The Necessity of Unity

In addition to the threats discussed in previous posts, there is another type of violence that is subtle and looks friendly while it is in fact a threat to humanity. This threat is related to advances in information technology which will reduce the human workforce in the current generation and their children.

The advent of robots (computer machines) that can mimic and replace human workers is already here. Highly artificial intelligence products are already being marketed such as the car that drives itself, robots in manufacturing establishments, voice-recognition technology that receives your order and responds verbally in your language. Google, Amazon, Apple, and many other giant companies (based in the silicon valley in the U.S.) have already made advances in such technology.

An interesting discussion is found on The Agenda in an interview earlier this year with Andrew McAfee, economics Professor at MIT. You may wish to see it here:    

http://ww3.tvo.org/video/168810/andrew-mcafee-machines-are-coming

As an economist, McAfee co-authored a book “Race Against The Machine..” which exposes the misdistribution of capital and rising poverty everywhere as a result of an excessive neo-Capitalism.

Together with the above consumerist trend, materialist philosophies are behind most studies in universities and schools that aggressively deny the spiritual/religious needs of mankind and reduce man to matter and the mind to brain.

Based on the above frame, I ask Christian families to help their children learn the new technologies for their jobs and (more to the point) to come to Church and abide by her teaching.   You can refer to the Second Vatican Council, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. They are available here:

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/index.htm

http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm

I may be dreaming about achieving unity but we must always have hope. 

Let us remember that this month is dedicated to Mary Mother of God. Here is a hymn in remembrance of her devotion to Christ her Son:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRDIggpHL-w&feature=fvst

More on Unity

The One who unites us all is Jesus Christ. You may wish to listen to the heavenly hymn by Johann Sebastian Bach “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6OgZCCoXWc

It is not by accident that today two celebrations coincide:

1. Mother’s Day in Canada.
2. The Solemn Feast of Our Lady of Fatima in the Roman Catholic Church.

The first celebration reminds us of the development of the human person from conception in the womb. In relation to this, the National March for Life in Ottawa this past Thursday was the most successful one in 15 years in spite of continuing political opposition by feminists. Read the report in the Catholic Register here:

http://www.catholicregister.org/news/canada/item/14471-march-for-life-draws-nearly-20000-people-to-parliament-hill-w/-video

More to the point about Pro-Life, a number of fellow Knights of Columbus shared a video with me that showed Yale University’s Associate Professor Alexander Tsiaras explain a recent discovery using his 3-D scanning technology, an achievement in accurately measuring the development of cells. It is amazing that this research was intended for Deep Space projects funded by NASA, yet computer technology united space research with research in artificial intelligence and in biology. The result of this advanced work supports the notion that the human person develops from the moment of conception in the womb. The presentation you may wish to see shows that the fetus has a complex biological structure that develops in the womb.  See the presentation here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=fKyljukBE70

The fact that the Internet technology allows us to share new information and development points also to the direction of more collaboration thus possibly leading to deeper unity in the human race.

The second celebration is about the 1917 Fatima apparition of the most beloved saint and most compassionate mother the Blessed Virgin Mary.   

Mary’s work in the past century and the 21^st century signals the importance she gives to unity of Christians, and also to her motherly care for her children both Christians and Muslims. According to the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a town called Fatima, named after the daughter of Islam’s founder, is significant.  I had lectured about it in May 2011. You may wish to read the lecture on my blog here:

http://www.todayquestions.blogspot.ca/2011/05/may-13-marys-intercession-in-fatima.html

In 2008, we dedicated one lecture to showing the ministry of Myrna Al-Akhras Nazzour of Soufanieh in Damascus regarding her call for Christian unity based on what she experienced as the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her. A devout Christian mother, Myrna was invited to talk in many churches including Jesus the King Church and her talks attracted thousands of faithful Christians due to the miraculous oil that dripped from her hands at many times which I saw with my own eyes. See the post http://todayquestions.blogspot.ca/2008/06/phenomenon-of-soufanieh.html

While Catholics are awaiting the Vatican’s authentication of the Soufanieh’s claims I also posted a video titled “Miracle of Damascus” on the blog here http://todayquestions.blogspot.com

The Blessed Virgin Mary is still at work for the collaboration of Christians and Muslims in the many initiatives by great minds such as the late French priest R. Caspar whose work behind the declarations of Vatican II is indisputable and whose contribution includes 88 books and is referred to in the Melkite Catholic publication Al-Macarra of June 2010.

Today is a blessed day; for here we celebrate life not only as a biological reality but also as a spiritual reality. Mother Mary continues to appeal to her children for peace and unity.  A mother carries life and love to her children. Her maternal affections for her children make her their first teacher. Her role is central to the life of her husband and family as my wife’s role is central to mine.  Her role is central to society as she bears and delivers the new generation of men and women. Her love unifies individuals into her family and, together with other mothers, she begets children to collaborate in developing the greater civilization of this planet.

May the Lord bless all mothers.

Why The World Needs Unity

Why The World Needs Unity...Unity is the goal of all humans; for we all are the offspring of Adam and Eve. We have oneness in spite of all the different languages, states, philosophies, ideas, and religions.  It is well known that no one human can live by himself a happy life; for each one of us is RELATIONAL. We depend on each other to some extent. In the most primitive societies, I buy food from one guy. He also buys cloth from another person...and so on. Trade is based on mutual needs that make relationships possible. These needs are partially fulfilled, but never exhausted, by buying and selling in the marketplace. You probably buy my services and I buy yours. If you extend this relationship over many centuries and nations, it becomes complex. However, the premise remains the same. You have interest in me not because you like me but because you need my product or service. However, the more we do business together the more likely we will develop good relationships. Free trade is based on making trade between nations easier and faster. The advent of the Information Age and the availability today to share this information across many nations through the Internet have brought a sense of a "global village."

From an anthropological perspective, humans evolved from apes who also do things in groups. Birds fly in groups since it is safer to fly in a group.  The more a species members collaborate the more they can survive the assault of predators. You may wish to read Ian Barbour's "When Science Meets Religion", John Polkinghorne's "Quantum Physics and Theology"  or better yet view the interview by Robert Wright with John Polkinghorne here:
http://www.meaningoflife.tv/video.php?speaker=polkinghorne&topic=complete and with John Haught here: http://www.meaningoflife.tv/video.php?speaker=haught&topic=complete but mostly you will thank me for bringing to your attention this amazing interview by Robert Wright with Lorenzo Albacete; for Albacete then relates how development is tied with God's inexhaustible love in Christ:
http://www.meaningoflife.tv/video.php?speaker=albacete&topic=complete

Relationship is arguably the basis of security. Each child remains insecure if he does not feel the protection of his mother/father. Security is the first need for survival together with nourishment and shelter. However for my security, I need the protection of the powerful elders of the tribe or, in modern civilization, the government. If the most powerful governor dies, the political/economic order requires that he be succeeded by another competent person until a new one is chosen or elected. You see the order of human families, tribes, states and the globe itself requires relationships starting with the top person charged with protecting the interests and survival of his subjects/citizens.

In the contemporary complexity of interactions of humans, let's only mention the pervasive advances of information technology with artificial intelligence that promises robots will control human life in a few decades. Read MIT's Andrew Mcafee "Race Against the Machine." The impact will be enormous taking into consideration that young graduates from universities are hardly able to find quality jobs. The Baby Boomers are ageing but the workforce is not replaced adequately by younger generations for many reasons but one of them is that we have stopped bringing children to life. The use of artificial contraceptives by women and the steady killing of children in the womb have had a negative impact on the growth of civilization.

If the world needs to save itself it must renounce not only its divisions but also the Satanic powers that deceive and lure its inhabitants into selfishness and pride. These are not the results of today or even of the last decade but the cumulative memory of wrongs since humans began to think and want things for   themselves independently of God. To guide us in the right way (i.e. the orthodox thought and action) we need unity that comes from God alone.. In spite of the failings in history by some Catholic bishops and faithful, I see this unity in the Catholic Church. If we have to be united let us be guided by the Bishop of Rome; for in the Christian tradition he is the successor of the one to whom Christ gave the keys of heaven. In fact, it is my opinion that not only Christians but all people of good will are already linked to the Catholic Church in a way that remains a mystery. As for why I think everyone should consider becoming Catholic, I refer you to my post at: http://todayquestions.blogspot.ca/2009/10/why-christians-should-be-catholic.html
and to my post at: http://todayquestions.blogspot.ca/2009/11/who-is-catholic.html

Let us pray for the unity of mankind. Seeing the divisions and the continuing violation of humans in the Middle East,  it may be a dream to pray to God for unity. However it is written "What is impossible with men is possible with God" (Luke 18: 27) Thus said Christ the Alpha and Omega.

Henri de Lubac

In 2007, Fergus Kerr wrote a scholarly book titled "Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians" in which he ably portrayed the contributions of major Catholic Theologians in the Twentieth Century. One of the most illustrious such theologians is the Jesuit Henri de Lubac, made Cardinal by Blessed John Paul II a couple of years before the former's death. I learned much from the book, but particularly I learned about the enormous work of Fr. Henri de Lubac, known for his outstanding achievements in the "Ressourcement" (i.e. going back to the resources of the Bible, the Fathers and Scholastics), "New Theology" and the Liturgical Movement. Henri de Lubac was invited to participate in Vatican II as an expert and here his contribution shines all the way in the major documents the Council issued particularly in Dei verbum where the Council speaks explicitly about the development of doctrine. Was it in the development of doctrine that his contribution was mostly pronounced? I am afraid that I cannot point to one thing he did, but his spirit of obedience to the Church led him to be appointed to the most celebrated Council in Church history. His approach to dogmas was at one and the same time balanced by recourse to Tradition as developed in the Fathers of the Church. In that vein he was able to retrieve the works of Origen the outstanding Biblical scholar of the Church of Alexandria in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Although de Lubac does not subscribe to Origenism (the idea of Apocatastasis rejected by the Church) he nevertheless opens up the hope for a world entangled in sin to the unconditional love of God and accordingly in de Lubac, as in Karl Rahner, we find an optimistic view that God is always present in every human person ever conceived. Salvation is possible to everyone and not only to Christians officially baptized in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church remains the sign and instrument of Christ in the world which requires her to continue to preach the salvific message and sacraments of Christ to the end of the world.Yet those who have not received Christ (for example through a distorted presentation of  the Gospel or forced conversion, I would think) are not rejected. For God loves all.   

Joseph Ratzinger: The Truth of the Resurrection

When Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) was a young theologian, he wrote his book "Introduction to Christianity" in 1968 from which the following is an excerpt:
 http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/ratzinger_resurrectionitc_mar07.asp

To the Christian, faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is an expression of certainty that the saying that seems to be only a beautiful dream is in fact true: "Love is strong as death" (Song 8:6). In the Old Testament, this sentence comes in the middle of praises of the power of eros. But this by no means signifies that we can simply push it aside as a lyrical exaggeration. The boundless demands of eros, its apparent exaggerations and extravagance, do in reality give expression to a basic problem, indeed the basic problem of human existence, insofar as they reflect the nature and intrinsic paradox of love: love demands infinity, indestructibility; indeed, it is, so to speak, a call for infinity. But it is also a fact that this cry of love cannot be satisfied, that it demands infinity but cannot grant it; that it claims eternity but in fact is included in the world of death, in its loneliness and its power of destruction. Only from this angle can one understand what "resurrection" means. It is the greater strength of love in face of death.

At the same time it is proof of what only immortality can create: being in the other who still stands when I have fallen apart. Man is a being who himself does not live forever but is necessarily delivered up to death. For him, since he has no continuance in himself, survival, from a purely human point of view, can only become possible through his continuing to exist in another. The statements of Scripture about the connection between sin and death are to be understood from this angle. For it now becomes clear that man's attempt "to be like God", his striving for autonomy, through which he wishes to stand on his own feet alone, means his death, for he just cannot stand on his own. If man--and this is the real nature of sin--nevertheless refuses to recognize his own limits and tries to be completely self-sufficient, then precisely by adopting this attitude he delivers himself up to death.

Of course man does understand that his life alone does not endure and that he must therefore strive to exist in others, so as to remain through them and in them in the land of the living. Two ways in particular have been tried. First, living on in one's own children: that is why in primitive peoples failure to marry and childlessness are regarded as the most terrible curse; they mean hopeless destruction; final death. Conversely, the largest possible number of children offers at the same time the greatest possible chance of survival, hope of immortality, and thus the most genuine blessing that man can expect. Another way discloses itself when man discovers that in his children he only continues to exist in a very unreal way; he wants more of himself to remain. So he takes refuge in the idea of fame, which should make him really immortal if he lives on through all ages in the memory of others. But this second attempt of man to obtain immortality for himself by existing in others fails just as badly as the first: what remains is not the self but only its echo, a mere shadow. So self-made immortality is really only a Hades; a sheol: more nonbeing than being. The inadequacy of both ways lies partly in the fact that the other person who holds my being after my death cannot carry this being itself but only its echo; and even more in the fact that even the other person to whom I have, so to speak, entrusted my continuance will not last--he, too, will perish.

This leads us to the next step. We have seen so far that man has no permanence in himself. And consequently can only continue to exist in another but that his existence in another is only shadowy and once again not final, because this other must perish, too. If this is so, then only one could truly give lasting stability: he who is, who does not come into existence and pass away again but abides in the midst of transience: the God of the living, who does not hold just the shadow and echo of my being, whose ideas are not just copies of reality. I myself am his thought, which establishes me more securely, so to speak, than I am in myself; his thought is not the posthumous shadow but the original source and strength of my being. In him I can stand as more than a shadow; in him I am truly closer to myself than I should be if I just tried to stay by myself.

Before we return from here to the Resurrection, let us try to see the same thing once again from a somewhat different side. We can start again from the dictum about love and death and say: Only where someone values love more highly than life, that is, only where someone is ready to put life second to love, for the sake of love, can love be stronger and more than death. If it is to be more than death, it must first be more than mere life. But if it could be this, not just in intention but in reality, then that would mean at the same time that the power of love had risen superior to the power of the merely biological and taken it into its service. To use Teilhard de Chardin's terminology; where that took place, the decisive complexity or "complexification" would have occurred; bios, too, would be encompassed by and incorporated in the power of love. It would cross the boundary--death--and create unity where death divides. If the power of love for another were so strong somewhere that it could keep alive not just his memory, the shadow of his "I", but that person himself, then a new stage in life would have been reached. This would mean that the realm of biological evolutions and mutations had been left behind and the leap made to a quite different plane, on which love was no longer subject to bios but made use of it. Such a final stage of "mutation" and "evolution" would itself no longer be a biological stage; it would signify the end of the sovereignty of bios, which is at the same time the sovereignty of death; it would open up the realm that the Greek Bible calls zoe, that is, definitive life, which has left behind the rule of death. The last stage of evolution needed by the world to reach its goal would then no longer be achieved within the realm of biology but by the spirit, by freedom, by love. It would no longer be evolution but decision and gift in one.

But what has all this to do, it may be asked, with faith in the Resurrection of Jesus? Well, we previously considered the question of the possible immortality of man from two sides, which now turn out to be aspects of one and the same state of affairs. We said that, as man has no permanence in himself, his survival could only be brought about by his living on in another. And we said, from the point of view of this "other", that only the love that takes up the beloved in itself, into its own being, could make possible this existence in the other. These two complementary aspects are mirrored again, so it seems to me, in the two New Testament ways of describing the Resurrection of the Lord: "Jesus has risen" and "God (the Father) has awakened Jesus." The two formulas meet in the fact that Jesus' total love for men, which leads him to the Cross, is perfected in totally passing beyond to the Father and therein becomes stronger than death, because in this it is at the same time total "being held" by him.

From this a further step results. We can now say that love always establishes some kind of immortality; even in its pre-human stage, it points, in the form of preservation of the species, in this direction. Indeed, this founding of immortality is not something incidental to love, not one thing that it does among others, but what really gives it its specific character. This principle can be reversed; it then signifies that immortality always proceeds from love, never out of the autarchy of that which is sufficient to itself. We may even be bold enough to assert that this principle, properly understood, also applies even to God as he is seen by the Christian faith. God, too, is absolute permanence, as opposed to everything transitory, for the reason that he is the relation of three Persons to one another, their incorporation in the "for one another" of love, act-substance of the love that is absolute and therefore completely "relative", living only "in relation to". As we said earlier, it is not autarchy, which knows no one but itself, that is divine; what is revolutionary about the Christian view of the world and of God, we found, as opposed to those of antiquity, is that it learns to understand the "absolute" as absolute "relatedness", as relatio subsistens.

To return to our argument, love is the foundation of immortality, and immortality proceeds from love alone. This statement to which we have now worked our way also means that he who has love for all has established immortality for all. That is precisely the meaning of the biblical statement that his Resurrection is our life. The--to us--curious reasoning of St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians now becomes comprehensible: if he has risen, then we have, too, for then love is stronger than death; if he has not risen, then we have not either, for then the situation is still that death has the last word, nothing else (cf. I Cor 15:16f.). Since this is a statement of central importance, let us spell it out once again in a different way: Either love is stronger than death, or it is not. If it has become so in him, then it became so precisely as love for others. This also means, it is true, that our own love, left to itself, is not sufficient to overcome death; taken in itself it would have to remain an unanswered cry. It means that only his love, coinciding with God's own power of life and love, can be the foundation of our immortality. Nevertheless, it still remains true that the mode of our immortality will depend on our mode of loving. We shall have to return to this in the section on the Last Judgment.

A further point emerges from this discussion. Given the foregoing considerations, it goes without saying that the life of him who has risen from the dead is not once again bios, the biological form of our mortal life within history; it is zoe, new, different, definitive life; life that has stepped beyond the mortal realm of bios and history, a realm that has here been surpassed by a greater power. And in fact the Resurrection narratives of the New Testament allow us to see clearly that the life of the Risen One lies, not within the historical bios, but beyond and above it. It is also true, of course, that this new life begot itself in history and had to do so, because after all it is there for history, and the Christian message is basically nothing else than the transmission of the testimony that love has managed to break through death here and thus has transformed fundamentally the situation of all of us. Once we have realized this, it is no longer difficult to find the right kind of hermeneutics for the difficult business of expounding the biblical Resurrection narratives, that is, to acquire a clear understanding of the sense in which they must properly be understood. Obviously we cannot attempt here a detailed discussion of the questions involved, which today present themselves in a more difficult form than ever before; especially as historical and--for the most part inadequately pondered--philosophical statements are becoming more and more inextricably intertwined, and exegesis itself quite often produces its own philosophy, which is intended to appear to the layman as a supremely refined distillation of the biblical evidence. Many points of detail will here always remain open to discussion, but it is possible to recognize a fundamental dividing line between explanation that remains explanation and arbitrary adaptations [to contemporary ways of thinking].

First of all, it is quite clear that after his Resurrection Christ did not go back to his previous earthly life, as we are told the young man of Nain and Lazarus did. He rose again to definitive life, which is no longer governed by chemical and biological laws and therefore stands outside the possibility of death, in the eternity conferred by love. That is why the encounters with him are "appearances"; that is why he with whom people had sat at table two days earlier is not recognized by his best friends and, even when recognized, remains foreign: only where he grants vision is he seen; only when he opens men's eyes and makes their hearts open up can the countenance of the eternal love that conquers death become recognizable in our mortal world, and, in that love, the new, different world, the world of him who is to come. That is also why it is so difficult, indeed absolutely impossible, for the Gospels to describe the encounter with the risen Christ; that is why they can only stammer when they speak of these meetings and seem to provide contradictory descriptions of them. In reality they are surprisingly unanimous in the dialectic of their statements, in the simultaneity of touching and not touching, or recognizing and not recognizing, of complete identity between the crucified and the risen Christ and complete transformation. People recognize the Lord and yet do not recognize him again; people touch him, and yet he is untouchable; he is the same and yet quite different. As we have said, the dialectic is always the same; it is only the stylistic means by which it is expressed that changes. 

For example, let us examine a little more closely from this point of view the Emmaus story, which we have already touched upon briefly. At first sight it looks as if we are confronted here with a completely earthly and material notion of resurrection; as if nothing remains of the mysterious and indescribable elements to be found in the Pauline accounts. It looks as if the tendency to detailed depiction, to the concreteness of legend, supported by the apologist's desire for something tangible, had completely won the upper hand and fetched the risen Lord right back into earthly history. But this impression is soon contradicted by his mysterious appearance and his no less mysterious disappearance. The notion is contradicted even more by the fact that here, too, he remains unrecognizable to the accustomed eye. He cannot be firmly grasped as he could be in the time of his earthly life; he is discovered only in the realm of faith; he sets the hearts of the two travelers aflame by his interpretation of the Scriptures and by breaking bread he opens their eyes. This is a reference to the two basic elements in early Christian worship, which consisted of the liturgy of the word (the reading and expounding of Scripture) and the eucharistic breaking of bread. In this way the evangelist makes it clear that the encounter with the risen Christ lies on a quite new plane; he tries to describe the indescribable in terms of the liturgical facts. He thereby provides both a theology of the Resurrection and a theology of the liturgy: one encounters the risen Christ in the word and in the sacrament; worship is the way in which he becomes touchable to us and, recognizable as the living Christ. And conversely, the liturgy is based on the mystery of Easter; it is to be understood as the Lord’s approach to us. In it he becomes our traveling companion, sets our dull hearts aflame, and opens our sealed eyes. He still walks with us, still finds us worried and downhearted, and still has the power to make us see.

Of course, all this is only half the story; to stop at this alone would mean falsifying the evidence of the New Testament. Experience of the risen Christ is something other than a meeting with a man from within our history, and it must certainly not be traced back to conversations at table and recollections that would have finally crystallized in the idea that he still lived and went about his business. Such an interpretation reduces what happened to the purely human level and robs it of its specific quality. The Resurrection narratives are something other and more than disguised liturgical scenes: they make visible the founding event on which all Christian liturgy rests. They testify to an approach that did not rise from the hearts of the disciples but came to them from outside, convinced them despite their doubts and made them certain that the Lord had truly risen. He who lay in the grave is no longer there; he--really he himself--lives. He who had been transposed into the other world of God showed himself powerful enough to make it palpably clear that he himself stood in their presence again, that in him the power of love had really proved itself stronger than the power of death.

Only by taking this just as seriously as what we said first does one remain faithful to the witness borne by the New Testament; only thus, too, is its seriousness in world history preserved. The comfortable attempt to spare oneself the belief in the mystery of God's mighty actions in this world and yet at the same time to have the satisfaction of remaining on the foundation of the biblical message leads nowhere; it measures up neither to the honesty of reason nor to the claims of faith. One cannot have both the Christian faith and "religion within the bounds of pure reason"; a choice is unavoidable. He who believes will see more and more clearly, it is true, how rational it is to have faith in the love that has conquered death.