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All Things Halloween

Once again, Halloween is upon us, and with that comes the inevitable, annual questions from Catholics: should we celebrate it? Dress up as only saints? Are we celebrating the reality of evil and the occult? How does one redeem a holiday? (All Hallow’s Eve, remember, or the night before All Saints Day).

In high school, I was told by one Protestant friend adamantly opposed to Halloween that her family would be celebrating “Reformation Day" instead. That was slightly awkward.

For answers to those questions, though, you can start with Father Dominic Legge’s column on Headline Bistro today – an informative and, yes, suspenseful piece on what the Church teaches on the existence of ghosts, demons and the spirits of our deceased loved ones. Bet you didn’t know Dominicans had ghost stories – check it out!

Then, Catholic blogger Taylor Marshall has a post this week on “Top 10 Ways to Have a Catholic Halloween.”

My favorite tip: “Have fun, don’t force converts.”

“Look, nobody likes to get a religious tract in their candy sack,” writes Marshall, a former Anglican priest. “Give out big handfuls of candy and the extra large candy bars, if you can. In the long run, you will make more converts with your charity. After all, you’ll be known as ‘the house that always gives out good candy.’”

“Has (Halloween) been corrupted by our culture and consumer market? You bet,” Marshall writes in tip number 10 (“Don’t Call it ‘Satan’s Holiday!’”). “However, Christmas has also been derailed by the culture. Does that mean that we’re going (to) h and over Christmas? No way! ... The Church does not surrender what rightfully belongs to her – she wins it back!” 

For more on the Catholic roots of All Hallow’s Eve, check out AmericanCatholic.org’s article on “How Halloween Can Be Redeemed.”

And on First Things, contributing writer, blogger and poet – and homeschooling mom – Sally Thomas reflects on “The Drama of Hallowmas” – that triptych of days during which the Church commemorates the dead.

“As our Hallowmas ends, the pageantry and excitement of Halloween and All Saints’ Day give way to the comparative quiet of the feast of All Souls,” Thomas writes:

Having been denizens of the night and citizens of the household of God, the children step back into themselves to contemplate their own mortality and pray for our beloved dead. In three days they have enacted the story of their own eternal lives: from darkness to the hope of heaven and the joy of the saints who await them in glory. From mystery to mystery, it’s a drama I would not have them miss.

Finally, my fellow News Wrap blogger Paul Ciarcia recently conducted a fascinating interview with Father Gary Thomas – official exorcist of the Diocese of San Jose and subject of the recent book “The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist.” 

Evil is real, as is the presence of Satan in this world – and Father Thomas would be the first to tell you. Read the article for more on how an exorcism unfolds, why Father Thomas sees an increase in people turning away from God and how this healing rite goes hand in hand with the ministry of the priesthood.

-- Elizabeth Hansen, Headline Bistro editor

Update: Just as I was posting this entry, I came across this story from the London Telegraph, on an article in the Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano warning on "Hallowe'en's Dangerous Messages:"

"Hallowe'en has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian," Spanish liturgist Father Joan Maria Canals said in the Vatican article, which went on to describe the pushback from Catholics in various European countries against the undeniably Americanized holiday. (On that note, the Telegraph's Catholic blogger Damian Thompson went on a tear this morning against "the American cult of Halloween, which demands that shops deck out their windows with feeble pumpkin displays -- and your doorbell is rung every five minutes by infants dressed as vampires, demanding presents." Goodness).

Parents, Father Canals continued, should therefore "try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death."

Fine by me. As with most things, it seems balance is key.

Has Science Gone too far?

On Monday, Hwang Woo-Suk, once a scientific pioneer and hero in his own country of South Korea, received his final disgrace when he was handed a two-year prison sentence for the falsification of cloning research and embezzlement.

Woo-Suk’s team supposedly cloned a dog, and it was once conjectured that his work in DNA and cloning research could create patient-specific cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and even cancer. A university investigation and a leak from a colleague eventually spilled the beans that Woo-Suk’s research was fabricated.

But the quest to understand human genes -- and to procure the large government grants that fund such research -- for the purposes of scientific advancement and curing disease has not ceased in his absence. The most recent breakthrough comes from Stanford University, where scientists have “found a way to coax human embryonic stem cells to turn into the types of cells that make eggs and sperm,” according to a Reuters report.

The headline from the UK Daily Mail goes straight for the heart of the story: “No men OR Women needed: Scientists create sperm and eggs from stem cells,” the paper claims.

Violent crime and protecting the unborn

The Americans United for Life blog has a short, informative post on the history of laws protecting “unborn victims of violence.”

Sadly, it seems that not much time goes by before such incidents – outside of abortion – are called to our attention from across the country: last weekend’s arrest of a Los Angeles man on suspicion of murder of his unborn child, the shooting death of a 15-year-old and her unborn child at a North Carolina bus stop last month, and now, the disturbing case in Utah of a minor female who paid a man $150 to beat her in order to induce a miscarriage. 

Addressing the man, the district judge said, “I don’t think words can describe the kind of depraved conduct you entered into in trying to take the life of a child.” (Notably, though, the judge chose to sentence him under Utah’s anti-abortion statute and up to five years in prison – a much more lenient punishment than the 15 years that could have come with the original, guilty plea to second-degree felony attempted murder).

Confusion results when people realize the disconnect between harsh punishment for violent crime against an unborn child and the legality of the actual abortion procedure.

“If the kid had a license to practice medicine, this would have been called abortion, and he would not be facing jail time,” one commenter wrote on the Salt Lake Tribune’s website. “There’s something wrong when one can be prosecuted and the other can’t be.” 

“Roe only applies to a voluntary abortion that falls within the mother’s ‘right,’” explains AUL senior counsel Clarke Forsythe on the blog. “Roe does not apply to an unborn child killed in the non-abortion context and does not protect a third party assailant who kills an unborn child.”

That’s good news for prosecutors seeking to press charges for the death, intentional or not, of an unborn child – but rather distressing for our culture as a whole, if we can so easily compartmentalize murder from “a woman’s right to choose.”

According to AUL, 37 states have enacted “unborn victims of violence” laws – in terms of crime, then, essentially recognizing the humanity of the unborn and the protection due to them. In fact, 25 of those states extend that legal protection as early as conception.

Despite the arguments of pro-abortion advocates to the contrary, no one can deny that an unborn child is a developing human being. Amazing video footage and 4D technology depicting life in the womb, like this powerful multimedia from the policy-neutral Endowment for Human Development, only confirm this. 

The truth will prevail – but when?

-- Elizabeth Hansen, Headline Bistro editor

An Upcoming Scientific Conference Plans to Defeat Darwin

Zenit is reporting on an upcoming conference to be held in Rome at the Pope Pius V University Nov. 9 in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species.” Unlike other conferences on the subject, this commemoration is built upon the theme “The Scientific Impossibility of Evolution” and is advertised as an conclusive rebuttal to Darwinian evolution. 

The press release, as well as abstracts of the planned talks, are available online.

Being held at a Roman university, and framing their research “in response to Pope Benedict’s call that both sides be heard,” the event’s organizers are clearly seeking some degree of a religious imprimatur on their work. While the Church and other scientists may be open to new research, it may not be clear the group’s obvious motivations are congruent with the Church’s views on evolution.  

Evolution has been in the news recently, not only on account of the sesquicentennial of the Darwin's theory. In early October, findings were released by scientists studying the fossils of a ancient ape known as "Ardi" (short for Ardipithecus) that recast much of the thinking on evolution. The 4.4 million-year-old fossil is believed to be the oldest common ancestor of apes and human beings on record, pushing back the previous mark by 1.2 million years. The fossil also revealed that many of the assumptions about the origins of upright walking and ingrained primate aggressiveness may need to be rethought, as well as the idea that human beings evolved from something like a chimpanzee.

Peter Wilders and H.M. Owen, the movers behind the anti-Darwin conference, intend to prove much deeper flaws in evolution than simply a correction in the fossil record. Using cross-disciplinary research and a heavy emphasis on new findings from sedimentology, they plan to posit data “fatal for Darwinism.”    

However, as long as conference organizers are referring to Pope Benedict's call to let both sides be heard, it might be helpful to look at exactly what the pope said.

Their reference is most likely from then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1999 talk at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he discussed faith and reason:

Has the last word been spoken? Have Christianity and reason permanently parted company? There is at any rate no getting around the dispute about the extent of the claims of the doctrine of evolution as a fundamental philosophy and about the exclusive validity of the positive method as the sole indicator of systematic knowledge and of rationality. This dispute has therefore to be approached objectively and with a willingness to listen, by both sides -- something that has hitherto been undertaken only to a limited extent. No one will be able to cast serious doubt upon the scientific evidence for micro-evolutionary processes.

First, it is worth noting his discussion of evolution is occurring, as one would expect, in a larger context of philosophy. The closest he comes to questioning the scientific, explanatory power of evolution in his Sorbonne address is by citing two evolutionists:

Within the teaching about evolution itself, the problem emerges at the point of transition from micro to macro-evolution, on which point Szathmary and Maynard Smith, both convinced supporters of an all-embracing theory of evolution, nonetheless declare that: ‘There is no theoretical basis for believing that evolutionary lines become more complex with time; and there is also no empirical evidence that this happens.’

In an 1996 interview with Peter Seewald, published in book form as Salt of the Earth, the pope acknowledged that the stories of creation in the Bible are a "theological framework" not a literal history, and were meant that the world is God's creation. He goes further however, saying that while creation in the Bible is an open question, "I think that in great measure the theory of evolution has not gotten beyond hypotheses and is often mixed with almost mythic philosophies that have yet to be critically discussed." 

Running through all his commentary has been Ratzinger's assertion that reason, or Logos, must stand at the beginning of things, not simply evolutionary mechanisms of chance and cunning, though he doesn't preclude the latter altogether. What he did question was the philosophy of evolution, which makes universal claims for itself beyond its proper bounds. From his Sorbonne speech:

Every explanation of reality that cannot at the same time provide a meaningful and comprehensible basis for ethics necessarily remains inadequate. Now the theory of evolution, in the cases where people have tried to extend it to a "philosophia universalis," has in fact been used for an attempt at a new ethos based on evolution. Yet this evolutionary ethic that inevitably takes as its key concept the model of selectivity, that is, the struggle for survival, the victory of the fittest, successful adaptation, has little comfort to offer. Even when people try to make it more attractive in various ways, it ultimately remains a bloodthirsty ethic.

Pope Benedict’s call for a dialogue, then, had a somewhat more philosophical scope in mind, regarding more fundamental questions. It was not simply a call for a scientific challenge to evolution, which the pope has before confirmed does not necessarily stand in opposition to Christian faith.

He was clear enough in 2008, when he addressed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences’ plenary assembly on "Scientific Insight Into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life." Then, he affirmed that “there is no opposition between faith's understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical sciences," and that "scientific truth, which is itself a participation in divine truth, can help philosophy and theology to understand ever more fully the human person and God's revelation about man, a revelation that is completed and perfected in Jesus Christ.”

If there is truly new and revolutionary evidence to be brought to bear on the evolutionary theory, then science itself demands that it be heard. As recent news events have shown, the theory continues to be shaped. Let’s hope however, that the planners of this latest conference on Darwin, realize that faith itself does not require the debunking of Darwin's theory.

Paul Ciarcia, Communications

Rome’s Quest for Unity

The New York Times featured two articles capturing the consequences and differing perspectives of the recently announced “ordinariate” for Anglicans to enter the Roman Catholic Church.

One article offered the perspective of the head of an Episcopal parish in Philadelphia, for whose members this announcement was a long sought after goal. “When I heard the news I was speechless, then the joy came and the tears,” Said Bishop David Moyer of the Church of the Good Shepherd. Good Shepherd may  be one of the first willing to make the transition to Roman Catholicism as a complete parish.

Bishop Moyer has before joined in a petition the Vatican for just such a move in 2007, which has now been vindicated. Along with the joy of the recent announcement some challenges remain. One of the wrinkles the story brings is up is what will become of the Church property itself, which technically may still remain under the jurisdiction of the Episcopal diocese. It will be interesting see how the property issue is dealt with going forward.

As far as what the move means on the other side of the pond, and around the world, Ross Douthat offered his analysis for the New York Times over the weekend by trying to read between the lines of the announcement, and prognosticate the geopolitical consequences.

An unexpected theme emerged that only a few have touched upon so far: Islam. A common line from recent commentary has been that the Vatican’s gesture is a sort of unified retrenchment of orthodox Christianity against accommodations by the Anglican Church towards ordaining women and other reforms (this piece covers similar themes). Ross Douthat, looking at the record and direction of Pope Benedict’s reign, argues there is more at play bringing together Anglicans and Roman Catholics:

The High Court and the High Altar

In 1777, America’s first Chief Justice John Jay was the primary author of New York’s constitution, which banned Catholic immigrants unless they renounced the pope.  While we’ve certainly come a long way in the battle against anti-Catholicism in the 180 years since his death, his fears seem to have acquired some stare decisis of their own.  

 
The latest round has been centered (oddly enough) on Jay’s old stomping ground, the Supreme Court, where 6 of the 9 justices are Catholic.  US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito made headlines last week when he said he was troubled by concerns raised about the court’s Catholics.  Speaking to the Justinian Society, he noted, “There has been so much talk lately about the number of Catholics serving on the Supreme Court…This is one of those questions that does not die.”   

Getting to the truth about health care in America, and a cautionary tale for the news media.

Trust But Verify

The Catholic bishops are not the only ones still harboring strong reservations about current health care legislation. Their early October letter to Congress stated clearly that when it comes to the necessary provisions for protecting life and conscience protection, “no current bill meets this test.”

There has not been much progress since then, and the USCCB is not alone in its insistence that much more work is needed to create an acceptable piece of health legislation.

On Wednesday afternoon, a press conference was held near the Capitol on the issue of health care, where participants discussed the issue of abortion coverage directly. Many of the most prominent legislators from both houses of Congress were present, including Rep. Mike Pence, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, and former presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback, indicating that concerns over issues of life are still front and center in many minds not only within Catholic leadership but among lawmakers as well.

Roundup of reactions to the Anglican provision

If you want a general idea of the complications that will inevitably come with the Vatican’s new provision for Anglicans seeking communion with the Catholic Church, Father Dwight Longenecker’s piece in the London Times is a good place to start.

Describing the situation as a game of “Ecclesiastical Pick up Stix,” Father Longenecker – himself a former Anglican clergy member who converted to Catholicism – does not mince words:

The Anglican Communion is more like a confederation of contradictions than a communion of the saints. At one point Anglicans worldwide were united in their shared understanding of the historic Christian faith and their shared ancestry in English language and culture. As time has progressed like an ever rolling stream the Anglican Communion has become more and more disparate. Now there are Charismatic Anglicans, Traditionalist Anglicans, Catholic Anglicans and Protestant Anglicans and New Age Anglicans and Liberal Anglicans.

... For all sorts of reasons Anglicans (and their American cousins the Episcopalians) have done the Protestant thing and quarrelled and split and quarrelled and split and quarrelled and split. Now there are over 125 independent 'Anglican' churches.

“What will the Vatican do?” Father Longenecker asks. “That’s where the game of pick up stix comes in. They will have to pick and choose carefully. ... The Vatican’s skills will need to be exercised with delicacy and tact for the good of each person and group, but also with a view to the unity of Christ’s whole church.”

(He goes into further depth on the subject on his blog).

That need for “delicacy” is being seen on the Anglican side, as well, even as the leader of the traditional Anglican group Forward in Faith conjectures that up to 1,000 clergy could convert.

“It could well be a flood, provided the terms and conditions are favorable,” said Stephen Parkinson. “We haven’t seen the fine print yet.”

Similarly, Primate John Hepworth, head of the 400,000-member Traditional Anglican Communion, expressed gratitude for Pope Benedict’s actions and hoped Anglicans can “find in this canonical structure the opportunity to preserve those Anglican traditions precious to us and consistent with the Catholic faith.”

Then from New York, Father George Rutler – who also came to the Church from the Anglican tradition – discussed the document in even blunter terms than Father Longenecker.

“It is a dramatic slap-down of liberal Anglicanism and a total repudiation of the ordination of women, homosexual marriage and the general neglect of doctrine in Anglicanism,” he said in a statement yesterday.

Father Rutler zeroed in on the announcement’s implications for ecumenism, saying that the Vatican’s emphasis on the “spiritual patrimony” of Anglicanism, rather than its doctrine, is telling.

“Indeed, it is a final rejection of Anglicanism,” he said. “(It) makes clear that it is not a historic “church” but rather an “ecclesial community” that strayed and now is invited to return to communion with the Pope as Successor of Peter.”

“The Apostolic Constitution is not a retraction of ecumenical desires,” Father Rutler continued, “but rather is the fulfillment of ecumenical aspirations, albeit not the way most Anglican leaders had envisioned it.”

Still, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster and Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury expressed hopes for continued ecumenical dialogue, even as the latter, Archbishop Rowan Williams, admitted that he was “informed of the planned announcement at a very late stage.”

Here in the U.S., USCCB president Cardinal Francis George issued a similar statement, affirming the bishops’ desire for deeper unity with the Episcopal Church while working to implement the Vatican provision in American dioceses.

-- Elizabeth Hansen, Headline Bistro editor

Welcoming the Anglicans

This morning brought significant news from the Vatican in terms of ecumenism – a document detailing how Anglicans can be welcomed into the Catholic Church, even while maintaining distinct traditions such as married priests.

Anglican groups – the foremost in everyone’s mind being the international, 400,000-member Traditional Anglican Communion – who wish to come into communion with the Catholic Church would be organized into personal ordinariates. These structures would operate much like a diocese without geographical boundaries – like the United States’ Archdiocese for the Military Services – presided over by a bishop and with its own priests. (On the subject of priests: under the Vatican instruction, former Anglican clergy who are married will be allowed to be ordained Catholic priests. However, following the tradition of both the Catholic and Orthodox Church, no married man will be ordained a bishop).

“The provision of this new structure is consistent with the commitment to ecumenical dialogue, which continues to be a priority for the Catholic Church,” said Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Stands for life around the world

Less than a week after the Guttmacher Institute released a report calling for increased access to abortion around the world, two heavily Catholic countries asserted their opposition to loosened abortion laws.

First, in Peru – a national poll revealed that a majority of the South American country’s citizens are opposed to widening abortion’s legality beyond saving the life of the mother. Peru’s Congress is set to debate a bill that would allow abortion in cases of rape and fetal deformity, which the archbishop of Lima has called a “death penalty” for the innocent.

“The cultural world today is without direction,” Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani had lamented earlier over his country’s abortion debate. “It doesn’t know whether it will legalize abortion, drugs and other things that go against humanity itself; that is, there is a lack of respect for God.”

Abortion advocates in Peru are using the argument that strict abortion laws are leading to hundreds of thousands of illegal, unsafe abortions in the country – a familiar claim to anyone who read last Friday’s news wrap on the Guttmacher report.

Catholic News Agency reports that the former Peruvian Minister of Health firmly rejected those statistics, saying he had researched them himself during his time in office.

Fifteen years ago, pro-abortion groups were claiming 54,000 illegal abortions were taking place in Peru, “and they multiplied that by five, and in 2006 they multiplied it by seven,” Luis Solari said. “On the basis of what? ... The figures that appear in this official deception do not exist anywhere in the Ministry of Health.”

Across the Atlantic in Madrid, Spain, police say at least 250,000 people turned out for a massive pro-life march, rallying against plans by Spain’s socialist government to effectively legalize abortion on demand for girls as young as 16.
 
The event’s organizers place that estimate at a much higher number, saying 1.5 million people attended the march. Madrid’s regional government estimates only a little lower, saying 1.2 million people were present.

America magazine's Austen Ivereigh makes the following observation:

The march was organised by 42 civil-society organizations coordinated by the Spanish Family Forum. It was an impressive display of what the pro-life movement is capable of when it unites behind simple powerful messages. It was festive, youthful, passionate; it had a very simple but compelling message centred on the rights of the innocent, as well as a strong democratic argument that such a radical reform of the abortion law requires a social consensus lacking in this case.

In the UK, as so often elsewhere, the pro-life movement too often divides into powerless little factions at war with each other, rendering itself incapable of the kind of mass conscience-shaking exercise that was so vivid in Madrid. Pro-lifers should study it and learn its lessons.

As we face discouraging news on the home front – as Headline Bistro columnist Charlie Spiering noted in his column on “Health Care Reform, Abortion and the Hyde Amendment” – it’s good to hear of the efforts of fellow pro-lifers around the world.

In the face of what can seem like David versus Goliath struggles to defend life from our own laws, Cardinal Cipriani’s image of a confused and directionless world is a vivid one indeed.

Yet, while encouraging his flock to participate in Saturday’s march, one Spanish bishop exhorted, “Let us fight for life. Life is the future of man, never death.”

The culture may seem compass-less, but convictions like that, and actions that follow them, serve as sure beacons to lead it back to truth.

-- Elizabeth Hansen, Headline Bistro