Finally, my own review of the Catholicism series

Sorry about the formatting problem! You can find the review in its original form at Amazon where you can also "like" the review. Thanks.

Wonderful, awe-inspiring!, October 18, 2011 By Paul Adams (Ave Maria, FL)    This review is from: Catholicism DVD Box Set (DVD) I have watched the whole series several times and cannot recommend it too highly. Beautifully produced (on a shoestring), intelligent, lucid, engaging, the series (like Catholicism itself) works on several levels. The Church has gone through a dark period, 40 years in the wilderness of self-inflicted wounds - scandal and a kind of beige accommodation to the times that produced some of the worst liturgical excesses, music, art, and architecture in the Church's history. Father Barron does not dodge the issues that have preoccupied critics of the Church from within and without, but he does not let them set his agenda. Instead the series tells the Church's own story, restoring the color and beauty of the faith as an incarnational and sacramental religion like no other. Barron explores the relation of faith to reason, of Christian religion to science, of sensuous art and mystical experience to theology and philosophy. Drawing on some of the greatest analytic minds of the past two millennia as well as the Church's mystics, artists, architects, and poets, Barron offers us a rich tapestry of the faith and its adherents throughout the world. Some of the images of piety and devotion of masses of ordinary people in Uganda and at Fatima, as well of the living patrimony of great art and architecture, are unforgettable. I recommend watching (and buying if possible) the whole series. It is organized thematically rather than as historical narrative. Every theme reinforces and speaks to all the others. All are expounded through engaging and clarifying stories, similes, and images. Barron draws us in from the start with an arresting challenge to the mushy view that reduces Jesus to a great teacher, like other religious founders, even a kind of Deepak Chopra of his day. But his followers were "amazed and afraid" in the presence of the God-Man, who asked his disciples, not what people thought of his teachings, but who they said he was. The challenge is that Christianity confronts us with a stark choice - either Jesus was who he said he was (in which case we owe him everything) or he was a bad man who deluded himself and others. This challenge is at the heart of Rabbi Jacob Neusner's imagined dialogue with Jesus (A Rabbi Talks With Jesus) and Pope Benedict's engagement with Neusner (Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration). The series is an extraordinary contribution the "New Evangelization" proclaimed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. As such it will appeal to those Catholics, especially the young, who yearn for an orthodox, confident, holy Catholicism. It will inform and challenge others whose only knowledge of the faith derives from its critics and enemies. For those who, with a few knock-down arguments, condemn unheard the Church and its profound contribution to (especially but not only) Western civilization, science, ethics, and culture, this is a unique opportunity to hear the other side. Audi alteram partem!

Anne Rice Abandons Reason for Rant

It is truly sad to see a writer of Anne Rice's talents, who just a few years ago wrote a fine Catholic spiritual memoir, descend to such depths of scurrility as in the personal anti-Catholic rants on her recent blog posts, where she accuses those who disagree with her of the basest motives, and without offering the slightest evidence or giving reasons for her views.

One is tempted to follow her own example and ascribe personal motivations to explain her turn to relentless and bitter attack on the Church. But the slew of hate-filled denunciations that her threads routinely elicits from commenters creates an environment of vitriolic anti-Catholicism. For whatever personal reasons, Rice herself simultaneously feeds off and sustains this environment.

At the same time, as Francis J. Beckwith points out, she exhibits an apparently irremediable incapacity to sustain a coherent argument. He says:

Anne Rice, I am sad to say, cannot distinguish her visceral dislike for Catholic moral theology with a sustained argument against it. Her case, which is apparently universal in scope, is no wider than a first person rant: “some Catholics are bad people, and thus I (that is, Anne Rice, famous ex-con-revert),cannot believe that what the Church claims is good is in fact good.” Does anyone with a fully functional set of cognitive faculties take such literary tourettes seriously? It would be like saying that Anne Rice is a bad novelist because she is a bad reasoner. She is indeed the latter, but the latter does not establish the former.

These sorts of distinctions are essential for clarity of thought and integrity of argument. Thus, we can only conclude that she has no interest in either.

Beckwith's comment, and mine, came in response to a frank exchange of views between Carl Olson of Insight Scoop and Anne Rice on amazon.com and Facebook. See Olson's post at http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2011/04/is-there-a-sinister-agenda-behind-the-ignatius-blogs-attack-on-me-personally-wha.html#comments where he rightly observes, among other things,

And so the critics, instead of responding to reasonable defenses by Catholics resort to innuendo and insinuation and suspicion.

Sad to see Anne Rice joining this ignoble throng.

Good reading for Lent - Robert Barron's The Strangest Way

In this wonderful book, The Strangest Way: Walking the Christian Path, Fr. Barron sets out three paths by which to walk "the strangest way" - those of finding the center (making Christ the center of our lives); knowing you're a sinner; and realizing your life is not about you. In describing each path, the author draws intelligently on theological and literary sources to give us a sense of the richness and profundity of the Christian faith. The book is not primarily a polemic against the dumbed down, accommodating, secularized, New Agey, or syncretistic strains of modern(ist) Christian spirituality, although these tendencies are duly noted by way of making the contrast to an alternative orthodox, adult spiritual practice.

In this respect, Barron distinguishes the spiritual search approach, whereby we seek the divine, to the "hound of heaven" understanding in which God's love pursues us. In contrast to an emphasis on the subjective, the interior, the psychological, the private experience, Barron emphasizes the Christian path as one walked in communion with the Church on earth in which the liturgy, the summit and source of Christian spirituality, unites us with the heavenly liturgy. It is a path that involves, especially in Lent, practices like prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, the physical and earthly as well as the spiritual and supernatural--combined in the Incarnation, and in Christ's real presence in the bread and wine made with human hands.

In all this, Barron achieves at least two things supremely well in my view. As the title suggests, he makes the familiar strange, helping us see with new eyes how different Christianity is, with its representation, not of human bliss but of a crucified man as the expression of God's broken heart, his outpouring of love as well as of our sinfulness and need for it.

Secondly, the book offers both an intellectually rich and satisfying orientation to Christian, specifically Catholic, spirituality and at the same time a guide to walking the Christian path with specific practices to follow as we do so.

This wonderful, challenging book is an excellent accompaniment to Fr. Barron's DVD, Untold Blessing: Three Paths to Holiness which covers the same material in lecture format that is brilliant and somewhat more popular. There is a study guide to accompany the DVD. Fr. Barron also presents the second path, knowing you're a sinner, in another DVD, Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Lively Virtues, a superb meditation on Dante's Inferno (The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell).

A New Manna

MONDAY, 28 FEBRUARY 2011

By Brad Miner

For too many centuries, Christianity – and perhaps especially Catholicism – has been associated with anti-Semitism. This history is well-known, and I will not rehearse it here. But behind all the violence and persecution and bigotry was the blood libel: Jews rejected and killed Jesus Christ, and this crime attaches not only to those who called for the Lord’s crucifixion then but also to their descendants, right down to the present day. To be sure, the Church has always been at least uneasy about the libel and never formally endorsed anything of the kind. Still, it awaited the twentieth century for something closer to philo-Semitism to emerge, especially in the actions of John Paul II, which continues to have effects in the twenty-first and the work of many in the Church who have sought to recover the Jewish roots of the Catholic faith.

This work has been taken up by Benedict XVI and other Vatican officials and by a number of authors, among them: Roy Schoeman, a Jewish convert to Catholicism, in his extraordinary Salvation is from the Jews: The Role of Judaism in Salvation History from Abraham to the Second Coming; Taylor Marshall, an Anglican priest who crossed the Tiber, in his bestselling The Crucified Rabbi: Judaism and the Origins of Catholic Christianity; and now Brant Pitre, a cradle Catholic and professor of sacred scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, in his newest book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper. (There is even an extraordinary recording of Jewish and Catholic canting and chanting, The Sacred Bridge, that demonstrates the intimate musical evolution of the two faiths.) Each of the books mentioned is a truly extraordinary reading experience, but Dr. Pitre’s book, just published by Doubleday, deserves some attention here.

It is extremely rare that a book so clearly based upon extensive scholarly research is as readable as is Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist. That scholarship encompasses not only careful study of the Bible, the Church fathers, and the Catechism, but also close readings of Jewish commentaries such as the various editions of the Mishnah Torah, Talmud, and other Hebraic sources, ancient and modern. Pitre’s work is a part of an ongoing and revolutionary revelation (not in a divine but in a scholarly and historical sense) concerning the necessity of understanding the universal in the particular. As Papa Ratzinger has written: “the message of Jesus is completely misunderstood if it is separated from the context of the faith and hope of the Chosen People . . .” Christ spoke to all people for all time, but the words he chose and their likely resonances in the minds of the first-century Jews who heard them are critical to our understanding of the One who truly is the Messiah.

I’m married to a Jew, and the highlight of every spring at our house is the Passover Seder my wife prepares and we celebrate with friends and family, Jews and Christians. The many parallels between the Seder service and the Catholic Mass are clearly evident to anybody who has attended both. And this is because the Last Supper was, for Jesus, His last Seder. What Professor Pitre demonstrates is the extent to which the whole of Jewish history and the whole of the salvation story play out in the Eucharist.

Passover is, of course, a remembrance of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. In the Mass, we celebrate Jesus as the Messiah, a new Moses, who leads us out of the captivity of sin towards our heavenly destiny. But during that Jewish exodus itself – not just on the eve of the journey, when the angel of death took the firstborns from every house not marked with the blood of the lamb – there was bread given by God to sustain the travelers: manna. Long story short, that heavenly bread is very much what Communion is for Catholics: the transubstantial body of Christ, who is God and is heaven. Manna (later the Bread of the Presence) was kept in the Ark of the Covenant during and after the exodus, and consumed in a ritual sacrifice of bread and wine (see Leviticus 24:5-7), as the consecrated Host is kept in Catholic tabernacles today, awaiting the Eucharist.

Among the most fascinating parts of this riveting story, certainly as Brant Pitre tells it, is the question of blood: How could a faithful, pious Jew such as Jesus of Nazareth speak as he often did, not just at the Last Supper, of the necessity of drinking his blood? After all, consuming blood is simply not kosher; drinking human blood is depraved and blasphemous. As Pitre notes, none of the earlier prophets had ever suggested such a thing. But Jesus, as we know, is more than a prophet. Pitre writes:

In a word, the Bread of the Presence was miraculous. After all, it would take just that – a miracle – for bread and wine to be transformed into the body and blood of the Messiah.

And Pitre quotes St. Cyril, fourth-century bishop of Jerusalem: Jesus turned water into wine at Cana, so “is it incredible that He should have turned wine into blood?” Blood, wine, Passover, Eucharist, prophecy, fulfillment.

Quite obviously, I’m breezing through the arguments of this remarkable book. But as one familiar with living Jewish and Christian history, I cannot begin to describe how thrilling it is to read Brant Pitre’s account of the Last Supper and the fourth cup of Passover wine, the one the Lord said he would not drink until He came into His Kingdom.

It is simply unthinkable that the correspondences between Passover and the Mass, manna and the Eucharist, and the prophets and the Messiah are not in themselves, in both Scripture and in tradition, proof positive that what we Catholics believe is absolutely true. Baruch Shem Kivod Malchuto LeOlam Va’ed! (Blessed be His Glorious Name Whose Kingdom is Forever and Ever!)


Brad Miner, a former literary editor of National Review, is senior editor of The Catholic Thing. One of his books, The Compleat Gentleman, was published last year in a revised edition.

© 2010 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org

The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Retrieved February 28, 2011 from http://www.thecatholicthing.org/?task=view

Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist - Brant Pitre's thrilling book

Brant Pitre, a young Catholic theologian - a professor of sacred scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans - has produced a minor publishing sensation. His book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, is currently ranked #1 on three Amazon.com bestseller lists:

#1 in Books on Catholicism
#1 in Books on Judaism
#1 in Books on Ritual

Elizabeth Scalia has an interesting interview with Pitre at her Patheos site http://www.patheos.com/community/theanchoress. And Hebrew Catholic (her term) Simcha Fisher reviews it there too (http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Behold-The-Manna-the-Bread-from-Heaven-that-Ever-Was-Simcha-Fisher-02-18-2011.html?print=1).

Scalia, who strongly recommends the book as Lenten reading this year, cites a couple of other reviews as well as quoting from her interview:

. . .my personal favorite is the chapter on the Bread of the Presence. This mysterious bread, which was kept in the Tabernacle of Moses and later in the Jerusalem Temple, is consistently overlooked by Christians, because it’s tucked away in the dreaded book of Leviticus! Yet it is easily one of the most transparent foreshadowings of the Eucharist in the Bible. I will never forget the day when I was reading the Jewish Talmud and discovered that the priests in the Temple used to take out the Bread of the Presence at the festivals, elevate it in the sight of the pilgrims, and proclaim: “Behold, God’s love for you”! Could you ask for a clearer parallel with the elevation of the Eucharist in the Mass, what Pope Benedict has called the “Sacrament of Charity”?

Yeah, that gave me a thrill of recognition, too! In fact it reminds me both of the elevation of the Blessed Sacrament at mass, and of this picture of John Paul II, holding aloft the monstrance for adoration and for the blessing of the people, during Benediction:

Longtime readers may recall that back in 2009 Rick at Brutally Honest and I got into a minor tussle about receiving Communion while one is not a Catholic. Since then, Rick has written now and then on his blog about the slow, sometimes painful journey he and his wife are making to become fully received into the church and he has been, yes, brutally honest about it. He has written a review of Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist that is very affecting:

I’ve been away from the Catholic faith for 40 years, in essence wandering in the wilderness as the Jews who were led out of Egypt. My trek toward belief in the Real Presence has been slow and methodical, perhaps even too cerebral; my struggles have been, well . . . real and present. Pitre’s book has helped fill the intellectual gaps and in that sense is an enormous assist. [. . .] I have longed and do long for the presence of God. I am comforted, consoled, strengthened, encouraged, chastened, made aware of my sinfulness, healed and forgiven by His nearness. I have lately been able to experience these things and more during Holy Communion, during Adoration and recently, during a moving and most holy Eucharistic Healing service offered by The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.

I’ve entered into these things with imperfect faith, with flawed belief, with too many doubts and yet each time, I’ve been granted release. Each time I have left a Eucharistic encounter believing more strongly than before that something mystical and something holy and something real had been before me and experienced by me. My faith has been strengthened.

In Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, Brant Pitre has provided a firm foundation on which I can literally build my faith, and wrap my brain around the Scriptural basis for Christ’s Presence in the breaking of the bread. This is, frankly, an answer to my prayer and my desiring.

As I said, it’s affecting.

Julie Davis at Happy Catholic, meanwhile, is even “happier” since reading Pitre’s book, and her review is very smart:

There is a thrill of discovery at seeing the pieces fall into place, and that makes the book a surprising page-turner; the reader eagerly wonders where the next revelation will take them. Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist makes it crystal clear why ancient Jews and early Christians alike understood Jesus’ outrageous claims about the Eucharist, that he is truly present in it now and forever.

This book made me look at the Eucharist and Jesus’ promises with new eyes and new appreciation for the truth hidden in plain sight in the Catholic Church. It answers the question that Brant Pitre encountered so long ago as a college student, “How can you Catholics teach that bread and wine actually become Jesus’ body and blood? Do you really believe that?”

It occurs to me that the word “thrill” keeps popping up. Yes, it is an absolute thrill to watch Pitre connect all the dots. And a little humbling when he reveals that, in much more casual ways, this is almost all in the brilliant Catechism that nobody reads enough (myself included).

Retrieved February 19, 2011 from http://www.patheos.com/community/theanchoress/2011/02/16/lenten-reading-jesus-and-jewish-roots-of-the-eucharist/

Catholicism tells its own story

After decades of crippling itself with self-inflicted wounds--from the liberal anti-Catholic Catholics and from the clerical abuse scandals--the Catholic Church needs desperately to tell its own story, with humility but without compromising its truth and the world-historic revolutionary challenge it represents. (On the latter, see Atheist Delusions by non-Catholic theologian David Bentley Hart.) Fr. Barron takes up the challenge of the New Evangelization called for by both JPII and B16 (echoing the charge given to his Church by Jesus two millennia ago) in what looks to be a magnificent documentary series, coming next Fall.

It tells a story without which culture and civilization, art and architecture, Dante and Shakespeare, human and civil rights, equality and democracy are largely unintelligible, especially (but not only) in the West.

Self-Inflicted Wounds: Beige (Hyper-Accommodating) Catholicism and the Pew Forum Study

Fr. Barron on dumbed down Catholicism

Here are the books that Fr. Barron bought for his niece:
Augustine, Confessions
Aquinas, Contra Gentiles
Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God
Dante, Divine Comedy
Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Are they really all the same?

A good friend once suggested that all religions are basically the same. Their leaders--like the Buddha and Jesus--were great teachers and at bottom their message was not different. My friend is a Unitarian atheist--the logical, or at least practical conclusion of "liberalism in religion" (the Unitarian slogan)--although, to be fair, my friend's atheism preceded his Unitarianism. I pointed out at the time that such a view, while appearing to look on all religions with tolerant acceptance, actually rests on the assumption that Christianity is false.

Now comes an excerpt from the first episode of what promises to be a wonderful series of documentary films called CATHOLICISM that is scheduled to come to the TV screen in September 2011. It makes the point brilliantly, not by criticizing other faiths, nor denying what is good and true and divinely inspired in them, but by explaining the heart of the Christian claim. Its title, "Amazed and Afraid," already suggests the very different nature of the choice to which the Christian faith--and indeed the whole Judeo-Christian tradition from Abraham on--impels us.

To the extent this is understood, we can see not only political and cultural reasons why Western secularists and cultural relativists tend to tolerate--even celebrate the diversity of--all faith traditions but Christianity and hence all cultures but their own. We can also see how the claims of Christianity itself, no matter how appreciative Christians are of the truths within other religions, cannot be reduced to a matter of indifference.

Religious indifferentism itself cannot tolerate Christianity. Indeed that is why so many Christians were martyred in the early centuries. The Roman Empire did not require anyone actually to believe in the official gods of the Roman state or to abandon their own gods. They just insisted that sacrifice be made to the state gods as a matter of political acquiescence and loyalty. But Christians, despite rendering unto Caesar what was his, would not render unto the emperor what belonged only to God. And they would not abandon Christ's order to evangelize in the face of persecution.

Father Robert Barron is an extraordinary speaker, cultural critic, and evangelist for the Catholic faith. His series, which I understand will be used for catechetical purposes across the country, holds promise for recovery from the disastrous failure of the Church to educate a generation of Catholics in their own faith. Even those in the chattering classes (the 'cultural elite' of the media, academia, and certain professions) who hold no good will whatever toward Catholicism, will--if they watch with anything approaching an open mind--be challenged and informed in new ways.