NCR Today

When I was young, I remember thinking about that phrase priests use on Ash Wednesday when they place the ashes on your forehead: "Remember (whomever) that you are dust and unto dust you shall return." Although we can profitably be reminded of our mortality from time to time, this always struck me as a bit morbid.

Of course, since Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, the ashes also announced the beginning of a season-long effort to repent wrongs, seek a new path and follow the Gospel.

In recent years, I was introduced to the world of environmental/cosmological spirituality in which we emphasize and celebrate our oneness with all creation, our unity with the entire universe. It's based on scientific accounts of the unfolding of God's creation, which happened quite a bit differently than the way it's told in Genesis. Humanity, like all other life, got its seed planted with the "Big Bang" as particles of matter sped out from the core. Over billions of years, this led to the creation of solar systems, planets and eventually many forms of life, including human life. We are literally made from the same "stuff" as the stars and planets!

Using Facebook, Vimeo, YouTube and the "40" website, young people and adults will be able to follow the journey of seven people in Los Angeles after an apocalyptic event has thrust them together for survival.

The number 40 haunts them as they try to figure out where God is in the midst of chaos and isolation. Each high-definition webisode is 4 to 7 minutes long and stars actors that most people will recognize from a variety of television series and/or commercials, Peggy Miley in particular. Two new episodes will air each week during Lent. A reflection guide is also available for each webisode on the site for reflection and conversation.

The other day, I was listening to reports on the Republican primary race, and I heard Rick Santorum criticize President Barack Obama's "theology." I stopped dead in my tracks. Theology? On the campaign trail? I thought Santorum was running for president, not for pope. What in the world did he mean?

Well, he went on to say that Obama believes in "some phony theology ... not a theology based on the Bible -- a different theology." When pressed later about what he meant, Santorum said he was referring to Obama's beliefs about the dangers of climate change.

Just for the record, Obama's beliefs about climate change are based in science -- as they are for most rational people -- not "theology."

Santorum went on to explain that he was talking about "radical environmentalists." That's apparently his term for those who still think the scientific method has merit and accept the current consensus on climate change in the scientific community. (Actually, this appalling anti-science attitude seems to have wide acceptance among the Republican candidates. Could the support of oil and gas interests have something to do with clouding their science?)

Stephen S. Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America, argues at CNN that there is no such thing as a single Catholic vote, but rather, there are three distinct Catholic voting blocs.

Professor Schneck argues that one particular voting bloc will likely determine the 2012 presidential election:

Pretend for a moment that your world was flipped over. Everything you thought right was wrong, all the threads of a civil society seemed frayed and no one appeared to notice or care. You'd be a little scared and very angry -- and you probably wouldn't know just who to blame.

That, I think, is what's behind the undying persistence of culture wars in American elections. This one was supposed to be about jobs, but right now, it has shifted unexpectedly toward cultural battles: values, family and the moral fiber of a nation. Progressives scratch their heads and wonder why, in a country struggling to get back on its economic feet, these issues boil to the top, especially among working-class and middle-class families so hard-hit by hard times.

NCR received a letter from Msgr. Hugh G Connolly, president of Saint Patrick’s College Maynooth, the national seminary of Ireland. Msgr. Connolly objected to a web column by Eugene Kennedy, which was posted to our website Jan. 19. That column is here.

Msgr. Connolly requested the opportunity to respond to Kennedy’s column. To meet that request, I am printing in full Msgr. Connolly’s written statement that gives his account of the changes at the college, which were the focus of Kennedy’s column.

Italian paper calls Dolan a papal candidate

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome

Pope Benedict XVI legendarily thinks in centuries, so it’s almost always a category mistake to read his public oratory as a commentary on current events. Yet it was hard to listen to him this morning without at least flashing on the recent Vatican leaks scandal, which has created widespread impressions of power struggles and senior churchmen stabbing one another in the back.

In comments today to 22 new cardinals taking part in Benedict’s fourth consistory, with most of the Vatican’s senior leadership looking on, the pope issued a strong plea for a spirit of service.

“Serving God and others, self-giving: this is the logic which authentic faith imparts and develops in our daily lives,” the pope said, “and which is not the type of power and glory which belongs to this world.”

Benedict noted that from the very beginning, not everyone in leadership positions among Christ’s followers has been up to that challenge.

The controversy over the Catholic bishops and the Obama mandate has spawned a veritable Pandora's Box of discussion and argument far beyond anything the bishops expected.

In an especially perceptive online New York Times essay, Gary Gutting, a Catholic and a philosopher, contends that the bishops are wrong in claiming birth control is contrary to the teachings of the Catholic church. There may have been a time, he says, "when the vast majority of Catholics accepted the bishops as having an absolute right to define theological and ethical doctrines. Those days, if they ever existed, are long gone. Most Catholics ... now reserve the right to reject doctrines ... and to interpret in their own way the doctrines they do accept."

"The ultimate arbiter of religious authority is the conscience of the individual believer," Gutting says.

"It follows that there is no alternative to accepting the members ... as themselves the only legitimate source of the decision to accept their leaders as authorized by God."

By now, if you have any link to any media, you have seen the photo of the men who testified on Capitol Hill about artificial contraception Thursday.

If you only look at the photo, the only people testifying are men. From an image analysis alone, the fact that only men testified about an issue at the core of our being as human persons, this image is deeply troubling.

Although the regulation of birth seems like it is only for women, Humane Vitae stresses that this is a matter for husbands and wives -- that would mean men and women. Even among conservative Christians, there must have been one woman who agreed with these men who could have been included. (It seems they denied a "liberal" woman the chance to testify.)