The Dawn Patrol

Au revoir, mes amis

With a heart full of gratitude to the many people who have enriched my life over the past seven and a half years while I have maintained this blog, I am going on indefinite hiatus from blogging, effective now.

I have taken blog vacations before, but intend this one to be much longer -- for good, I hope.

When I started The Dawn Patrol in February 2002, it was with the goals of furthering my writing career and becoming a more social creature. With much thanks to readers, I have accomplished both goals beyond my wildest dreams, but now find myself at the point of diminishing returns.

Where writing is concerned, although I continue to freelance and would love to pen a second book if given the opportunity, right now I need to focus on my master's thesis. (I am preparing to enter my second year of M.A. studies and intend to earn a PhD, with the goal of becoming a moral-theology professor at a small Catholic college.) As far as being more social, although my blog continues to bring me into contact with wonderful people, the time I spend online now eats up my life to the point where I cannot well maintain the friendships I have -- let alone build new ones.

To be honest, I have suffered from an Internet addiction for the past several years. Just as there is no such thing for an alcoholic as "one drink," there is no such thing for me as a quick e-mail check and a perusal of the day's online headlines. If I sit down at the computer, I remain glued to it for hours on end. I might excuse myself by telling myself I am reading about important world events or doing research for school. But the truth is that I allow myself to be distracted by whatever comes to mind while I am at the computer, to the point where it becomes a self-medication for loneliness and boredom. And why do I become lonely and bored? Because I waste so much time on the Internet, of course.

St. Thomas Aquinas had a word for this vice that causes one to fail to moderate one's quest for knowledge: curiositas. With all the years of my life that I have spent in online curiositas, I have precious little wisdom to show for it.

There is no guarantee that forgoing blogging will make me become a better student, writer, or friend, but it will make it harder for me to excuse my spending so much time in the virtual world.

* * *

Although the topic has yet to be refined, the current plan for my master's thesis is to compare and contrast modern-day popular catechesis on marriage and sex with preconciliar popular catechesis on those topics. Although I expect to find ways in which modern-day catechists do a better job of explaining what the Church has always believed, my goal is to highlight pre-Vatican II approaches that are worth recovering.

For the preconciliar part of my research, I am using as a model the writings of Father Daniel A. Lord S.J. (1888-1955), particularly those from the collection of his works that is kept in the Special Collections section of the Georgetown University Library.

The Father Lord collection consists of 41 linear feet of material in 30 file boxes. Although it includes photographs and other memorabilia, more than 90 percent of it is Lord's manuscripts, published works, and letters. Even that is but a small fraction of his writings, especially given his prodigious correspondence. The Rev. Godfrey Poage C.P., who worked for Lord's Summer School of Catholic Action, later wrote of him:

In the five summers I spent with him I could not begin to calculate the number of letters he wrote. I recall how once he worked all day on letters as we travelled together across the country in a Pullman. At the station I mailed about forty letters for him and thought he was through for the day. Later that evening he came to my hotel room and inquired: "Do you know where there is a mailbox?" In his hand were seventeen more letters.

Lord's output included some 300 pamphlets, scores of books, and dozens of stage shows, including large-scale musicals whose casts numbered in the hundreds. As Father Poage observed, he often wrote them on the road, taking his typewriter on trains as he traveled the United States and beyond, giving talks and retreats. Sometimes he included his railroad mise-en-scene in his writings, as with the pamphlet "Man says -- 'If I Were God ...", composed June 1940:

As I write these lines, the Pennsylvania train is carrying me through the splendid valleys that lie between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. They are so glorious I find it hard to keep my mind on the work in the typewriter before me. A variegated flow of glorious countryside rushes by my Pullman window: green, warmly clear, friendly hills that rise above foamy streams; farms that alternate ploughed fields with vineyards and the bright beauty of springtime orchards, mountains so rich in minerals that men are endlessly digging up the coal and steel ore that make possible the train I ride, clay pits from which are fashioned bricks and china for the bride’s wedding table, man-made canyons rendering unlimited-supplies of building material; little green and blue lakes that furnish prosperous cities with cool, clear, refreshing water.

Just a moment ago we swung around the famous Horseshoe Curve outside Altoona and, though I have seen it a score of times, I had to stop typing long enough to drink in the beauties that the gracious Creator has laid as surface drape over the rich resources stored away in the earth for the needs and luxuries of His children.

I shudder to think how many fewer boxes would be in Georgetown's Daniel A. Lord collection, had the author lived at a time when he could take a laptop on a train equipped with wi-fi.

* * *

There is one reason for forgoing blogging that I have not mentioned. I believe that, as a student of theology, and as one who hopes to become a better witness for the Faith, it will help me to become less involved in the day-to-day dialogue about "inside Catholic" issues whose importance becomes magnified out of proportion within the blogosphere's insular walls.

Last week, at the Envoy Institute Catholic apologetics conference, I was approached by a young man who told me he had been raised Catholic but was now attending a nondenominational Protestant church. He said he got a feeling out of the Protestant services that was greater than anything he had felt at a Catholic Mass.

"But you realize," I said, " that at the Catholic Mass, Jesus is really and truly present on the altar?"

I expected an argument. Perhaps the man would say, "He's present at my church just as much as He is in the Mass."

But he didn't. He looked at me innocently and said, "No. I didn't know that."

I told him what I could, and urged him to ask one of the priests present at the conference what was really happening during the Mass. He did end up speaking to a priest there -- for about nine hours, I am told, praise God.

The experience left me thinking that perhaps it was time to reorient myself towards learning how to explain the Church's deepest and most basic truths -- and spend less effort writing about things that, while perhaps important, are essentially tangential.

This is, again, something I am learning from Father Lord. Many of his writings, as well as the wonderful audio recording of a sermon he gave shortly before his death, stress the importance of giving people a principle of return. However necessary it is to communicate the Church's teachings regarding the way one should live, I see more and more that the most important thing to share is how to get back to God if one has fled from His arms.

* * *

There are many other things I would like to write, but I need to finish typing in time to get some sleep, and I want to put this behind me so that I may no longer feel a responsibility to blog.

Many, many thanks to everyone who has read this blog, and especially those who have prayed for me. You have done more for me than I could ever express. Everyone who reads this blog has been, and will continue to be, in my prayers. I am forever grateful for your prayers, and for the feedback and encouragement you have given me over the years.

I continue to give talks from time to time, and from now on will update dawneden.com and thrillofthechaste.com with upcoming dates. (The dawneden.com page is updated more frequently, as I update it myself, while thrillofthechaste.com is maintained by a friend.)

With my newfound time, I would like to make more flesh-and-blood friends, as opposed to virtual "Facebook friends." If you are in the Washington, D.C., area and would like to meet, contact me via my feedback form.

I also remain in hope of marriage. My feelings about this have not changed since I wrote an essay on the subject a few years ago. Since writing that piece, I have been encouraged by Father Peter Ryan S.J.'s article on discerning the elements of one's personal vocation. Father Ryan stresses that, while we are all called to holiness, God does not require us to succeed in our calling. What He does ask is that we put our best efforts into whatever He calls us to do. For me, this is a great comfort, because it answers the question of how one can believe one is called to marriage, and yet perhaps never achieve marriage. It is not a issue of "missing one's vocation," as some would have it. It is, in fact, living out one's vocation to strive, and giving God the sacrifice of accepting His mercy.

One last note: Last year, I offered a free copy of The Thrill of the Chaste to any Catholic priest, deacon, seminarian, or vowed religious who requested one. However, I failed to fulfill all the requests. If you requested a copy then and did not receive it, please let me know and I will remedy the error.

Labels: Daniel A. Lord

12:02 AM |

Lying in the hands of God
A guest post by DANIEL T. LUKASIK, Esq.

Growing up in a Polish-Catholic home, I was more of a cultural Catholic than a church going sort. But, my alcoholic father would make us go with him sometimes. I think it gave him a sense of normalcy; a feeling that he could be with other people without throwing down shots of Jack Daniels at a local watering hole. Only later did I develop any real sense of my own spiritual search. I’m still on that journey. I often don’t know “where” I am going, but I am still walking.

All religions have a lot to say on the topic of suffering, but not so much on the topic of depression. I guess you could say that depression is a “form” of suffering. Personally, I think that doesn’t cut it. When someone says to me, “Well, everyone suffers,” I walk away misunderstood and feeling the worse for the encounter. Maybe there’s not much dialogue about depression in our churches because of the raw fear that faith can’t fix everything.

When I first became sick, I didn’t know I had “depression.” I just thought I was having one of life’s many existential emergencies. I would kneel and pray that God would take away my pain. But, it simply didn’t happen that way. Sometimes, I would God an ultimatum: “You either take away this damn pain, or I’m turning my back on you fella.”

I demanded “a” solution, an answer. One wasn’t forthcoming.

As time went on, something happened. I stopped trying to dictate so many of the terms of my recovery from depression. Instead, I just began to surrender myself. I began to see that God was bigger than my depression. It didn’t mean that I wouldn’t suffer now or in the future from it. But a light appeared in the cracks in depression’s armor. There’s a sense of joyous relief that comes when we stop the war against depression. We lay our burden down.

In the new album by the Dave Matthews Band, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, there’s a beautiful song [listen now] called "Lying in the Hands of God." In one part, Dave sings: “If you feel the angels in your head. Teardrop of Joy runs down your face. You will rise.”

At my best, when I feel “the angels in my head,” I weep with joy knowing that depression doesn’t have the final say in my life. Yes, there will be times when I suffer from it. But it doesn’t last.

In her article written for my Web site Lawyerswithdepression.com, Sister Kathryn James Hermes (who suffers from depression), author of A Contemplative Approach to Depression, wrote that prayer leads us to “. . . vulnerability – the learned powerlessness of the truly powerful who can simply be: simply wait, simply be present, simply wonder, simply trust, that much larger hands are holding us and knows for whom we work in view of a much larger plan that we cannot as yet understand.”

Depression is often a jumble of disjointed thoughts. We don’t know what we want or desire and even if we did, we don’t have the will or energy to take that first step towards these goals. But just as our thoughts are jumbled, so is our will –the precious spark of spirit that God blew into us the day we were conceived. It is still there beneath the rumble of our melancholy. We need to turn away from the voice of depression and towards the desire within us that seeks God mercy and direction. Thomas Merton, that great voice of contemplative monasticism, captures better than I can this aspiration in his prayer:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

"But I believe that my desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from this desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I know nothing about it.

"Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Tune out the drumbeat of depression today. We don’t have to understand or control it all. Try lying in the hands of God awhile and rise.

Visit Daniel T. Lukasik's Lawyerswithdepression.com and his blog.

12:01 AM |

Friday, July 17, 2009

Did Sotomayor perjure herself?

That's the question Jill Stanek is asking, in an entry that draws upon my liveblogging.

Comments closed; leave a comment at Jill's blog.

8:24 AM

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Liveblogging the Sotomayor hearings -- Day 4

I am continuing to liveblog the Sotomayor hearings for my employer. She made a bombshell admission today, saying she was aware of the abortion advocacy of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, on whose board she sat for twelve years. See my coverage on the AUL Blog.

Comments closed; comment on the AUL Blog.

11:10 AM

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Liveblogging the Sotomayor hearings -- Day 3

Visit the AUL Blog to see my continuous liveblogging of the Sotomayor confirmation hearings.

Comments closed; leave a comment on the AUL Blog.

1:20 PM

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

More murder by Swiss euthanasia group
A guest post by WILLIAM NEWTON

Reprinted with permission from William Newton's Blog of the Courtier:

I previously wrote about the so-called Schwerzenbach Clinic run by the euthanasia group Dignitas and their horrific practices. Today it has been reported that prestigious conductor Sir Edward Downes, who worked with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Sydney Opera House among other classical music institutions, was killed by Dignitas at this clinic, along with his wife Joan. News reports indicate that Sir Edward, who was 85 years old, was nearly blind and losing his hearing while his wife was 74 years old and suffering from cancer. Their family, in a statement released to the press, appear to accept the decision of the couple to have themselves killed. London's Metropolitan Police are investigating the deaths, but British law does not, apparently, allow them to do much about the situation.

This is yet another sad example of the neo-pagan culture of death in which we have found ourselves. Two intelligent, accomplished people, who are suffering to some degree, decide to take a road to destruction with the help of those who are all too willing to oblige, for a fee. Today, the actions of groups like Dignitas are increasingly treated, not as the crime which they are, but rather a statement about personal choice and preference to the point of absurdity, as if one were selecting between different types of melon at the supermarket.

The creep of nihilism and selfishness into our culture continues unabated, and to what logical end no one can authoritatively say. As the Church teaches, those who decide to commit suicide, assisted or not, are very often so emotionally distressed that we must rely on God's mercy with respect to the fate of their immortal souls. However, this does not mean that we should sit back and allow a group such as Dignitas, which makes a mockery of the very concept of dignity, to run unchecked. I hope that parliamentarians in Britain finally take a serious look at redrafting the applicable laws of their country so that something can be done to go after this heinous organization.

9:37 PM |

AP ups the 'anti'

Just posted to the Americans United for Life blog: "AP Editor: Sotomayor Used 'Pro-Choice Language' (As Does the AP)."

See the rest of my Sotomayor-hearing liveblogging on the AUL Blog.

1:44 PM |

Liveblogging the Sotomayor hearings—Day 2

Keep up with the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings for Obama's Supreme Court nominee via my liveblogging at the Americans United for Life Blog.

Comments closed; comment at the AUL Blog.

12:34 AM

Father Thomas Berg gives in-depth interview on Legion visitation

Father Thomas Berg, president of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, who left the Legion of Christ in April to be incardinated in the Archdiocese of New York, has given an interview to reporter Sandro Magister that is a must-read.

The charity he displays towards the members of the order that was his home for 23 years, and towards its lay arm, Regnum Christi, is deeply affecting, making his insights of the Legion's institutional errors and flaws all the more compelling.

Q: What are the issues you think should change in the internal culture of the Legion, especially related to the recently suppressed "vow of charity", meaning the vow not to criticize one's superiors?

A: At the core of serious problems in the internal culture of the congregation is a mistaken understanding and living of the theological principle - in itself valid - that God's will is made manifest to the religious through his superior. The Legionary seminarian is erroneously led to foster a hyper-focusing on internal "dependence" on the superior for virtually every one of his intentional acts (either explicitly or in virtue of some norm or permission received, or presumed or habitual permissions). This is not in harmony with the tradition of religious life in the Church, nor is it theologically or psychologically sound. It entails rather an unhealthy suppression of personal freedom (which is a far cry from the reasoned, discerned and freely exercised oblation of mind and will that the Holy Spirit genuinely inspires in the institution of religious obedience) and occasions unholy and unhealthy restrictions on personal conscience.

Furthermore, Legionary norms regarding "reporting to," "informing," "communication with," and "dependence on" superiors constitute a system of control and conformity which now must be considered highly suspect given what we know about Fr. Maciel. They furthermore engender a simplistic, and humanly and theologically impoverished notion of God's will (its discernment and manifestation) that breeds personal immaturity.

More seriously, the lived manner in which Legionaries practice obedience is laced with the kind of unquestioning submission which allowed the cult of personality to emerge around the figure of Maciel in the first place and covered for his misdeeds. Legionary seminarians are essentially trained to suspend reason in their obedience and to seek a total internal conformity with all the norms, and to withstand any internal impulse to examine or critique the norms or the indications of superiors.

Granted, the primary motivation behind such living of obedience is the ideal of total "immolation" of oneself for the love of Christ as embodied in the relentless living of all norms and indications of the superiors. This "immolation" of intellect and will is at the heart of the "holocaust" that the Legionary is invited to live for love of Christ and the Church. While the motivation is valid, and generations of Legionaries have pursued this in good faith, in the long run it not only proves profoundly problematic, but also explains the negative personality change which many, if not most, Legionaries undergo over time: the shallowness of their emotional expression, the lack of empathy and inability to relate normally to others in so many contexts, the general sense of their being "out of touch," etc. Only exceptionally do Legionary priests move beyond this, but only thanks to the multiple talents and human gifts they brought with them to the Legion.

Read the full interview.

Comments closed. Please pray for the Legionaries (current and former), the members of Regnum Christi, and the Apostolic Visitators.

12:05 AM

Monday, July 13, 2009

We the papal
U.S. repackaging of Church teachings on sex muddles the message

A guest post by FR. ANGELO MARY GEIGER F.I.

In the light of John Paul II’s landmark teaching on human love in the divine plan, called Theology of the Body, there has been a recent effort in the United States to repackage the Church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality in “more positive” terms.

It is said that the Holy Father was reacting against “prudish Victorian morality,” especially prevalent in the United States, much in the same way that the sexual revolution was a reaction against “sexual repression.” The difference, we are told, is that John Paul II’s teaching consists of a beautiful vision for marriage, not the world’s pernicious justification of lust.

Now while this modern sex-saturated age benefits from the beauty of the truth of God’s original plan for conjugal love, we run the risk of going off the rails if we make prudery the bogeyman for our pornographic age. Modern man is not preoccupied with fear of the body and of sexuality. Modern man is largely afraid of suffering and of dying. This is also true within the Church.

Pope Benedict XVI critiqued modernity’s obsession with erotic love in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, without denying a real problem with prudery:

“Nowadays Christianity of the past is often criticized as having been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed. Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great “yes” to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will."

The answer to this problem is not a new “holy” focus on all things erotic, but a subordination of eros to agape. In the Benedict XVI’s language eros is “possessive love,” not bad in itself, but in need of being put in the service of agape or “oblative” (sacrificial) love. God wants us all to be happy, but the way to happiness is through sacrifice.

The place we learn this more than anywhere else is at the foot of the Cross, where the Hearts of Jesus and Mary are united in the wedding banquet of the Lamb and through which we are united to God by our participation in these mysteries in the reception of Holy Communion. But first of all, the Cross is the mystery of oblative love. The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are opened for all mankind through the suffering and sorrow of their sacrifice. Theirs is a battle against our ancient enemy. While mankind has generally been the loser in this struggle, this new Man and Woman conquer by means of their fortitude, that is, by means of their willingness to face death. This is more agape than eros.

But the fruit of agape is eros, because victory leads to joy and life. Christ the King with His blessed Mother the Queen reign forever in the bliss of heaven because in this place of exile they overcame the enemy. This must be the standard of our own effort to subordinate eros to agape.

Most Catholics are not afraid of their bodies. They are afraid of death. By definition, the virtue of fortitude is endurance in the face of suffering and death. In reference to the cross and our participation in its mystery St. Bonaventure says: “Whoever loves this death can see God because it is true beyond doubt that man will not see me and live” (Itinerarium Mentis in Deum 7.6, quoting Ex. 33:20). Modern man needs to continue in the struggle against lust while striving also to see the beauty of God’s plan for love. The focus of our lives needs to be on the Cross where we find the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

It seems to me that John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and Benedict’s XVI’s analysis of eros and agape fit hand in glove. We should avoid using the profound insights of either pope to conduct a local crusade. In the real battle we cannot afford to lose our focus.

Father Angelo Mary Geiger, a Franciscan Friar of the Immaculate, blogs at MaryVictrix.com.

Labels: Father Angelo Mary Geiger

12:00 AM |

Blogging for life

Visit the Americans United for Life Blog starting this morning at 10 a.m., where I'll be liveblogging the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Comments closed; leave a comment at the AUL Blog.

12:00 AM

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