HeadlineBistro

The Israel-Gaza Conflict

Yesterday marked day four of Israel’s aerial attacks on the Gaza Strip. And even as the number of the Palestinian dead continues to escalate with each incoming story – nearly 400, as of today – and leaders from the United Nations Secretary-General to Pope Benedict XVI call for an end to the violence, we’re reminded of the gritty complexities behind the conflict.

The Catholic News Service humanizes the events from both the Palestinian and Israeli perspective.

First, a Catholic priest in Gaza: “They are bombarding us like the demon,” he said, describing the terror of the sound of incoming bombs, as well as his fear of a Palestinian uprising.

He sounded helpless, keeping in touch with his parishioners through text messages. “We pray and we ask God to find a solution,” he said, though later in the story he describes the cyclic nature of the violence. “The more they attack the more they will be attacked.”

On the other side of the border, an Israeli mother whose city has been under bombardment from Hamas-launched rockets over the past eight years voiced her frustration.

“They are terrorists who are trying to kill us. They are trying to kill my children,” she told CNS. “I don’t want anyone to die, but it can’t be that they try to kill me and we will just sit back here quietly.”

That tone of frustration is prevalent in Israeli media, such as the editorial page of the Jerusalem Post. Elsewhere in the Post, columnist Gershon Baskin objectively states the arguments for and against, as well as the “what ifs,” of the military operation Israel has now undertaken. It’s not an entirely optimistic picture. The Vatican has stressed that a truce must be negotiated, “even if it seems impossible” – Baskin’s survey of Israeli-Palestinian-Hamas entanglements does not belie that acknowledgment that there is no simplistic answer to the crisis.

For a clearer understanding of the Gaza conflict, this Boston Globe column on “The Suffering Hamas Causes” is another must-read, besides Baskin’s article. It’s no new news that Hamas regularly stages its military operations from areas densely populated with civilians, using the Palestinians as literal human shields.

“It is Hamas that perfected the use of the suicide bomb, by which young Palestinians were induced to kill themselves so that Israelis could also be killed,” writes Jeff Robbins, the U.S. delegate to the U.N. Human Rights Commission under President Clinton.  “It is somehow apt that Hamas should be forever associated with the suicide bomb, for in a larger sense Hamas has proved to be an instrument of the demise of Palestinians in Gaza.” 

The CNS story ends with a quote from a Christian father in Gaza trying to keep his family safe in the midst of the Israeli bombardment.

“We … believe there is no other way but prayers on both sides,” he said. “The solution is not going to be this way; there will just be an escalation.”

“The civilians on both sides are suffering,” he added. “We need people to think about peace and about what is going on. I pity everybody.”

Bleak News and an African Theme

Yesterday's top news offered a handful of bleak reports, including a study finding an increase in killings among young black males and a Washington Post article on the unsurprising but sad link between families’ economic hardships and child neglect and abuse.

In the former story, a Northwestern University study found that between 2000 and 2007, the number of black males age 14-17 killed rose more than 39%. In comparison, the number of killed white males of the same age rose 17%. The number of black males who committed homicide likewise increased 34%, while that number for white males was only 3%.

One Boston pastor, the executive director of an anti-crime coalition, said that violent trend “bears out what I see on the streets every day."

The child neglect story is likewise disturbing, especially in its relation to the financial crisis hitting the family home.

According to the Washington Post, child neglect cases in Northern Virginia’s Fairfax County jumped over 150% this past July-October, compared to the same months’ statistics last year.

The director of an Arizona-based child abuse prevention organization said that in recent weeks, her hotline has received 10% more calls reporting physical abuse.

“We’re seeing parents facing unemployment, foreclosure, losing their automobiles,” she said. “And that increase in stress can lead to drug and alcohol abuse, and that’s directly linked to child abuse.”

Another story that’s been making its way around the media is a report that says teens who take abstinence pledges are just as likely to engage in sexual activities before marriage than teens who don’t make such a pledge.

The findings invite the re-flaring of the debate over sex education in American schools, particularly in regards to how big an emphasis should be placed on abstinence at all – and whether it’s then contradictory to teach students about contraception. 

Valerie Huber, director of the National Abstinence Education Association, acknowledged to Bloomberg (which added interesting analysis on Obama’s views on abstinence education) that making a one-time virginity pledge isn’t enough in a “sex-saturated culture.”

Those youth, she said, need “reinforcement and encouragement in their pursuit to make healthy decisions.”

The study’s researcher said the problem seemed to lie in students’ lack of internalization of their commitment to abstinence until marriage.

“Participating in a program doesn't appear to be motivating them to change their behavior,” she said. “It seems like abstinence has to come from an individual conviction rather than participating in a program."  

And, despite opposing views between abstinence education advocates and those who would use the study as proof that abstinence-only programs don’t work, Huber would seem inclined to agree with that above statement.

“A lot of people would say a virginity pledge is an equivalent to an abstinence education program. It’s certainly not,” she said earlier this year. Referring to the “single-event” of signing or vocalizing a pledge of virginity until marriage, Huber added that the problem is a lack of follow-up with those teens.

“We think abstinence education is a natural reinforcement of this personal decision they have made,” she said.

On a different note: unintentionally, Headline Bistro ran a string of Africa-related articles yesterday. They included:

• At least45 Ugandan Catholics were massacred in their church the day after Christmas, with the country’s government blaming rebels for the attack.

• Somali president Abdullahi Yusuf resigned yesterday, leaving the essentially lawless nation (and base for pirate excursions) awaiting a new administration. In the past few days alone, nearly 50 people have died in fighting between Islamist groups in central Somalia.

• As part of a fascinating series on foreign priests serving in American parishes, the New York Times profiled Kenyan priest Fr. Chrispin Oneko at his new parish on Oak Grove, Kentucky. The article is an insightful look at the phenomena of countries considered missionary territory now turning around and sending their own to the United States – and the cultural shock to both parishioners and the incoming priest that ensues.

• Finally, a suprising, must-read op/ed from the London Times entitled, “As an Atheist, I Truly Believe that Africa Needs God.” The author makes the case that it’s not government food aid or NGOs that will save Africa and its people, but religion – Christianity, to be exact. While he looks to Protestantism to “smash straight through the philosophical/spiritual framework” he says prevents real development in Africa, the author’s objective observations of the liveliness, directness, and “engagement with the world” among African Christians should still resonate with  Catholics. (Don’t forget, Pope Benedict XVI is traveling to Cameroon and Angola this March, kicking off what John Allen is calling the “Year of Africa” in the Church).

The article ends on a prophetic note:

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Violence Mars the Christmas Season

Welcome back!

Christmas was marked last week around the world, from the Vatican’s Midnight Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica to subdued celebrations in Iraq, where the Christian holiday was officially recognized for the first time.

In a Baghdad monastery, Chaldean Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly celebrated Midnight Mass with a leading Shiite cleric present.

“I thank the visitors here and ask them to share happiness and love with their brothers on Christmas; by this they will build a glorious Iraq,” the cardinal said.

In Mosul, which has seen some of the most intense waves of anti-Christian violence over the past year, families braved the threat of kidnapping and death to come to Mass on Christmas.

Fr. Basman George Fatouhi, a young Chaldean priest-turned-de facto leader of the Mosul Chaldean community after its archbishop was killed last year, gave the Christmas homily, encouraging his people to persevere in their faith.

Jesus, he said, is like a flame that will “warm the hearts” of the faithful in this difficult time.

Pope Benedict XVI’s Christmas message used a similar image, calling the birth of Jesus a light that, beginning as a “glimmer” in the night, spreads “from a precise point in the universe: from the stable of Bethlehem.”

“He is the light whose appearance breaks through the gloom, dispels the darkness and enables us to understand the meaning and the value of our own lives and of all history,” the pope said.

As a message to the whole world – for the hope of Christmas is meant for all, Pope Benedict insisted – it touched on the realities of various troubled spots, such as Zimbabwe and Sudan, as well as the current crisis of affluent nations experiencing uncertain economic futures.

“In each of these places may the Light of Christmas shine forth and encourage all people to do their part in a spirit of authentic solidarity,” the Holy Father said. “If people look only to their own interests, our world will certainly fall apart.”

The pontiff especially prayed that “the divine Light of Bethlehem” will “radiate throughout the Holy Land” – a timely intercession, considering this weekend’s attacks on Gaza by Israeli forces.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas says 300 people have died from the attacks; the UN places the number of civilian casualties at 56. Israel’s attacks are in response for recent mortar and rocket attacks launched from Gaza into Israel, despite a six-month ceasefire. Now, Hamas is threatening to resume its suicide bombings within Israel, which have not occurred since 2005.

Pope Benedict has decried the violence, calling for a restored truce in the Gaza Strip, and Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi criticized both sides’ enslavement to opposing ideologies.

“Hamas is a prisoner to a logic of hatred, Israel of a logic of trusting in force as the best response to hatred,” Fr. Lombardi said. “They need to keep looking for a different way out, even if it seems impossible.”

Likewise, while acknowledging that Israel’s strikes are “a very hard blow for Hamas,” he said their intensity also brings about many innocent victims and will breed more hatred in the region.

It’s a sad state of affairs and, following the pope’s lead, one that deserves our prayers and attention.

The Pope's Reflections

TIME magazine may have its Person of the Year, but Vatican tradition has the Pope reflecting back on all of 2008 – and, as always, he offers noteworthy insight.

Addressing the Roman Curia – the Vatican’s governing apparatus, essentially – Pope Benedict XVI touched on the major happenings of the past year: World Youth Day and his trips to the United States and France, namely. He also drew out the link between the concerns of the Church – particularly over the dignity of the human person – and the role of the Holy Spirit.

The most intriguing connection – and, of course, the first one grabbed by most media – was his comparison to the Church’s concern for the environment and the observation that, despite calls to save nature, mankind turns against and destroys himself. Doing so, he said, is "living against the truth, against the Creator Spirit." The Holy Father particularly mentioned sexual immorality and the redefinition of marriage as examples.

Just as we must listen to the “language of creation,” treating it with respect and following the intrinsic rules for its care, so we must honor the “human ecology.” The Church, Pope Benedict said, “must defend the human person against its own destruction.”

And for World Youth Day fans, the pope addressed criticisms that the festival provided no lasting fruit in attendees, but rather just short-lived excitement and a rock-concert environment centered on the pope himself. 

Pope Benedict, though, brought up what he saw as proof that the Holy Spirit works through World Youth Days.

Quoting Nietzsche, he said, “‘Success does not lie in organizing a party, but in finding people capable of drawing joy from it.’ According to Scripture, joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22), and this fruit was absolutely palpable during those days in Sydney.”

As for his supposed rock-star status: “The pope is not the star around which everything turns. He is totally, and solely, the Vicar. He points to the Other who stands in our midst.”

In pro-life news, the National Catholic Register has a fascinating story about an ad campaign on cable channels MTV and BET that has directed thousands of women to pro-life help lines and crisis pregnancy centers.

The statistics are truly incredible: in the ads’ five-week run this fall, they generated nearly 22,000 requests for help from women who saw them while watching TV. Organizers estimate that, as a result, at least 11,000 babies were saved.

And on one day alone, 1,044 women responded to the ads via telephone or online. Crisis pregnancy centers in areas where the ads were run have also seen the spike in requests for help, testifying to the ads’ effectiveness.

Finally, as Christmas approaches in just a couple days, the Wall Street Journal offers a poignant commentary on the mystery of fairy tales, Santa Claus and Christianity, very much in the vein of the great Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton.

Headline Bistro will be scaling back a little over Christmas in terms of the News Wrap and email updates. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and leave you with a part of Pope Benedict’s Christmas message last December:

The Creator of the universe, in making himself a Child, came among us to share in our human journey; he made himself little to enter the human heart and thereby to renew it with the almightiness of his love. Let us therefore prepare to welcome him with faith, enlivened by hope.

Weekend wrap

• A Continental Airlines jet crashed off a Denver International Airport runway Saturday night, injuring more than 30 on board. The plane veered off the runway and fell into a ravine, catching fire and shredding an engine and its landing gears. And while reporters were kept away from the site in the hours of aftermath that followed, one passenger gained a nationwide audience with his Twitter account, updating his feed with descriptions of the crash.

• Caroline Kennedy began facing heated reactions from both parties this weekend, although it was mainly Republicans who criticized her lack of experience and celebrity status. Still, some fellow New York Democrats also expressed their hesitation over Kennedy’s qualification as a senator. “It’s not an entitlement,” Rep. Gary Ackerman told Face the Nation. 

• Kennedy did answer, via email and through a spokesman, questions about her stand on various issues posed to her by Politico. Of note, she said she supports “full equality and marriage rights” for homosexual couples. She also said she opposed the Iraq war “from the beginning,” though she supports a plan under President-elect Obama to begin “responsible withdrawal.”

• And to top off the political “Year of the Woman,” TIME magazine named Sarah Palin a runner-up for Person of the Year (the top honor, unsurprisingly, being snagged by the president-elect). Calling her “the most astonishing political debut in modern times,” the magazine acknowledged Palin’s magnetic appeal with the crowds – she was a “one-woman rescue team for the Republican tickets.”

• In the latest news from the Blagojevich scandal, Politico reports that President-elect Obama will “absolve” Rahm Emanuel from any possible wrongdoing (of which there were none, the transition team maintains) in his conversations with the Illinois governor and his aides. That report of absolution is expected to be released sometime this week before Christmas Eve.

• Finally, in an encouraging story, the Washington Times reports on the hundreds of hours President Bush and Vice-President Cheney have spent comforting wounded troops and meeting with the families of fallen soldiers, often privately and out of the media’s eye. Regardless of one’s feelings toward the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the facts conveyed in the Times story are still impressive: personal letters from the president to each family of the over 4,000 soldiers killed in the two wars, as well as meetings with more than 500 families and over 900 injured veterans, not to mention the numerous military funerals that the president and first lady would attend together. “This is my duty,” President Bush said.
“The president is commander in chief, but the president is often comforter in chief, as well.”

This week in the news:

• Winter weather hit the country, leaving parts of the Northeast without power for days at a time and three inches of snow over the Las Vegas strip.

• President-elect Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to lead his inaugural invocation has sent gay rights advocates into an outright furor, as the California megachurch pastor was one of the vocal supporters of the state’s Proposition 8. Obama defended his choice, saying that although he and Warren disagree on certain issues, “dialogue is part of what my campaign is all about.” CBN’s David Brody has his take on pro-lifers upset with Warren for participating in the inauguration at all. (To his credit, Warren was and has been outspoken about his adamant opposition to abortion, such as in his recent interview with Beliefnet editor Steve Waldman).

• Cardinal Avery Dulles’ funeral Mass was Thursday at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The New York Times depicts the majestic farewell of the liturgy, and John Martin’s report of the Mass, Cardinal Egan’s homily and the hopeful faith of those in attendance simply draws the reader there for himself.

• Illinois Governor Blagojevich issued his first statement on the bribery charges against him, claiming no wrongdoing and vowing to fight the accusations. He won’t resign, he said, and on the same day issued 22 pardons in the state.

• The Minnesota Senate recount has finally flipped the vote tally in favor of Democrat Al Franken, who now leads Coleman by over 200 votes. However, lawyers from both parties are expected to be continuing the fight, as thousands more ballots lie uncounted, having previously been withdrawn from the recount by both campaigns. “Litigation is inevitable,” said a political science professor quoted by Politico. “If Franken loses — he’ll argue legitimate votes were not counted. If Coleman loses, he’ll argue illegitimate votes were counted.”

• Finally, as Christmas draws close,Pope Benedict XVI suggested that the current economic crisis can have a silver lining: as wealth is discovered to be transient, perhaps Christmas’ true meaning can also be restored. He also pointed Christians toward a greater awareness of those in need during the Christmas season.

Two Victories for Freedom of Conscience

Thursday was a win for health workers’ freedom of conscience across the country.

In addition to the announcement of the Health and Human Service’s much-debated conscience protection rule, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that state pharmacists have the right to refuse prescribing emergency contraception on moral or religious grounds.

The Illinois case reverses lower courts’ decisions on a rule issued by Gov. Rod Blagojevich, which forced pharmacists to dispense the “morning-after” pill if asked to. As Kathryn Jean Lopez recently pointed out, the whole world has now heard of the disgraced governor’s brazenness over his plans to sell Illinois’ senate seat – but his audacity then is only matched by his previous insistence against health workers’ freedom of conscience.

She quotes a Blagojevich interview from 2006:

“Rather than try to get the legislature to pass something — because we attempted to and they didn’t do it — on my own, through executive order action, I forced these guys to fill prescriptions for birth control for women who come in with prescriptions from their doctors,” the governor had boasted.

“How’s that for leadership to be proud of?” Lopez asks. “This is a case of government compulsion on an issue that public officials should not take lightly: freedom of conscience concerning matters that many Americans — including some pharmacists — consider life and death.”

“I cannot follow my religion's teachings and continue to be involved" in emergency contraception, said the 45-year-old Catholic pharmacist who filed the lawsuit against the rule.

The pill seeks to interfere with the embryo’s implantation in the mother’s womb, although, as John Allen points out, there’s still debate over whether the pill prevents conception at all or causes the actual abortion of a newly-conceived child. Either way, the Vatican’s just-released document on bioethics, Dignitas Personae, has grave words on such interceptive methods of preventing pregnancy.

“It is true that there is not always complete knowledge of the way that different pharmaceuticals operate,” the document says, “but scientific studies indicate that the effect of inhibiting implantation is certainly present, even if this does not mean that such interceptives cause an abortion every time they are used.”

“The use of means of interception and contragestation (destroying the implanted embryo) fall within the sin of abortion and are gravely immoral,” Dignitas Personae concludes on the matter.

As for the HHS announcement, the conscience protection rule will go into effect 30 days from today – just before President-elect Obama takes office. Though Obama will likely undo the national rule (which in itself would be a lengthy process), the Illinois case will hopefully remain the precedent for upholding freedom of conscience – and send its ripple effects to other states, as well.

Contrasting Views of Life and Love

Today’s news wrap focuses on some contrasting, cultural indicators that have made their appearance in recent headlines.

It’s no new news that the Obama administration is expected to roll back President Bush’s policies on key life issues, such as the reinstating of the Mexico City Policy (preventing U.S. money from funding abortions overseas) or the ban on federally-funded embryonic stem cell research. However, the issue comes to a head again as the Department of Health and Human Services seeks to make a last minute push this week for a healthcare workers’ conscience protection rule.

We’ve covered the importance of the rule here and here. And in yesterday’s Washington Times, the president of the Christian Medical Association argues again why doctors and nurses cannot be expected to act against their personal convictions. The Wall Street Journal, however, reports the Obama transition team is already seeking how to undo the rule after the president-elect takes office.

Organizations like the pro-abortion NARAL are pleased.

“We have a lot of work to do to fix the damage the Bush administration has done,” said the organization’s president.

On the other side of the life issues, though, and outside the realm of legislation, the Diocese of El Paso gave a beautiful witness to the dignity of the human person – even in its handling and burial of a tiny, abandoned baby found dead at a wastewater treatment plant.

Bishop Armando Ochoa presided over the funeral, along with Catholic priests serving nearby Ft. Bliss, and members of the Knights of Columbus stood at attention near the tiny casket, dressed in full, Fourth Degree regalia. Fifty other people from the area attended.

“Passers-by who saw Knights of Columbus in full regalia, a limousine, a military chaplain and the bishop stopped to ask whether someone important was being buried,” the El Paso Times reports – a seeming understatement of how the Church witnesses through its members’ actions to the dignity and value of life.

“They said (at the morgue) they don’t bury any child under six grams,” said Bishop Ochoa. But “we reverence life, and you and I know there’s an embodied soul there.”

Moving on to campus culture, the New York Times ran a disturbing op/ed piece on the increasing trend of college hookups. While acknowledging that the mentality behind “a one-night stand with someone you know” is “sad,” the article – one of the most popular pieces on the Times’ website for the past couple days – falls drastically short in capturing the real tragedy behind this culture of cheap sex and shallow relationships.

Enter the Love and Fidelity Network, a campus-aimed organization recently highlighted in the National Catholic Register.

The group seeks to educate college students on “a viable alternative to the hookup culture” and give them the support and resources to do so. Plans in the works include campus conferences and seminars, as well as student-led initiatives such as forums and social events that communicate the beauty of marriage, chastity and faithfulness.

“I wanted the name of the organization to explicitly and clearly express the vision for human love and sexuality that the organization promotes,” said the organization’s president, a Princeton graduate.

She added that Love and Fidelity’s goal is to build up a network of “an articulate and effective new generation of leaders who will advocate for marriage, family, love and fidelity on college campuses and in the public square.”

They held their first conference, which attracted 130 participants from 18 different colleges, at Princeton University last month. Talks focused on topics such as “Making the Case for Marriage in the Media and Public Square” and “The Medical and Psychological Costs of the Hookup Culture.”

It’s that kind of striving for a comprehensive, honest understanding of the problem that will produce the most compelling answers – something the New York Times article ultimately failed to do.

Rounding Up the Day's News...

Some quick news bites for your mid-week morning:

• If you can’t get enough of the fascinating story behind Anh “Joseph” Cao’s rise to Congress this month, the Catholic News Service did a feature story on him, his life as a Catholic immigrant leading up to an interest in politics, and the role his faith will have in his vision for Louisiana. Also, in case you missed it, Fathers for Good did an exclusive interview with Cao, focusing on him as a politician, husband and father. 

• Cardinal Francis Arinze, who just stepped down from his head post at the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, presented his book on the priesthood vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. The book, entitled “Letter to a Young Priest,” is meant to help priests with struggles from obedience to their bishops to confronting the fact that loneliness is a part of every vocation. He points young priests toward prayer: “Only then will he be capable of seeing Christ in every person whom he encounters in his ministry.”

• On a related note, the Boston Globe has an encouraging story up on the city’s St. John’s Seminary, which, at the height of the clergy sexual abuse scandal, was on the verge of shutting down due to plummeting enrollment. Under the persistent work of Cardinal Sean O’Malley and a new rector, though, enrollment has doubled over the past two years, and more New England bishops are beginning to send their seminarians back to Boston to continue their studies.

• America’s economy could use a dose of similar good news: the Washington Post reports that welfare rolls have increased for the first time in years. According to the Post, a number of those new applicants come from middle class families who have not turned to the welfare system before but are feeling the crunch of recession and high unemployment rates.

• Even Yale’s been hit by the nation’s economic woes; following Harvard’s loss of $8 billion to its endowment, Yale’s own endowment fell 25% to $17 billion. The university plans to cut expenses through restricted pay raises and cutting spending on consultants, traveling, energy and further building.

• And adding to various institutions’ financial turmoil, the Bernard Madoff fraud has left the Jewish community, especially, with hard losses, as numerous Jewish charities and organizations had invested with Madoff. “To see foundations losing big parts or all of their assets through fraud has never happened before,” said the president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research. “This is a tremendous violation of the public trust.”

Scandal, Original Sin and the Witness of Cardinal Avery Dulles

How fitting it seems these days that Pope Benedict XVI has been teaching on the existence of original sin – even departing from his prepared remarks in order to bring up the subject again.

Italian blogger Sandro Magister compiles Pope Benedict’s recent remarks on the subject – three times in a week this month – noting that despite our modern avoidance, or outright rejection, of original sin, the pope is intent on driving home his catechesis on this central doctrine.

As we said: the Pope’s timing is impeccable.

The sad scandal of Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion “Ponzi” scheme is shocking and almost unbelievable in its sheer scale and the audacity it required to be carried out for so long. The Wall Street Journal rather cynically expressed this with its editorial acknowledgement that, despite Madoff’s appearance as “a pillar of the community and philanthropist,” “the real lesson here is about men, not markets. Human nature doesn’t change, and crooks will always be with us.”

(For background on the Madoff scandal – the breadth and depth of which is only continuing to be revealed – the London Times explains how the Wall Street investor actually pulled it off, as well as what, exactly, a pyramid, or Ponzi, scheme is.)

Perhaps one of the most tragic and telling quotes from Madoff himself is what he allegedly told his sons before the rest of the world was tipped off about the fraud: “It’s all just one big lie,” he said; he was “finished” and had “absolutely nothing” left. Bloomberg has compiled emails from a tiny sampling of individuals affected by the scheme – people who have lost their entire savings by trusting them to one man.

Of course, the revelation of the Madoff scheme comes days after charges that Illinois’ Rod Blagojevich tried to take bribes for the state’s open Senate seat. The Chicago Tribune has a column up by the journalist whose firing Blagojevich allegedly tried to muscle in as part of a deal for the paper’s parent company – it’s that kind of brazenness that ought to make even the nonbeliever seriously consider the possibility that human nature has been wounded by original sin.

To return to Pope Benedict, the pontiff said on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception that “the existence of what the Church calls ‘original sin’ is, unfortunately, overwhelmingly obvious, if we only look around ourselves, and above all within ourselves.”

And the week before, at his general audience, he spoke of the “interior contradiction” within each human being.

“One one hand, every man knows that he must do good, and he profoundly wants to do it,” Pope Benedict said. “However, at the same time, he also feels the other impulse to do the contrary, to follow the path of egoism, violence, of doing only what pleases him even while knowing that he is acting against the good.”

Sound familiar?

“Each one of us experiences it every day,” he continued. “And above all we always see around us the prevalence of this second will. Suffice it to think of the daily news on injustice, violence, falsehood, lust. We see it every day: it is a fact.”

However, lest we resign ourselves to a “despairing vision” of humanity, the pope reminded us that man is not only curable of this sad condition, but, through the coming of Jesus at Christmas, “God has introduced healing.”

****

The London Times ran an obituary of Cardinal Avery Dulles by Joseph Bottum. As many articles and tributes have been focusing – rightly so – on his immense work as a theologian, this one also grasps the cardinal’s deep faith, as well as the drama that led up to his conversion.

The article ends with a quote from Cardinal Dulles’ cousin, speaking at a dinner after his elevation to the rank of cardinal. It presents the opposite of what Pope Benedict’s description of the effects of sin, the answer to that “impulse” toward egoism and living for oneself.

When the young Dulles had converted, the relative said, his Presbyterian and well-established family was upset, saying he had thrown his life way.

“And, of course, they were right,” she said. “He did throw that life away. He threw it away for God.”

Cardinal Dulles’ life and death stands in beautiful contrast to a world rocked by scandals brought on original sin.

“To the permanent source of evil (God) has opposed a source of pure good,” Pope Benedict said. “Christ crucified and risen, the new Adam, opposed the filthy river of evil with a river of light. And this river is present in history: We see the saints, the great saints but also the humble saints, the simple faithful. We see that the river of light that comes from Christ is present, is strong.”