Michael Novak Recalls the Good Humored John XXIII and the Polish Pontiff Who Called Him a Friend

Tells ZENIT Why Joint Canonization Made Sense

Vatican City, April 27, 2014 

Michael Novak, former ambassador to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, theologian, and author of some 30 books, including "The Open Church" and "Writing from Left to Right: My Journey from Liberal to Conservative" spoke with ZENIT in Rome days before this weekend's canonization.

An eyewitness to Vatican II, who was both given one of the last wedding blessings by John XXIII and who was publicly called a friend by John Paul II, Novak shared with ZENIT his thoughts about the two popes and the canonization.

Novak: The linking of the popes makes better sense of them both, than one by one.

ZENIT: What is the reason behind having a joint canonization? It's said that Poles are unhappy with JPII being canonized on the same day as John XXIII.

At the end of John XXIII's time as pope, his work was left very undone. Some were even speculating about a Vatican III. Once Benedict XVI was asked: "What's the full meaning of Vatican II?" He responded: "We won't know, as the fruits of the council take time to develop."

This is very true and is evidenced by the fact that no other country or great organization has had a re-enactment of the council, in the sense that they took the initiative to reinvent themselves. We cannot name another institution that is or has effectively done this in the same way that the Catholic Church did through Vatican II.

The questions raised by the decisions reached by the decrees were incredibly far reaching and forward looking. It's true that 50 years were needed to come to a common understanding of what happened.

ZENIT: Many say the joint canonization could be seen as a sign of continuity between the Popes and the council. Could you explain your view on this?

Novak: Yes, as I said in my book "The Open Church," John XXIII 'opened the windows of the Church' when he announced there would be a Second Vatican Council. He knew better than to consult with the Roman Curia, which had been described in this way: "Popes come and go, but the Curia lives forever." He just announced the Church needed this council and will be having it, whether the Curia liked it or not.

Vatican II was a tremendous event which advanced the Council of Trent. It announced a new era of the Church which, after John Paul II, Benedict XVI was about to build on in a very scholarly way and Francis would build on in a very populist way.

ZENIT: In what ways did John Paul II himself carry out the fruits of the council?

Novak: John Paul II took the initiatives of John XXIII and 'rounded them out,' completing them and making them international. By 'rounded out,' I mean he did something unimaginable in the way he carried out the council's decrees. No one had any idea what he was thinking. 

If someone would have predicted that the wall would come down, they would have locked him up. This is a testament to Wojtyla who, effectively did the impossible, in crumbling communism, in a roughly 11 year time frame.

He changed the contours of the world, traveling, more than any pope ever had. He showed the Church structure is not a pyramid, it's concentric rings, which were visible during his travels, at which he would be on an altar surrounded by bishops of the region and hemisphere. John Paul introduced this to the world.

ZENIT: Tell us about the "The Open Church." With your personal account of being present at Vatican II, could you give some insight to the persons who would like to know more about John XXIII?

Novak: John XXIII was so wonderful. He was known as the smiling pope. He was very easy-going, kind, warm, and friendly. He enjoyed a good joke and laughed often. He had that personal touch that people see in and love about Pope Francis today. He was not all puffed up about himself.

ZENIT: Can you please give an example of this humorous and playful side of the Italian pontiff?

Novak: Yes, once, when walking with a journalist in the Vatican gardens, he was asked whether he knew how many people worked at the Vatican. He joked saying, "about half."

ZENIT: How else were John XXIII and Pope Francis similar?

Novak: They were both pastors of the Church. They possessed that warmth. They fall into the category of someone with whom you would like to have a coffee or cigar with.

John XXIII had "opened the windows of the Church" with Vatican II and brought an "aggiornamento," meaning it brought the Church to today. Yet, he was aware, like how Francis is, that sometimes there are 'winds.' Not everything that comes in through the open window is good. There are noxious fumes. Likewise, not everything of today is good. 

ZENIT: What aspect of John XXIII and John Paul II's relationship is important to this canonization?

Novak: The council that John XXIII proposed brought the Church together and nailed down clear, positive statements of faith built around prayers of the Church. This allowed for the evangelization, which John Paul II brought to fruition.

April 27, 2014) © Innovative Media Inc. Reposted here from Zenit with permission.

"This new power grab by the State to redefine a centuries-old institution" - and the mob mentality promoting it

  
TUESDAY, 8 APRIL 2014

“I was jeered and spat at for defending marriage”

BY CAROLINE FARROW

 10 |  |       

Recently I appeared in the audience of BBC’s Question Time in my home town of Brighton after a friend asked me to take their place at short notice.
When Marilyn Barmer stood up and nervously asked whether the first gay marriages due to take place in the city in the next 24 hours were a necessary piece of legislation, the temperature in the auditorium plummeted, the warm glow of good-natured yet passionate debate replaced by a glacial hostility.

I have never before experienced such a palpable and visceral sense of contempt and dislike, despite having debated the issue a number of times inside a TV studio or on the radio with LGBT advocates.

While I’ve come in for a hefty amount of online abuse and insults over the years and at times been shocked by some of the sentiments expressed, I have at least been able to emotionally distance myself.

Words can have a powerful impact but at the end of the day that’s all they are -- a stream of invective from those suffering from a sense of inadequacy in one or several areas of their lives, who should not be given any headspace.

Fed up with the shallow and saccharin sentiments of love that were lacking in intellectual rigour emanating from the panel and the on-screen love-in between Tory MP Justine Greening and Labour MP Dianne Abbot about how wonderful it all was, I raised my hand when David Dimbleby asked whether or not anyone agreed with the questioner.

As the host focused his attention upon me, asking me to refute specific allegations of homophobia, I did my best to add a fresh perspective to the debate from the point of view those who did not wish to see marriage redefined.

But when the audience jeered in response to the simple statement of fact that every single child had a biological mother and father, I knew that I was fighting a lost cause.
The audience were not listening to what was being said; even a great debater such as George Bernard Shaw would not have won them over.

Afterwards both Roger Helmer and Lord Simon Wolfson, two of the guest panellists, kindly congratulated me on my courage.

Surely I thought, speaking my mind on a TV show wasn’t particularly brave. Yes, the aggression was unnerving, not least when Dimbleby began to unexpectedly interrogate me, but as we are  living in a free and democratic society we should all be able to speak in the public square without fear of repercussions.

Sadly however, freedom of speech comes with a price. While filing out of the studio, someone approached me to tell me I was ‘absolutely disgusting’.

Another group of people spat at me. I was swiftly identified on Twitter by Dr Evan Harris and gay columnist Benjamin Cohen and the insults flowed.

My crime? Stating that marriage was a child-centric institution and that children have a right to be brought up by their biological parents, where at all possible.

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell is still not satisfied that same sex marriage legislation goes far enough is now calling for a repeal of the marriage law.  Stonewall are calling for homophobia to be eradicated from ‘churches and homes’.

What does this mean in reality? Are the thought police to be sent into churches and homes to enforce the new orthodoxy that anyone who does not support the new State definition of marriage is to be censured and made to see the error of their ways?

A new Cinderella law seeks to prosecute parents who do not show their children  enough emotional affection.

Will the State define as emotional cruelty ideas that are not commensurate with their own vision of perfect parenting?

Will parents who homeschool or refuse to condone the new definition of marriage be deemed guilty of emotional cruelty or causing harm?

There is legitimate concern that this new power grab by the State to redefine a centuries-old institution will have a serious impact on  freedom of speech and religions. Being spat at is the least of our worries.

Caroline Farrow writes from the UK where she has participated in a number of media debates on family issues. This article first appeared in Conservative Woman and is reproduced here with permission.
* The BBC Question Time referred to is here, and the question about gay marriage begins at 38 minutes in.

This article is published by Caroline Farrow and MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation. Commercial media must contact us for permission and fees. Some articles on this site are published under different terms.

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The link between family structure and poverty

Nicole M. King | 7 Apr 2014 | 

From MercatorNet

The New York Times recently highlighted a study that seems to show promising results for a specialized-care program for children born into poverty.

In 1972, researchers in North Carolina began tracking two groups of babies from poor families.  In one group, “the children were given full-time day care up to age 5 that included most of their daily meals, talking, games and other stimulating activities.”  The other group received baby formula, but no other form of interaction.  The full study was published in Science on Thursday of last week.  “By age 30,” reports the Times, “those in the group given special care were four times as likely to have graduated from college.”  In addition, however, both men and women in the treatment group had better health outcomes, including lower rates of hypertension and risk factors for heart disease, better nutritional habits, and lower rates of diabetes and stroke.  Surprised by the physical health benefits and thrilled about potential outcomes for children born into poverty, the researchers are currently looking into how the cost of the program ($16,000 per child, per year, in 2010 dollars) compares with the cost of medical care were the children not enrolled.

While better outcomes for children born into poverty is undoubtedly a worthy goal, the glaring omission in this story is what places those children in poverty to begin with.  Other research has demonstrated that we might better use that $16,000 per child, per year.

The New Research - The key determinant of child poverty

According to the prevailing dogma of the welfare system, better job-training programs, education, and daycare subsidies will lift unwed mothers and their children out of poverty. That strategy —which has been pursued for at least a generation — has little to show for itself while its framers have ignored the growing body of evidence that suggests the country will make little headway in reducing poverty without addressing one of its major causes: the growth of the percentage of children being raised outside of an intact family.

The latest study, mining county-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, and the American Religious Data Archive, reinforces that verdict. Conducted by Sri Ranjith of the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka and Anil Rupasingha of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the study identifies numerous economic and demographic determinants of poverty while zeroing in on the relationship between social capital, religious adherence, and child poverty.

As might be expected, all seven economic variables weighed by the economists, including a county’s general unemployment and male unemployment rates, were found to be significantly associated with its child-poverty rate.  The researchers also discovered new categories of links to child poverty: social cohesion and religious adherence. Using a county-level composite index developed by the Northeast Regional Center and composed of civic, sports, political, and business organizations, as well as nonprofits and voter-engagement data, the economists established that as their measure of social capital increased by 1 percent in a country, the child-poverty rate declined by 0.41-percentage point. In addition, their aggregate measure of religious adherents (representing Catholics and Protestants) demonstrated a similar positive impact on lowering the poverty rate.

Nonetheless, when the economists ranked the comparative impact of all their variables from the highest to the lowest (using the coefficients of their most sophisticated statistical model), they found that by far the “biggest factor” associated with child poverty in a county is the proportion of households headed by unwed mothers with children under 18 years of age. They established that every 1 percentage-point increase in these households correlates with a 1.2 percentage-point increase in the county’s child-poverty rate. This correlation remained statistically significant (p < 0.01) in all three statistical models.

Ironically, the magnitude of this association does not lead Ranjith and Rupasingha to consider strategies that might reverse increased patterns of unwed childrearing. No, the researchers seem enamored with the potential of “community social and cultural aspects for enhancing the welfare of children.” That’s not all bad; yet the very social capital and higher levels of religious attachment the economists covet find their origin in the family anchored on life-long marriage.

(Sri Ranjith and Anil Rupasingha, “Social and Cultural Determinants of Child Poverty in the United States,” Journal of Economic Issues 46.1 [March 2012]: 119–42.)

This article has been republished with permission from The Family in America, a publication of The Howard Center. The Howard Center is a MercatorNet partner site.

This article is published by Nicole M. King and MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation. Commercial media must contact us for permission and fees. Some articles on this site are published under different terms.

- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/13869#sthash.K3iRslGR.dpuf