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Posted by Kathleen Brewer de Pozos, PhD on May 1, 2008

The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker – May 1

The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker is a relatively new one in the Catholic liturgical calendar, though feasts of St. Joseph are not. Celebrating St. Joseph’s vocation as a carpenter, a worker, dates formally to 1955 when the feast was proclaimed by Pope Pius XII as a response to Communist celebrations of a festival honoring workers on May 1.

It’s not uncommon for the Church to take non-Christian celebrations and give them a Christian focus. Celebrations such as Christmas and the Feast of All Saints, for example, have been set for times when non-Christian communities into which Christian witnesses/missionaries were entering were celebrating their own religious or civic feasts. Sometimes we say those feasts were “baptized” — a kind of shift in interpretation to give new meanings to old rhythms and rituals.

Reverence for human labor and an insistence on the protection of workers predated the Communist revolutions in the Soviet Union and other nations of the world. The writers of the Gospels noted that Jesus was the son of a carpenter from Nazareth, and that He was also a carpenter. His first disciples were fishermen, tax collectors, home makers — the everyday, ordinary folk now celebrated as “workers” on May Day.

Pope Leo XIII laid out the biblical and intellectual foundations of contemporary Catholic social teaching with his encyclical, Rerum Novarum, subtitled On Capital and Labor, in 1891. From that first encyclical, through the 20th Century and into the 21st, the Church, through the writings of its Popes and Bishops, has insisted that the dignity of human labor and human laborers is to be respected and protected. No perfect social system exists – from communism through capitalism, the negative excesses of all have been critiqued and the benefits of all have been noted.

The Church insists that laborers are entitled to a fair wage. Employers have a right to make a reasonable profit, but not to excessive profits at the expense of the health and safety of their employees. Working conditions must be safe. The poorest of the poor must have a chance to live with basic human dignity and security assured. Those who are in positions of power must use that power to protect the powerless. Those with education must look out for those who have not. People of faith must speak on behalf of those treated unjustly.

Fundamentally, we are a family — God’s family. And we are responsible for each other. Each of us has our own “work” to do. Whether our work is to build bridges, tend the sick, educate the children, prepare the meals, or write blog posts, we each have a calling to work for the good of all and to build up the community.

On this Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, may we be aware of the work of great and small in this world, respect the gifts we all bring, and be attentive to protect those whose labors are least valued and respected.

Posted by Kathleen Brewer de Pozos, PhD on Apr 25, 2008

A Theologian’s Reflections on Mark’s Gospel

Theologian and storyteller Megan McKenna’s book, On Your Mark: Reading Mark in the Shadow of the Cross, is a powerful example of the contribution of theology and biblical research to our understanding of the Good News. When the gospels were written, nearly 2000 years ago, they were written for a specific audience, with certain shared beliefs and experiences. Each was written for a different audience, but each audience had much in common. They were written as teaching materials, to help new believers come to know about Jesus, become His faithful followers, and live according to His Way.

We live in a dramatically different world. Many things the ancients took for granted or understood to be significant, we don’t even notice in passing when reading Scripture.

In the past century, thanks to the work of theologians, biblical scholars, anthropologists, archeologists, linguists and many other professional researchers, we have gained a tremendous amount of knowledge about the world in which Christianity began and of the beliefs and life of the early Christian community. The Holy Spirit has worked through these people to bring the Word to us as excitingly fresh teaching.

Megan McKenna’s presentation of Mark’s Gospel lays out the requirements of Christian discipleship through exploration of the meaning of the texts. She shows what their meaning might have been for the disciples and the early community – how they served as a roadmap for discipleship. Because she is also master storyteller, Megan presents other stories as well that serve to reinforce the Gospel. And always, for Megan, the bottom line is, what this means for us today.

Take a look at her work. You won’t regret it!

Posted by Dcn. Randy Pozos on Apr 23, 2008

St. Anselm of Canterbury – Faith Seeking Understanding

Fides Quaerens Intellectum – Faith Seeking Understanding – is the theme of the philosophy and theology of St. Anselm (1033 – 1109). His feast day is April 21. St. Anselm is regarded as the greatest philosopher of the 11th century and set the tone for the scholastic thinking of the early Middle Ages. Anselm represents a new beginning of a new civilization that ends the Dark Ages. His thinking is very much in line with the Neo-Platonism of St. Augustine.

St. Anselm’s writing on the nature of God and his proof for the existence of God emphasize the role of reason in understanding and shaping faith. His proof for the existence of God is meant to show that we can come to a knowledge that God exists from our own reason. Belief in God and His revelation is a gift of faith. However, faith is a reasonable course to take and of itself enlightens and encourages understanding.

It is often fashionable to dismiss the Middle Ages as a pre-rational time before the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Unfortunately, this overlooks the importance of reason and the intertwining of faith and reason since the origins of Christianity. Although many of its concepts and their cultural context are foreign to us, the content and style of Anselm’s reasoning demonstrates a critical, analytical, and logical approach to dealing with questions of faith and living the Christian life.

Anselm’s notion of atonement, the redemption of the human race brought about by the death of Christ, is based on a concept of justice that seems – well – Medieval, and that is what it is. While it might strike some of us as portraying a vindictive God, St. Anselm presents it as arising out of the will of the Father and the Son to restore the human race. While we as post-moderns might see echoes of European tribal notions of compensation for injury or damage, St. Anselm is following the lead of many preceding philosophers and theologians to place the witness of scripture in a rational context.

Most of St. Anselm’s life was spent as a scholar and abbot. As Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Anselm had the unenviable position of being subject to two kings who attempted to exercise control over the church and plunder its treasury. St. Anselm spent years in exile.

Western critical thought and reasoning owes a debt to St. Anselm. As much as we might be inclined to relegate faith to the psychology of religious experience, St. Anselm reminds us that while the heart might claim our allegiance, our mind and reason challenge us to understand and live the faith of our hearts with the best of our minds enlightened by grace.

Posted by Dcn. Randy Pozos on Apr 10, 2008

Memory, Identity, and Resurrection

This Easter Season, I have been puzzling over why the people who lived with Jesus and shared the intimacies and hardships of his travels didn’t recognize him when they encountered the Risen Christ.

I have been reading Oliver Sacks’, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, and came across the notion of emotional memory. Sacks relates the very tragic case of a brilliant music scholar and choral director who suffers an almost total amnesia as the result of encephalitis. He had no episodic memory, which meant that everything kept popping into existence all of the time. However, his ability to sight read and play music from memory was quite intact. He also “recognized” his wife and clung to her. Apparently, according to Sacks, our physical and emotional memory is somehow distinct from our memory of events past and present. It is something much deeper. He also states that our development of episodic memory comes to the fore after the age of two. In those first two pivotal years we develop deep emotional bonds. Learning music, riding a bike, and other types of motor learning have their own place outside of episodic memory. The bonds of deep love even transcend the loss of memory of specific events.

The scene in the garden with the Risen Christ and Mary of Magdala has always resonated deeply within me. Mary is still in a serious state of shock on top of her tremendous grief. Her disorientation seems almost complete when she hears her name in the music of a voice that transcends the memory of events.

So many oceans of ink and uncounted forests have been lost to the question of how we can find the Jesus of history. The disciples left us stories and experiences that are far beyond episodic memory. Their invitation is catechetical – an invitation into the mystery of a love and relationship so intense it is beyond time and memory.

Posted by Dcn. Randy Pozos on Mar 31, 2008

Religious Environmentalism – Gottlieb: A Greener Faith

Japan’s Mt. Fuji presents a beautiful backdrop for Tokyo, home to more than 32 million people. The last major eruption of this perfectly symmetrical stratovolcano came in 1707. Image from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.

The coming of Spring and all things green, including Earth Day, is a good time to read Roger S. Gottlieb’s book, “A Greener Faith.” Megan Jones, of the Department of History at the University of Delaware, has published a very good review on H-Net Catholic Discussion Network on the history and culture of Catholicism.

Gottlieb’s vision of religion takes in all of the major world religions and all indigenous or native expressions. For someone like myself, who studied environmental biology and social ethics in the 1970’s, it’s deja vu all over again. What strikes me as a card carrying anthropologist, though, is the assumption that since religion reflects culture and society, thinkers and practitioners of religion, from the New Age suburban shaman to the Archbishop, should embrace environmentalism as a way to validate religious experience in the face of the current atheistic onslaught from Dawkins et al.

On the one hand, there is the Christian notion of watching the signs of the times and the injunction to witness to justice. As Gottlieb observes, religion can bring hope to what seems to be a hopeless situation. However, I cannot help but resist the notion of “using” religion, of whatever stripe. As a universal anthropological phenomenon, religion closely mirrors the current situation of its social context. Re-interpreting religious texts and folk traditions does occur at times of crisis – in ways that are in keeping with the group’s social construction of reality.

What gives me pause are the laws of unintended consequences which I have seen first hand as a public health planner. Encouraging people to explore the environmental challenge is a social imperative. However, adopting a public policy agenda draped in the folds of religion appears to play into the criticism that religion is at base a tool of social control, without any transnatural referent that is not delusional.

So… Lead us not into religious environmentalism and deliver us from the temptations of the moment.

Posted by Dcn. Randy Pozos on Mar 30, 2008

First Sunday of Easter – “Thomas Take Your Hand…”

St. Thomas the Apostle is better known for his doubt than his faith. The story takes place after Jesus has appeared to the Apostles and shown them the wounds in His hands, feet, and side. The resurrected, glorified Christ still has his wounds. Why wasn’t He restored to His original whole state? Was it the way for His disciples to recognize Him, or is His passion and death such a part of Him that His very wounds have become part of His identity? It all sounds a little too good to St. Thomas when the others tell him of the Lord’s visit. The message to Thomas, and the rest of us, when he encounters Christ, is “blessed are those who have not seen and believe.” (John 20:29)

Faith.. Blessed are those with faith.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,
kept in heaven for you
who by the power of God are safeguarded through faith,
to a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the final time.
In this you rejoice, although now for a little while
you may have to suffer through various trials,
so that the genuineness of your faith,
more precious than gold that is perishable even though tested by fire,
may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Although you have not seen him you love him;
even though you do not see him now yet believe in him,
you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy,
as you attain the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1Peter1:3-9)

Christ died for all, but salvation comes to us through faith? Why? Stay tuned…

Posted by Dcn. Randy Pozos on Mar 22, 2008

Good Friday: Identifying with Christ or Christ Identifying With Us?

For those who love Christ, remembering His passion and death is always an occasion for sorrow. However, such human acts as compassion are never simple. The pain of the impending loss of a loved one – anticipatory grief – can be worse than the actual loss. In fact, when death finally comes, we often feel guilty about experiencing relief. My friend Jim lost his father when Jim was in eighth grade, after a protracted two year battle with cancer. When we talked about it a couple of years later, Jim confessed that he still felt more relief than grief.

Of course, we couldn’t experience compassion without a close identification with the other. This becomes very complex in the person of the Christ. He did not fight his enemies. He did not curse. He did not condemn. He forgave. He blessed. This human-divine reaction to an injustice that is almost as inconceivable as it is enraging provides no adequate psychological outlet for the post-Freudian soul. How can we proclaim and fight for justice if God Himself did not? Tragically, the consolation in the Gospels and the wider testimony of the New Testament – that no evil, no matter how overwhelming, how senseless, can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus – escapes us. (Romans 8:38-39) Instead of experiencing this Passover of the Lord – the Blood of the Lamb on the door posts and lintel of our home that spares us from the Angel of Death – we run out into that night of despair by focusing on the ways we have been complicit with that evil.

When we hear that we are saved from a life defined by suffering and pain without meaning and no exit, we can think that we were saved from something we deserved. “Evil as you are … who among you would give his son a scorpion when he asked for bread?” (Loosely taken from Luke 11: 11-13) is a stark reminder to the disciples that Jesus could not conceive of His Father wanting anything less than we ourselves would want for our own children. Just as our children are all too much in our own image and likeness, we are in God’s. The teaching and life of Jesus in this regard is at odds with the vengeful patriarch of the Old Testament who punishes and chastises. (Lest we be tempted to think that Jews hold or held onto to this concept, we should remember that Jesus was not the only Jew who presented a view that had grown beyond it. The are interesting similarities between Jesus and his contemporary, Hillel the Elder.)

Enter God’s protectors:

“Ah hah! Now he has said it on his very own blog! Your own words condemn you. God doesn’t care about sin, you say. There are no consequences, no punishment, no reckoning. You present a God who is merciful, but not just. If Christ did not die for our sins how was the Father appeased? How is he the sacrificial victim?”

The Blogger Offers a Parable:

Once upon a time, there was a wonderful teacher who healed by word and touch and saved people from all kinds of physical, psychological, and social maladies. He made the mistake of speaking truth to power and telling religious and civil leaders that outward observance only made them into whitened sepulchers. They waited for the right time and got a close friend to betray him, and they took him off to Guantanamo, and then transferred him to a third world country, where he was tortured to death by specialists trained at the School of the Americas. Like so many thousands of his time, he was supposed to have become one of the disappeared. Fortunately for us, He didn’t stay dead and he didn’t stay hidden. Strangely though, he left again, said he would return, and in the meantime the were supposed to wait for a Holy Wind to make everything clear.

Yet His disciples wanted an explanation. If He was truly God’s Son, how could this have happened to Him? If he really was the Messiah, how could he have failed? He was just as maddening as those parables he used to tell them. Where are the answers? It was like one of those Eastern religions. “The question is the answer.” And that other junk the Beatles found in India, under the influence of something other than the great American mystic, Jack Daniels.

God finally sent them someone they could understand – sort of. “Like, well, yuh see, dude- God don’t need sacafices, ” The voice of the aging surfer was hoarse with too many years of funny cigarettes, his faced etched with too much salt and sun, his eyes opaque while he waited for the waves to rise. “It’s like, all ’bout love. All God wants is love. The torture and sufferin’ part, that’s what we do to us and each other. Man, like the Teacher Dude, the Guru Guy, like he couldn’t hang out forever. ‘Cause like, you guys were all brain dead on a kind a gnarly bad trip. Like he let it happen. The tube was closin’. Like there was just the wipeout; like really bad at Mavericks. He did it to show y’all that if yah stay in the water and go for it, sooner or later it’s gonna happen if ya stay true to the search for the Big One. Dude, got some extra change? My old lady’s on me for the rent, like ya know.”

The words of reproach, as the seeker turned away, were familiar. “That sucks man. What a waste. I came to hear some guy explain some @$#%?! blogger’s crappy parable. I could’a been watchin’ the game on my big screen.” So he zipped up his jacket and marched straight home, out of the saving mystery, ignoring the glory of the sky, the dazzle of the water, and the carpet of color and bird song all about him.

Posted by Dcn. Randy Pozos on Mar 20, 2008

Holy Thursday on the California Coast

Holy Week on the California coast, from Pt. Mendocino above San Francisco to the Mexican border, is a place of spring time sun, deep blue skies, and blossoming flowers. At the Equinox, the ocean loses its grayness and picks up more yellows, subtle greens and muted turquoise. The salt air becomes more pungent, as the kelp forests put on new growth to accommodate the explosion of trillions upon trillions of sea plants and animals. The succulents and coastal chaparral burst out in purples, roses, and pinks, peppered with the bright yellow of sour grass blossoms. The Santa Cruz redwoods seem to stretch, fresh washed from the winter storms, looking forward to the morning and evening fog that gives them sustenance and flourishes their layered ecosystems that change every 20 feet upward, dancing in the dappled ray filled sunlight of the forest canopy.

It is a time of happiness and rejoicing. Sunglasses come out, flip flops slap the pavement, and shorts replace the winter denim, even though the day time temperatures are barely in the mid-60s. It is the coming of First Summer, before the Fog Season that begins on Memorial Day in late May and ends on Labor Day in early September. On the Central Coast, we host our first guests during Spring Break and settle in to enjoy the peaceful days before our June to August onslaught of shivering, fog-bitten visitors and their much welcome tourist dollars.

Aren’t we supposed to be down or at least subdued during Holy Week? How can we rejoice Saturday evening and Easter if we have somehow not rationed that joy? We should at least lament our unfaithful adherence to our Lenten resolutions – right? Christ’s terrible torture and death stayed the arm of a rightfully vengeful Father, so shouldn’t we show at least some token of fear for not being swept out into hellfire? If God’s Spring and Passover are any indication, maybe Cotton Mather had it wrong. Maybe we are a lot more than “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.”

If we, and all creation, are the overflowing love of the Trinity, are we the products of a God who can somehow demand the death of the the Eternal Word Made Flesh, God’s very immediate recognition and instantaneous self-acceptance, who shares the eternal dance of the Three in the joy of the Holy Spirit? Yes, much of the language that shapes our souls is a reflection of the fallen world where the Word “pitched his tent” – the actual Greek expression we use in the Creed. Yes, Jesus died and saved us in his rising from the dead. Yes, Jesus is the Lamb of God. Yes, we are the reason, we are his motivation for sharing our lives and submitting to the capital punishment of being tortured to death by an occupying superpower. Perhaps, the gravest sin of pride is to even think that we were the cause. Yes, God as Love couldn’t bear to leave us to the fate of hatred, despair, and alienation.

Why should people celebrating their rescue be glum, depressed, lost in narcissistic guilt? Why is this night different from any other night? It is the Passover of the Lord. If we are not washed in joyful Spring, can we share the Passover meal? Can we have any part in Him?

Posted by Dcn. Randy Pozos on Mar 18, 2008

Holy Week – Salvation Through Suffering or Self Actualization?

The profound Christian mysteries of Holy Week – the Last Supper, the Passion, Death, and Resurrection – are part of a cycle that we often break up into pieces. We can focus on the suffering Christ or move more comfortably to the Resurrected Christ. We can focus on the suffering humanity of Christ or His triumphant divinity. The problem of course is holding the contradiction to arrive at the truth by affirming the opposites. Is Christ human or divine? Yes.

In our lives, are we supposed to unfold and blossom in all of our God given gifts or do we have to exercise discipline and self-scrutiny and trim away important parts of ourselves – our sensuality, our connectedness with the earth, our search for joy and happiness? It seems that from the 1700s to the mid-20th century there was an emphasis on asceticism – a word created in the enlightenment – for the rational and spiritual to dominate at the expense of the heart, the emotions, and all things physical. Even the great secular Freudian construct of the human person posits a dominant super ego, the besieged ego, and the troublesome impish id of desire and impulse that seeks to undo the ethical correctness of the super ego and the reasonableness of the ego.

The psychology of Maslow is known for its emphasis on the self-actualization of the human person. The focus of Christian existentialism in the 20th century was on authenticity. In the late 20th century, the immanence of God with us was emphasized, as opposed to the previous focus on God’s utter transcendence. The re-emergence of Catholic and Protestant teaching of the social gospel has focused on the rights and dignity of individuals and communities to develop their gifts, free of domination and exploitation.

Of course, as we all know, we pay a price for our self-actualization and for advocating this freedom for others. That price is suffering – due to our own imperfect attempts at being authentic or “real”, the fear and resistance of ourselves and others to freedom, and the forces of oppression which come upon us in violence, social disapproval, or our own lack of will.

When we come right down to it, it is often more comfortable to stay in our zone of known suffering than to accept the insecure joy of resurrection. If I experience love, joy, and some glimmer of self-actualization, it will always be imperfect, and the “blues” (the dark days) will return. It may be a spiral upward, but it’s also a lot of insecurity and hassle and change. We have to live ambiguously. We don’t have the answers. In fact, we have to affirm opposites. Who needs this tension?

The bad times and the good times – through both there is only one guarantee – challenge.

Posted by Dcn. Randy Pozos on Mar 13, 2008

Campaign USA 2008 – Moral Choices #1 – Priorities

The coming of God’s kingdom in a free society can be a messy affair – since we enjoy the wonderful freedom and moral obligation to vote. Morality – what we actually do – is about the dialog between the heart and the mind over the best thing to do. Ethics is the reasoned system we use to evaluate choices.

This post is the first in a series on the moral choices in picking a candidate. Beliefnet’s “God-0-meter” tracks the statements of U.S. candidates for president and rates them on a scale from secularist (we don’t need God or religion) to theocrat (God will run the country through our clergy.) The secularist and theocrat labels are unfortunate because they are so extreme in our political system that they seem comical.

Generally, the hot button moral issues are questions of individual sexual morality: abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage, sex education, condoms for HIV / AIDs prevention, U.S. funding for overseas birth control. Many believers focus on the abortion issue and want to make the procedure illegal once more. For the most part, these are efforts to make public policy reflect traditional personal Judaeo-Christian morality as it did in the mid-20th century.

Social issues are usually things such as prayer in the schools, creationism versus evolution, displaying the Ten Commandments in courtrooms, and religious displays in public spaces. Public funding for private religious schools by voucher payments garners a lot of support. These issues are actually questions of the relationship between faith communities and the government.

There is a movement to broaden the question of moral choices in public policy. “Covenant for a New America” is an effort led by Jim Wallace of Sojourner’s magazine to unite liberals and conservatives to “make overcoming poverty a non-partisan agenda. look at the very broad priorities of human dignity and freedom: poverty, health care, education, equality of opportunity, and economic development. Stewardship of creation in terms of protecting the environment and minimizing global warming is now being emphasized. This movement represents a return by Evangelicals to social reform issues that were a focus during the first half of the 20th century. Major liturgical churches, such as Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Presbyterians, are placing a renewed emphasis on social gospel issues.

How do you choose a candidate morally? If your candidate wants to outlaw abortion, prevent the legalization of gay marriage, and require every courtroom to display the Ten Commandments, is that a morally correct choice? What if your candidate gets into office and then cuts support services for mothers, including access to birth control, and women are again forced to risk their lives in illegal back street abortions? What if your candidate wants to outlaw the death penalty, increase social programs, and use more diplomacy than military force in international relations? Is it a moral choice to support that candidate if he or she also advocates birth control to prevent the need for abortion and allows the price of energy to stay high to encourage new energy saving technologies and reduce green house gas emissions?

The problem is that there is a broad spectrum of Christian values with a variety of applications to public policy.

In the following posts we will take a look at the leading U.S. presidential candidates against the backdrop of a broad moral spectrum.

Posted by Dcn. Randy Pozos on Mar 12, 2008

Will Robots Have Souls?: Singularity and the Nerdpacolipse

“Hello Dave.”

There is a point of view among artificial intelligence researchers and speculators that human intelligence will be surpassed in a burst of development by machines, called the singularity. Others have referred fancifully to this event as the “nerdpocalypse,” obviously playing on the term apocalypse. A materialist view of the human mind is very compatible with this type of speculation. If human consciousness and intelligence can be reduced to the chemistry and physics of neurons, machines should, logically, arrive at the point of complexity in which they experience their own conscious intelligence. The first example of this sudden and surprising emergence of identity and agency is the computer HAL in Kubric’s 1968 epic film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” HAL’s calm and chilling response to the astronaut’s request to save his life and open the pod doors was, “I am sorry, I don’t think I can do that, Dave,” and made the implications of artificial intelligence far from theoretical.

What is more interesting is keeping the non-materialist view of mind as a faculty of the non-physical soul. When machines display animal levels of intelligence, have they received an animal soul in the sense that Aristotle and St. Thomas described it? Will highly advanced machines – some of them large carbon based self replicating systems in water – have a “human” soul when they manifest a personality?

Some of the options are grim, like the Matrix in the 1999 movie of the same name which conquers and almost obliterates the human race. Others, like Marvin, the paranoid android ( who is also desperately depressed ) in Douglas Adams 1978 “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” show that the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation’s line of “real people personalities” was, maybe, not such a good idea. The computer which operates the Starship “Heart of Gold” and its infinite improbability drive has at least three very human and irritating personalities.

If and when artificial intelligence stops being artificial will we have created something in our own likeness or in God’s?

Posted by Dcn. Randy Pozos on Mar 11, 2008

The Spiritual Brain – A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul

Harper Collins

Neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, Ph.D. and journalist Denyse O’Leary have written a very detailed and easy to understand account of the debate about whether the mind is merely the result of the chemical action of billions of neurons or whether it is something non-material, something spiritual.

Their conclusion, not surprisingly, is that there is rational scientific evidence indicating that the mind, a faculty of the soul, is spiritual. The approach is painstakingly rational. The book begins by examining the most recent affirmations of the materialist approach. Currently, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Daniel Dennett), The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins), God is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens), and Letters to a Christian Nation (Sam Harris) are very popular anti-theistic books. There are conferences such as the Science Network’s “Beyond Belief” and the popular You-Tube Blasphemy Challenge. This materialist trend argues that science proves that there is nothing beyond the chemistry and physics of matter and energy.

Beauregard and O’Leary take these arguments apart very carefully in a scientifically rigorous manner and disprove them. More importantly, the book presents the results of Beauregard’s neuro-imaging studies of Carmelite nuns to actually document the neuronal activity associated with religious experience. Basically, religious states / mystical experiences (RSMEs according to the authors) are complex phenomena that involve many parts of the brain. They are not the result of genes or the by-product of certain parts of the brain. None of this proves the existence of God or of the soul. However, it does re-affirm the rationality and the moral dimensions of the choice of material versus spiritual explanations of religious experience.

This is a very good book for college students and educated members of the general public. An important book not only for the apologetics of faith in the post-modern world, The Spiritual Brain establishes the objective reality of religious states / mystical experiences (RSMEs) that are related to complex interpersonal transcendent encounters.

Tolle Lege.

Posted by Dcn. Randy Pozos on Mar 10, 2008

In Search of God: Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

What do you tell yourself or others when there is doubt about the existence of God? I would like to recommend an interview with Dr. Rowan William, the Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England. The interviewer, John Humphrys, is from Channel 4 of the BBC.

The interview starts off in a genteel enough manner but builds into some rather intense exchanges. It is not a debate. In fact Humphrys begins by asking for a sales pitch – to be converted. Wisely, the Archbishop leads Humphrys to question his own questions in a manner similar to Socratic dialog.

It is a very good example of pastoral teaching, even if the inquirer does not seem to be entirely sincere. Take a look at the text or listen to the podcast.

Posted by Kathleen Brewer de Pozos, PhD on Feb 21, 2008

Saint of the Day – St. Peter Damian – February 21

St. Peter Damian is the figure on the right, with Sts. Augustine, Anne and Elizabeth.

St. Peter Damian lived in the 11th century. He was orphaned at a young age and raised by two of his brothers. The first treated him as little more than a slave, but the second treated him kindly, took him into his own home and sent him to school. Peter took this second brother’s name, Damian, as part of his own name.

Peter Damian grew up to become a teacher and, later, became a Benedictine monk. He was always very devout and passionate about prayer, fasting, sacrifices and caring for the poor. He regularly welcomed poor people to eat with him. He spent so much time in prayer and reading Scripture that he developed insomnia. He had to learn to use his time more wisely, so that he could have the time he wanted for prayer and still get enough sleep to maintain his health.

He eventually became abbot of his monastery and founded 5 others. His reputation as a reformer of monastery life, peacemaker and troubleshooter led a series of popes to send him as their representative to settle problems in various monasteries and dioceses, as well as to be a representative of the Church with local government officials. If he saw a churchman or government official who was not living in a way that witnessed to the Gospel, he would intervene with that person and publicly call him back to a more appropriate lifestyle. He wrote passionately against practices which he saw as sinful and did not hesitate to argue with persons in authority.

Peter Damian never sought titles or office within the Church, but he was forced to accept the position of Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia. In this role he led the diocese and worked for reform among priests, bishops and laity. Though he had not wanted to be a bishop, he served faithfully until finally Pope Alexander II allowed him to retire. Even in retirement, he traveled extensively as the Pope’s representative. He died of a fever on his way home from a final journey to Ravenna as papal legate.

Though never officially canonized, Peter Damian is a Doctor of the Church, a title granted to him in part because of his efforts to reform the Church from within and to encourage the practice of prayer and study of Scripture. He was a prolific writer, a man of great influence in his world, and yet also a humble monk in spirit, retreating to the monastery whenever possible to live his preferred life of simplicity and prayer.

In the words of Pope Benedict XVI,

“With his pen and his words he addressed all: he asked his brother hermits for the courage of a radical self-giving to the Lord which would as closely as possible resemble martyrdom; he demanded of the Pope, Bishops and ecclesiastics a high level of evangelical detachment from honours and privileges in carrying out their ecclesial functions; he reminded priests of the highest ideal of their mission that they were to exercise by cultivating purity of morals and true personal poverty.

In an age marked by forms of particularism and uncertainties because it was bereft of a unifying principle, Peter Damien, aware of his own limitations – he liked to define himself as peccator monachus – passed on to his contemporaries the knowledge that only through a constant harmonious tension between the two fundamental poles of life – solitude and communion – can an effective Christian witness develop.”

This tension and these ideals are still the ones with which we wrestle today as we each try to fulfill the vocations to which we are called, in a world filled with controversy, using the gifts we have received for the larger community, and being renewed through prayer and Scripture.

Posted by Dcn. Randy Pozos on Jan 28, 2008

Saint of the Day: St. Thomas Aquinas – January 28

St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor (c. 1225 – 1274), has been and continues to be one of the most influential forces shaping Catholic theology and philosophy. He was born at Roccasecca castle, the home of his father, Count Landulf, in the Kingdom of Naples. His mother was Theodora, Countess of Theate, and was related to the Hohenstafuen dyanasty of Holy Roman emperors. St. Thomas’s uncle, Sinbald, was the abbot of the first Benedictine monastery, Monte Cassino, and the family planned for him to succeed his uncle as abbot.

At the age of 5, St. Thomas was sent to Monte Cassino to begin his studies. At 16 he was sent to the University of Naples, where he came under the influence of the Order of Preachers – the Dominicans -who were innovators in a new style of religious life very different from that of traditional orders such as the Benedictines. St. Thomas upset his family by announcing his intention of joining the Dominicans. This action not only destroyed the family’s ambition to retain the power and prestige of Monte Cassino, but it was almost akin to running off with a band of hippies. Unable to convince him to renounce this foolishness, his family kidnapped him and held him for a year in the family castle of San Giovanni. Finally, Pope Innocent IV intervened and St. Thomas joined the Dominicans at 17.

St. Thomas and the Dominicans of his time introduced an entirely new way of approaching the faith. For 12 centuries, the Church teachers of the faith appealed to the authority of the scriptures and previous teachers such as St. Augustine or other Fathers of the Church. The scholastic movement, embodied by St. Thomas and his teacher St. Albert the Great, began with an open inquiry based on logic and reason. The traditional Faith was accepted as true, but thoughtful and logical reason were presented as to why it might not be true. Ultimately, various statements of belief were upheld, not only on the authority of the Church or tradition, but by reason and logic as well.

The format of the scholastic argument is the back bone of St. Thomas’s two major works, The Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles. It is hard for us as post-modern people to imagine what a daring and threatening approach this was for the time. In fact the 1200s were a time of immense change in Europe. Trade and communications with the East had been reopened and with them came a flood of new and ancient knowledge. Trade and commerce increased the power and prestige of market towns at the expense of the countryside. Monastic schools gave way to early universities. The great Cathedrals began to dominate the landscape. The traditional clergy were overshadowed by the two great orders of mendicant friars (the begging brothers) – the Dominicans and the Franciscans.

St. Thomas, and his contemporary members of the scholastic movement, absorbed and transformed Islamic and Greek philosophy, science, technology, and mathematics. In particular, the Thomistic school of scholasticism is known for reviving the philosophy of Aristotle and its logic.

Over the centuries, scholastic philosophy would evolve and change in a variety of ways and St. Thomas – contrary to his own method – became the authority. Instead of being a fresh and bold inquiry, scholasticism degenerated into a catalog of arguments and answers to be memorized and repeated. In the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, scholasticism and Thomism were disregarded by secular philosophies reliant only on reason. Thomism was also marginalized in training programs for priests.

In the late 1800s, there was a movement to restore Thomism as a defense against the secular philosophies of the Enlightenment and to renew some intellectual vigor in Catholic circles. It was an attempt to come to grips with the modern world and met heavy resistance. In the early 1900s, Thomism began to assume some prominence and neo-Thomism emerged with a renewed interest in the relationship between faith and reason. It is a long and complicated story, but it reflects the enduring importance of the work of St. Thomas and the changing moods of society and philosophy.

The core question persists. What can we know of God through reason? The second question follows. How reasonable is our faith?

If we want to honor a man who was a mystic, a saint, and an intellectual, it seems that we have to take on the openness of his inquiry and the wonder he beheld in faith.

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Next Entries »

A Theologian’s Reflections on Mark’s Gospel

St. Anselm of Canterbury – Faith Seeking Understanding

Memory, Identity, and Resurrection

Religious Environmentalism – Gottlieb: A Greener Faith

First Sunday of Easter – “Thomas Take Your Hand…”

Good Friday: Identifying with Christ or Christ Identifying With Us?

Holy Thursday on the California Coast

Holy Week – Salvation Through Suffering or Self Actualization?

Will Robots Have Souls?: Singularity and the Nerdpacolipse

The Spiritual Brain – A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul

In Search of God: Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

Saint of the Day – St. Peter Damian – February 21

Saint of the Day: St. Thomas Aquinas – January 28

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