Do As Romans Do
What a shockingly ironic eye-opener your September 2005 “Fathers Know Best” was! After all these centuries of Protestants accusing Catholics of “forbidding marriage” by allowing (not forcing) men and women to choose consecrated virginity, you announce Augustine’s declaration that it is the contraceptors who actually forbid marriage, though they hold to its outward form. Soranus, a Greek doctor who practiced in Rome around A.D. 100, wrote that “women are married for the sake of bearing heirs and not for pleasure and enjoyment.” The Julian laws passed in 18 B.C. and the stronger Augustan law of A.D. 9 encouraged big families by placing heavier penalties for crimes on the unmarried or the married who were childless. Bachelors were forbidden to receive inheritances and legacies. A woman was allowed to be exempt from marriage for one year after the death of her husband or for six months after a divorce. Priority was given not to the consul who was older but to the one with more children than his colleague (see Jo-Ann Shelton, As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History, Oxford, 24–9). It was a Roman’s duty to marry and produce more Romans for the state. The ancients would have understood very clearly that a contracepting marriage was a sham. Thank you for enlightening the modern world on the ancient understanding of marriage and Paul’s prophecy about it. I’m glad I didn’t let my subscription lapse!
Mary Horey
via the Internet
Paganism’s Problems
Fascinating back-and-forth between Tony Clark and the former Buddhist (Letters, October 2005). The difference between Christianity and paganism is crucial to understand. Without the truth of the revelation of Jesus Christ, all of paganism—whether Buddhist, Hindu, ancient Greek, Roman, Norse, whatever—ends in despair. Without the light of Christ, our individual human lives, our histories, and history itself really do go nowhere and end in nothing. Buddhism, not knowing Christ, not knowing the preciousness of each human life because of its creation in the image of God, embraces this nothingness; it is inevitable. Buddhism and all of paganism do not know the good creation, which is good because of its Creator. They see only the fallen world and know something is wrong, but on their own they cannot know what is wrong: that we need not mind-control or stoicism but redemption. Thus the strategy of paganism is always escape, detachment, and disdain for the world. The words joy, hope, love, freedom, and truth can have no meaning for the pagan, because he does not yet have the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Lucy Tucker
Scarsdale, New York
A “Nietzsche” Market
In his article “What’s in a Name” (October 2005), Carl Olson dismisses Friedrich Nietzsche’s exceptional contribution to Western thought. When Nietzsche announces that “there is no truth, only opinions,” “there are no facts, only interpretation,” and “God is dead,” he is announcing the consequences of a culture that made truth and God irrelevant. So while we should disagree with Nietzsche’s answer (the “will to power” and the “overman”), we cannot dismiss his critique of philosophy and simply go back to Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, as Olson seems to suggest (i.e, that we can comprehend reality through the use of universal and abstract concepts). Olson’s analysis does not address one of the truly original contributions of Christianity to this debate: the primacy of the individual and the particular over the universal through the mystery of the Incarnation. When we speak of the dignity of every human life, for example, we are not appealing to the true universal objective concept of “human.” Rather, we appeal to the uniqueness of this one specific human being in this one womb who ought not be aborted because God loves him. This individual is unrepeatable. He is not a copy of a universal concept; he is a person. Christianity simply overcomes the framework within which Olson attempts to condemn Nietzsche and nominalism.
Edgardo Tenreiro
Naples, Florida
Carl Olson replies: Mr. Tenreiro both protests too much and reads too much into my short comment about Nietzsche. In fact, my point was exactly what Tenreiro initially states: that Nietzsche “is announcing the consequences of a culture that made truth and God irrelevant.” My simple point was that nominalism played a significant role in the process by which truth and God have become increasingly irrelevant. My comment on Nietzsche was hardly a dismissal of him but simply an observation that his thought had its own genealogy and that his views of man and God are ultimately in direct opposition to Christianity. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s remark that Nietzsche’s statement—”God is dead and we have killed him”—”belongs linguistically to the tradition of Christian Passiontide piety” simply recognizes that Nietzsche saw the daunting challenge at the heart of the gospel. But Ratzinger points out that Nietzsche tried to address it and other challenges through radical subjectivism by setting “the intoxicating Dionysiac element in opposition to the ordered Apollonian” (Truth and Tolerance, Ignatius, 239). Identifying and criticizing that subjectivism is hardly a dismissal of Nietzsche; on the contrary, it is a recognition of how influential and dangerous it really is.
TGIF?
While addressing a question about eating meat on Fridays in Advent (Quick Questions, November 2005), you answer that although all Fridays are days of abstinence, “The American bishops’ conference has decreed that abstinence is required only on Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent.” I think that that answer, while maybe correct as far as it goes, is misleading in that no mention is made of the substitute act of charity or penance that is required if one chooses to eat meat on Fridays. All most people hear is that we can eat meat; what they should hear is that we must observe Friday and can keep with tradition by refraining from meat or substituting some other penance or charitable act.
This is important to me for several reasons. First, I’ve resumed the practice of refraining from meat on Fridays, and it is a helpful all-day reminder of God’s love for us and the burden of sin—many of them mine—Christ carried on the cross. I actually look forward to thinking about this on Fridays. Secondly, I’ll bet not one in a thousand of the laity know that we are still expected to observe Fridays; I’ve never met one. So, when I saw your answer, I was disappointed that you did not clarify this important (and helpful) expectation and, in fact, will have confirmed an error in the minds of your readers.
Furthermore, although not its purpose, consistent and unobtrusive selection of fish on Fridays is a witness and an effective evangelization opportunity; it is noticed.
Liam Dudley
Wilmington, Delaware
As regards the answer about meatless Fridays in Advent in the November issue, I believe Fridays are still penitential and still regarded as preparatory to Sunday, when we represent the Good Friday sacrifice and celebrate the Resurrection.
The purpose of penitential Fridays, I believe, is to remind us of Calvary, which then makes us think of sin, the principality of evil, the need to struggle. . . . You see where this goes: right to the very deposit of faith.
I hope you will help revive the recognition that Fridays are penitential and can be an important opportunity to grow in our faith.
Anna Brown
via the Internet
Editor’s reply: The U.S. bishops’ conference urges Catholics to do some sort of penance on Fridays outside of Lent, but it is not mandated. For a fuller explanation, see Jimmy Akin’s article “Is Friday Penance Required?” in the January 2005 issue of This Rock (also online at www.catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0501bt.asp).
Campus Catholicism
Tim Drake’s article on Catholic universities and colleges (“Catholic and ‘No Longer Catholic,’” November 2005) was, as is all of his writing, informative and well-written. Over the past several years I have had the opportunity to visit several campuses, and I write this letter only to add a note about a different model that impressed me greatly.
The St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas provides support to Catholic students that is not usually available at state institutions. The center has extensive facilities that are closer to the heart of campus than are the freshmen dorms. There is a beautiful chapel where about 100 students attend one of the several daily masses, they have regular eucharistic adoration, and the chapel is open for private worship during most hours of the day.
The center itself has numerous classrooms, a library, a computer lab, and other facilities that one would expect to find only in a university building. More than 300 students take classes that emphasize theological education, spiritual formation, and training in apostleship. They also have a lectureship program that brings Catholic speakers to campus, and they run a catechetical institute to enable students to become theologically educated in the faith, Scripture, and the traditions of the Church.
Unlike most campus centers, St. Lawrence does not rely on volunteers to teach its courses. It hires well-qualified instructors who are dedicated to the center and the students, including (when I visited there) two priests and four nuns. In fact, the center offers more than thirty scholarships worth over $90,000 to the students, and it played a significant role in establishing a professorship in Catholic studies in the university proper.
While this model (which, I understand, also exists at the University of Illinois) cannot replace true Catholic institutions, it can play an important role for students who have chosen, for financial or other reasons, to attend a state school.
Ronald Rychlak
University of Mississippi
Oxford, Mississippi