By Brian Welter
Where is the holy located, in the individual or in the community? Protestants would emphasize the individual before God and the priesthood of all believers. Pre-Vatican II Catholicism would emphasize the intercessory role of the priest and the sacramental nature of the Church: extra ecclesiam nulla salvus. Certainly, Islam has traditionally located the holy in the community, the dar al Islam, the house of God. Apostates from Islam must be punished, just like the medieval and early modern Christian heretics tended to face a tough time in Christendom. But are apostates punished because the community has such a superior position viz the individual, or is apostasy such a big issue because individuals are so central to the Dar al Islam?
In Islam, what is the worth of the individual outside of the community? Does his value only consist in his adherence to the community? Seyyed Hossein Nasr has written extensively on the person and on nature, from his interpretation of Islam, and often to a Western audience that is firmly ensconced in a tradition of individual rights and the diminishment of collective identity, rights, and traditions. Yet how well does Seyyed Hossein Nasr represent Islam? Each chapter will discuss the basic arguments offered by Nasr, interwoven with possible objections by contemporary or twentieth-century Islamic thinkers such as Muhammed and Seyyed Qutub, Tariq Ramadan, and others. This will offer some possible assessments of Nasr's teaching from within Islam?
The “harmony” part of the study examines how Nasr's view of man and woman, following an Islamic view, distances itself from the Western feminist view of men and women being the same and therefore equal, to a view of women and men in harmony with each other, in accordance with Islamic tradition and the rights that it holds. This study will explore how, for Nasr, Islamic society envisions harmony rather than extreme democracy and freedom as exemplified in Western democracies today. In fact, unity, harmony, and the carrying on of tradition seem to be the focal point of Nasr's writing, the story behind the story. Likewise, Nasr's view of science, knowledge, and nature invoke harmony. Rather than dominating nature, science and knowledge should bring us into closer contact with God. Islamic science should be a spiritual science. The Islamic economy should bring about harmony rather than fierce, profit-making competition. It should build family and community rather than destroy the centuries-old human ecology and traditions, as Western-influenced capitalism is presently doing.
This study will, as much as possible, avoid references to Western or Christian thinkers in the attempt to understand Nasr within the Muslim world of thought. In his writings, it is this world of thought that Nasr tries to communicate to his Western audience. Despite this preoccupation with his Western readers, one cannot judge Nasr as a Muslim scholar except from within this Islamic tradition. How, then, does Nasr transmit his religious tradition of harmony to this West and the wider world?
Ch. 1. Dignity and Rights: Psychology and Spirituality
Nasr avoids an entitlement view of rights for the individual. He finds human dignity by locating God in the heart of the person. The Sufi mystic ultimately sees the world with God's eyes. Yet this comes through the arduous spiritual journey.
Nasr's Islamic approach parallels the Christian belief that human dignity rises from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, though Nasr does not indicate that this dignity also follows from the fact that we are made in the image of God, which is a cornerstone of Jewish and Christian anthropology: “The grandeur of the human state is not in that human beings can make complicated machines or conceptualize complex theories, but in that men and women are worthy of being addressed by God and being considered worthy of receiving His revelation and grace.”1 In a nutshell, Nasr's Islamic viewpoint does follow the Christian understanding that human dignity comes from the nature of God and the nature of human-divine relations: “To be human is to be capable of hearing the Word of God and being led back to Him.”2 Nasr pinpoints the individual's priestly function as being particularly noteworthy and full of dignity: “The fact that in the Islamic rites each Muslim – man and woman – stands directly before God in the daily prayers without any intermediary indicates from the Sufi point of view not only that each Muslim has a priestly function but also that there is a nexus linking each soul directly to God.”3
Ch. 2. Male and Female; Sexuality
Rather than equality-through-sameness, Nasr offers a traditional Islamic vision of the dignity of women and men that encourages harmony in the household and in society.
Certainly, Nasr follows the traditional Islamic teachings on sexuality.
Ch. 3.The Economy, Work and Leisure
Ch. 4. Community and Hierarchy
For Nasr, the world is necessarily hierarchical. God created the universe, and humans and spiritual beings, as well as animals and minerals and all else. God is the supreme ruler of all, and humans occupy a special place.
Ch. 5. Creation
“Esoterically speaking, all things by virtue of their existence, which is ultimately the Divine Breath, praise God, as the Quran asserts. They speak in silence of the mystery of existence, but most of us do not have the necessary power of hearing to grasp their silent words.”4
For Nasr, creation and humans, and God, who created the first two, are all linked through the dynamic mystery of God: “Although from one point of view creation is old, from another it is fresh and new. God's act of existentiation is ever present, and in fact existence is not so much a state as an act, as the existentiating command of God, 'Be!' This doctrine is of great significance not only for cosmology but also for the spiritual life.”5 Creation's youth is caused by the truth that God constantly sustains it, keeping creation in existence. Without this support, creation would cease to exist. This enchanted view of the universe, while not necessarily excluding the laws of Western science, demands something more than laws of physics and Darwinian evolution. Physics itself is an expression of God's support. Physics and the laws Western scientists have discovered depend on divine sustenance. Evolution too depends on God's sustenance; it exists because God wills it to exist. God is prior to and independent of physics and biology, and the laws discovered therein. This is the Islamic or at least Sufi re-enchantment of the world. God's generosity to creation is immediate and intimate: “In a deeper sense, every tree that we observe in the garden comes freshly from God's creative act.”6 Education is a spiritual journey, and the teacher is therefore a life teacher, a teacher of wisdom. This evokes the meaning of the Catholic terms “spiritual formation,” and lectio divina, both of which place spiritual growth above the need for a heavily critical outlook on life and the literary or religious canon and tradition. Education, for Nasr, is the guardian and transmitter of tradition, of spiritual and communal life, rather than about new discovery or revolutionary, radical thinking. This follows from his depiction of Islam as the middle way, something he also admires in the Greeks.
Ch. 6. Philosophy as Wisdom
The wisdom and teachings of the Quran govern what is valuable and not valuable knowledge. Knowledge foremost brings the believer closer to God. As such, knowledge is a lifestyle aid. It gives us the knowledge of the heart. Nasr writes at length about the intellect, which he situates in the heart. The knowledge of the heart – spiritual knowledge in keeping with Islam – governs the knowledge of the head. Science, in other words, falls under the knowledge hierarchy. Knowledge is subject to hierarch; otherwise, it would not lead to wisdom, but to the chaos of modern Western science and technology, which, Nasr repeatedly observes, is killing the planet, as well as the human traditions that dwell on it.
Ch.7. Science, and Knowledge
“Since in Islam the revelation came in the form of a sacred book, many Muslim sages have looked upon nature as a book of God...”7
Nasr portrays Islamic science and knowledge as holistic and unified around the oneness of the religion, a practice personified in the hakim. This knowledge strives for wisdom rather than for the Western-based need for advancement and the domination of the material world. Since Islamic knowledge is really a spiritual striving with God always on the mind, education and knowledge play a central role in the sacred. Knowledge in Islam is sacred, and the hakim is a kind of sacred man.8
Nasr highlights the spiritual and interpersonal nature of Islamic education, which does not seek to cultivate, above all, freedom of thought and a hyper-critical outlook, but which instead emphasizes the human dimensions of community, teacher-student relations, and knowledge itself. Knowledge builds community: “The transmission of knowledge has always had a highly personal aspect, in that the student has sought a particular master rather than an institution, and has submitted himself to that chosen teacher wholeheartedly. The relation that has always existed between the teacher and the student has been a highly intimate one, in which the student reveres the teacher as a father and obeys him, even in personal matters not connected with his formal studies. The atmosphere of these schools has been very relaxed and informal, without there being any great academic or financial pressure upon the student.”9 Nasr then ends this train of thought by gently though forcefully criticizing the modern, Western path: “Nor has there ever been the strong incentive to receive a diploma and then seek to benefit from its social and economic advantages, prevalent in so many modern educational institutions.”10 Education, for Nasr, is a sacred, personal endeavor, the goals of which are spiritual growth and community bonds: “That is why a person may often remain a student all his life, mastering one subject after another and going from one teacher to the next.”11
Ch. 8. God and Being / Ontology
Natural law: an Islamic natural law, or one too in debt to Christian law. Aristotle plays a big role in Nasr's philosophy. He is unafraid to borrow at length from the Greeks in general.
Nasr links God to the person. The individual is nothing without God: “Human beings qua human beings cannot enter the Divine sanctuary, but there is within us a reality that is already Divine. To be fully human is to realize our perfect servitude and to remove the veil of separative existence through spiritual practice so that God, transcendent and immanent within us, can utter 'I'.'”12
“The great mystery of existence is that it veils God by what is none other than Him... This truth is explicitly stated in the Quran.”13 Tells a Sufi story to illustrate: “...The moral of this story is that the in-depth understanding of the truth that God veils Himself by what is none other than God can come only from spiritual realization.”14
Bibliography
Fakhry, Majid,
Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism, A Short Introduction.
Gülen, M. Fethullah,
Khomeini, Sayyid Ruhollah Mousavi,
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein,
A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World.
The Garden of Truth.
The Heart of Islam.
Ideals and Realities of Islam.
Islamic Philosophy from the Origin to the Present.
Knowledge and the Sacred.
Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis in Modern Man.
Religion and the Order of Nature.
Science and Civilization in Islam.
Ozak, Muzaffer,
Irshad – Wisdom of a Sufi Master.
The Unveiling of Love.
Ramadan, Tariq,
Islam, the West, and the Challenges of Modernity.
Western Muslims and the Future of Islam.
Qutb, Muhammed,
Qutb, Seyyid,
Social Justice in Islam.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
American Babylon: Notes of an American Exile
By Richard John Neuhaus, Basic Books.
The late Father Neuhaus takes on America's morally relativist intelligentsia in his new book, principally by focusing on the late philosopher Richard Rorty, whom the author sees as one of the bedrock voices of relativism.
Neuhaus spends considerable effort explaining how the thin American understanding of church results in a too-great sanctification of the country. In this erroneous view, America replaces the church, and people bestow on the country a sacred calling that no state or political endeavor should or could ever have.
In fact, America to a large degree parallels the Babylon of ancient Israelite exile. America, or any country, is exile for Christians because Christians ultimately give their hearts to heaven, not to mammon and country. Humans must work within the world, just as the prophet Jeremiah told the Israelites in Babylon that they should work for the betterment of their new country. Yet this kind of progress occurs only when people of faith, then or now, look to a higher good than the world:
“What we should have learned from the past 200 years, and especially from the catastrophes of the twentieth century, is that history is not the answer to the question that is history.” History can only “participate in its own redemption” when it recalls its higher purpose, thus when “the transcendent and the immanent, the infinite and the finite, are so conjoined,” Neuhaus argues.
American Babylon examines some of the awful ethics thinking brought about by the current round of relativism, including that of professor Peter Singer, who takes controversial positions on animals rights and eugenics:
“His ethical theory exults in its liberation from particular time and place and from the authoritative references that have shaped our traditions of the moral life.” Like Rorty, Singer believes that the moral truth is what we say the moral truth is. Without a higher reference, based on religious and ethical traditions like Christianity, the possibility of not only abortion but also infanticide is open to humans.
The heart of this book is Neuhaus' discussion on Rorty, the great American relativist who like Singer and Nietzsche believed that humans make up their morality, and so can change their ethical thinking at any time. Ethics, like everything else, is a will to power for these thinkers.
Rorty's manner of ethical and philosophical relativism is highly relevant to Catholics and any one who cares about right and wrong. People with his attitude confront Christians almost every day when the religious and ethical issues arise.
Since for Rorty right and wrong do not exist outside of human definitions of right and wrong, he thinks it is imperative that liberals try to change the way people talk about ethical issues because we will never be able to solve our irreconcilable differences. Rorty invites his followers to simply duck the whole debate.
First, people can turn the deep, serious ethical conversation into something lighthearted. They can tease and joke and “josh” the concerned person of morals into giving up the conversation. If this doesn't work, good old-fashioned ignoring can work as well.
Thus we see on university campuses the attempt by pro-choice groups to limit or deny campus and student union services to pro-life groups. Rather than inviting an open, honest, and intellectual debate, pro-choice groups simply shut down the conversation and define the issue as how they see fit. In other words, from their more powerful position they simply will the debate to go away.
Such groups believe that they are creating a morality-free public zone, and that Catholics and others can keep their religious and ethical thoughts off campus and in their homes, safely out of sight. Yet Neuhaus doesn't buy this argument. American Babylon is a search for the proper response to such people, and an attempt to show just how moralizing and value-laden these secularists really are.
The late Father Neuhaus takes on America's morally relativist intelligentsia in his new book, principally by focusing on the late philosopher Richard Rorty, whom the author sees as one of the bedrock voices of relativism.
Neuhaus spends considerable effort explaining how the thin American understanding of church results in a too-great sanctification of the country. In this erroneous view, America replaces the church, and people bestow on the country a sacred calling that no state or political endeavor should or could ever have.
In fact, America to a large degree parallels the Babylon of ancient Israelite exile. America, or any country, is exile for Christians because Christians ultimately give their hearts to heaven, not to mammon and country. Humans must work within the world, just as the prophet Jeremiah told the Israelites in Babylon that they should work for the betterment of their new country. Yet this kind of progress occurs only when people of faith, then or now, look to a higher good than the world:
“What we should have learned from the past 200 years, and especially from the catastrophes of the twentieth century, is that history is not the answer to the question that is history.” History can only “participate in its own redemption” when it recalls its higher purpose, thus when “the transcendent and the immanent, the infinite and the finite, are so conjoined,” Neuhaus argues.
American Babylon examines some of the awful ethics thinking brought about by the current round of relativism, including that of professor Peter Singer, who takes controversial positions on animals rights and eugenics:
“His ethical theory exults in its liberation from particular time and place and from the authoritative references that have shaped our traditions of the moral life.” Like Rorty, Singer believes that the moral truth is what we say the moral truth is. Without a higher reference, based on religious and ethical traditions like Christianity, the possibility of not only abortion but also infanticide is open to humans.
The heart of this book is Neuhaus' discussion on Rorty, the great American relativist who like Singer and Nietzsche believed that humans make up their morality, and so can change their ethical thinking at any time. Ethics, like everything else, is a will to power for these thinkers.
Rorty's manner of ethical and philosophical relativism is highly relevant to Catholics and any one who cares about right and wrong. People with his attitude confront Christians almost every day when the religious and ethical issues arise.
Since for Rorty right and wrong do not exist outside of human definitions of right and wrong, he thinks it is imperative that liberals try to change the way people talk about ethical issues because we will never be able to solve our irreconcilable differences. Rorty invites his followers to simply duck the whole debate.
First, people can turn the deep, serious ethical conversation into something lighthearted. They can tease and joke and “josh” the concerned person of morals into giving up the conversation. If this doesn't work, good old-fashioned ignoring can work as well.
Thus we see on university campuses the attempt by pro-choice groups to limit or deny campus and student union services to pro-life groups. Rather than inviting an open, honest, and intellectual debate, pro-choice groups simply shut down the conversation and define the issue as how they see fit. In other words, from their more powerful position they simply will the debate to go away.
Such groups believe that they are creating a morality-free public zone, and that Catholics and others can keep their religious and ethical thoughts off campus and in their homes, safely out of sight. Yet Neuhaus doesn't buy this argument. American Babylon is a search for the proper response to such people, and an attempt to show just how moralizing and value-laden these secularists really are.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Personhood in Islam and Christianity: Harmony in John Paul II and Seyyed Hossein Nasr
By Brian Welter
1. Dignity and Rights
2. Male and Female
3. Sexuality
4. The Economy, Work and Leisure
5. Community and Hierarchy
6. Creation
7. Philosophy, Science, and Knowledge
8. God and Being
1. Dignity and Rights
2. Male and Female
3. Sexuality
4. The Economy, Work and Leisure
5. Community and Hierarchy
6. Creation
7. Philosophy, Science, and Knowledge
8. God and Being
Sunday, October 25, 2009
The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World
By Stephen Mansfield, 273 pages hardcover, Thomas Nelson.
More a biography of the family and corporation than of the beer, The Search for God and Guinness nevertheless interweaves several interesting strands, including history, beer-making, and vast societal change. Mansfield keeps the storyline close to the people involved, painting interesting, believable, well-researched character portrayals.
The religious temper of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries played a major role in the company, from the top down and from the beginning. Company founder Arthur Guinness was influenced by evangelical preacher John Wesley, “who inspired him [Guinness] to use his wealth and talents to care for the hurting of mankind. Taking Scripture as his guide, Arthur did indeed serve the needy of his time and did indeed try to use his gifts in honor of his God.”
Mansfield is a good theologian, and emphasizes the consistent outlook of the company and family, inspired as they were by this founding vision. The Guinness Company looked after its employees until the 1960s in almost unmatched, revolutionary ways, educating them, providing doctors, nurses, and social workers, and even offering housing assistance.
The Guinness Company was also at the forefront of technological change, including the logistics to bring its product to the Caribbean and West Africa, and the Japanese-like attention to detail and drive to constantly improve in all areas.
More a biography of the family and corporation than of the beer, The Search for God and Guinness nevertheless interweaves several interesting strands, including history, beer-making, and vast societal change. Mansfield keeps the storyline close to the people involved, painting interesting, believable, well-researched character portrayals.
The religious temper of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries played a major role in the company, from the top down and from the beginning. Company founder Arthur Guinness was influenced by evangelical preacher John Wesley, “who inspired him [Guinness] to use his wealth and talents to care for the hurting of mankind. Taking Scripture as his guide, Arthur did indeed serve the needy of his time and did indeed try to use his gifts in honor of his God.”
Mansfield is a good theologian, and emphasizes the consistent outlook of the company and family, inspired as they were by this founding vision. The Guinness Company looked after its employees until the 1960s in almost unmatched, revolutionary ways, educating them, providing doctors, nurses, and social workers, and even offering housing assistance.
The Guinness Company was also at the forefront of technological change, including the logistics to bring its product to the Caribbean and West Africa, and the Japanese-like attention to detail and drive to constantly improve in all areas.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
On Conscience
By Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI, hardcover 82 pages.
“Morality of conscience and morality of authority, as two opposing models, appear to be locked in a struggle with each other,” writes then-Cardinal Ratzinger, getting to the heart of the matter.
On Conscience, from talks he gave to American bishops, reflects the brilliance of the current pope. His great strength is his integrative, holistic view. His many writings look to different eras and geographic locations, and from theology, philosophy, Greek mythology, and the current cultural situation in developed countries such as Canada.
As with Pope John Paul II, much of Cardinal Ratzinger-Benedict XVI's teachings have addressed the descent of freedom into immoral license in modern societies, where individuals believe they can do whatever they please:
“[T]he identification of conscience with superficial consciousness, the reduction of man to his subjectivity, does not liberate but enslaves. It makes us totally dependent on the prevailing opinions, and debases these with every passing day.”
The decay of modern society into instant gratification sounds too depressing; many people, even Catholics, wish that the magisterium would simply relax and lay off of the moralizing.
But the sharp analysis of Cardinal Ratzinger-Benedict XVI's words help us see the immaturity of this request: “First, conscience is not identical to personal wishes and taste. Second, conscience cannot be reduced to social advantage, to group consensus, or to the demands of political and social power.”
Cardinal Ratzinger skillfully offers the Catholic theological insight behind the true meaning of freedom, and once again parallels John Paul II's writings:
“The love of God, which is concrete in the commandments, is not imposed on us from without ... but has been implanted in us beforehand. The sense for the good has been stamped upon us, as Augustine puts it....The true nature of the Petrine office [the papacy] has become so incomprehensible in the modern age no doubt because we think of authority only in terms that do not allow for bridges between subject and object. Accordingly, everything that does not come from the subject is thought to be externally imposed.”
The author emphasizes a special kind of remembering, which he calls anamnesis. He believes that this reflects the Christian belief of a divine spark within each of us. This spark allows us a special kind of knowing that is similar to remembering. Made in God's image, when we hear the Gospel, we experience a kind of remembering or returning back to our true selves as God made us. Here, in our true selves, we find our true freedom.
“Morality of conscience and morality of authority, as two opposing models, appear to be locked in a struggle with each other,” writes then-Cardinal Ratzinger, getting to the heart of the matter.
On Conscience, from talks he gave to American bishops, reflects the brilliance of the current pope. His great strength is his integrative, holistic view. His many writings look to different eras and geographic locations, and from theology, philosophy, Greek mythology, and the current cultural situation in developed countries such as Canada.
As with Pope John Paul II, much of Cardinal Ratzinger-Benedict XVI's teachings have addressed the descent of freedom into immoral license in modern societies, where individuals believe they can do whatever they please:
“[T]he identification of conscience with superficial consciousness, the reduction of man to his subjectivity, does not liberate but enslaves. It makes us totally dependent on the prevailing opinions, and debases these with every passing day.”
The decay of modern society into instant gratification sounds too depressing; many people, even Catholics, wish that the magisterium would simply relax and lay off of the moralizing.
But the sharp analysis of Cardinal Ratzinger-Benedict XVI's words help us see the immaturity of this request: “First, conscience is not identical to personal wishes and taste. Second, conscience cannot be reduced to social advantage, to group consensus, or to the demands of political and social power.”
Cardinal Ratzinger skillfully offers the Catholic theological insight behind the true meaning of freedom, and once again parallels John Paul II's writings:
“The love of God, which is concrete in the commandments, is not imposed on us from without ... but has been implanted in us beforehand. The sense for the good has been stamped upon us, as Augustine puts it....The true nature of the Petrine office [the papacy] has become so incomprehensible in the modern age no doubt because we think of authority only in terms that do not allow for bridges between subject and object. Accordingly, everything that does not come from the subject is thought to be externally imposed.”
The author emphasizes a special kind of remembering, which he calls anamnesis. He believes that this reflects the Christian belief of a divine spark within each of us. This spark allows us a special kind of knowing that is similar to remembering. Made in God's image, when we hear the Gospel, we experience a kind of remembering or returning back to our true selves as God made us. Here, in our true selves, we find our true freedom.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
A Special Mission: Hitler's Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII
By Dan Kurzman.
Kurzman writes: “Finally, [Gerhard] Gumpert argued that the only answer was to tap the Vatican's influence—indirectly. The two men then considered how to achieve this, and came up with a devious maze of intrigue. They wrote a letter to General Stahel, who was sympathetic to their cause, requesting that the arrests be halted. They then asked a 'high Vatican official,' Bishop Alois Hudal, rector of the German Catholic Church in Rome, Santa Maria dell'Anima, to sign it because he was reputed as being pro-Nazi and would have special credibility.”
A Special Mission, written by a veteran foreign affairs journalist, moves as quickly through the maze of Nazi and diplomatic intrigue as an Indiana Jones movie. It deals with good guyound out that if he spoke out against the atrocities against the Jews, they would feel forced to kidnap him and take him to Germany or actions—or inactions, as some critics assert—of Pope Pius XII during the holocaust. It mainly focuses, however, on the Nazi evil-doings in Rome, and particularly as how they affected the pontiff. The Nazis could never decide on whether to murder Italy's Jews and / or to kidnap the pope, though both plots had been put into motion to varying degrees.
The Nazis in Germany failed to convince their Nazi German underlings in Italy to carry out these deeds because by this time, 1943, it was clear that the war was slipping away from Germany and that the Allies would win or that some compromise with the Brits and Americans would be necessary to fend off the Soviet threat, which even menaced Italy.
Kurzman clearly appreciates Pope Pius' predicament: “The strongest justification offered for Pius's public silence was that any papal protest would provoke Hitler into drastic retaliation. The pope's supporters argue that because Dutch prelates protested vehemently against Hitler's deportations in Holland, several hundred additional victims, mostly Jewish converts, including Edith Stein, the philosopher, were dragged out of Church institutions to their death.”
Also, the pontiff had found out that if he spoke out against the atrocities against the Jews, they would feel forced to kidnap him and take him to Germany or a neutral place. Kurzman argues that Pius did not fear being kidnapped, but feared more than anything Nazi reprisals against the Catholic Church not only in Germany but across Europe.
Kurzman, though thorough in his historical research, is more the journalist in his rendition of events, surmising dialogue between various players and focusing on the peculiarities and relationships of the men, which makes for interesting reading:
“Miglione [the Vatican Secretary of State] thus followed, often with frustration, the priorities set by Pius, especially in his conversations with the German bishops. He didn't mention the extermination camps but stressed the need to save the treasures of Rome and the Vatican. Why provoke a backlash? Why stir up a storm with Catholics who, intimidated by Hitler, might feel it necessary to declare their primary loyalty to him?”
A Special Mission offers us another slice of this great tragedy of modern history. Unafraid to ask hard questions about the Catholic leadership during the war, it also does not unduly criticize or negate the Magisterium's good intentions.
Kurzman writes: “Finally, [Gerhard] Gumpert argued that the only answer was to tap the Vatican's influence—indirectly. The two men then considered how to achieve this, and came up with a devious maze of intrigue. They wrote a letter to General Stahel, who was sympathetic to their cause, requesting that the arrests be halted. They then asked a 'high Vatican official,' Bishop Alois Hudal, rector of the German Catholic Church in Rome, Santa Maria dell'Anima, to sign it because he was reputed as being pro-Nazi and would have special credibility.”
A Special Mission, written by a veteran foreign affairs journalist, moves as quickly through the maze of Nazi and diplomatic intrigue as an Indiana Jones movie. It deals with good guyound out that if he spoke out against the atrocities against the Jews, they would feel forced to kidnap him and take him to Germany or actions—or inactions, as some critics assert—of Pope Pius XII during the holocaust. It mainly focuses, however, on the Nazi evil-doings in Rome, and particularly as how they affected the pontiff. The Nazis could never decide on whether to murder Italy's Jews and / or to kidnap the pope, though both plots had been put into motion to varying degrees.
The Nazis in Germany failed to convince their Nazi German underlings in Italy to carry out these deeds because by this time, 1943, it was clear that the war was slipping away from Germany and that the Allies would win or that some compromise with the Brits and Americans would be necessary to fend off the Soviet threat, which even menaced Italy.
Kurzman clearly appreciates Pope Pius' predicament: “The strongest justification offered for Pius's public silence was that any papal protest would provoke Hitler into drastic retaliation. The pope's supporters argue that because Dutch prelates protested vehemently against Hitler's deportations in Holland, several hundred additional victims, mostly Jewish converts, including Edith Stein, the philosopher, were dragged out of Church institutions to their death.”
Also, the pontiff had found out that if he spoke out against the atrocities against the Jews, they would feel forced to kidnap him and take him to Germany or a neutral place. Kurzman argues that Pius did not fear being kidnapped, but feared more than anything Nazi reprisals against the Catholic Church not only in Germany but across Europe.
Kurzman, though thorough in his historical research, is more the journalist in his rendition of events, surmising dialogue between various players and focusing on the peculiarities and relationships of the men, which makes for interesting reading:
“Miglione [the Vatican Secretary of State] thus followed, often with frustration, the priorities set by Pius, especially in his conversations with the German bishops. He didn't mention the extermination camps but stressed the need to save the treasures of Rome and the Vatican. Why provoke a backlash? Why stir up a storm with Catholics who, intimidated by Hitler, might feel it necessary to declare their primary loyalty to him?”
A Special Mission offers us another slice of this great tragedy of modern history. Unafraid to ask hard questions about the Catholic leadership during the war, it also does not unduly criticize or negate the Magisterium's good intentions.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
A Contemplative Reading of the Gospel series of three books: Matthew: The Journey Toward Hope
Series also contains Mark: The Risk of Believing; Luke: The Song of God's Mercy, by Elena Bosetti, Pauline Books.
Sister Elena Bosetti has written three excellent, simple books that combine contemporary scholarship with an interactive, spiritual perspective. The chapter on parables in the book on Luke is particularly instructive. First, she neatly defines parables: “They dynamically involve their listeners, challenging them personally and arousing them to critical judgment on the situation being presented and, implicitly, on the reality to which the parable alludes.” She then discusses the Greek origins of this word, parabolé, before drawing on the rich Hebrew use of parable in an exchange between Nathan the prophet and King David. Lastly, before beginning her study of the parable of the shepherd and the lost sheep in the Gospel of Luke, she offers a prayer for her readers: “We will dedicate this lectio to allowing ourselves to be evangelized by this delightful parable.”
Bosetti follows this general formula of information-Greek scholarship-spiritual direction throughout the three books, which makes the series interesting to all sorts of people. She avoids oversimplifying the academic side, and challenges the reader with some punchy personal questions that prevent the reading from becoming dry.
The author therefore occasionally adopts the role of prophet, as in her interesting discussion of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, where she proclaims, “There is no excuse instead for our laziness and injustice. If the Master calls the poor blessed, it is not so that the rich can rest easy.”
In this part of Matthew she enters into the entire Catholic tradition, first in explaining the Greek roots to the word 'cathedra', where Jesus sits down on the Mount not to rest but, professor-like, to teach. Second, she adds, “This image was the inspiration for the magnificent mosaic decorating the apse of St. Apollinaris Church in Rome. In the mosaic, the disciples are depicted as sheep that the Master feeds with his word.” Bossetti links the origins and biblical rendition to the artistic and intellectual heritage of the faith. She gives Catholics a sense of the biblical roots of spirituality.
Her scholarly lay-outs for the three gospels help to clarify their message and flow. Through simple diagrams, she simplifies even the long and somewhat complicated set-up of Matthew. She also lays out on the same page the gospel parallels, that is, the same stories or information told in two or more of the gospels. Both lay-out techniques help readers unfamiliar with the basic scholarly approach to the Gospels to understand quickly some of the issues.
Because of her “Dialoguing with the Word” approach throughout these works, where she has us, for instance, prayerfully situate ourselves at the Jordan River at the time of Jesus' baptism, she never swamps the reader with her academic tendencies.
Sister Elena Bosetti has written three excellent, simple books that combine contemporary scholarship with an interactive, spiritual perspective. The chapter on parables in the book on Luke is particularly instructive. First, she neatly defines parables: “They dynamically involve their listeners, challenging them personally and arousing them to critical judgment on the situation being presented and, implicitly, on the reality to which the parable alludes.” She then discusses the Greek origins of this word, parabolé, before drawing on the rich Hebrew use of parable in an exchange between Nathan the prophet and King David. Lastly, before beginning her study of the parable of the shepherd and the lost sheep in the Gospel of Luke, she offers a prayer for her readers: “We will dedicate this lectio to allowing ourselves to be evangelized by this delightful parable.”
Bosetti follows this general formula of information-Greek scholarship-spiritual direction throughout the three books, which makes the series interesting to all sorts of people. She avoids oversimplifying the academic side, and challenges the reader with some punchy personal questions that prevent the reading from becoming dry.
The author therefore occasionally adopts the role of prophet, as in her interesting discussion of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, where she proclaims, “There is no excuse instead for our laziness and injustice. If the Master calls the poor blessed, it is not so that the rich can rest easy.”
In this part of Matthew she enters into the entire Catholic tradition, first in explaining the Greek roots to the word 'cathedra', where Jesus sits down on the Mount not to rest but, professor-like, to teach. Second, she adds, “This image was the inspiration for the magnificent mosaic decorating the apse of St. Apollinaris Church in Rome. In the mosaic, the disciples are depicted as sheep that the Master feeds with his word.” Bossetti links the origins and biblical rendition to the artistic and intellectual heritage of the faith. She gives Catholics a sense of the biblical roots of spirituality.
Her scholarly lay-outs for the three gospels help to clarify their message and flow. Through simple diagrams, she simplifies even the long and somewhat complicated set-up of Matthew. She also lays out on the same page the gospel parallels, that is, the same stories or information told in two or more of the gospels. Both lay-out techniques help readers unfamiliar with the basic scholarly approach to the Gospels to understand quickly some of the issues.
Because of her “Dialoguing with the Word” approach throughout these works, where she has us, for instance, prayerfully situate ourselves at the Jordan River at the time of Jesus' baptism, she never swamps the reader with her academic tendencies.
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