Catholic Biblical Fundamentalism v. the Church's Teaching on Creation

Well over a year ago, in a tweet on my Twitter page, I praised Father Victor Warkulwiz's book The Doctrines of Genesis 1-11 as an "excellent book" and "highly recommended." Today, after having done a bit more research on what the Catholic Church actually teaches about the creation of the world, I am forced in good conscience to retract those compliments and warn other Catholics about the dangers that Catholic biblical fundamentalism presents to a proper understanding of Catholic creation doctrine. During my first few months of studying this book beginning in September 2010, I thought it was an excellent work entirely faithful to the Church's Magisterium, and as such I was willing to heartily endorse it. However, a year later and halfway into the book, my initial impression had begun to change significantly. I was starting to find myself in disagreement with some of the things Fr. Warkulwiz was saying and having some misgivings about the book. The claim I found most disturbing of all--and which is really fundamental to the thesis of the whole book--is that, for a Catholic, the only reasonable interpretation of the Hebrew word yom in Genesis chapter 1 (which means "day") is a strict literal interpretation. This bothered me so much that I wrote the following essay about it, which I sent to Fr. Warkulwiz:

The Meaning of Yom in Traditional Catholic Creation Theology
by Justin Soutar
September 14, 2011

In his well-researched book, The Doctrines of Genesis 1-11: A Compendium and Defense of Traditional Catholic Theology on Origins, Father Victor P. Warkulwiz, M.S.S. strives to faithfully transmit the essentials of Catholic creation doctrine as drawn from Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and Magisterial teaching; he also delves into the theological exploration of this doctrine by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church over the centuries. Father Warkulwiz presents this doctrine and theology in the form of sixteen theses drawn from the first eleven chapters of Genesis, which he interprets literally, and he assembles an impressive array of theological, philosophical and scientific arguments to defend them.

Although I have been enjoying my study of Father Warkulwiz’s scholarly work, there is one part of it that really bothers me. It’s where he insists that the Hebrew word yom (“day”) in Genesis 1 can only be reasonably interpreted to mean a literal natural day, in opposition to two of the greatest Doctors of the Church, Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, who preferred a symbolic interpretation of yom. Father Warkulwiz takes this position in support of his sixth thesis, “God created the world in six natural days,” and defends it on the following grounds: 1) The word yom is never used in Sacred Scripture for a period of time of a definite length other than a natural day. 2) A literal interpretation of yom in Genesis 1 is in accordance with the hermeneutical principle of Pope Leo XIII, originally formulated by Saint Augustine, that Scripture must be understood in its literal and obvious sense except where reason or necessity force us to do otherwise. 3) Nearly all of the Church Fathers and Doctors held a literal interpretation of yom in Genesis 1. 4) The creation day is the prototype of the natural day, which sets the rhythm for our lives and life in general. 5) The natural sciences are unable to confirm or refute the idea that God created the world in six literal natural days.

The key point here is whether the interpretation of yom is a matter of doctrine or of theological opinion. A reliable test to distinguish between the two is this: 1) If the Church Fathers and Doctors are in perfectly unanimous agreement on a certain point, it is a doctrine of the faith. 2) If they are not in unanimous agreement on a certain point, it is a matter of theological opinion. Most, but not all, of the Church Fathers and Doctors believed in a literal six-day creation. The outstanding exceptions were Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, who held that God created the world instantaneously and that the six days of Genesis 1 are symbolic. So the idea that God created the world in six natural days is a traditional, widely held, non-binding theological opinion within Catholicism, not a compulsory doctrine of the faith.

Father Warkulwiz concludes that “it is not reasonable to take the word yom in Genesis 1 to mean other than a literal natural day.” (p. 171) But Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas took it to mean other than that, and their reasons for doing so seemed quite reasonable to them. Augustine interpreted the word “day” in Genesis chapter 1 as referring to the creation of light and of the angels. The following quotation from his commentary on Genesis 1 appears in Father Warkulwiz’s book:

The obvious conclusion is that if the angels are among the works of God of those days, they are that light which received the name of “day.” And the unity of that day is underlined by its not being called “the first day,” but “one day.” Thus the second day, and the third, and the rest are not different days; the same “one day” was repeated to complete the number six or seven, to represent the seven stages of knowledge [in the minds of the angels], the six stages comprehending the created works, and the seventh stage embracing God’s rest….Thus, the angels, illuminated by that light by which they were created, themselves became light and are called “day” by participation in the changeless light and day, which is the Word of God, through whom they themselves and all other things were made.

(p. 166)

And Saint Thomas sided with Saint Augustine:

…Ambrose and other saints hold that there was an order of time by which things were distinguished. This opinion is indeed more generally held, and seems to accord better with the apparent literal sense (of Scripture). Still, the previous theory (that of Augustine) is the more reasonable, and ensures a better defense of Holy Scripture against the derision of unbelievers. To this, insists Augustine, must the fullest heed be given: “the Scriptures are so to be explained that they will not incur the ridicule of unbelievers”; and his theory is the one that appeals to me.

(p. 167, footnote [bold added])

Aquinas not only did not interpret the word yom in Genesis 1 literally, he actually commended Augustine’s symbolic interpretation as being more reasonable! And he did this with full awareness that he was swimming against the tide of most of the Church Fathers and Doctors before him, who held a different and more literal view of this same Scripture passage. Augustine, moreover, who first laid down the general rule of sticking to the literal sense of Scripture, himself did not apply it to the word yom in Genesis chapter 1. Father Warkulwiz appears to have taken Saint Augustine’s principle out of context in order to justify a strict literal interpretation of yom that the saint himself opposed.

Unfortunately, the logical breakdown doesn’t end there. Father Warkulwiz goes so far as to state unequivocally in the preamble to his sixth thesis that “there is no justification for a Catholic to deny that God created the world in six natural days.” (p. 164) This is insulting to the intelligence of the reader as well as to the two great saints and Doctors quoted above. Is Father Warkulwiz implying that two of the most renowned minds in Church history had no justification for their positions?

The Church, the ultimate authority for teaching the truth and interpreting Sacred Scripture, has not formally defined the meaning of yom in Genesis 1; rather, she has opened it to discussion. In 1909, the Pontifical Biblical Commission issued a statement (which is still in force) authorizing Catholic biblical interpreters to freely discuss the question of whether the word yom in Genesis 1 means strictly “a literal natural day” or less strictly “a certain space of time.” Yet while admitting in his book that the Church has permitted discussion of the meaning of yom in Genesis chapter 1 (and that Augustine and Aquinas held symbolic interpretations of it), Father Warkulwiz effectively negates this permission by arguing that the hermeneutical principle of Pope Leo XIII forbids a less strict interpretation of yom. This raises the question of the proper application of that principle. How is one to decide which passages of Sacred Scripture must be interpreted in the literal and obvious sense; which must be understood symbolically; and which may be interpreted either way? The answer is that no individual Catholic has the authority to make such decisions on his or her own. Only the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, can infallibly guide the interpretation of Scripture by the faithful.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 337, we are told: “Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day.” As Father Warkulwiz correctly points out (p. 164), this does not mean that the six days and the work of the six days weren’t real. However, in this passage the Church is clearly and officially teaching a symbolic interpretation of Genesis 1 that in no way denies the literal and historical truth of that Scriptural text—that God, at the beginning of time, created the world and everything in it. Father Warkulwiz opines that the Church “could someday declare that yom in Genesis 1 means a literal day because that interpretation has strong support in Scriptural exegesis and in Tradition.” (p. 189) But the Church cannot make a doctrinal declaration that contradicts the teaching of her own Catechism. The Catechism is a “statement of the Church’s faith and of catholic doctrine” (Pope John Paul II, Fidei Depositum, § 3), not a handbook of theological opinion. As “a sure norm for teaching the faith” (Ibid), it is free from error in matters of faith and morals.

For the benefit of his Catholic readers, out of respect for the Church and her Doctors, and for the sake of logical consistency, I hope that in a future edition of his book Father Warkulwiz will concede the validity and reasonableness of less than strictly literal interpretations of yom in Genesis chapter 1. It is not reasonable to oblige Catholics to accept a particular theological opinion, whatever merits it may possess. Maintaining the proper distinction between binding Church doctrine and matters of non-binding theological opinion is essential to an accurate and fair presentation of traditional Catholic creation doctrine and theology.


Copyright © 2011 by Justin D. Soutar.

Fr. Warkulwiz did send me a written response, which I reprint below for the sake of fairness and out of respect for a Catholic priest:

Reply to J. Soutar on the Meaning of Yom in Genesis One

Mr. Soutar seems to be saying that since St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas felt free to deny the interpretation of yom in Genesis One as a literal natural day, we are free today to interpret yom in any symbolic way that we please. That is simply not so. First of all, Augustine and Aquinas held that everything in the universe was created at once. That is not the interpretation pressed on us today. Today we are told that yom means an immensely long undefined period of time because the universe as we see it today was not created that way but slowly evolved from an amorphous state over billions of years. St. Augustine and St. Thomas would have certainly found that interpretation outrageous. Augustine castigated those who stretched the length of the history of the world beyond its biblical limits.

Second, we do not necessarily have the same freedom of interpretation today that Augustine and Aquinas had. Influenced by the false science of his day, St. Thomas also denied the Immaculate Conception. The Church eventually declared that such denial is not merely unreasonable and unjustifiable but heretical. That is not an insult to St. Thomas. It is a development of doctrine. I am saying that the issue of the meaning of yom has reached the point in development that no one can provide a theological, philosophical or scientific reason good enough to justify denying its literal interpretation as a natural day. One must have a very good reason, not just an opinion, for denying that God created the world in six natural days because the literal interpretation is the one favored by the Church in light of the hermeneutical principle of Leo XIII. The 1909 decree of the Pontifical Biblical Commission did not nullify that principle but presumes it. The Catechism of the Catholic Church in saying that the six days are symbolic is not affirming that a purely symbolic meaning (as opposed to a symbolic meaning superimposed on the literal meaning) is permissible because the Catechism must be read in the light of Catholic Tradition, which was formally elucidated by Leo XIII. I did not say that such denial is heretical but that it is unreasonable and unjustifiable. But it is possible that some time in the future if the Church may formally affirm the literal interpretation of yom as she did the Immaculate Conception. Its denial would then be heretical. This issue is immensely important because denial of the six natural days of creation lends support to the atheistically-inspired notion of universal evolution; which has poisoned the faith of many Catholics, leading them eventually to declare that there are errors in genuine passages of Sacred Scripture.

Rev. Victor P. Warkulwiz, M.S.S.
October 2011

I think my original argument stands. Note that I was NOT saying that Catholics are free to interpret yom any way they want to but that they should interpret it as the Church does--and the Church, in her own official Catechism, has unambiguously sided with the symbolic interpretation of yom. The Church will never formally affirm the literal interpretation of yom as binding doctrine of the faith because it isn't. The Immaculate Conception, on the other hand, is a binding doctrine of the faith, so comparing it to the meaning of yom is comparing apples to oranges. Fr. Warkulwiz claims that "the Catechism must be read in the light of Catholic Tradition," but the Catechism itself does not say this. The Catechism itself is a synthesis of 2,000 years of Catholic tradition; it contains exactly what the Church teaches and has always taught, and as an authoritative text of the Magisterium it can stand on its own.

The actual content of the Church's creation doctrine is pretty basic and succinct. The Church teaches that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1); that God created "all things visible and invisible," including the universe, angels, and human beings; and that He brought them into existence ex nihilo (out of nothing). That is the literal and historical truth about creation that the Church has always upheld and will always uphold. However, the Church leaves open the question of how God accomplished his work of creation. He could have done it instanteously, or in six literal days, or in six thousand years, or in six million, or even in six billion years. After all, He is God. He is all-powerful. The point is that He did it. That is our faith. How He did it is a mystery. We don't know for sure how he did it because we weren't there. Only God was there. The divinely inspired Genesis creation account is not meant to give us scientific data or to satisfy our curiosity about how it happened, but to teach us the essential truth that God created the world. It's not the business of the Church or of science to explain how God created the world. That is purely a matter for philosophical speculation, theological opinion, and personal preference. I personally happen to be a young-earth creationist who favors the literal six-day creation scenario. Many Catholic leaders today happen to be theistic evolutionists who believe that God carried out His creative work through gradual evolutionary processes over an immensely long period of time. Both positions are ultimately opinions, neither of which affects the basic principle of our faith that God created the world and holds it continuously in existence.

Many atheists today use the theory of evolution as scientific support for their absurd idea of the universe having come into existence without a Creator. But the theory of evolution no more proves their atheism than young-earth creationism proves my faith in God the Creator. How the world came into existence is irrelevant to the central issue here. The crux of the matter is: Do we believe in an all-powerful God who created the world, or do we not? That is the important question facing us, the crucial choice we must make.

It's not the theory of evolution that threatens the faith of individual Catholics. It's the godless, radically secular social and political ideology of evolutionism that does that. As Cardinal Christoph Schonborn (a leading theistic evolutionist) has pointed out, the problem is not Darwin, but Darwinism. Darwin chose to believe in the Creator of the world. The Darwinists, by contrast, have chosen to reject faith in God the Creator.

Catholic biblical fundamentalists and traditionalists like Fr. Warkulwiz are certainly well-intentioned and sincere. They are passionately devoted to Catholic doctrine and anxious to carefully preserve and vigorously defend that doctrine, and their writings have a certain appeal to those of like mind. The problem is, they have a flawed understanding of some of the teachings of the Church and they look to their own flawed understanding, rather than to the Magisterium (the Pope and the bishops in union with him), as the ultimate authority on what the Church teaches. Deep down they don't really trust that the Holy Spirit is continuing to protect the modern Church from teaching error in the post-Vatican II era, and they see themselves as the few faithful guardians of true Catholic doctrine. The danger of Catholic biblical fundamentalism as exemplified by a book like The Doctrines of Genesis 1-11 is that ordinary lay Catholics in union with Rome will become subtly and unconsciously infected by the traditionalist mentality and begin to distrust the Magisterium, listening more to what the traditionalists are saying than to what the Church is saying. By devouring traditionalist literature and neglecting official magisterial texts like the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a person's Catholic faith can become seriously distorted and he or she may end up breaking off from full communion with the Catholic Church due to refusal to accept certain binding Church teachings (such as that the Holy Spirit protects the Church from teaching error).

Due to the immense importance of us Catholics being properly formed in our faith, I would strongly discourage reading Fr. Warkulwiz's book. Instead I would like to recommend Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith by Cardinal Schonborn. Another great read is The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Dr. Francis Collins, a convert to Christianity and world-renowned DNA expert who was appointed a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI.

Quote of the Day

"O my God, Trinity whom I adore...grant my soul peace; make it your heaven, your beloved dwelling, and the place of your rest. May I never abandon you there, but may I be there, whole and entire, completely vigilant in my faith, entirely adoring, and wholly given over to your creative action."

--Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity

Sentinels of the Shenandoah

I was inspired to write this little poem one winter morning a  few years ago by the beauty of the fog-shrouded, tree-clad mountain slopes of western Virginia, where I came to live in 2008.

Sentinels of the Shenandoah
by Justin Soutar -- 11/26/2012

The world is gray and white
   On a soundless winter morning.
Wrapped in mist and shrouded in fog,
   The mighty ranks of trees
Stand guard over the valley
   From their mountainside post.
Dimly, I can see them
   All crowded together,
The great white pines and cedars,
   Spruce and hemlock,
Oak, maple and hickory,
   Walnut and hornbeam,
Towering into the gloom
   Like hundreds of church steeples;
Ever so still and silent,
   Their presence never failing.


Copyright © 2012 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.

Quote of the Day

What does it mean, then, to be a Christian? It means to continue to receive and accept the witness of the apostles, the eyewitnesses of our salvation. It means to believe in Christ with the same faith that was born in them from the works and the words of the risen Lord.

This is what the Apostle John writes: "The way we can be sure of our knowledge of him is to keep his commandments. The man who claims, 'I know him,' without keeping his commandments, is a liar; in such a one there is no truth. But whoever keeps his word, truly has the love of God been made perfect in him" (1 Jn. 2:3-5).

The apostle is speaking of a living faith. Faith is living when it bears the fruit of good works. These are the works of love. Faith is alive through God's love in us. Love is expressed in the observance of the commandments. There can be no contradictions between the knowledge of "I know him" and the actions of one who confesses Christ. Only he who completes his faith with good works remains in the truth.

--Blessed John Paul II

Happy Thanksgiving

Perhaps more than any other national holiday, Thanksgiving demonstrates America's fundamental identity as a Christian nation, a nation "under God." The Pilgrims who celebrated the first Thanksgiving in October of 1620 were deeply religious Christians who had sailed to this land primarily in order to worship God freely without government interference. They thanked God for the blessings of liberty as well as for the blessing of an abundant harvest that he bestowed upon them. Four centuries later, the Thanksgiving tradition that they started continues up to this day. More than two hundred years after that first Thanksgiving celebration, during a time of great national crisis, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln officially instituted Thanksgiving as an annual national holiday set on the fourth Thursday of November.

Today our nation is again in crisis as our federal government, led by President Barack Obama and his cohorts in the U.S. Senate, is now attacking the very foundation of religious liberty on which America was built by legislating immorality and attempting to reshape our country into a radically secularist nation without God. Thus our country's fundamental identity risks being lost. We must heed the warnings of our Founding Fathers that without the indispensable supports of religion and morality, our liberty will soon collapse. Faith in God and the observance of his Law is the foundation of our religious freedom as well as of all our other freedoms.

We should also gratefully recall the sacrifices of those who fought and gave their lives to defend the rights to life and religious freedom that we enjoy today. Their faith and courage should inspire us to continue praying and working for the end of legalized abortion, the repeal of the HHS mandate, and the defeat of radical secularism, so that this great nation will once again be "one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Happy Thanksgiving.

Thought for the Day

If yesterday's Scripture quote was directed at our government leaders, today's should jar the rest of us out of our comfortable complacency:

"But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

--St. Luke 18:8

Thought for the Day

As I present today's little reflection from the word of God, I am thinking particularly of President Obama and the five Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of Obamacare.

Hear therefore, ye kings, and understand: learn, ye that are judges of the ends of the earth.

Give ear, you that rule the people, and that please yourselves in multitudes of nations:

For power is given you by the Lord, and strength by the Most High, who will examine your works, and search out your thoughts:

Because being ministers of his kingdom, you have not judged rightly, nor kept the law of justice, nor walked according to the will of God.

Horribly and speedily will he appear to you: for a most severe judgment shall be for them that bear rule.

--Wisdom 6:2-6 (Douay-Rheims Version)

Thought for the Day

And the apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith." The Lord replied, "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you."

--St. Luke 17:5-6

Quote of the Day

When reading a little inspirational book called Reasons for Hope, I recently came across an excellent quote for the Year of Faith from our late great hero in the faith, Blessed John Paul II. When reading it, keep in mind that Pope Benedict XVI calls the Year of Faith "a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the World." This beautiful quote concisely summarizes what the Year of Faith is all about:

The proclamation of the word of God has Christian conversion as its aim: a complete and sincere adherence to Christ and his gospel through faith. Conversion is a gift of God, a work of the Blessed Trinity. It is the Spirit who opens people's hearts so that they can believe in Christ and "confess him" (see 1 Cor. 12:3); of those who draw near to him through faith Jesus says: "No one can come to me unlesss the Father who sent me draws him" (Jn. 6:44).

From the outset, conversion is expressed in faith which is total and radical, and which neither limits nor hinders God's gift. At the same time, it gives rise to a dynamic and lifelong process which demands a continual turning away from "life according to the flesh" to "life according to the Spirit" (see Rom. 8:3-5). Conversion means accepting, by a personal decision, the saving sovereignty of Christ and becoming his disciple.

--Blessed John Paul II

Another Four Years of the Obama Nightmare

Sadly, President Obama--the most radically secularist and pro-abortion president in American history who has dared to attack our fundamental religious liberties and conscience rights with the monstrosity known as Obamacare while utterly neglecting to help the average American deal with the worst recession in 80 years--has managed to pull re-election out of the hat with 50 percent of the American popular vote to 48 percent for Romney.

This isn't just a defeat for Mitt Romney--it's a defeat for the innocent unborn, a defeat for religious liberty, a defeat for traditional marriage, a defeat for our economy and jobs, a defeat for responsible limited government and lower taxes, a defeat for our Constitution, and a defeat for the Christian moral and ethical values that made America great.

Our nation is in big trouble. God help us.

Tomorrow is Election Day

This is a pivotal election in American history. The right to life of the innocent unborn, our religious liberties and conscience rights, traditional marriage, our economy, and the future of our country are on the line. We can't just sit idly by and watch our nation go to the dogs. Edmund Burke once said, "All that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." In our case, all that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good people fail to exercise their right to vote.


As Catholics and as American citizens, it's our duty to God, our neighbor and our country to vote for candidates who stand for what we believe in.

Let's do it.

Quote of the Day

"In giving us his Son, his only and definitive Word, God spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word, and he has no more to say."

--St. John of the Cross

Thought for the Day

If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him.

--Romans 6:8-9

Quote of the Day

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because I see everything by it."

- C.S. Lewis

Snow in October? AGAIN?

Yep. Here we are--it's the end of October, and the snowflakes are blowing and falling as I write this. It's a strange phenomenon, but it's real. This is the second year in a row that we've had snow in late October. This is an unusual occurrence, even here in the mountains of western Virginia. Last year we had about half an inch of accumulation, enough to cover everything; this year we have just a trace of accumulation (so far--we might get more tonight, they say). We haven't even had our first hard frost yet. Must be global warming. (Just kidding.)

Seriously, I think this odd weather has something to do with Solar Cycle 24. If you're not familiar with this, Google it and read a little about it. The Sun has a complex 11-year sunspot cycle, and there is clear scientific evidence--enough to make a convincing theory--that this cycle somehow profoundly affects Earth's weather. Sunspots are magnetically charged regions of the sun's surface from which loops of plasma originate. They're cooler than the surrounding surface areas and have a brownish look to them. They always occur in pairs due to the laws of magnetic polarity, and they can be anywhere from one to three times the size of Earth. Scientific observations show that when there are fewer sunspots, Earth gets colder; when there are more, Earth gets warmer. Scientists don't understand the mechanism by which changes in magnetic solar activity produce climate changes on Earth, but there is clearly a link between the two. I intend to research this topic further and eventually present my findings in a research paper.

Anyway, the current sunspot cycle is rather atypical compared to previous cycles. If you look at a graph or diagram showing the sunspot cycles over the last 100 or so years, you'll notice that the cycles in the early and mid-twentieth century were pretty well defined, with the number of sunspots tending to rise and fall pretty evenly over the course of an 11-year cycle. However, in more recent cycles--those in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century--the sunspot patterns have been getting noticeably more irregular and chaotic. In the current cycle so far--the 24th since scientists have been keeping track--the number of sunspots looks more like a roller coaster than a smooth up-and-down curve. I think this has something to do with our irregular weather patterns and, more broadly, with climate change. I suspect that our weather is changing because the Sun is changing. It's not as stable and unchanging as we often perceive it. Some people may not like to hear this idea, but it may be true just the same. I'm not denying that human activity plays a role in climate change, but I'm convinced that that's only part of the story. The Sun is the primary engine that drives Earth's weather, and it is unquestionably the single most powerful influence on our weather and climate--overwhelmingly more powerful than any other influences.

So don't get worked up about climate change. It's basically a natural phenomenon triggered by solar change, with artificial CO2 emissions being only a minor contributing factor. And we shouldn't worry about the Sun changing either. God is in charge of the Sun and the Earth and everything in the universe. He created the universe and holds it in the palm of His hand. He loves us and we should trust in Him. And He wants us to continue exploring the amazing complexity and mystery of his awesome creation.

The peak of Solar Cycle 24 comes next year, so we can expect plenty more weird weather along with spectacular auroras, powerful solar flares and things like that. Hang on tight and enjoy the ride!

Disappearing Bees: The Wireless Culprit

On September 18, 2011, Italy’s largest agricultural cooperative donated eight beehives containing 500,000 honeybees to Pope Benedict XVI. Given in honor of the Italian Catholic Church’s Day for the Protection of Creation, the bees from Coldiretti currently reside on the pontifical farm at Castel Gandolfo. Farmers around the world are concerned about the honeybee, whose global population has declined sharply and mysteriously in the last ten or so years. As Coldiretti president Sergio Marini observed, bees "play a vital role in the planet's ecosystem and their disappearance would have disastrous consequences for health and the environment; a third of human food production depends on crops pollinated by insects, 80 percent of which are bees." In recent years, beekeepers across North America and Europe have reported devastating losses of anywhere from 25 to 100 percent of their colonies.

The official term for this massive worldwide disappearance of honeybees is Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). It’s a bizarre and unprecedented phenomenon characterized by worker bees deserting their hives nearly en masse, leaving only the queen and her capped brood behind. Without its worker bees and their vital honey production, a bee colony cannot survive. Scientists all over the world are researching a variety of potential causes of CCD including pests (such as the Varroa mite), disease, viruses, pesticides, genetically modified crops, stress, poor nutrition, and climate change. However, none of these factors can adequately explain the unique characteristics of CCD, such as its rapid spread and simultaneous appearance on multiple continents. Attacks by pesticides, viruses or parasites would result in piles of dead bees in the hives, whereas the hives are simply left vacant in the case of CCD. Climate change has been much too gradual to account for the disorder, and harsh winters can explain only part of the bee die-off. The other possible causes (GM crops, stress, poor nutrition) are not factors in every area affected by CCD.

In fact, two pioneering research scientists—Dr. George Carlo and Milt Bowling—may have already identified the main cause of CCD. Dr. Carlo is an award-winning American public health expert who ran the wireless industry’s six-year, $28.5 million study on the health effects of cellular phones back in the 1990s. Milt Bowling of Canada has been involved with the cell phone safety issue since 1997 and has been working with Dr. Carlo on the issue since 2005. According to these two researchers, the culprit in the world’s current honeybee decline is the enormous and continuing proliferation of information-carrying radio waves (ICRW) in the global environment due to the massive 21st-century shift to wireless technology. As a result of their research carried out both independently and in concert, Dr. Carlo and Bowling are convinced that man-made wireless signals—particularly from cell phones and their transmitters—interfere with the bees’ natural navigation and communication capabilities.

A honeybee’s navigational system is comprised of small magnetite crystals in its abdomen, which allow it to tune like a radio into the earth’s electromagnetic field. When a worker bee leaves the hive to gather pollen, it senses this field and uses it to calculate its position relative to the hive much as a GPS system works. This enables it to return to the colony with its precious load, even from more than a mile away. But various independent studies show that the bees lose this crucial ability to navigate when artificial electromagnetic fields are introduced into their environment.

In one study conducted in 2006 at Landau University in Germany, two beehives were exposed to radiation from a cordless phone and two were left unexposed. Twenty-five bees were then taken from each hive and released about 2500 feet away. Within 32 minutes, 16 bees returned to one of the unexposed hives and 17 to the other, while only six bees returned to one of the exposed hives after 38 minutes and none at all made it back to the other. Moreover, after nine days the bees in the exposed hives had constructed 21 percent fewer cells in the hive frame than the bees in the unexposed hives.

Another study was carried out in 2009 by Dr. Daniel Favre, a retired biologist of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. He placed mobile phone handsets near beehives, activated them for specific periods of time, and analyzed the bees’ resulting behavior. Favre found that activation of the phones triggered the worker piping signal, which is a sign of distress, and that the colony’s activities did not return to normal until some time after the phone activation had ceased.

In a third study conducted in 2010, researchers at Panjab University in Chandigarh, India fitted cell phones to a beehive and activated them twice a day for 15 minutes each. Within three months, honey production had ceased, the queen laid half as many eggs, and the hive population had fallen significantly.

While this research provides strong support for a link between wireless transmissions and CCD, a definitive study is still needed to conclusively prove the theory (and convince skeptics). Dr. Carlo and Bowling have designed a comprehensive research program to do just that, but it remains on hold due to lack of funding from North American and European governments. Furthermore, the highly successful mobile phone industry is in denial that the widespread global use of their product could be placing bees at risk—even though the spread pattern of CCD is remarkably consistent with trends in cell phone use during the last ten years.

Meanwhile, the number of honeybees worldwide continues to decline drastically, presenting an urgent environmental challenge. As Marini noted above, honeybees are one of the major insect pollinators essential to human food production, so their disappearance would be a disaster for the world’s food supply. Without pollination by bees, many fruits, vegetables, nuts and herbs simply could not be produced.

What can—and should—we do about this? If information-carrying radio waves are indeed disrupting honeybee colonies around the globe, the obvious solution would be a planet-wide reduction in wireless transmissions, particularly from mobile phones and their supporting infrastructure. By virtue of their sheer numbers (well over five billion worldwide), cell phones generate far more ICRW than all other wireless sources put together. Thus, cutting back global cell phone transmissions along with careful regulation of other wireless technology would allow the world’s honeybee population to stabilize and begin recovering. Individuals, communities, governments and non-government organizations should work together to address this issue and take up the challenge of saving the bees before it’s too late. The future of life on earth depends on it.


Copyright © 2012 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.


REFERENCES

1. “Benedict XVI Receives Half Million Bees,” ZENIT, Sep. 21, 2011. Oct. 24, 2011

2. “Pope: Christians Should Unite to Care for Creation, Poor,” Worldwatch Institute. Oct. 28, 2011

3. Milt Bowling, “Bees and the Future of Food,” Health Action Magazine, Fall 2007. Oct. 21, 2011


4. Ibid; Milt Bowling, “Where are the Birds and Bees?”, Health Action, 2007. Oct. 21, 2011

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid. (Original source: Hermann Stever et al, “Verhaltensanderung der Honigbiene Apis mellifera unter elektromagnetischer Exposition” [Electromagnetic Radiation: Influences on Honeybees (Apis mellifera)], University of Landau, Feb. 2006. Nov. 7, 2011 <http://agbi.uni-landau.de/material_download/elmagexp_bienen_06.pdf>)

7. Daniel Favre, “Mobile phone-induced honeybee worker piping,” Kokopelli Association,
April 13, 2011. Oct. 21, 2011 http://www.kokopelli.asso.fr/documentation/favre.pdf

8. Sasha Herriman, “Study links bee decline to cell phones,” CNN World, June 30, 2010. Oct. 24, 2011

9. Wikipedia contributors, “List of countries by number of cell phones in use,” Wikipedia, Oct. 21, 2011. Oct. 24, 2011

Christmas with Mother Teresa: A True Story

Imagine working eighteen hours a day, every day for several months straight. Imagine baking, packing, shipping, unloading, and distributing two million loaves of bread a day. Imagine feeding, clothing and sheltering millions of homeless and needy visitors from another country. Imagine doing all this with Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta—and then spending your Christmas with her through an unforeseen twist of circumstances.

These are the actual experiences of a man whom I know personally. As an overseas Program Director for Catholic Relief Services (CRS), this man spent nine years in India working closely with Blessed Mother Teresa. In 1971, with her assistance, he organized and directed a tremendous humanitarian relief program for millions of East Pakistani refugees. Then, at the climax of this great effort, he and Mother Teresa unexpectedly shared a providentially arranged Christmas with a very special visitor: a well-known American Catholic archbishop whose cause for sainthood is now underway.

A few years ago, I was blessed with the incredible opportunity to interview this living witness of Mother Teresa’s sanctity and hear his own firsthand account of the amazing events in which he was involved—a true story never before told. I found it to be a dramatic, inspiring and deeply moving account of great human tragedy and suffering illuminated and uplifted by the gentle touch of Christ’s redeeming love.

Catholic Relief Services spent tens of millions of dollars to bring the East Pakistani refugees necessary food, water, clothing, soap, shelter, and medical aid, but Mother Teresa gave them what no money could buy—Christian love and compassion. “She was truly a mother to everybody, and of course the people responded to that,” the former CRS Program Director tells me in one of our interviews. He also recalls how the refugees in each camp would eagerly await Mother Teresa’s arrival regardless of the time of day or night. Whenever he and she arrived at a camp, the refugees would courteously welcome them according to Bengali custom by placing garlands of flowers on their shoulders and offering them food and drink. “Especially when it’s Mother Teresa because she was the big honored guest, so just by association I would get my share too,” chuckles the Director.

However, his fondest memory of the relief program is his unique Christmas spent with Mother Teresa and her famous visitor from the United States. “Mother Teresa had a wonderful opportunity that day to demonstrate to everybody just how a saint would operate on Christmas Day,” he remarks, “because I’m sure that she would have had a totally different type of a Christmas Day herself.”

More than forty years after it happened, this powerful true story will finally be told to the world as it was told to this author in a new book currently being written. The book, entitled My Christmas with Mother Teresa, will tell you who that surprise Christmas visitor was, why he came to visit Mother Teresa and the refugees, and how the CRS Program Director was personally affected by spending Christmas with two such holy individuals. (The identity of this now retired Program Director will be revealed in the published book.)

The book will also delve into the historical background of the East Pakistani refugee crisis to answer common questions such as: What prompted ten million East Pakistani refugees to flee into India in a single year? How did India and the world respond to the massive refugee crisis? How did the crisis end? What happened to the refugees after the crisis?

Additionally, My Christmas with Mother Teresa will feature a variety of colorful, entertaining, inspiring, and amazing personal anecdotes and experiences of the CRS Program Director culled from memories of his nine years’ life and work in India and his personal friendship with the “Saint of Calcutta.”

Information about the book’s publisher, release date, and availability will be posted on my Twitter page at http://twitter.com/justinsoutar as well as right here on my blog.

Let's Keep Our Arms Up

Our first Mass reading today from the Second Book of Kings (Fourth Book of Kings in the Douay-Rheims Bible) offers several parallels to our own time. Ezekiah was King of Judah during a time when that kingdom was in decline. For many years now, the people of Israel had been unfaithful to the covenant God had made with their fathers, living in sin and worshiping idols. In punishment for this, God had permitted their once-great kingdom to be divided into two separate kingdoms (Israel and Judah) both governed by a succession of more or less wicked and mediocre kings. Ezekiah, however, was a good king who was pleasing to God—in fact, one of the best since David (cf. 2 Kings 18:3). He had made serious and partially successful efforts to restore true worship of God and to convert the people of Judah back to holy lives in fidelity to the Mosaic law.

In today’s reading, Sennacherib, the powerful pagan king of the Assyrians, is preparing to march on the Holy City of Jerusalem with a strong army and destroy the Temple. He had sent a blasphemous messenger to Jerusalem who proudly boasted that the all-mighty Sennacherib would decimate the city and that the God of the Hebrews could not possibly prevent this (see 2 Kings 18:17ff). This wicked messenger employed psychological warfare, yelling to the Jerusalemites that they should cease their useless prayers for deliverance and instead surrender to the King of the Assyrians who was going to conquer them anyway.

Ezekiah was horrified and deeply saddened by such blasphemy, and he refused to be swayed by it. He humbled himself, rending his garments and putting on sackcloth, and he prayed fervently to God that Jerusalem would be delivered from the hands of the King of the Assyrians. The prophet Isaiah then came to him and told him that God had heard his prayer and would deliver Jerusalem. He did so in spectacular fashion: as the army of Sennacherib camped around the city the night before the planned siege, an angel of God killed 185,000 of the Assyrian troops. The next morning, Sennacherib left for home without so much as touching Jerusalem.

This story has several lessons to teach us today. Like the ancient kingdom of Judah, America today is a once-great empire in decline. For decades we Americans in general and Catholics in particular have been unfaithful to God in our private and public lives, killing millions of our own children through legalized abortion, using contraception in violation of Church teaching, growing weak in religious belief and lax in the practice of our faith, voting for “Catholic” representatives who support abortion and homosexual “marriage,” and worshipping a variety of idols—politics, sports, sex, power, pleasure, money, fame, possessions, etc. And now, in punishment for all this evil, God is allowing a wicked, radically secularist, anti-religious federal government to force employers to provide immoral services—contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients—to their employees in the name of “health care”. Perhaps this is what we justly deserve.

However, God in His Infinite Mercy is always willing to hear the prayers of those who humble themselves and sincerely repent—even in a time of general crisis and decline. Many Americans have now turned away from these evils and are living lives pleasing to God. Like Ezekiah, they are aghast at the horrible sacrilege a powerful leader is attempting to perpetrate in their land. Like Sennacherib, who attempted to desecrate Israel’s most hallowed sanctuary, the Holy Place of the Temple, President Obama and his cohorts are attempting to violate our most cherished liberties—freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, enshrined in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

Note that when threatened with destruction, Ezekiah did not take up arms for military defense. Rather, he lifted his arms in confident prayer to the all-powerful God. There may come a time to take up arms in defense of our most cherished freedoms, but now is not the time for that. This is fundamentally a spiritual battle we are now fighting here in the United States, not just a political or legal battle, and thus it requires spiritual weapons. This is a war between good and evil. Those on the side of evil trust in the power of the Obama administration, the media, and their wealthy lobbyist backers. Those on the side of good must place their entire trust in God—which means praying and fasting for the restoration of religious liberty. That’s what this Fortnight for Freedom is all about. If we humble ourselves and turn to God in earnest, fervent prayer as King Ezekiah did, he will certainly hear our prayers and deliver us from the evil now threatening our nation. If we keep our arms raised in prayer to God as Moses did (cf. Exodus 17:10-13), we will ultimately be victorious—no matter how long and difficult the struggle may be.

The Fortnight for Freedom Has Begun!

In response to current grave threats to religious liberty in America, especially that presented by the Obama administration's unjust contraceptive mandate, our Catholic bishops have declared a Fortnight for Freedom--a national two-week period of prayer, fasting, education, and advocacy in support of religious freedom. It began yesterday, June 21, and will run through July 4, our great national holiday of Independence Day. The event officially began last night at 7 PM Eastern Time with an Opening Mass celebrated at the National Shrine of the Assumption in Baltimore, Maryland, and it will officially end with a Closing Mass celebrated July 4 at 12:10 PM ET at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. The latter event will be televised nationally on EWTN. You can find out more about this special event by clicking here and scrolling down to where it says "A Fortnight for Freedom"; the bishops have more good info and resources here as well as at Fortnight4Freedom.org. You can participate in the special activities your local parish is offering, which will vary from parish to parish. You can also sign up to participate in the Virtual Vigil for Religious Liberty that the Catholic Advocate is offering. EWTN is airing special programming throughout this time and has set up a new website devoted entirely to religious liberty, so be sure to check those out as well.

As a younger American Catholic, it's refreshing to see the excellent leadership our bishops are showing on this issue. They have courageously risen up and are standing united to meet this challenge, sounding the alarm and speaking the truth as befits successors of the Apostles and patriotic citizens. They deserve our wholehearted support and thanks, and let's remember to keep them in our prayers too. Their example should encourage us to fulfill our own duties as lay Catholics and citizens to be present and active in the public square in defending the religious freedom and conscience rights of all Americans. In this battle for religious freedom, prayer is our most important weapon, but political activism is essential as well. As Catholics we must pray, and as citizens we must act. Prayer and action have to go together if this effort is to be successful.

I find it significant that the U.S. Supreme Court will be issuing a landmark decision on religious liberty right in the middle of the Fortnight for Freedom. I think Divine Providence has a hand in this. As our justices decide the constitutionality of the sweeping new healthcare legislation underpinning HHS mandate, millions of Catholics across our nation will be praying and fasting for the protection of religious liberty. Prayer and fasting are powerful spiritual weapons that can change the course of history, especially when they are taken advantage of en masse as is happening right now. Let's continue to pray that the Holy Spirit will grant wisdom to our judges and inspire them to make the right decision on the mandate, i.e., to uphold our Constitution and protect our First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

With firm trust in Divine Providence and under the reassuring protection of our Immaculate Mother Mary, Patroness of the United States, let us join together in prayer, fasting, and political action for the restoration and protection of the religious liberty on which America was founded. And let's bear in mind that no matter what happens, we win in the end through the power of Christ's Cross and Resurrection.

I'll close with two religious liberty quotes from America's Founding Fathers. The first is from James Madison, often called the “father” of the U.S. Constitution: "There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation. I can appeal to my uniform conduct on this subject, that I have warmly supported religious freedom.” The second is from Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence: “No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.”

Let freedom ring!

On a Very Important Subject

Here's my letter to Steve Neill, Editor of the Catholic Virginian (my diocesan newspaper) regarding the Obama administration's unprecedented attack on the religious freedom of the American people:

May 7, 2012

Dear Editor:

In the article, “Attack on religious liberty said real concern,” which appeared in the April 30 edition of the Catholic Virginian, you stated that “many Catholics have great concern over a perceived attack on religious liberty by the government mandate which would require employers to cover contraceptive services in insurance policies for their employees.” I’m sorry, but this attack is not “perceived”; it is real, and Catholics should indeed be greatly concerned about it. Our Catholic bishops have said as much in their recently issued pastoral letter entitled, “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty” (http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/our-first-most-cherished-liberty.cfm). In this well-written and timely document, the bishops state the following regarding the HHS mandate: “In an unprecedented way, the federal government will both force religious institutions to facilitate and fund a product contrary to their own moral teaching and purport to define which religious institutions are ‘religious enough’ to merit protection of their religious liberty. These features of the ‘preventive services’ mandate amount to an unjust law.”

The bishops are right to call the mandate “unprecedented” and “unjust.” Never before in American history has the federal government ordered religious institutions to violate their own principles. This is a clear violation of the First Amendment to our Constitution, which forbids Congress from making any law that would prohibit the free exercise of religion. Congress overstepped its bounds by passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010, which President Obama signed into law and which requires virtually all employers to include contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs in their health insurance plans. The HHS mandate is simply an affirmation of this new law. Hopefully the Supreme Court, which is currently reviewing the PPACA, will do its duty to rule against the legislation behind the mandate. Recognizing its unconstitutional nature, EWTN, Belmont Abbey College and other Catholic institutions that would be impacted by the mandate have rightly filed lawsuits of their own against the Obama administration to stop it.

Only “houses of worship” and narrowly defined “religious institutions” that serve exclusively members of their own faith are exempted from the HHS mandate. Thus all institutions run by religious believers that serve people regardless of faith—including Catholic orphanages and shelters, schools and universities, hospitals and pharmacies, soup kitchens, and even crisis pregnancy outreach centers—are now forced to provide contraceptive services or referrals for such services. This kind of government compulsion and control of religious entities and of our healthcare system is what one might expect in a Communist country, not in a free nation such as the United States is supposed to be. By attacking religion and denying our conscience rights, the Obama administration has already begun to take our nation down the dark path of totalitarianism.

As American citizens and as Catholics, we cannot afford to simply sit back and allow our most cherished God-given liberty to be swept aside by an unscrupulous and overreaching government with a radically secularist agenda. We must face the reality of what is happening and take action to defend our basic conscience rights and the freedom to publicly practice our religion without government interference—a key freedom on which our nation was founded. Our bishops have called us to prayer, fasting, and political involvement for the restoration of our religious liberty, so that “as Catholics and as Americans we do not have to choose between the two.” Let’s take up the challenge together with courage and perseverance, trusting in God’s help and in the protection of Mary Immaculate, our patroness.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

[signed] Justin Soutar

There was much more I could have said, but I wanted to try to keep this short and to the point.

"Our First, Most Cherished Liberty"

In response to the growing threat to religious freedom in the United States, particularly from (but not only from) the Obama administration, our Catholic bishops have issued a fine comprehensive statement on religious liberty that should be required reading for every American Catholic. It's an eloquently written yet realistic assessment of the dangers being faced not only by Catholics but by all religious believers in the United States. Leaders of other religions have issued similar statements of their own, and many non-Catholics have praised the bishops for taking a strong stand on this vitally important issue.

The document is entitled, "Our First, Most Cherished Liberty."

This is a call to arms.

Read the document.

Easter Reflection from Pope Benedict XVI

Alleluia! He is risen! He is truly risen.

Once again our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI offers a profound and beautiful theological reflection on the meaning of Easter. The pope focuses on the themes of creation, specifically the creation of light, and Easter as the new creation. He also warns of a "darkness that poses a real threat to mankind," identifying this as "[t]he darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values," and presents its antidote, faith, as the "true enlightenment." Here is the full text of his homily given at the solemn celebration of the Easter Vigil in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome on April 7, 2012. Like most of what Pope Benedict writes, it's very rich in content and well worth the ten minutes or so it takes to read. This is from a Vatican translation published by ZENIT.

***
Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Easter is the feast of the new creation. Jesus is risen and dies no more. He has opened the door to a new life, one that no longer knows illness and death. He has taken mankind up into God himself. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God", as Saint Paul says in the First Letter to the Corinthians (15:50). On the subject of Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection, the Church writer Tertullian in the third century was bold enough to write: "Rest assured, flesh and blood, through Christ you have gained your place in heaven and in the Kingdom of God" (CCL II, 994). A new dimension has opened up for mankind. Creation has become greater and broader. Easter Day ushers in a new creation, but that is precisely why the Church starts the liturgy on this day with the old creation, so that we can learn to understand the new one aright. At the beginning of the Liturgy of the Word on Easter night, then, comes the account of the creation of the world. Two things are particularly important here in connection with this liturgy. On the one hand, creation is presented as a whole that includes the phenomenon of time. The seven days are an image of completeness, unfolding in time. They are ordered towards the seventh day, the day of the freedom of all creatures for God and for one another. Creation is therefore directed towards the coming together of God and his creatures; it exists so as to open up a space for the response to God’s great glory, an encounter between love and freedom. On the other hand, what the Church hears on Easter night is above all the first element of the creation account: "God said, ‘let there be light!’" (Gen 1:3). The creation account begins symbolically with the creation of light. The sun and the moon are created only on the fourth day. The creation account calls them lights, set by God in the firmament of heaven. In this way he deliberately takes away the divine character that the great religions had assigned to them. No, they are not gods. They are shining bodies created by the one God. But they are preceded by the light through which God’s glory is reflected in the essence of the created being.

What is the creation account saying here? Light makes life possible. It makes encounter possible. It makes communication possible. It makes knowledge, access to reality and to truth, possible. And insofar as it makes knowledge possible, it makes freedom and progress possible. Evil hides. Light, then, is also an expression of the good that both is and creates brightness. It is daylight, which makes it possible for us to act. To say that God created light means that God created the world as a space for knowledge and truth, as a space for encounter and freedom, as a space for good and for love. Matter is fundamentally good, being itself is good. And evil does not come from God-made being, rather, it comes into existence only through denial. It is a "no".

At Easter, on the morning of the first day of the week, God said once again: "Let there be light". The night on the Mount of Olives, the solar eclipse of Jesus’ passion and death, the night of the grave had all passed. Now it is the first day once again – creation is beginning anew. "Let there be light", says God, "and there was light": Jesus rises from the grave. Life is stronger than death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies. The darkness of the previous days is driven away the moment Jesus rises from the grave and himself becomes God’s pure light. But this applies not only to him, not only to the darkness of those days. With the resurrection of Jesus, light itself is created anew. He draws all of us after him into the new light of the resurrection and he conquers all darkness. He is God’s new day, new for all of us.
But how is this to come about? How does all this affect us so that instead of remaining word it becomes a reality that draws us in? Through the sacrament of baptism and the profession of faith, the Lord has built a bridge across to us, through which the new day reaches us. The Lord says to the newly-baptized: Fiat lux – let there be light. God’s new day – the day of indestructible life, comes also to us. Christ takes you by the hand. From now on you are held by him and walk with him into the light, into real life. For this reason the early Church called baptism photismos – illumination.

Why was this? The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things, but cannot see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going, what is good and what is evil. The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general. If God and moral values, the difference between good and evil, remain in darkness, then all other "lights", that put such incredible technical feats within our reach, are not only progress but also dangers that put us and the world at risk. Today we can illuminate our cities so brightly that the stars of the sky are no longer visible. Is this not an image of the problems caused by our version of enlightenment? With regard to material things, our knowledge and our technical accomplishments are legion, but what reaches beyond, the things of God and the question of good, we can no longer identify. Faith, then, which reveals God’s light to us, is the true enlightenment, enabling God’s light to break into our world, opening our eyes to the true light.

Dear friends, as I conclude, I would like to add one more thought about light and illumination. On Easter night, the night of the new creation, the Church presents the mystery of light using a unique and very humble symbol: the Paschal candle. This is a light that lives from sacrifice. The candle shines inasmuch as it is burnt up. It gives light, inasmuch as it gives itself. Thus the Church presents most beautifully the paschal mystery of Christ, who gives himself and so bestows the great light. Secondly, we should remember that the light of the candle is a fire. Fire is the power that shapes the world, the force of transformation. And fire gives warmth. Here too the mystery of Christ is made newly visible. Christ, the light, is fire, flame, burning up evil and so reshaping both the world and ourselves. "Whoever is close to me is close to the fire," as Jesus is reported by Origen to have said. And this fire is both heat and light: not a cold light, but one through which God’s warmth and goodness reach down to us.

The great hymn of the Exsultet, which the deacon sings at the beginning of the Easter liturgy, points us quite gently towards a further aspect. It reminds us that this object, the candle, has its origin in the work of bees. So the whole of creation plays its part. In the candle, creation becomes a bearer of light. But in the mind of the Fathers, the candle also in some sense contains a silent reference to the Church,. The cooperation of the living community of believers in the Church in some way resembles the activity of bees. It builds up the community of light. So the candle serves as a summons to us to become involved in the community of the Church, whose raison d’être is to let the light of Christ shine upon the world.

Let us pray to the Lord at this time that he may grant us to experience the joy of his light; let us pray that we ourselves may become bearers of his light, and that through the Church, Christ’s radiant face may enter our world (cf. Lumen Gentium, no. 1). Amen.
***

American Catholics, Check This Out

I'd like to recommend an important resource I just discovered to my fellow Catholic citizens of the United States:

the Catholic Advocate Congressional Scorecard.

With this handy tool you can keep track of how your Senators and Representatives in Congress--especially the Catholic ones--vote on the crucial life and marriage issues as well as other issues of importance to Catholic voters. (For example, you can find out how your Senators and Representatives voted yesterday on the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act.)

Take a look!

Greetings from Snowy Virginia!

This past weekend we enjoyed our first good snowstorm of the season, which brought about 10 inches of snow.

Just a Few Thoughts About the Presidential Race

I haven't turned out many articles lately because I've been occupied with the Mother Teresa book and some other things. Nonetheless, I've been thinking about and reflecting a little on what's going on in our country lately, specifically the 2012 race for the presidency which is heating up right now. That's where a blog post comes in: it's a great place to share your random thoughts on a specific topic without having to organize them into a formal article. So here I'd like to share just a few of my thoughts on the presidential campaign.

When I checked the news this morning, I saw the story about former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney winning the Republican primary in Nevada. The mainstream media is making it look like Romney has already clinched the nomination and has "crushed" his rivals. Even before the Nevada election, they produced a poll showing Romney favored by 50 percent of likely voters and Gingrich by 25 percent--a 25-point difference between the two candidates. In the actual election, Romney won 44 percent of the vote, Gingrich 26 percent. That's only an 18-point difference. I get the sense that the mainstream media is pushing Romney and trying to ruin the other contenders, especially Newt Gingrich but also Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Why? Well, for one thing, I think it's because Mr. Romney is a great friend of the Establishment--what our founding fathers called the "moneyed interests." For years now, major corporate enterprises in this country have been manipulating our government (both parties), the economy and the media to promote their own interests. The American people are fed up with this corrupt setup and they want real change, hence the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. But the Establishment hangs on tenaciously and won't give up without a fight. Its members have come up with a pretty smart plan to keep their sinking enterprise afloat: Hey, lots of Americans are unhappy with President Obama, so let's promote a Republican alternative to Obama who is a friend of ours. That way, whether he gets elected or Obama gets reelected, we'll be safe. On the other hand, Gingrich, Paul, and Santorum are friends of the American people, and each represents a threat to the Establishment in some way. All three are staunchly pro-life and anti-Obamacare, which threatens the abortion, pharmaceutical and insurance industries; in addition to that, Paul would abolish the Federal Reserve and income taxes, dramatically downsize the federal government, and end our foreign wars, which would utterly destroy the Establishment. Paul and Gingrich have huge followings, so the mainstream media, which is controlled by the Establishment, is going to do everything it can to try to keep those men from getting anywhere near the White House.

Another reason Romney gets so much media attention is because he is very media savvy and has a lot of money to spend on marketing himself. This guy is not just a politician; he's a practiced businessman, a self-made multimillionaire, and he knows how to sell a product and make mincemeat of the competition. In this case, he's trying to sell himself to the American people as the best candidate for president, spending tens of millions of dollars on glossy ads to exalt himself and push his rivals out of the way. He's very slick and polished. Romney is a rich man, but I have serious doubts about whether he is an honest man. Please forgive my frankness, but Romney seems fake to me. His Establishment connections (notably the one with Obamacare) make him a definite enemy of the Tea Party. As a pro-life president, Romney would be a significant improvement over Obama, but beyond that, I don't see how his presidency would differ much from that of Obama's. When you get down to the important issues facing our country, Romney is surprisingly vague on many of them. His plan for rebuilding our economy, for instance, remains a mystery to me. (Perhaps I need a course in Romneynomics--can anybody out there help?)

On the other hand, Ron Paul has a fine reputation as an absolutely 100 percent honest and consistent man, a man of integrity and truthfulness, who is not part of the Establishment and never has been--and that's saying a lot in today's corrupt political environment. Predictably, that dooms him to chronic mainstream media blackout. However, because of his reputation, Paul still manages to raise millions of dollars through the use of alternative media, especially the Internet. I don't agree with all of his issue positions, but I think a Paul presidency would be enormously beneficial for our country, getting us back to the Constitution and in line with what our founding fathers intended. The reality, though, is that he probably won't win the Republican nomination for president getting "only" 15 or 20 percent of the primary vote in each state.

I think our best choice this primary season is to get behind Newt Gingrich for president. Although he has a few Establishment connections, he is an honest and consistent man like Paul, which can be verified by checking his thirty-year-long voting record. He is a representative of the Tea Party on the issues. He would defeat Barack Obama, defund Planned Parenthood, repeal this Obamacare monstrosity, cut taxes and downsize the government. That's good enough for me. And I believe there is a good chance--despite all of Romney's money and connections and show-biz glitter--that Newt will eventually overtake Romney and win his party's nomination for president. There are still forty-five state primaries left, and I think he can do it. In short, I think this is a classic case of Mother Angelica's axiom, "Don't let the perfect get in the way of the good." Ron Paul is the perfect, Newt Gingrich is the good. The bitter irony is that if we try to hold out for the perfect, taking support away from Gingrich and giving it to Paul, we may wind up with Mitt Romney as the next president of the United States.