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Today's readings focus on wisdom.

Wisdom, in Christian thought, is a gift of the Holy Spirit, contrasted with worldly or secular wisdom.

It may sometimes be believed that worldly wisdom is more practical and pragmatic. Realistic and "down to earth" compared to the pie-in-the-sky faith and hope of Christian "wisdom."

Not so. The one who possesses the wisdom of God knows the world better than the world knows itself. God created the world, after all. There is an obliviousness to worldly wisdom, illustrated in Jesus' image of the five unwise virgins who didn't realize that they weren't ready to go to the wedding party until it was too late.

The world is not fully self-aware. The best it can do is look in the mirror. God looks inward, to the heart. To look at God is to see with his eyes. Thus the teaching of the Church that "Christ fully reveals man to himself."

Wisdom means not letting oneself be distracted by the immediately visible. That does not necessarily mean looking away from it, but looking past it, going deeper. We don't have to detach ourselves completely. We just have to recognize that the things we deeply desire in this world in this life point to something else. We do not cower away from the world. We rise up from it.

Marriage is an example. Marriages where the two parties expect to find complete happiness in their partners are doomed to fail. Because two ordinary people cannot make each other perfectly happy. We all know this from experience. But two people who get married knowing that they will challenge each other, and help each other grow, are much more likely to make it. The world looks at marriage and all it sees is a destination. The Church (and other people of faith) see it as a starting point.

Worldly wisdom means looking only at the surface. Catholic Christian wisdom looks deeper and sees more. It doesn't just see a baby in a trough, it sees a savior. It doesn't just see a cross -- for when you think of just a cross, it's about as inspiring as a guillotine. Wisdom looks at it and sees salvation. Because wisdom looks deeper.

When you think about it, wisdom is critical thinking of the highest order. In fact, Thomas Aquinas postulates along those lines*.

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure critical thinking skills have to be taught. (At least, I remember being tested for it in high school.) The better a critical thinker the teacher is, the more critical a thinker the student will be. In the Christian's case, Christ is the teacher, the greatest of all.






*From the Summa: Q1 on the nature and extent of sacred doctrine, Article 6 whether it is the same as wisdom.

This doctrine [Christianity] is wisdom above all human wisdom; not merely in any one order, but absolutely. For since it is the part of a wise man to arrange and to judge, and since lesser matters should be judged in the light of some higher principle, he is said to be wise in any one order who considers the highest principle in that order: thus in the order of building, he who plans the form of the house is called wise and architect, in opposition to the inferior laborers who trim the wood and make ready the stones: "As a wise architect, I have laid the foundation" (1 Corinthians 3:10). Again, in the order of all human life, the prudent man is called wise, inasmuch as he directs his acts to a fitting end: "Wisdom is prudence to a man" (Proverbs 10:23). Therefore he who considers absolutely the highest cause of the whole universe, namely God, is most of all called wise. Hence wisdom is said to be the knowledge of divine things, as Augustine says (De Trin. xii, 14). But sacred doctrine essentially treats of God viewed as the highest cause -- not only so far as He can be known through creatures just as philosophers knew Him -- "That which is known of God is manifest in them" (Romans 1:19) -- but also as far as He is known to Himself alone and revealed to others. Hence sacred doctrine is especially called wisdom.

A week ago was the tenth anniversary of the controversial Declaration "Dominus Iesus" (Lord Jesus), from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which in 2000 was headed up by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, today Pope Benedict XVI.

Anyway, I say it was controversial because it made some claims about Jesus which are often considered somewhat politically incorrect. Claims like Jesus is the only name under which anyone is to be saved from an eternity separate from God, or that the Church He founded is the one true Church.

I read the document this morning for the first time ever. I felt like most of it was pretty common sense, provided that the person reading it professed to believe in the content of Holy Writ. If the document is politically incorrect or offensive to modern ideas of religious pluralism or relativism, it is because the New Testament and the Jesus of Nazareth described therein are rather offensive to those.

But I find that the most difficult Gospel teachings to accept often turn out to be the most beautiful.

The most dominant image used to describe God's love for mankind in Scripture is matrimonial -- the love of a husband for his wife. The declaration reads:

And thus, just as the head and members of a living body, though not identical, are inseparable, so too Christ and the Church can neither be confused nor separated, and constitute a single "whole Christ". This same inseparability is also expressed in the New Testament by the analogy of the Church as the Bride of Christ (cf. 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:25-29; Rev 21:2,9).

That is probably the most new idea I've taken from the document, the idea that Christ and the Church are distinct but inseparable. Or maybe not a new idea, but a new and clearer expression of the idea.

Because there is often perceived a disconnect between the two. Christ is all-loving, all-affirming; the Church is cold and rigid. Christ comforts. The Church burdens. Christ welcomes. The Church excommunicates.

Why the apparent difference? I would surmise that it is because the Church is clear and unmistakable in the world today, while Christ is more shrouded in the past, more ephemeral and thus more vulnerable to wishful thinking. In other words, it is much easier for us to make whatever we want out of "Jesus" than it is to make whatever we want out of the Church. Christ isn't walking around giving interviews or writing books. The pope is.

This is not to say that Christ is not loving and welcoming. Quite the opposite. But as Christ is welcoming, so too is the Church. It is the Church's job to preserve a proper understanding of Christ in the world today. The farther one gets away from Christ's teachings as propogated by the Church, the more one's understanding of Christ becomes contaminated by one's own wishful thinking. The Christ in our heads is then not Christ at all. Just a repository of our own opinions, costumed up to look like a 33-year-old bearded Jewish carpenter.

If any of the Church's teachings strike us as cold or unloving, like (and I hope this does not upset anyone too much) her teaching on marriage, then it is not her teaching but a teaching of Christ himself that we find so cold and unloving. Does that mean Christ is cold and unloving? Or might it mean that our understanding of the issue needs to be corrected or sharpened?

Anyway, I think that is what Cardinal Ratzinger was getting at. Just throwing it out there.

Speaking of marriage ...
as I read the declaration this morning it got me thinking about my future married relationship. St. Paul makes clear that the mystery of marriage actually points to the mystery of Christ and the Church -- distinct but inseparable entities. Beginning on that fateful day in late September, T and I will continue to be distinct individuals, but we will be inseparable. As one body.

Mind blown.

The Washington Post reports that in Salt Lake City, Utah, at Temple Square and Brigham Young University, Mormons seem to be working with Catholics on marriage prep.

"Mormons have a lot to teach Catholics about emphasizing marriage as a God-given vocation," writes Anthony Stevens-Aroyo, a Catholic.

Whether Catholics must learn from Mormons about the holiness of marriage is up for debate, as far as I'm concerned. But there is no question that many of us Catholics certainly can learn about the holiness of marriage from someone.

It is sometimes believed in Catholic circles that the celibate priesthood is the way to go if one is "holy" like that, while marriage is more "natural" and "normal." On the other end of the spectrum the celibate priesthood (or religious life) is considered the really honorable thing for a person to do with one's life, while marriage is considered somehow more worldly and less righteous. I will sometimes hear people pray for "vocations to the priesthood and religious life." Nothing wrong with that of course.

But Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York has said most aptly:

"That's where we have the real vocation crisis. We have a vocation crisis to lifelong, life-giving, loving, faithful marriage. If we take care of that one, we'll have all the priests and nuns we need for the Church."

He is absolutely correct.

The joining of one man and one woman in holy matrimony is just as much God's idea as is the priesthood.

Stevens-Arroyo continues:

In Catholic America, I fear, we don't advertise often enough that the Sacrament of Marriage is a vocation. While the LDS and a host of Protestant churches function as places to meet "good wives" and "reliable husbands" for believers seeking worthy marriage partners, Catholic churches pray more often for celibate vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Certainly, celibacy is an essential gift to the church and should be maintained, but there are far more Catholics who are married than those who are celibate. If we need priests to function as Christ's Church, we also need married people to fill the pews and take on lay ministries.

But the American bishops are paying attention, Arroyo goes on. They wrote a pastoral letter in November 2009, "Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan." And they've recently launched the website "For Your Marriage."

It's been a really long time since I've written about anything purely political. But I came across this interview on CNBC with Rep. Paul Ryan, a member of Pres. Obama's debt commission.

Ryan has been talking a lot lately about how to get the country out of its current debt crisis.

His upshot: "We got to get the entrepreneurial economy started again."

"We're replacing basic free enterprise with crony capitalism, where you have big business using their largesse and their connections with big government to stack the deck in their favor," Ryan says. "To have the rules set for the incumbents in business, which are to erect barriers to entry against other would-be competitors that would knock them off the top of the hill. So I'm really worried that many of us are confusing being pro-market with being pro-business. We need to have a free enterprise system where everybody has access to capital markets."

That's a key distinction. The reputation of conservative elected officials is that they are pro-business. Certainly some of them are. But what Ryan demonstrates is that sound fiscal responsibility consists in being pro-market -- i.e., in favoring equal opportunity. That means cutting back on subsidies, cutting back on throwing dollars at certain individual companies or sectors, and simply allowing the market -- which is composed of individual entrepreneurs, inventors, and producers -- to do what it does best.

This doesn't mean producers in the market will not be held to account if they behave criminally. Laws are in place for a reason and they should be enforced. But what we have gotten away from in America is a sense of independence. The idea that the key to prosperity and happiness is freedom and liberty to prosper oneself and one's family. If the nation is to climb out of its current debt situation and the current recession, it will be individuals, families, and local communities -- the private sector, not the public sector -- that do it.

Here's Ryan's conversation on CNBC.

***
The discussion reminds me of something my best man Brandon Kraft wrote in his (and formerly also my) blog Catholic Thinker about the difference between working for good and working for greed. The illustration he cites is Gordon Gekko from the 1987 film Wall Street. Certainly that is a good, albeit fictional, illustration of the vice and certainly it is an accurate portrayal of some on Wall Street.

I would add that greed is not just in the private sector. It is everywhere. No government can spend itself into trillions of dollars in debt without being greedy. And it is my opinion that most private consumers are smart and know greed when they see it (more so than the government, I'd wager). Greed doesn't pay in a marketplace populated by consumers with a moral compass.

So again, the point is that to be a supporter of a free and unencumbered market is not the same as siding with unethical Wall Street hacks and big business. Often, as Ryan makes plain, it is the very collusion of such types with the government that make it difficult for up-and-comers to prosper themselves and build a good life for themselves and their families. A free market, as distinguished from crony capitalism, is crucial to addressing what may become the growing problem of poverty in the United States.

Been thinking a lot about the Holy Spirit lately. Fr. J said in his homily last Sunday said that the Holy Spirit "makes the difference." It makes the difference between a loving church community and a cold and distant one. It makes the difference in a generous and giving person and a miser. It makes the difference between a person who is ready to change and a person who is stuck in his old ways.

David Mills of "First Things" magazine wrote this week about "Spirituality without Spirits," or the modern popular concept and lifestyle of "spirituality" as opposed to supposedly cold hard "religion."

He writes about Lady Gaga -- who may not be so celibate after all -- telling a newspaper that although she was raised Catholic, she now prefers a more "spiritual" type of God.

"There's really no religion that doesn't hate or condemn a certain kind of people, and I totally believe in all love and forgiveness, and excluding no one," she says.

Mills debunks the whole "spirituality" myth -- which is that one can be spiritual without the actual relationship with the kind of Spirit that one encounters only in religious practice. To be religious is to be spiritual -- to engage with and encounter a true spirit that is beyond us, that challenges us, and that can change us.

I'm presently reading a book by John Paul II on the Holy Spirit: Dominum et Vivificantem: The Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World. That first Latin part means "Lord and Giver of Life," which is what we Catholics call the Holy Spirit every Sunday at Mass.

Because every human heart desires God, I think it can certainly be said that persons who subscribe to these sorts of popular, ephemeral, non-substantive types of "spirituality" are looking, objectively, for the Holy Spirit. In other words, everyone wants life, and the Holy Spirit stands ready to give it to them to the full. But their perception, often received from popular media, is that the Holy Spirit, and the Church to which He gives life, will not give them the kind of happiness that they seek from living spiritually.

Why? Because of the moral claims that they make. It's that "Holy" with a capital "H" that some of us find so unnerving. That's what, I suspect, Lady Gaga is talking about. She thinks that religion is about hating and condemning people. That's her concept of morality. If it was my concept of morality, I would agree with her. A lot of people would, and that I suspect is why the concept of "spirituality" is so appealing, why so many characterize themselves as "spiritual but not religious."

But religion, at least the Christian religion, is about loving and accepting and including people. But therefore it must be about hating and condemning certain lifestyles and practices, both in our own lives and in the world writ large, that are fundamentally incompatible with loving our neighbor the way Christ loves us. If certain sexual practices -- and let's be frank, the vast majority of objections people have to the moral claims of the Church come down to sexual practices -- are condemned and excluded by the Church, that is the reason.

The reason why certain practices must be excluded may not always be clear to us, but many things regarding God are not always clear, and nonethless true. My purpose here is not to make the case for these teachings. That would take many more blog posts. I simply say the basis of these teachings is not hate and exclusion, but love and inclusion -- of all people.

The concept is rooted in scripture, as John Paul II notes in his book. In John Chapter 16, Jesus tells his disciples that when the Holy Spirit comes, He will "convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment."

Well there's the rub. All you have to do is watch a few episodes of "Intervention" to know that we human beings do not like to be convinced of our own sin -- of our imperfections and our need to change. Religion -- Holy Spirituality -- does that. Spirituality does not.

Came across an interesting article at the website for Crisis Magazine, a lay Catholic publication, by a guy named John Zmirak, whom I've never heard of but seems pretty insightful.

His argument: the theological virtue of love (or more clearly charity) cannot be properly understood or properly practiced without a proper understanding and practice of the "merely natural" virtues of justice (moral righteousness), temperance (moderation, avoidance of excess), fortitude (courage), and prudence (smart thinking).

Without the clear understanding and proper practice of those virtues, we cannot fulfill Christ's commandment, that we love one another as He loved us. For Jesus Himself was a model not only of the theological virtues (faith, hope and love), but of those four natural virtues as well.

The Christian message of Love, Zmirak writes, is not that only our conception of "love" by itself is sufficient without anything else to place it in context.

The example upon which he draws is indeed Benedict's comments regarding the abuse scandals, when he said:

"Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice. In one word we have to re-learn these essentials: conversion, prayer, penance, and the theological virtues."

Love without respect for justice is not really love, but a corruption of it. In modern popular culture, there are many conceptions and practices of "love" that do not include justice, or temperance, or courage, or prudence. They may involve strong emotional attachments and warm-fuzzies, but a strong emotional attachment and warm-fuzzies are not a foundation for a loving relationship in the Christian sense.

Some may argue that this makes it appear that God's Love is not enough, that we devalue God's Love by saying that it needs other virtues to make it work.

But I would say it is precisely by practicing these simple, ordinary human virtues that we place the value in Love that it truly deserves. Without these ordinary virtues, we strip Love of its identity. Love becomes merely an undiscerning affirmation of everyone, even those who need to be called to conversion, and everything, even the most heinous crimes. Love is challenging. As Zmirak put it:

Grace builds on nature, but it cannot simply replace it. If we're unjust, rash, intemperate or irresponsible, it won't simply cripple our attempts to practice faith, hope, and charity -- it might actually render them evil.

Prayer is like planting a tree in an empty backyard. One may not always feel like planting a tree. One may even be pressed into doing so by a friend or politely asked to help do so by a dad to whom one owes much of his present success.

Planting a tree takes a great deal of effort, especially in a place like Central Texas, where one encounters hard rock about an inch beneath the surface. You plunge the shovel into the nice brown dirt a couple of times, and then, CLANK.

At that point, all you can really do is keep plunging the shovel into the ground again and again. And what difference might you see between one plunge and the next? If you're not the strongest dude on the block, probably not a whole lot.

So it is with prayer. It may have a certain novelty and fun at first. But then it becomes work. And at times it may appear to be fruitless work. You may not see much if any difference in your life from one prayer to the next. In that way, it may be easy to get discouraged. But one must keep the end in mind.

You might ask yourself, while you're plunging that shovel into the ground over and over again, only to dislodge a couple of tiny limestone shards, what is even the point? The point is not merely to plunge away with increasing impatience and anger at the rock. The point is to make room in the ground. Why? To plant a tree.

You're plunging that shovel into the ground over and over again, at great discomfort to yourself, blistering your hands, in order to bring new life, new beauty into your backyard (or your parents' backyard, as the case may be). The tree spices up the backyard and brings shade to the grass below. It turns the backyard from a flat, uninteresting place to potentially, one day, a garden.

But it starts with plunging that shovel into the hard rock ground.

So it is with prayer. It is the first step to bringing new life into the spiritual soil of one's soul. And at first all one can do is repeat the motions. But one must keep the end in mind. The end in mind is holiness -- turning our flat, uninteresting lives into something more, something blessed and joyful. Prayer is making room in our very crowded hearts and minds for that new life -- which is God.

If I had brought the new tree into the backyard and just thrown it on the ground without first making room for it, the tree could not have taken root. No roots, no life. No life, no shade. No new beauty. In order to enjoy the benefits of the tree, I have to make room for the tree.

If we want to enjoy the benefits of God in our lives, if we want the deep interior happiness and comfort that only He can give, we have to make room for Him. Over and over again.

Some may object to what I said yesterday as regards human beings. It would appear that human beings often desire things far removed from God. In fact, human beings, given a free will by God, are uniquely able to pursue that which offends God. This we call sin.

A genocidal madman or a serial killer or abuser can hardly be said to desire to return to God.

Neither can those who outrightly reject God, or who believe intellectually in Him but profess to hate Him.

And even those who believe in God and profess to desire a life that pleases Him will be often annoyed by His intrusion into their lives -- as when we desire a particular thing for ourselves, like gossip or excesive drinking, but our consciences, informed by the Holy Spirit, forbid us.

So persons at every level of virtue and wickedness can be said to at least very often desire something far removed from God, some may argue.

While there may be some truth to the above, I maintain that all people, either by nature or by instinct or by will, do desire to return to God. Even if consciously we do not with our wills desire to return to Him, even so by our nature we desire to do so. The definition of original sin is that our wills desire one thing and nature desires another.

In other words, even when we profess to hate God, we love Him in spite of ourselves, in the sense that we are drawn to Him. Whatever we seek in the short term, we do so in hopes of obtaining some larger and further good, and beyond that another, and another, until we reach the ultimate good. That ultimate good is God, whether we like it or not.

Those who believe in an desire to please Him will often understand that what they desire in any given moment is not the thing in itself, like gossip or excessive drinking, but the good that lies beyond it, like notoriety or appreciation, or relaxation and comfort from one's troubles. Those things are all good things, pleasing to God, and it pleases Him that we should experience them either at His direct giving or by way of other persons, but not by way of that which offends Him.

And in fact those goods are more truly achieved in a way that pleases God rather than offends Him. The drunk will not still have comfort from his burdens tomorrow morning, nor the gossiper his appreciation. What one desires when he is tempted to gossip or excess is, in reality, God, whose love overflows.

The same goes for the unbelievers -- those who denounce God with their words abd those extreme evildoers who grievously offend Him with genocide or abuse. The evils that they and believers perpetrate are always ultimately because they seek happiness and fulfillment for themselves, or sometimes others, which means naturally they will be, in spite of themselves and albeit in a very confused way, drawn to God.

Indeed, for some who are determined not to desire to God, that want that they have in their natures can repulse them. But that natural desire is part of who they are, which means they hate a part -- the truest part -- of themselves. They wish it gone. But there it is. Always. Wherever they go. Which is why I am convinced part of the experience of Hell is eternal self-loathing.

St. Paul writes: "For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want." Why would one do the evil that one does not want? Because that evil will not achieve the good that one desires by nature. In other words, it will not bring one closer to God, which means it will not make the sinner happy. But every sinner desires that happiness, which can only be provided by God. So every sinner in spite of Himself desires to return to God.

Every man and woman seeks God, for every man and woman, from the most honorable to the most wicked, is created in His image and likeness. At every moment the human heart seeks Him out. The question is whether the human heart is getting warmer, or colder. The key to really drawing closer to the warmth of God is to consciously and actively desire with our wills that to which we are drawn by nature, which is God Himself.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. -- The words of Christ, the Book of Revelation, Chapter 22 verse 13

God is the beginning and the end of everything. Everyone and everything. All of creation proceeded from Him, and all of creation, each individual creature, longs, either by its nature or by its instinct or by its will, to return to Him.

I have heard physicists and geoscientists theorize that the universe as we know it started with the Big Bang and that at some point the universe will begin to colapse in on itself -- and, perhaps, at that point the process will repeat itself.

Some may think this theory challenges belief in a Higher Power, since it would appear to go against the idea of one creation moving towards one ultimate conclusion.

On the contrary, I would posit that such a theory, if true, would only provide a further and ultimate reflection in the material universe of God's relationship with His creation.

Those reflections in the material universe are everywhere. We humans, and al creation, cannot for example leave the ground without at some point returning to it -- sometimes peacefully and sometimes violently, but we return. Water evaporates, travels up, and eventually returns -- sometimes peacefully and sometimes violently, but it returns. The sun rises and sets. We persons leave in the morning and return in the evening.

Everything that God created awakens or springs into motion at one point in space and comes to rest at that same point. This we call a thing's or a person's "home." We leave from there, but always with the desire to return there.

God is the ultimate first point at which we awaken, at which all creation comes to life and is set in motion. And He is the point at which all Creation, and, above all, mankind, comes to finally rest. As Augustine said; "You have created us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."

***

And while we're on the subject of cosmic reflections of God's relationship with HIs creation.

I saw this article a few days ago about "Why Catholics like Einstein," not that we're the only Christians who do, obviously. He makes the point:

If the universe were roughly 6,000 years old, as a literal reading of Genesis would suggest, then we would not be able to see the Milky Way. The light would not have reached the earth yet.

I know he was meaning to refute Creationists who take Genesis to be in no way figurative and in every way literal, and that I think he does rather effectively. But in doing that he sort of blew my mind with the vastness of creation itself. When you look up into the night sky, you are staring thousands, maybe even millions of years into the past. Because it takes that much time for the light from those stars across the galaxy to reach that spot where you are.

Think about that for a minute. God sets a star blazing on one end of the galaxy. The light from the star travels outward for millions of years until finally it makes contact with the eyes of a child of God. You, sitting on the roof. Psalm 19:2 -- "The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky proclaims its builder's craft."

Pope Benedict XVI preached a homily at Mass with the Pontifical Biblical Academy yesterday, in which he addressed, in off-the-cuff, non-scripted remarks, not just the ongoing sexual abuse scandals plaguing the Catholic Church in various parts of the world, but the errors of modern thought that made such crimes possible, and the fresh opportunity for the Church to open herself to God's transforming power.

So far there is not a complete transcript, just notes taken by Vatican Radio and others. But if the notes are any indication, it was a brilliant teaching moment from Benedict.

Because so much of this is so great, I'm going to quote it a bit at a time and intersperse my comments. If you, dear reader, wish not to be interrupted by my inferior thoughts, please skip over them. You won't offend me. He's the freakin' pope.

Vatican Radio reports:

Speaking without a prepared text, the Holy Father said that in modern times we have seen theorized an idea of man according to which human being would be, "free, autonomous, and nothing else."

This supposed freedom from everything, including freedom from the duty of obedience to God, "Is a lie," said Pope Benedict, a falsehood regarding the basic structure of human being - about the way women and men are made to be, "because," he continued, "human being does not exist on its own, nor does it exist for itself."

I'm not sure there's a man alive on the planet today who better understands the errors of modern thought than Pope Benedict. He understands that the error is based on something that appears on the surface to be a good, which is freedom. When he says that this particular idea of freedom is a "lie," he is not saying that there is no freedom. He is saying that what many in the modern world mean when they say the word "freedom" is not freedom at all. For God is the source of freedom.

In the modern mind, to be free means to be unencumbered by, often by means of separation. For example, being free from homework by being separated from school, or confinement by being separated from prison. Or morality by being separated from God. But to be separated from God is to be separated from the only source of freedom available to man. Therefore, "freedom" from God in the modern sense is actually the opposite of freedom.

He continues:

The Pope said it is a political and practical falsehood, as well, because cooperation and sharing of freedoms is a necessary part of social life - and if God does not exist - if He is not a point of reference really accessible to human being, then only prevailing opinion remains and it becomes the final arbiter of all things.

Citing the Nazi and Communist regimes of the 20th century as examples, Pope Benedict said such dictatorships can never accept the notion of a God who is above ideological power - and he also stressed that in the present, there are subtle forms of dictatorship like that of a radical conformism, which can lead to subtle and not-so subtle aggression toward the Church.

In the modern world quite often people think there are no facts that cannot be disputed -- only opinions that can be rhetorically cleverer than others, and thus more highly valued as "right." Particularly in the area of morality and politics it is the one who can be funnier or more charismatic who wins. That is not to say that such qualities are bad. They can be very good, but only if they are used to advance truth rather than falsehoods. Those who possess good humor and charisma may be right, or wrong. But in the modern world they are admired regardless as being worthy of our agreement. And on the flipside, those who come off as angry or humorless are dismissed as unworthy of our attention, regardless of whether what they're saying may be true.

The Holy Father also stressed that for Christians, true obedience to God depends on our truly knowing Him, and he warned against the danger of using "obedience to God" as a pretext for following our own desires.

If we don't know a person, we can't know what he wants. We may think that perhaps we know what he wants. But if the thing that we think he perhaps wants coincides with what we certainly know we want, how likely are we to make sure we understand him rightly?

That is the awkward position in which many Catholics finds themselves. We have a Church that professes concrete teachings on the principles of Jesus, many of which impose on us what at times appear to be profound inconveniences -- unreasonable prohibitions. Often, it is not simply that we do not know, but that we would rather not know.

But again, only by summoning up the courage to know the truth -- about ourselves and about God and what he wants -- can we be truly confident in God, and only then can we be truly free.

"We have," he said, "a certain fear of speaking about eternal life."

"We talk of things that are useful to the world," continued Pope Benedict, "we show that Christianity can help make the world a better place, but we do not dare say that the end of the world and the goal of Christianity is eternal life - and that the criteria of life in this world come from the goal - this we dare not say."

How true is this! We hear this a lot these days, and not necessarily always in a bad way. But it's very popular to talk about "What Christ's sacrifice means for me," and "How does this impact my life here and now," etc. But there's a certain self-centeredness there when we think of Christianity only in terms of this present world, and my present life. It's important to do that, of course. But have we perhaps lost sight of our ultimate and final end? The complete happiness that we cannot have in this life, no matter how much money we earn, how many friends we make, and how holy we are? Christianity -- Christ -- is much bigger than this world, and will remain long after this world is gone.

We must rather have the courage, the joy, the great hope that there is eternal life, that eternal life is real life and that from this real life comes the light that illuminates this world as well.

And here we have the flipside of that coin. Part of the problem is, I argue, a certain self-centeredness on the part of man. But the other side of it is simply fear. What, really, is going to happen to me after my heart stops beating? When I lose consciousness for the last time? It is simply the scariest question that human beings can ask themselves. And we are the only species on the planet that fears death on more than just an instinctual level, more than just when death seems uncomfortably near. We worry about it in the comfort of our own homes. Am I ultimately going anywhere besides in the ground?

As with virtually every question that weighs on the human heart, the answer is Jesus. We have in Him a demonstration that death is not the end, that we are heading for something greater. Don't just cling to that when you're afraid. Own it always. Believe and know that eternal life is waiting.

The Catholic News Service quotes him near the end of his remarks.

Recognizing the sins of priests who have sexually abused children, performing penance and asking for forgiveness, the Catholic Church trusts that God will purify and transform the church, Pope Benedict XVI said.

"I must say that we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word 'penance,' which seemed too harsh to us. Now, under the attacks of the world that speaks to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is a grace."

Like death, we fear penance. Penance is a kind of death because we put to death our perverse desires. And Benedict is pointing to the recent terrible offenses of abusive priests, but also takes this as an opportunity not just for those perpetrators, but for all the members of the Church to really examine ourselves. If we truly possess the truth of the Jesus Christ, if we receive Him fully, then we should be the least afraid of the change it would make in ourselves.

That's the amazing thing about what Pope Benedict is doing here. He's taking the recent egregious crimes of the priests as an opportunity for the whole Church to be an example to the world of the change that Christ can make if we open ourselves to Him. There are many calling for change in how the Church operates as an institution. Such suggestions are worth considering. But Benedict understands that even more urgently needed is the transformation of hearts -- those of the Church's shepherds and their followers.

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When I think of people going off the cuff the way Benedict has, I often picture them launching into rants against this person or that person, angrily speaking and wishing ill. None of that here. He attacks no individual person or group of persons. He simply invites people to examine the prevailing ideas of the modern world. And he does it with love, motivated by the love of Christ and the fire of the Holy Spirit. As his five-year anniversary approaches, I am thankful for this pope.

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Reuters reported on the pope's words here, and the New York Times here.

Hat tip to the First Things blog and Rocco Palmo's Whispers in the Loggia.