Author: Richard Chonak

A resource: talks by Fr. John Hardon, SJ

Fr_Hardon.jpgFor those not familiar with Fr. John Anthony Hardon, SJ, he was a wonderful teacher of the faith who lived in Detroit. He trained catechists and wrote an adult catechism which helped me on the way into the Church; he gave retreats, and spoke to many audiences. He’s also noted for making converts: quite a few Catholics found or returned to the faith through an encounter with him.
Supporters of his cause for beatification are building a website presenting many of his talks in text form and as mp3s.
(A prayer for his intercession is posted on the home page of that web site.)

A skeptical look at the population control movement

Professor Matthew Connelly (Columbia University) recently presented a radio documentary about the population control movement, “Controlling People”, on the BBC, in three episodes.
The story of a radical social-engineering campaign that began with high-sounding ideals and why it didn’t work.
Part One: The “religion” of Malthusian ideology: The self-interested Western desire to keep down rising populations in the Third World: population-control ideology spread by men in wealthy countries.
Part Two: The Indian Emergency: Mass sterilization camps in India in the 1970s operated on eight million people, induced by payments and imposed with government pressure and, later, force. Social scientist Steven Mosher, then a supporter of population control, tells about the methods of the one-child policy in China: government lock-up and coerced abortion. But the rise of working women led to delayed marriage and reduced fertility on its own.
Part Three: Continuing Incomprehension. Fertility rates are falling, but the population-control ideology of the 1970s remains, targeting the poor with sterilization. A surrogacy program in India exploits the needs of the poor to satisfy the wishes of Western couples. “The disappearing female child” targeted by sex-selection abortion and infanticide. The continuing conflict among pop-controllers between advocates of sterilization and contraception.
I should note that there are some biases in the presentation: Professor Connelly frames the conflict as merely one between somewhat arrogant proponents of sterilization and more liberal supporters of voluntary contraception, and he treats voices of opposition to abortion and contraception as a “fanatical” religious element. Still, the presentation of the history and the issues is worthwhile.

If they’d write in decent Latin, things would be different!

The noted Latinist (and noted quirky personality) Fr. Reginald Foster, O.C.D., appeared in his regular feature on Vatican Radio (podcast link) Friday. Since Pope Benedict is making a state visit to Germany soon, the interviewer Sr. Veronica asked Fr. Foster to describe a famous battle between the Germans and the Roman Empire.
After describing the results of the battle (“the Germans beat the pants off of them”), he went on with some funny remarks about the expressiveness of Latin:

“You can say everything marvelously: except this kind of jargon, this philosophical jargon that’s going around, like how the politicians here in Italy talk, you know that kind of stuff — ugh, that’s terrible, I mean ‘la realizzazione della programma… da questo piano di lavoro’ – agh, shut up! …

“If the encyclicals were written in Latin, … you couldn’t do this, because Latin doesn’t allow you, y’know, just to blah blah blah, you just can’t blah in Latin, which is what they’re doing, you see, so they write it — and the worst is in, well, French, Italian, you see — and it just kind of dribbles on and on, and I’m supposed to put this dribble, dribble, and dribble into Latin! …

“They say this crummy thing in Italian, and I said, I can say this infinitely better in Latin, and people would agree! … At least your sentences are clear and concise, and solid as a rock, whereas these other people are dribbling, dribbling around, and blah blah blah blah — you don’t know what they’re talking about…. If they would write in decent Latin, things would be different, but they refuse!”

Here’s a clip with the interview.

“Anglicans and the Roman Catholic Church”

I just finished reading the anthology Anglicans and the Roman Catholic Church: Reflections on Recent Developments, edited by Stephen Cavanaugh (Ignatius Press).
The collection of essays is an orientation to the “Anglican Use” phenomenon by some of its leading advocates: the book covers its origins and development, its current status and possible future, with helpful articles about liturgy, ecumenism, and the experience of entering into full communion with the Catholic Church.
I’m particularly grateful for the articles on liturgy. Brother John-Bede Pauley, OSB’s essay on the monastic character in Anglican liturgy is a help in understanding what the “Anglican patrimony” means as a gift to the Church. Prof. Hans-Jürgen Feulner’s introduction to comparative liturgy and its use in studying the development of rites and texts indicates the sort of studies the Church will need in order to develop a set of rites for the new Anglican Ordinariates. These will need to be suitable for the Ordinariates in various countries, and thus will have to improve on the current Book of Divine Worship, developed hastily in the 1980s for “Anglican-use” congregations in the US; it drew heavily on texts of that era: the U.S. Episcopalian 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the 1975 ICEL Roman Missal (soon to become obsolete).