Byers and the pro-life position. As always, if you can spare a moment to post on the comment board to defend the pro-life position it would be appreciated. Be sure to click on the link, as Ryan has posted the full text of his letter as the full text had to be cut down due to the 400 word limit the Reveille sets on Letters to the Editor.

Ryan Hallford's "Some Things Just Are My Buisness"

Emily Byers Writes on the Importance of All Saints Day

Emily Byers' column this week discusses the need for the saints in the modern world. Have a happy All Saints Day.


Emily Byers' "Reasons to Celebrate All Saints Day"

Stephen Caruso Joins Air Force Reserve

Best wishes to founding Parousian Stephen Caruso as he begins basic training.

Synopsis of Michael Denton's Presentation on Suffering

A Synopsis of Michael R. Denton's Presentation to the Parousians on the Role of Suffering in Our Lives and in the Life of Christ as shown in Bishop Fulton J. Sheen's "Life of Christ."

Sheen believes that all of the world’s political and spiritual problems really come down to one fallacy: the divorce of Christ and His Cross. On one side, there are those who Sheen terms the “Christ-less Cross.” In Sheen’s day this was primarily the communists, but it also applies to many atheists. Those who view the world in this way see suffering. They see the hunger, the disease, the war, but that’s all they see. They see no redemption in it, no greater good or glory that can be achieved from suffering. On the other hand, there are those who favor the “Cross-less Christ.” These are the ones who view Jesus as merely a teacher similar to Confucius or Buddha, and believe that the Church ought to focus primarily on his teachings of love and forgiveness and forgo the “unnecessary” criticisms of the world’s morality. Even some of those who accept Jesus as Divine fall into this category, arguing that while the Crucifixion and Resurrection were necessary for our entrance into eternal life, they have no real impact on the way we should live our lives. Sheen argues that both of these views, which are united by their common disregard for the value of suffering in our lives, misinterpret Christ’s life. Every time Christ had the opportunity to choose between suffering and not suffering, Sheen argues, Christ chooses suffering. Christ however not only chooses this for Himself, through His teaching and His actions Sheen shows that He is also calling us to seek suffering, persecution, and humiliation as a necessary and the most important aspect of our discipleship.

Even before Christ was born, there were indications that He would be different from any other teacher in history. Jesus was the only person ever pre-announced. Sheen argues that this is significant, because if God really was going to send somebody who would come to us and unlock the secrets of truth, he would send out notification ahead of time. God did this not only through the many prophesies in the Judaic Scriptures that Jesus fulfilled throughout His life, he also gave inclinations of belief in the Gentiles. Sheen shows that the Romans, Greeks, and even some Eastern Asian cultures had at the time of Christ the sense that a Messiah was imminent. Jesus also differed from other teachers in His attitude to death. Most teachers, like Confucius or Buddha, were defeated in their teaching by death; that is they could no longer teach when they were dead so they sought to avoid death in order to prolong their teaching. Jesus on the other hand had His teaching fulfilled by His death. As Sheen says “every other person who ever came into this world came into it to live. He came into it to die.” Finally Sheen echoes an argument given by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, namely that it is ridiculous to try to maintain the position that Jesus was simply a “good man.” Jesus proclaimed Himself to be divine and demanded that His Apostles die for Him. To make such requests if Jesus was simply a man and not Divine would make Jesus far less than a “good man;” rather they would make at best a lunatic and at worst a horrible fraud.

When Jesus was first born, He immediately set Himself up as a model for humiliation. Sheen points out that the very act of a Divine being becoming human is humiliating. Sheen asks us to imagine what it would be like to become a snail: to reduce ourselves to its size, it intelligence, not to mention the slime and other things that to us would be disgusting. How humiliating it would be for us to become a snail. How much more humiliating, Sheen says, must it be for a God to become man. So they very act of coming into this world as a man shows Jesus’ willingness to accept humiliation. When he finally arrived into the world, he found more humiliation. He was born into poverty, and was denied any room at an inn and was forced into a dirty manager. While Jesus remained in that manager, Sheen says that we see evidence of Jesus’ call for us to humble ourselves as well as the first reminder of the Cross. While in this manager, which was really a sort of cave, Sheen believes that the Wise Men when they came to visit Christ had to stoop low simply to enter the cave and approach Christ. Already we see the teaching: we must ourselves stoop down by humility in order that we may approach and come closer to Christ. The Wise Men, having stooped low, then give Jesus three gifts, one of which is myrrh. Myrrh, Sheen points out, is also used in the anointment of corpses. Already we see Calvary shadowing Christ.

When Jesus gets closer to His Ministry we see both the Miracle at Cana and the Temptations of Satan as ways in which Christ identifies His coming with suffering. When Mary at the wedding feast asks Jesus to help out the host for they have run short on wine. His response is “My Hour has not yet come.” When we usually hear this we think Jesus is here talking about His ministry. Sheen tells us however that all seven times the word for “hour” is used in the Gospel it is used in reference to His death. What Jesus then means when He tells Mary this is that if He does this miracle, His ministry has to begin and that that will mean His death. Here Jesus has made His ministry inextricable from His death; if He is to minister He is also to suffer and die. Mary is then given a choice: to keep Jesus and His glory all to herself or to allow Jesus to suffer and die as well as suffer herself so that Jesus might be shared amongst all of mankind. Mary chooses suffering by telling the servants “do whatever he tells you to” and becomes for us a model of suffering. Jesus then goes out into the desert and fasts for forty days, after which he is tempted by Satan. The first temptation of Satan is to turn the stones into bread. Satan is now tempting Jesus to eliminate suffering not only in Jesus’ stomach but also in the world. Here Satan is advancing the argument “Jesus, you have the power to eliminate suffering both in yourself and in all the world. Get rid of hunger, disease, and all other afflictions that cause suffering. In this you will be an economic savior to the world.” Instead, Jesus refuses and allows the pangs of hunger to continue to gnaw at Him. Then Satan invites Jesus to throw Himself down from the Temple and be caught by angels in a wild spectacle that will surely make men believe. Jesus however refuses. He does not want some wild stunt or even one of His miracles to be the standard of Christianity. Instead He wants the Cross, he wants His suffering and our willingness to suffer to be the standard by which we either believe or disbelieve. Finally, Satan tempts Christ to become a political savior like the Jews at the time largely believed the Messiah to be. Satan invites Jesus to have control over all the world if only He will worship Satan, that is Jesus can have his control and power as long as He tolerates evil. Jesus refuses, and He refuses knowing that to strike against evil will necessitate His own suffering.

The Beatitudes are usually the event pointed to most by those who would like something other than suffering to be the defining aspect of Jesus’ life. Sheen argues however that to interpret the Beatitudes as anything other than primarily to suffering is to miss the heart of the Beatitudes. Sheen has this to say about the Beatitudes:

“Let Him come into a world which tries to interpret man in terms of sex; which regards purity as coldness, chastity as frustrated sex, self-containment as abnormality, and the union of husband and wife until death as boredom; which says that a marriage endures only so long as the glands endure, that one may unbind what God binds and unseals what God seals. Say to them “Blessed are the pure;” and He will find Himself hanging naked on a Cross, made spectacle to men and angels in a last wild crazy affirmation that purity is abnormal, that the virgins are neurotics, and that carnality is right.”… “The Beatitudes cannot be taken alone: they are not ideals; they are hard facts and realities inseparable from the Cross of Calvary. What he taught was self-crucifixion: to love those who hate us; to pluck out eyes and cut off arms to prevent sinning; to be clean on the inside when the passions clamor for satisfaction on the outside; to forgive those who would put us to death; to overcome evil with good; to bless those who would curse us; to stop mouthing freedom until we have justice, truth, and love of God in our hearts as the condition of freedom; to live in the world and still keep oneself unpolluted from it; to deny ourselves sometimes legitimate pleasures in order to better crucify our egotism-all this is to sentence the old man in us to death.”

There are two things we can take from this. The first is that just living the Beatitudes is a call to persecution. Whether one preaches to the world about the need for chastity or simply lives it in his or her own life that disciple is standing against what the world holds dear, and the world does not like any opposition for that reminds the world of its sin. So to choose to live the life prescribed by the Beatitudes is to choose to live a life of suffering. Second, when Jesus is calling us to help the poor and love our enemies He is calling us to endure suffering. It is a sacrifice to give our time to the poor and it might be humiliating to have to wear a mask while ripping out the rotten walls of flooded homes in New Orleans. So in the Beatitudes Jesus is calling us to a life of service, and that service is summarized as choosing suffering, persecution, and humiliation for His glory.

The idea of the suffering Messiah is foreign to the world now, but it was also foreign to Peter. At the Transfiguration, Peter sees Jesus clothed in brilliant white surrounded by the great figures of the Old Testament and in this he sees the great glory of Christ. He is so impressed by this that he wants to set up camp, or really to shelter the group away from the world so that Peter can only bask in the glory. Jesus instead refuses this. Elijah and Moses disappear, Jesus’ vestments return to being dirty, and Jesus becomes once again the weary traveler. Jesus had the opportunity to choose glory or suffering, since by setting out again Jesus was setting out towards the Cross. Jesus at every opportunity chose suffering over glory. Eventually this would be manifested in the Cross itself, and I need not go into detail of the extreme suffering and humiliation he suffered there. However, once He is one the Cross He does two things to show us that this was the greatest thing He had done and as such was what we as disciples need to most emulate. He said “It is accomplished.” He did not say that after the wonderful teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, when the crowds around him swelled on a grassy hill and were in awe of His wisdom. He said it while he was bloody, naked, and dying on a wooden cross with the people taunting and mocking Him below. Jesus only fulfilled His mission when He had fully shown people to accept persecution, suffering, and humiliation when He Himself had accepted. Then He does the second thing to show the importance of suffering and humiliation: He dies. Sheen points out that as an omnipotent being, Jesus would have to will Himself to die in order to die. Jesus here is choosing once more to undergo the worst humiliation and suffering: death. By doing so we too are called to be willing to die for Him.

If anything, Sheen’s “Life of Christ” points out to us that in everything Jesus said, taught, or did there is a call to be willing to be persecuted, to be humiliated, and to suffer so that His work may be furthered. We can take comfort in knowing that He suffered too and that He will be with us every moment. I’d like to close with this from John 15:18-19

“If the world hates you, it hated me first, as you know well. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you do not belong to the world, because I have chosen you out of the world, for that reason the world hates you.”

Prayers for Beth Reed

The Parousians would like to thank Joey Reed for taking the time to visit with us at our meeting this past Sunday. We would like to thank those of you who have remembered Beth Reed and her family in their prayers and we ask that you continue to do so.

Commenting on the Reveille's Abortion Discussion

The Parousians would like to thank everyone who has been able to post on Reveille's website in connection with the abortion debate. If you have not yet had a chance to post a response to Shanelle Matthews' rebuttal but would still like to, the link can be found here.


Shanelle Matthews: "Some Things Just Aren't Your Business"

Dealing with Evolution

Thanks to everyone who made it to yesterday's meeting. Next Sunday, at 8 o'clock at Ryan Halford's residence Will Newman will be presenting on the the exegetical and theological problems associated with evolution. It will review Sacred Scripture, Patristic writings, and Conciliar Documents and will draw on the wisdom of Catholic luminaries from St. Augustine to our current Pope Benedict in order to understand these difficulties and sketch out some possible solutions. Again, if you need directions to Ryan's house feel free to contact(504) 952-0247.

Freeing Morality: A Brief Case for Moral Humanity

From founding Parousian and Alive and Young blogger Paul Catalanatto:

To those individuals who propose that morality is a made up invention of humanity. To those people who seek to free humanity from such oppressive codes of conduct as morality, and who view morality as if it is an old shoe with a hole in it, which has worn out its usefulness and should be discarded. Their proof for these claims: none.

They might point to a fossil and imagine that this person could not have possibly lived morally because they imagine that the person, who is of the fossil, did not live in a city or have technology and was closer to a rogue Rousseauian agent living in the woods resembling something closer to an animal then a human.

They discuss prehistoric humanity as if prehistoric humanity had left textbooks, diaries, and media to be studied. Their scientific qualifications for such claims rest upon their knowledge of prehistoric humanity, which can only be derived from: 1) Their knowledge of the prehistoric person. 2) Their knowledge of the critical study of prehistoric writings. 3) Their knowledge of prehistoric society, culture, religion, etc. None of which exist in the time of historic humanity so that they can be studied.

They find no evidence to base their claims upon, so they make it up as they go along. Their logic states that if there is no evidence for such a thing then that thing must not have existed. This reasoning is flawed. Just because there is no evidence for something does not mean that it does not or did not exist – or perhaps the evidence is in a different package science does not recognize. For example, there is no evidence for my prehistoric ancestors, yet I assure you that I do have prehistoric ancestors – if I didn’t I would not exist. Yet, because I exist only proves that I have prehistoric ancestors.

Therefore, it can equally be argued that humanity has been civilized and moral from its origin. Proof for this claim: humanity lives morally and civilized now and every evidence of history points to this conclusion. There is no evidence to state that humanity has lived otherwise. In fact, what humanity does know, and what every history and literature student learns, is that things exist in a state long before being recorded in writing. That is, the oral history, oral morality, and oral art existed long before written history, written morality, and written art. In other words, history provides evidence for prehistoric civility and morality being closer to our current civility morality than most want to believe. Even the most ancient of cultures that we have today (the Australian aborigines) exhibits some degree of civility towards one another.

I cannot seem to understand why and how the nomad is less civilized than the city dweller, nor why the ancient whom believed in gods less moral and less civilized than today’s modern who believes in economics? Why exactly is the caveman less of an artist because his paintings are found in a cave and not hung in a museum?

Lastly, to those who wish to free humanity of its morality, I offer this advice.
Freeing one's self of morality is much like freeing one's self of clothes at a cocktail party: it is not recommended.

Archbishop Alfred Hughes Reiterates Calling God's Love "Unconditional" Is Misleading

Unconditional Love

"It is true that God’s love is faithful no matter what we do. Our actions, however, can separate us from God in this world and in the next. The love of God does not dwell within us when we have separated ourselves by mortal sin. His love continues in faithful pursuit of us, inviting us to conversion and the acceptance of his love."

Archbishop Alfred Hughes on the Perils of Wealth

Jesus begs us: “Do not go away sad!”

" . . .(A)ll too often, wealth leads to an attitude of self-sufficiency that soon replaces God with self. Wealth can delude us into a false sense of power over our lives. Moreover, the pursuit of financial autonomy easily becomes a pursuit of moral autonomy. Hurricane Katrina should have shaken us from any illusion about self-sufficiency. We who lost so much and even the control over so many aspects of our lives have had a lesson to learn: the good (and happiness) is related to much more intangible realities: God, life, faith, friendship, support, hope, love."

Archbishop Jose Gomez on Loving God

The challenge of loving God above all things

"Loving God above all things means, striving for holiness in daily life and in all regards. Because it is not only words that show that we love God, but good deeds performed during our entire life. The Servant of God John Paul II enjoyed repeating that “the ‘yes’ that Mary gives the Creator is a ‘yes’ to the human person;” that is, loving God above all things is not something that we do against our human nature, but, on the contrary, it enhances our human dignity and brings happiness to our life."

Daily Reveille's pro-abortion columns

The Daily Reveille has published the pro-abortion response in its edition today. Columnist Shanelle Matthews and a letter to the editor both accuse Parousian Emily Byers and the pro-life cause of butting into the personal affairs of women.


Shanelle Matthews: "Some Things Just Aren't Your Business"


Letters to the Editor: "Columnist 'Missed the Mark'"

Once again, if you have the oppurtunity to comment on either one of these boards or to write a letter into the Daily Reveille refuting either one of these responses then we encourage you to do so.

Meeting on Sunday

This Sunday we will cease drawing upon the generous hospitality of Mary Grace, Fay Thibodeaux, and Sarah Berard and return to Ryan Halford's residence. The presentation will be given by Michael Denton, and it will be given on themes of the Crucifixion, Persecution, and the Eucharist as presented in Bishop Fulton J. Sheen's famous work "Life of Christ." The meeting will begin at 8 o'clock. Ryan Halford's address is 4463 Tupello Street, and for directions call (504) 952-0247.

Reaction to Emily's Column

The reaction to Parousian Emily Byers' column on Wednesday has been enormous judging by the traffic on the Reveille's website. The reaction from the pro-choice had been at best misinformed and at worst nasty and mean, and the Parousians would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to defend Emily and the pro-life position. We would like to ask everyone for their continued support on this comments page so that the pro-life position can continue to be defended well.


Comments on Emily Byers' Article Against the Human Toll of Abortion

If you have not yet had the oppurtunity to read the Emily's column itself, we invite you to do so.


Abortion is 'America's holocaust'

Mark Shea Recognizes the Parousians and Emily Byers

Preemminent Catholic blogger Mark Shea has once again honored the Parousians and Parousian Emily Byers by calling attention to her recent article on abortion. The Parousians, contacting from their rainy and swampy secret base, would like to again thank Mark Shea for recognizing our humble alien civilization.


Mark Shea Recognizes the Advanced Alien Civilization Known as the Parousians

Parousian Emily Byers on the American Holocaust

Abortion is 'America's holocaust'

Parousian Emily Byers continues her debate with Planned Parenthood.

Wednesday Audience

From Founding Parousian Member Caleb Bernacchio:

Today's Wednesday Audience focused on the Apostle Paul. Pope Benedict said that St Paul had been called the 13th Apostle, as he had been received the call after Christ's Ascension. Noting that Paul had been a staunch opponent to the Gospel, Benedict said that this all changed after he had a personal encounter with the Risen Lord. The Holy Father said that St Paul teaches us to keep focused on the center, to see and judge all things in the context of Christ, God's reconciling Love.

In St Paul's life this was demonstrated through his steadfast preaching of the Gospel, a task which brought him all over the Roman Empire and most of in his martyrdom in Rome, in which he testified to Christ with his life.

Silence and Contemplation

From Founding Parousian Caleb Bernacchio:

On Monday, a Mass was said by Cardinal Zenon at St Peter's for students of the Pontifical Universities. Opening with the Veni Creator Spiritus, it was a solemn mass that emphasized that God was the interior teacher, as St Augustine liked to say.

In his homily Cardinal Zenon, in the light of the Gospel reading from Luke, asked everyone to consider the motivation behind their studies, and likewise, to remember that we should strive to be rich in front of God.

After Mass Pope Benedict processed into St Peter's. I was sitting in the very back row, next to the barrier where the Holy Father was walking in. The Pope, as Peter's successor, carries with himself a palpable sense of the unity of the entire Church. He is obviously a very a holy man, but this is in a sense overshadowed by the Office that he fulfills. I was able to shake the Holy Father's hand as he processed towards the altar.

In his address, Benedict said that students of theology cannot study God as if he was some object, something outside of ourselves, like we would study chemical engineering, or something of that sort. But rather, that God must not be separated from us when we seek to understand our Faith, that theology cannot be merely an academic enterprise, but instead it must one dimension of our efforts to be holy as God is holy.

He said that in today's world many things are said, but that sometimes silence and contemplation are best. In this way, when we are silent, we can contemplate the face of Christ and listen to what he has to say.

Parousian Michael Denton Rebuts Vox

Parousian Michael Denton's response to the letter from Vox: Voices for Planned Parenthood was published in the Daily Reveille.

Vox did little to combat Byers' arguments

New Student Speaker Format in Effect

Important Announcement: The Parousians are changing their student speaker format. In an effort to bring more time efficiency and order to the meetings we will be structuring the student presentations as follows: 30 minutes will be set for the presentation and 30 minutes will be set for a discussion. We are committed 100 percent to this new policy as it will consistently set an operating time to accommodate the busy schedules that many of us endure. Also, the focus on discussion is to encourage more dialogue and exchange of ideas which is one of the primary aims of the Parousians: to encourage dialogue in the academy. Everyone has insight to offer and this new structure hopes to allow for more opportunity for people to participate in discussion.

Crucifixion, Eucharist, and Sheen on the Life of Christ

This Sunday: Looking forward to next Sunday's presentation Michael Denton will present on the Crucifixion and Eucharist drawing on themes from the Life of Christ by Fulton J. Sheen. This presentation will return to our usual meeting place, 4463 Tupello Street residence of Ryan Hallford. For directions call (504) 952-0247. We would like to thank Mary Grace, Fay Thibodeaux, and Sarah Berard who kindly hosted the Parousians for the last few meetings in light of a malfunctioning A/C unit at our normal meeting place.

DEVELOPING STORY: Parousian Luke Ordogne Confirms Caleb-Pope Handshake

Parousian Luke Ordogne states:
"I just got an email from Caleb, and this is what it said:

'Luca,

Guess what I did today?

I shook Pope Benedict's hand.'"

Ordogne did not forward the e-mail. Direct confirmation from founding Parousian Caleb Bernacchio has not yet been received at the Parousians' home office, and he remains unavailable for comment. Stay tuned to this blog for more details.

BREAKING NEWS: Caleb Bernacchio Shakes Pope Benedict's Hand

Reliable sources report to the Parousian Post that founding Parousian Caleb Bernacchio has shook Pope Benedict's hand. Stay tuned to this blog for more details as we receive them.

Father John Carville on Rome During Vatican II This Sunday Night

Father John Carville will be the Parousians' special guest this Sunday at 8pm when he shares his memories of being a student in Rome during Vatican II and elaborates on the continuity between the popes of the Council (John XXIII and Paul VI) and the popes of our lifetime (John Paul II and Benedict XVI.) Call Ryan Hallford for directions to Mary Grace Westphal, Fay Thibodeaux, and Sarah Berard's apartment (601 East Campus Apartments)at (504) 952-0247. Please come and bring a friend.

Of Course They Don't Go There: Planned Parenthood's Vox Responds to Emily Byers

"Sex is no longer sacred. Tragically, many of us are stunned to hear anyone claim it ever was.

Thankfully an alternate view exists, one which holds that our sexual nature speaks staggering truths about who we are, about the human capacity for relationship, intimacy and participation in the creation of new life.

That's heavy stuff. No wonder Planned Parenthood and its pro-choice confederates are afraid to go there."

And Parousian Emily Byers was right, but the Vox officers felt compelled to speak out anyway.

Columnist was wrong about PPFA

Wednesday Audience

From Founding Parousian Member Caleb Bernacchio:

At the today's Wednesday Audience the Holy Father spoke about a text from the Gospel of St Matthew, which spoke of Judas' betrayal of Jesus, his subsequent guilt and suicide.

Pope Benedict, summarizing his speech, given in Italian, to the English speaking pilgrims, said that different theologies have tried to explain the motivation that lead to the betrayal of Jesus by Judas but, the Pope said, the gospels tell us that Judas gave in to the temptation of the Evil One. He said it is surprising to many that someone who lived so closely with Jesus could betray him. But, he emphasised, Christ respects our freedom, and does not force our will. He leaves us free to seek complete happiness in a life of complete obedience to the Father, a life of following Christ.


Incidentally, the Bishop who announced the Pilgrims from English speaking countries, mentioned a group from Assumption Parish in Franklin, LA. Assumption Parish is the home parish of the renowned Luke Ordogne's mother.

Curt Jester Cites Emily Byers and the Parousians

Unhappy Anniversary

The clown prince of Catholic commentary critiques one of Emily's critics:

"You just got to enjoy those bumper sticker platitudes like "Don't like abortion - don't have one." Don't like slavery, don't own one. Don't like murder, don't kill anyone. Though what immediately comes to mind is in this commenter's case "Don't like reason, don't use it."

Thanks for the comeback.

Mark Shea Cites Emily Byers and the Parousians Again

Parousian Emily Byers takes on Planned Parenthood

Thanks to preeminent Catholic blogger Mark Shea for recognizing Emily and the Parousians first.

Dawn Eden Cites Emily Byers

Dawn Eden, the beloved Catholic convert, columnist, rock journalist, take-no-prisoners blogger, and author of The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On cites our own Emily Byers as her quote of the day.

She has also added a link to the Parousians blog. Many thanks and tremendous fan support from the Parousians to Dawn Eden.

Maclin Horton Cites the Parousians

Rod Dreher describes Maclin Horton as "a Catholic convert who went from 1960s counterculturalist to faithful orthodox Catholic without ever losing his sense that something was seriously wrong with mainstream American society." Horton has two blogs, and they both recognize the Parousians today. Light on Dark Water deals with faith, literature, and music, while Caelum et Terra (a project with Daniel Nichols, the founder of the magazine of the same name) deals with social concerns. Both are priority stops for anyone surfing the net.

Horton's post from Light on Dark Water:

"What's more depressing than the drunks and joyless libertines who seem to comprise a good percentage of today's college students? What's more heartening than a bright, lively bunch of Catholic students challenging the conventional morbid hedonism? The Parousians are such a group at LSU, doing good things. Here's one of them taking on Margaret Sanger in the LSU student paper. That's nerve. And they have an interesting blog: a look at their links indicates a healthy disregard for some of the unhealthy divisions in the Church: First Things alongside the Catholic Worker. Good for them.

And, all together now: Wouldn't That Be A Good Name For A Band? Or an interesting one, anyway."

Again, many thanks to another role model for his support.

Bishop Robert Finn on the Rosary

October is month of the Rosary: Mary of Victories pray for us!

"In his 2002 letter, the Holy Father recommended the rosary as a contemplative prayer deeply rooted in the Sacred Scriptures. He suggested that we turn to the Bible in the course of our recitation, reading a short or longer portion of God's Word that corresponds to the mystery we reflect on while saying the beautiful prayers, the "Our Father" and the "Hail Mary," which themselves are echoes of Gospel. In this way we unite ourselves more completely not only with the power of the revealed Word, the Scriptures. It also becomes more likely that we will find in this prayer a meaningful coincidence between the mysteries of Christ's life and the dynamics of our own daily spiritual mysteries."

Archbishop Alfred Hughes on the Gospel of Life

The great source of hope for New Orleans' recovery is a passionate rebuilder of the culture of life.

Respect Life Sunday

"Why are the rich so miserable? They are miserable, if they have been unjust; if their ill-gotten gains came from defrauding their employees and ignoring the cries of those who were deprived. Even if their ears have been closed to the cry of their victims, these cries "have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts." Their crying is clear: "You have murdered the righteous one."

The application of this text to those who would contribute to the killing of a child in her mother's womb is frightening. But so, too, is it application to those who refuse to work for the Gospel of Life. There are those who would choose political expediency over the life of the unborn child. There are those who would attend to their own comforts when defenseless children need their support. There are those who consider the Gospel of Life an abstraction, not a personal responsibility. There are those who never visit their parents or listen to their children. There are those who would never work for a just penal system and the elimination of the unnecessary execution of those condemned to capital punishment. There are those who would never grapple with the moral dimensions of war or embryonic stem cell research. So God asks us today: Do you; do we work for the Gospel of Life?

Some would ask: What is the worst sin? Murder; apostasy? Christ has indicated that the greatest sin is to lead a "little one" into sin. The "little ones" are Christ's disciples. It is clear from Christ's words that nothing in life is worth more than virtue. Not even my hand, my foot, my eye is worth more than doing what God asks of me. That is why embracing the Gospel of Life is so essential. We cannot lead others into sin by disregarding or rejecting the Gospel of Life."

Archbishop Alfred Hughes on the Gospel of Prosperity

God’s will and human possessions

"In the human effort to respond to this teaching, there is always going to be a tension between greed and generosity. Greed is one of the fundamental ways in which our fallen human nature disorients us. It leads to a desire to amass earthly goods. This can take the form of personal avarice for riches or power. It can also take the social expression of injustice by harming others in order to amass wealth.

On the other hand, generosity leads us to largeness of heart. The widow in Serephta in the time of Elijah who was willing to share her limited flour for food and ended up being able to live more than a year with her son is an example of generosity of heart. The Lord Jesus also drew the attention of his disciples to the widow who placed a small mite in the Temple basket but, in doing so, gave all that she had to live on. In my own experience growing up in a post-Depression period, I marvel now at the sacrificial and generous way in which my parents provided despite the extraordinarily limited income on which we were living.

The experience of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath has presented us with an opportunity to re-look at the way in which we have amassed possessions. We have lost homes, possessions, jobs and a way of life. The Gospel calls us to place God first and to allow everything else to fall into its proper perspective. We have a responsibility to evaluate our approach to possessions and finances in light of the Gospel."

Emily Byers Critiques Planned Parenthood

Emily takes a hard look at the PPFA on the 90 year anniversary of their founding.
Planned Parenthood Denies its Roots

Caleb in Rome, Part 2

From Founding Parousian Caleb Bernacchio:

As promised, to conclude the story. Later on that same day, I went to the address of Haley's friend from New Orleans, who I met 3 days before I left, and waited for him to come out of the gated apartment. He had already offered me a place to stay.

Of notable occurence:

I'm sitting on a computer in an internet shop in Rome and on the TV behind is the world famous Benny Hinn!

But I am happy to report that I found a book edited by Dr. Henderson, and another one that had an essay written by him, in the Leonine Bookstore just outside of St Peter's.

Next Parousian Meeting: Commemoration and Celebration

This Sunday night at 8 pm we will celebrate the 28th anniversary of John Paul II becoming Pope. Tobias Danna will share some very brief comments about John Paul's continuing relevance in our lives, and your testimonials of what John Paul meant to you are encouraged. Afterwards, the party begins, with special attention given to our own Mary Grace Westphal's 20th birthday. Refreshments will be served, and I hear rumors there will be dancing.

The party will be at the apartment complex of Sarah Berard, Mary Grace Westphal, and Fay Thibodeaux. The location is apartment 601 in the East Campus Apartments. The East Campus Apartments are located on the LSU campus near the REC Center and across from East Laville. Appartment 601 is on the first floor in building Six which is in the middle of the ECA Complex. If any further directions are needed call Ryan Hallford, at (504) 952-0247.

Divine Mercy at LSU

Beginning this Friday (10/13) at 3pm, founding Parousian Katie Culotta will be leading a Chaplet of Divine Mercy and Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the Parade grounds. Meet her on the front steps of the Union. Katie is also organizing a nightly Rosary around campus. Contact her for more info at (504) 621-5283.

Announcement: Change in the Parousian Guard at LSU

From founding Parousian Tobias Danna:

I will return to work with FEMA this Monday, taking complaints from disabled applicants who feel they did not receive the help they needed, conducting interviews to determine the legitimacy of the claims, and routing requests to proper channels. The job is high stress, and the hours are long, but the work is noble, and the pay is good and will help us fund some of our bigger vision. Part of this bigger vision is helping start the Parousians of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where initially Ryan Hallford and I will be playing an active role in the coming weeks. Philip de Mahy will be primarily coordinating the LSU meetings from here on, as well as doing much of the posting on the blog. Please give him your full support.

I will not be a complete stranger, but I know in many ways I will be a ghost. I trust this is as it should be, that God is working something out for all our good.

I need your friendship and your prayers, your occasional phone calls and e-mails. I have no reason to doubt you will come through for my sake. Never doubt my trust in you, that the Parousians of LSU will be faithful in doing the work of John Paul's New Evangelization by proclaiming the ever-relevant Truth and Love who is Christ Jesus in the academy.

There are four things I keep needing to say to all of you, and I will never have said them enough. I love you, but not nearly as well as you deserve. Forgive me for the times when I am a royal jerk. Thank you for walking this stretch with me. And may all your fears be cast down as you learn the perfect love of God in your days.

Be God's,
Toby Danna

Emily Byers' Witnessing Hope on Respecting Those Who Serve

Where is our gratitude to our troops?

Archbishop Alfred Hughes on Defending Life

The New Orleans Archbishop says not all areas where Catholics are called to defend the dignity of human life are morally equivalent.

The Gospel of Life revisited

"Whether we address abortion or stem-cell research or human cloning or euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide or violence or racial injustice or war or capital punishment or poverty, the underlying issue is respect for human life. We cannot treat all of these issues as morally equivalent. Each is subject to a different moral analysis. Yet they all impact the sacredness of human life.

For instance, we cannot tolerate the impoverishment of people or the denial of basic health care for them. But there is no one policy or plan that is the only legitimate moral response. Discrimination based on race is intrinsically wrong, but we can legitimately differ on the most effective moral plan to address it. It is wrong to take the life of a criminal for motives of vengeance or in circumstances where the state has other viable alternatives to protect its citizens, but the Church teaches that state-sanctioned executions may, in rare circumstances, still be justified. However, abortion, euthanasia, genocide and pre-meditated murder are always gravely wrong."

Archbishop Donald Wuerl on Faith and American Democracy

The assertion by some that the secular voice alone should speak to the ordering of society and its public policy, that it alone can speak to the needs of the human condition, is being increasingly challenged. Looking around, I see many young men and women who, in such increasing numbers, are looking for spiritual values, a sense of rootedness and hope for the future. In spite of all the options and challenges from the secular world competing for the allegiance of human hearts, the quiet, soft and gentle voice of the Spirit has not been stilled.


"Morality and ethical considerations cannot be divorced from their religious antecedents. What we do and how we act, our morals and ethics, follow on what we believe. The religious convictions of a people sustain their moral decisions.

What is religion’s place in public life? As our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, tells us in his first encyclical letter, “Deus Caritas Est” (God Is Love): “[f]or her part, the Church, as the social expression of Christian faith, has a proper independence and is structured on the basis of her faith as a community which the State must recognize. The two spheres are distinct, yet always interrelated” (DCE 28). Politics, law and faith are mingled because believers are also citizens. Church and state are home to the very same people.

The place of religion and religious conviction in public life is precisely to sustain those values that make possible a common good that is more than just temporary political expediency. Without a value system rooted in morality and ethical integrity, there is the very real danger that human choices will be motivated solely by personal convenience and gain.

To speak out against racial discrimination, social injustice or threats to the dignity of life is not to force values upon society, but rather to call our society to its own, long-accepted, moral principles and commitment to defend basic human rights, which is the function of law."

Archbishop Charles Chaput on Catholics and Public Actions

In mass media and courts, some religions less equal than others. Catholics have the right and the duty to form their public actions guided by their faith

"What’s the lesson here for Catholics? Week in and week out, but especially every two and four years, we hear a pious lecture from critics of religion. The message is always tired, and it’s always the same: Faith is allegedly a private matter, and Catholics shouldn’t “impose their religion” on society at large.

In fact, what we claim to believe, we need to act on both in our private lives and our public choices — and if we don’t act, we make ourselves into liars. Religion has no business endorsing political candidates or parties. But religious believers have every right and the serious obligation to form their social, political and economic decisions guided by their religious faith."

Parousian Mark Duggan on Marketing LSU and Academics

A belated letter to the editor which ran in the October 3 Daily Reveille from Parousian Mark Duggan.

Lunch with Lewis this Wednesday at St. Alban's Chapel

From Drew Rollins of St. Alban's Chapel

"Lunch With C. S. Lewis"
Tomorrow at 11:30 (St. Alban's Chapel)

I hope you're all having a good week. I look forward to seeing you
here for lunch tomorrow (chocolate chip cookies this week!).

I'd like to begin by discussing the reading from October 8, "At the
Back of the Moral Law -- a person", and this idea that "When you know
you are sick, you will listen to the doctor." (Someone said that
before Lewis. Can you guess who?) And I'll want to hear your thoughts
on these readings, of course.

You may also remember that St. James Episcopal Church (downtown Baton
Rouge) is holding a conference on C. S. Lewis this weekend. Several
major Lewis scholars will speak. There are talks on Thursday evening
(7:00), Friday evening (7:00), and Saturday morning (9:00). There is
NO CHARGE for students! Jeanie and I are planning to go on Thursday
evening, the session on "The Screwtape Letters", just in case anyone
would like to sit with us! It promises to be an excellent conference.

Stephen Dufrene on Plato, Aristotle, and Pro Wrestling

From Parousian alumnus and Houma-Thibodaux seminarian Stephen Dufrene:

The following is a dialogue between a mature, or enlightened, pro-wrestling fan and a “rasslin” fan. The purpose of the dialogue is to demonstrate Plato’s belief in the necessity to postulate forms and their existence in what we perceive to be reality, as well as what they (forms) must be according to the conclusions of the dialogue. In the second part of the dialogue, a third character is introduced to articulate Aristotle’s critique as well as offer his own solution to the question of what is and what is known in reality.

SCENE I: The scene takes place during the intermission of a live pro-wrestling show. Eddie, the “rasslin’” fan, never misses pro-wrestling on TV and perceives what is shown as reality. Eddie has a seat next to a mature fan named Joe, who is also a fan of Plato. The dialogue begins as Eddie is visibly upset after hearing an announcement concerning his favorite wrestler, Rubberman, being attacked and injured backstage. Joe knows better than to burst the blistering excitement of Eddie’s ignorance; however, Joe has taken advantage of the drink specials, gets emotional when he drinks, and is having trouble watching Eddie’s tears.

J: C’mon man, you know he’s not really hurt back there!
E: Didn’t you just hear the emergency announcement?
J: (laughing) Sure I did, but that doesn’t mean Rubberman is actually hurt.
E: You’re right; he does have special powers, and maybe he has already healed himself. I saw him flying on TV last week, you know.

J: You have got to be kidding me!
E: Nope, saw it with my own two eyes, and they don’t lie.
J: I think you’re missing the point; all of what happens to the wrestlers is staged. (Eddie is becoming visibly angry at this point despite the sorrow still felt for Rubberman.)

J: Let’s make a deal: listen to what I’ve got to say, and you will feel better about your friend Rubberman.

E: Anything to take away this anguish!
J: Then let us begin. Do you recall the first match tonight when we could hear the wrestlers communicating what moves they were about to perform? The opponents openly communicated with one another before every major slam and flip.

E: You mean that’s what they were doing? I thought they were threatening one another. I’m not sure if I want to believe you.
J: You see, the camera men are trained so that what is caught on tape does not show any communication between the wrestlers. The result is that what we see on television is perceived differently from what actually is physically taking place in the ring.

E: Are you telling me that there is more than what I see on TV?
J: Your eyes don’t lie, right? What we see on TV is simply what the cameras want to show us, vague images of the changing physical matter taking place in the ring.

E: So everything that I have believed from pro-wrestling on TV is nothing more than weak ideas of what is reality; and the characters only image what the reality actually is?

J: You’re exactly right; these were only weak ideas based on incomplete information from TV. Sense experience cannot explain everything. Feeling better about Rubberman now?

E: A little. I’m starting to believe that there is more going on than what I can see, but how can I know for sure?

J: You have to recognize that there is a difference between your sense experience and intellect. Can you think of anything that you know to be different from someone else’s perceptions?

E: Today my supervisor, Al, and I drank some beer at lunch. Shortly after we returned to work his boss passed by, and Al loudly reminded me never to drink during the workday. His boss just turned and commented on how proud he was with Al’s positive influence. Al’s boss has no idea of what the reality actually is. Are you saying…

J: Exactly, this type of definition that is outside of the material changing world can serve as a sort of “common denominator” between your knowledge of what actually goes on at work and what actually happens in pro-wrestling. You see, just as your supervisor only acts the way he should when his boss is around, we can say that he only imitates what the ideal employee would be.

E: I see! Do you mean that the wrestlers only participate and imitate the ideal wrestlers they represent? What is this ideal? I think you’ve had too many beers; you and Al should hang out!

J: Now you’re on the right track, you’re beginning to see through the realm of opinion and into the realm of knowledge. We can now move into the knowledge of stability outside the changing material world, or for our sake, what goes on inside the ring. The following might be painful to hear, but give me a chance; we must try to separate the intellect from the senses. There is a promoter who devises the story lines and outcomes for all of the matches. The promoter’s imagination is the reality behind the appearances and is outside of the material changing world of what you once perceived to be the reality inside of the ring. The wrestlers only participate in and imitate what goes on in the promoters imagination, or, in philosophical terms, what would be the form.

E: So the wise fan recognizes the unchanging reality behind what the senses perceive to be reality inside the ring. The promoter is the reason that all things in the ring exist!

J: Yes, We can now describe him as the Good, or what it is that gives proper order to what is perceived as reality.

E: Ahhh….so everything starts with the promoter, or the Good. What goes on in his imagination explains my questions of what is, what is known, and what is the cause of what happens in the material changing world of the ring. You called the promoter’s imagination the “form”; does everything else in the world have a form they only imitate or participate in?

J: I believe so. Let’s investigate by summarizing what we have learned. We know in order for forms to exist they must be similar to the promoter’s imagination, immaterial and outside of the changing world.

E: Right, they must also be completely independent of my beliefs, since I believe there is no way the midget in the last match could really beat the 500lb. man!

J: Let’s also recall the masked wrestler from earlier. On TV last week he was 40 pounds heavier and had a tattoo; I don’t believe he lost all that weight and rubbed off a tattoo!

E: That’s right, there must be an unchanging reality outside of what is perceived through the senses. What can we learn from the instances when there is an accident and the referee stops the match? This is definitely not what is in the mind of the promoter.

J: Then we would have to agree that there is an ideal essence that the wrestlers only participate in.

[At this point Eddie leaves his seat to buy a Rubberman foam finger. On his way he sees Rubberman who is obviously not injured. Eddie runs to tell Joe the news.]

E: Joe, I just saw Rubberman, and he is OK! Now I understand that he was only injured backstage in the promoters mind. Rubberman is not imitating the form very well!

SCENE II: Doug, a former wrestler, is sitting behind Joe and Eddie. Doug couldn’t help but hear the philosophical discussion transpiring before him. He had originally chosen to remain silent so as not to offend Joe and Eddie. This sentiment soon vanished when he realized he was going home empty handed- Eddie had bought the last Rubberman foam finger. Emotions are high.

D: Excuse me, but I couldn’t help but overhear your discussion. I’ve got to say that you guys have done nothing but complicate my life! What you speak of is a useless doubling of reality with no basis for explaining how the wrestlers themselves change over time!

E: Why don’t you explain yourself?

D: Lets start with the idea of the wrestlers only participating or imitating the promoter’s imagination. This may be a challenge to see from the fan’s perspective, but it is an absurd assumption. This can be proven wrong by the simple evidence of the promoter’s temper rising when wrestlers don’t perform the way his (the promoter’s) imagination had planned. Yes, you could say they were poorly imitating; however, I have seen several occurrences where wrestlers actually opposed what the promoter had imagined.

E: So the participation of wrestlers in the promoter’s imagination is what you mean as a useless doubling of reality! I knew Rubberman was more than an imitation!

D: Absolutely, Rubberman is the substance! He contains both matter in his body, and form in his understanding of how to behave, as well as what he is to accomplish during the match. If there were no man to give matter to the Rubberman character, then the character would cease to exist have form. Matter and form cannot be separated!

E: I think I now know why Joe’s explanation cannot explain change. Let me give it a shot. In the promoter’s mind the wrestler would always remain the ideal, but in reality the champion always ages and eventually becomes less than a crowd favorite. I agree, Doug; to say that material only imitates the form is not good enough.

J: I see where my example is weak, but how do you explain change?

D: Since form and matter exist in each wrestler, or what we can call the substance, it is the matter itself that changes, and the forms come and go.

E: Do you mean, for example, that as the wrestler portraying Hulk Hogan ages, his character changes into a wrestler who talks a lot more than wrestles?

D: Right. As the age (matter*) changes, different uses for the characters have to be imagined. In other words, as material changes, the form that once made up its substance leaves and another form enters. I think you would agree that as far as characters go, Hulk Hogan of old and Hollywood Hogan of today are based off completely different ideas, or as we have previously called them, forms.

E: Without a doubt, it’s only the same person portraying two different characters. Am I correct now in saying that, as the wrestler ages and his character is changed, the form making up his substance changes?

D: Correct, and therefore his substance also changes. Hence the progression of an individual wrestler and the different characters that he portrays. When the wrestler is young and healthy, most of his time is spent in the ring. As he ages and becomes injured his character is changed into a manager. Once he is unable to perform the duties of a manager, he is put out to pasture as an announcer. In each of these different phases the health and age (physical matter*) change, and the ideas that inspire the characters (forms) come and go accordingly with the health and age (matter*) of the wrestler.

E: If this is the explanation of how things change, I believe I can give an example of why things change along the lines of our wrestling discussion.

D&J: I’d like to hear this!

E: Let’s call the individual who wants to become a wrestler the material cause, or the “stuff”. The promoter and the wrestler himself develop an idea of what the ideal character would be, resulting in a formal cause.

D: Would the formal cause be the character’s personality, fighting style, muscular build, etc.?

E: Good job, Doug. Once the wrestler has an idea of the formal cause, he can begin to train and practice in order to become what has been envisioned. This training and practicing stage can be called the efficient cause. Items such as weights and acting classes may be considered agents.

D: What will we call the stage once the wrestler reaches his goal and does his best to fulfill what we called the formal cause?

E: Let’s call the attainment of the goal or purpose the final cause.

The scene ends as the announcer calls an end to the intermission. Joe, Eddie, and Doug laugh as they read the announcer’s shirt: “Everything that I know about reality, I’ve learned from Pro-Wrestling!”

* It is understood that Aristotle would categorize age and ability as accidents of the individuals that wrestle; however, here they pertain to the substance of the character. I.e., if you take away the flexibility of the wrestler portraying Rubberman, the character of Rubberman would cease to exist.

Caleb in Rome

From founding Parousian Caleb Bernacchio:

Greetings from the Eternal City. I just wanted to thank everyone that participated in the roast. I especially thank everyone who did not mention everything which could have been said.

I arrived at about 8:30 in the morning on Wednesday, the Feast of St Francis. My arrangements to be picked up at the airport did not pan out. So I spent about fifty dollars to get to the Phillipino College where I thought I was going to be staying. Upon arrival I waited for a long time before they knew what they should do with a disoriented white man who claimed that he was staying at thier college. Other than the pair of workers I was the only laymen at the college and I was the only white man from America. They asked me to sit in the chair and wait for the rector. I sat down and fell asleep reading the Summa Theologica (thanks to Katie Culotta's offer to buy Gelato from Capital City Creamery, after the 7:00 AM Communion service, I only got about 3 and a half hours of sleep in the two nights before I found myself in Rome).

The Rector woke me up and informed that it was against the law for me to stay at the Phillipino College but he insisted that I eat lunch. Luckily two holy Phillipino priests, resisting the temptation to think that I was deranged, spent all day helping find a place to sleep. I was finally taken in by a convent in the room nearest the chapel. At about 1:00 PM the following day the Mother Superior sent one of the sisters to my room to make sure that I was still alive.

Part 2 later.

Duggan, Hallford, and Danna on Lepanto this Sunday at 8pm

Because Ryan's AC is currently out of commission and for a change of atmosphere, the next meeting will be held at the apartment of Sarah Berard, Mary-Grace Westphal, and Fay Thibodeaux. The location is apartment 601 in the East Campus Apartments. The East Campus Apartments are located on the LSU campus near the REC Center and across from East Laville. Apartment 601 is on the first floor in building Six which is in the middle of the ECA Complex. If any further directions needed call Ryan Hallford, at (504) 952-0247.

The discussion will recognize the anniversary (actually on Saturday) of the battle of Lepanto, one of the most eventful clashes between Islam and Christendom. Mark Duggan will discuss the historical aspects of the battle while Ryan and Tobias Danna introduce G. K. Chesterton's poem Lepanto as well as some thoughts from Chesterton on the Middle East.

Archbishop Charles Chaput on St. Francis' Example to Society's Leaders

Archbishop says public leaders, who claim to be Catholic but do not act on Gospel, are deceiving themselves

"If you and I want to be what God calls us to be in the years that lie ahead, we need to be like St. Francis."

LSU Alumnus and 'Bad Catholic' John Zmirak on Bridging the Political Divide

Trading Places: How to rekindle conversation between Left and Right

The author of The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living ridicules the hypocrisy of contemporary progressives and conservatives.

Emily Byers Challenges the Materialistic Mindset

Too often our goals are materialistic

Parousian and Reveille columnist confronts the materialist consumer culture on the feast of Saint Francis.

Remembering Rich Mullins

On what would have been the ninth anniversary of his entry into the Catholic Church, the Parousians remember this Quaker-turned-Evangelical-turning-Catholic disciple of St. Francis, Flannery O'Connor, and G. K. Chesterton.

Rich Mullins -- Enigmatic, Restless, Catholic

A Ragamuffin Music Man: Rich Mullins

Update on Beth Reed

Beth is no longer using a ventilator to breathe, but she has returned to ICU due to breathing difficulties. The doctors hope to remove another brain tumor next week, but they are waiting for some stability in her recovery from the last surgery. Please continue to pray for her healing through the intercession of Pope John Paul II.

A Fresh Perspective on Corporal Mortification for Spiritual Perfection

I Scourge the Body Electric

Special Thanks

A great deal of appreciation goes out to everyone who made Caleb Bernacchio's farewell roast such a success. Special thanks goes out to Father John Carville, Father Bryce Sibley, seminarians and Parousian alumni Matthew McCaughey and Stephen Dufrene, and the Parousians of ULL for helping send off Caleb with good natured jabbing.

Archbishop Alfred Hughes on Pope Benedict's lecture at Regensburg

The real message of Pope Benedict XVI

"In his perceptive analysis, Pope Benedict raises a question for authentic religious dialogue. If we detach a morality rooted in human nature and accessible to human reason from our faith in God, does not that allow us to convert vice into virtue and virtue into sin? Authentic world religions have tried to ground spirituality in moral virtue. But if we believe that God wants our faith to win at all costs, then the end justifies the means. Terrorism becomes an act of virtue. If, however, the Jihad is interpreted as a spiritual war against the demonic powers of evil, it is much easier to find a common ground. This is a challenge that we need to address humbly, sincerely and directly."

Archbishop Jose Gomez on Moral Law

Don't mess with your faith

" At first sight, the Ten Commandments look like a long list of “no’s.” However, Jesus Christ has revealed to us the fullness and completion of this law: the “no’s” are, truly, the ancient expression of a totally new law; a law that is summed up in the commandment to love God and neighbor, and to love one another as Christ loved us. This law has also been inscribed in the human heart: it is the law of freedom that we received through our baptism and that must affect every aspect of our life. God’s law, then, makes us free, and brings us happiness and salvation."

Ryan Hallford on Gossip, Truth, and Community

From founding Parousian Ryan Hallford:

"Where do I start? Why do I write? What can be accomplished? Attempting to say something of importance has typically forced my mind to go blank. Perhaps, I should start by saying something very non-important. And why not? Often society devours very non-important things. This trend radiates throughout the media. When I listen or read the news, I anticipate many unimportant things that writers publish. The numbers of magazines devoted to such topics baffles my mind. When shopping in stores how often do you see academic or religious journals at checkout lines? While the wide spread use of internet may serve to advance the type of global consciousness theorized by the likes of Teilhard de Chardin, I can not help believing that the social obsession with trivial news sets back progress.

Gossip in any community can easily become a frequent past time; however; does the present rate of gossip serve to benefit mankind? One of my favorite churches, St. Joseph Abbey, has the seven vices or capital sins depicted in the apse. These vices are embodied in the form of demons that are held prisoner under the angels of God who simultaneously uphold and serve God’s creation. In the spirit of good humor, and because the space between windows merits another portrait, the painter, Dom Gregory De Wit, includes an eighth vice for the Benedictine community to be vigilant against. This eighth demon whispers towards the choir stalls where the monks daily gather to pray. This depiction serves to warn them against the destructive nature of gossip. Apparently, not only secular society suffers from the infestation of unimportant things. Frankly, it distracts us from the more important issues of life.

The problem gossip creates makes important things disappear in the horizon of infinite amounts of tedious rumors and possibilities that serve to distract the mind rather than form it. Instead of focusing on issues that concern the nature of man and his end, we become bogged down in a quagmire of filth. The truth takes back seat to the entertainment that soap operas afford. Why waste energy talking about gossip? Because there is a growing need to reexamine our culture in hopes to discover those precious gems of life; to embrace culture from within and find those important things that truly enhances the life of the individual. Such a realization sets out to evangelize culture through two methods: from within and without.

Through the instruments of faith and reason the mind can discern the moments of grace manifested within culture. These spectacles of truth can often go unnoticed in the midst of unimportant things unless given proper recognition. This method intends to evangelize the culture from within thereby adhering to the call of a New Evangelization that reads the signs of the time. However, an equally important counterpart to this New Evangelization not only deciphers the important things from within but speaks about those truths found outside any individual culture. By transcending a particular culture and calling upon the eternal truths expressed by means of the Church and the light of reason, the responsibility of spreading the Gospel and redeeming the culture rest in the hearts of a people awaiting the Parousia.

Often, the vast sea of non-important things drowns the advocates of Truth. Much ciphering takes place before exposing the truth ingrained at the heart of the community. Within the community, every person has a valid insight into reality by the nature of their own experiences. Reality is greater than the any individual mind can know. Each person is a part of reality and therefore a part of the whole. Each person does have a capability of contemplating the whole (animals do not) and thereby offer a subjective perspective on reality without objectively comprehending the whole of reality. This does not mean that the community can invent or create Truth. However, we are called to collectively work together in seeking the Truth and participating in its reality. Life is full of beauty and meaning, and I encourage people to share their insight so that I may too learn what they have to offer. By journeying and journaling together, hopefully this blog may inspire greater knowledge and love of God than any of us could have obtained individually. Truth is a communal affair and calls us to greater unity and brotherhood. In arguing for the important things in life, I believe there are three types of people that argue: those who argue for the sake or arguing, those who argue because they like to hear themselves argue, and those who argue to seek the Truth. I consider myself in the last category. And by "argue" you can easily substitute it with the word "dialogue". I believe Truth is of the utmost importance. We should search for the Truth and rejoice in the day we find it."