Pensees Catholiques Collections II: Volume 3

By Edward L. Helmrich

Within the Trinity, only the second Person of the Trinity became man. But the second Person of the Trinity always acts in union with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Jesus was an only child, but he lived in the unit of the Holy Family. On the Cross, Jesus' death alone redeemed mankind, but he was crucified with two others. So, while Jesus is the sole mediator between God and man, we might look for two co-redeemers. And they would be Mary, who stood at the foot of the Cross, offering Jesus and herself to the God, and Joseph, who had died in their company. The existence of co-redeemers has implications for Our Lady of America: this apparition was recently judged as being without error, but not supernatural because Joseph was referred to as a "co-redeemer." From the above, and from the fact that this title is used by some of the Church Fathers for St. Joseph, maybe the status of this apparition can be reassessed. If it is declared supernatural, Mary's statue can be processed to and installed in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., as she requested. If that happens, Mary promised a spiritual renewal of our country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885400602

Book preview

cover.jpg

Pensees Catholiques Collections II

Volume 3

Edward L. Helmrich

ISBN 979-8-88540-059-6 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88540-060-2 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Edward L. Helmrich

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

55 Literature Notes

More Fr. Benedict Groeschel and Jim Lonergan Sayings

Pensées Catholiques54

Epilogue

(c) MCzarnecki 2020

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it (Genesis 2:15). And this is what the Lord does for us when we receive the Eucharist: he tills and defends the garden of our soul through which he walks in the twilight of the day.

To

The C. F. R.'s

Introduction

In parts 1 and 2, I was quite serious out of necessity. But this part is just enjoyable. Who doesn't like the story, apocryphal or not, that when Napoleon kidnapped Pope Pius VII, Napoleon told the pope, Now I will destroy the church, and he replied, If we priests haven't destroyed the church in eighteen hundred years, you won't be able to either? Or when in 2 Samuel 6, Uzzah touches the ark to steady it and is struck dead (prefiguring the perpetual virginity of Mary, the second ark, and giving men pause before touching women unlawfully)? Or that the Son of God is prophesied to be named twice, once by a woman (The virgin…shall call is name Immanuel [Isaiah 7:14 ESV]), and once by a man (to Joseph, You are to give him the name Jesus [Matthew 1:21 NIV])? Or that in a talk James Carroll argued that all post-apostolic conflict in the whole world can be blamed on the model established by the Christians when they quarreled with the Jews and left the temple (even though they were thrown out)? Or that St. Peter was bishop of Antioch, then bishop of Alexandria, then bishop of Rome?

This book contains 3 collections and an epilogue. The first collection is made up of 55 notes on literature and film as examples of interpreting literature and film from a Catholic point of view. In some cases, even if not the primary meaning, they might be in some sense examples of Kierkegaardian indirection in that they speak of truths that wouldn't be heard if spoken in the language of theology. And perhaps they will provide a starting point for some who have not read these books. The second collection is another handful of sayings from the saintly Father Benedict Groeschel and from Jim Lonergan. The third collection is made up of a thousand plus unrelated observations on various topics, justified only on the grounds that they come from a Catholic point of view and are mostly intriguing questions to ponder, perhaps as a starting point for research. It is also hoped that they prove informative for someone interested in learning about the Catholic faith or that 1 or 2 might remove stumbling blocks or misunderstandings that keep someone from considering the faith. As a whole, they remind me of the old Irish joke:

How do you remember all these things?

I pick them up and I'm too lazy to forget them.¹

In the epilogue, I describe what has happened to me over the years for people who knew me and might be curious. Others can safely skip it.

55 Literature Notes

Other Examples of a Catholic Hermeneutic

These are brief examples of considering literature, etc., from a Catholic point of view. As a sidenote, Father Lauder in his program The Catholic Novel (NET TV) praises the Catholic novelists Graham Greene and J. R. R. Tolkien, but they aren't read in school.

Alice in Wonderland—It seems that Lewis Carroll is taking a child through a college and meeting the different professors. The man on the horse near the end, who keeps falling off his horse and getting back on, is possibly the mathematician who starts on a line of reasoning, then runs into contradictions, work them out, and start again, over and over. The innocence, honesty, and charm of the child reminds one of Jesus in Mark 9:37: Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me.

Beckett, Samuel—The words of the characters in Beckett's more extreme novels seem like the words of Jesus on the cross. Unable to move, unable to act, does the person become angry or despairing or detached and contemplative? In general, he seems to want to know what a man or woman would say if everything were stripped away; he's trying to get at what the heart is in itself, the truth of the matter.

In religious terms, one can see his characters as living out the logic of extreme Protestant thought, viz if it's not possible for us to be transformed or made holy in this life, his characters honestly portray our real, sinful, untransformed, damaged selves. If we add the Protestant thought that man lost everything in the fall, became completely depraved and unable to do good, it is always like a ray of sunshine in Russia when one of his characters has the smallest good feeling, says a kind word, or does a small good act, almost as a gentle protest for human-ness. Beckett might be testing the Protestant idea as if it's a science experiment: Is there any goodness left in man after the fall or not? Also, as above, if we are the body of Christ, then recording our thoughts and words while we are incapacitated and near death can be considered the words from the cross or the last words.

Man on Fire (starring Denzel Washington [20th Century Fox, 2004]) is a wonderful intentional modern-day Passion of Christ. The main character, Creasy, is willing to die to overcome a specific evil; and he dies from loss of blood as Christ. As Christ, he dies in the presence of Mary (he holds the medal of the Immaculate Conception). He wears a number 24 baseball jersey, a tribute perhaps to Willie Mays.

Berlin Alexanderplatz (Alfred Döblin, Walter, 1961)—Döblin became a Catholic. He portrays a man who commits a crime, then decides to live a decent life and to never commit a crime again. Yet he finds himself, within a few years, committing crimes again and going to even darker places. Is Döblin saying that one can't live a decent life without the help of grace (and perhaps the sacraments)? Toward the end, Biberkopf, the main character, gives up fighting since he can't stick to the straight and narrow and hears death say to him: You belong to me. You have always been frightened of me, but you belong to me. (This is not true; we belong to God.) It makes the reader very sad when he gives in to evil since one views him with great compassion. The shape of the novel with the long epilogue, a sort of recapitulation of the whole story, certainly brings Joyce's Ulysses to mind, not to mention the darkness and confusion.

Book of Kells—It is the Gospels written in honor of St. Columba and completed in AD 800, 200 years after his death. It was started on the Isle of Iona but was finished in Kells in mainland Ireland because of the attacks of the Vikings. But it is known of course for its calligraphy and its illuminations. Considering the intricate patterns in the Mass, that all of creation is present at the Mass—animals, saints in heaven, etc.—and that the real home of the Bible is in the Mass, it could be that these illuminations aren't just decorations but an expression of the reality of the Mass, with all its complex patterns, within which the gospel is found and proclaimed. (In 1990, The Wild Geese had 12 photographic copies made of the Book of Kells for over $10,000 each and gave one to Iona College, which is on display at Ryan Library.)

(Public domain. KellsFol032vChristEnthroned.jpg)

The Bourne Trilogy (Matt Damon, Universal City, California: Universal Studios, 2002–2007)—The main character is David Webb, who is trying to remember who he was before he changed and became Jason Bourne. His real name, David Webb, brings to mind David in the Old Testament and the historical web of moral and theological teachings. One sees on his original dog tags near the end that he is Catholic. The person he became, or was tricked into becoming, was Jason Bourne. Jason is a name from Greek mythology, and the name Bourne might mean he has been born again, but outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. In his training, he has to kill an unknown man to let go of David Webb. He has to do it to kill his conscience. Perhaps, in a subtle way, the movie and the recovery of David Webb can be seen as a suggestion that our society turn back to the Judeo-Christian tradition, having left it. A comparison between David Webb and Jesus is seen at the end when they search for his body in the river for 3 days but don't find it. Jason Bourne spends 3 years trying to find out who he is, the same length as Jesus' public ministry.

Calculus—Calculus was invented independently by Newton and Leibniz in the 1660s, and it worked wonders, but it lacked a logical foundation. Was it internally consistent? Why are we sure we can do arithmetic with infinitesimal quantities as we do in calculus? It wasn't until Abraham Robinson in 1961 constructed a set, which modeled the real numbers plus the infinitesimals, plus the operations of addition and multiplication, and showed that the operations of calculus could be done on this set that the internal logical consistency of calculus was shown (by the existence of this set). So it was used for 300 years to build buildings and bridges and airplanes before its logical foundation was established.

Catch-22—When trying to determine if I could read great novels with some understanding, I decided one day that I would read Catch-22, and it would tell me if I could read great works or not. About 5 years later in high school, I read Catch-22, and I found it, and still find it, probably the funniest book I've read, at least the first 175 pages, after which it gets dark. Perhaps I like it so much because my father fought in World War II, and that's the atmosphere of the novel, and it seems to treat fairly and realistically all involved. Those who call it cheap vaudeville, which it isn't, don't appreciate the extensive and exquisite plays on logic, perhaps not seen since Alice in Wonderland. My favorite dialogue, of course, among many, is the one ending with Appleby saying, At least I don't have flies in my eyes, or the old Italian man in his chair in front of his house who says he will always be there, and later in the novel, isn't, indicating that the whole world was upended by the war.

Cats—T. S. Eliot's poem and the play. Eliot would not write about a small subject. The music of his time was jazz. In jazz, a cat is a with-it person who in some sense takes an interesting and perhaps entertaining stance or pose, perhaps self-consciously, in face of reality. T. S. Eliot's poem describes the leaders of Europe between the wars, saying they have taken different postures in relation to reality and what is important. T. S. Eliot's using an animal to discuss something else is also seen in his poem Hippopotamus where the hippo is described in itself but also stands for the church. As Fr. Groeschel said, the Church is like the hippopotamus: it looks ugly on the outside, but it gets where it's going (Sermon, 2000).

A Christmas Carol (Dickens)—The conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge is dramatic, of course. The whole plot though rests on the power of intercessory prayer, a Catholic belief and practice. Marley tells Scrooge that the chance of change has been won for him by Marley's prayers and intercession. And Cratchit's wife agrees with her husband to say a prayer for Scrooge at Christmas dinner. It makes one see monasteries and convents as powerhouses that bring mercy and grace to the world. Of course, Marley, appearing from purgatory (or worse), is fully in line with Catholic belief, and I strongly suspect Dickens had read some of the many reports of people from purgatory appearing to sisters and monks asking for prayers.

Darwinism²—As a start, one has to say that we would all like an explanation of how life could start, develop into different species, and adapt to its environment. Such an explanation does not imply that God does not exist or is not necessary at all. It's very possible that God would create a self-generating creation, though it's not clear that's what he did. The problem with Darwinism, though it's the only explanation we have, is that in toto, it just doesn't work.

It does explain how a creature adapts to its environment.³ If one is a materialist, believing all there is, is matter, then evolution is the only answer we have as to how life got here. But if God is Spirit (John 4:24), that is, there are nonmaterial beings, maybe we have another part of the answer.⁴ Man is the only being who is material and spiritual. His or her spiritual nature comes into existence when the person is conceived, ex nihilo; his or her material nature is the result of 14.7 billion years of cosmic and biological evolution. And it is very elegant of God to use evolution to develop the shape of the human being, also so that all physical creation participated in it. And it was the shape, as his temple, that God had determined from the beginning.

Of course, Darwin was angry at God over the death of his daughter, so he described evolution with no reference to God, while other evolutionists (Wallace) included God. One can find the idea of evolution in St. Augustine; Darwin showed it experimentally.⁵ The attempt to describe the origin of life scientifically is a noble enterprise, of course. And in science, one can't refer to God at all, that's not the domain of science. The problem is that Darwinists (see David Berlinski) are not honest about what Darwinism can and cannot explain. It can explain how a species makes small changes to adapt to its environment. Darwinism can't explain how life arose from nonlife; it can't explain how one species arose from another species. It can't explain the explosion of species in the Cambrian period. And it can't explain how complex structures were of advantage to an organism before the whole complex structure had developed. And the time it would take for random mutations to develop an organized structure is just much greater than the time allotted. (As Roy Schoeman states, If it can't explain these things, what can it explain?).

But it is true that it is the only explanation, as bad as it is, holes and all, if one tries to explain the development of life without referring to God. Perhaps the conclusion of Darwinism is that the attempt to describe life without reference to God just isn't possible. Darwin writes that if change can be shown to be nongradual, then his theory fails. And the explosion of species during the Cambrian period as shown in the fossil record doesn't seem gradual in the sense of evolution. Also, biologists tell us that random changes in DNA rarely if ever lead to an increase in complexity (information). If one believes that God is real, there are still 3 possible positions:

God started the physical world, and it developed through evolution, but God can control the outcome of random events, so it developed according to God's will.⁶

God intervened in the random process of evolution to direct it according to his will, also allowing complex structures to develop (intelligent design.)

God created creatures with a final end or teleology, and they developed with his help along the lines of their teleology.

The first option is unacceptable because random chance changes in DNA just doesn't work as the mechanism by itself with created complex life. It would take too much time. And it can't explain the start of life nor the development of one species from another nor the development of complex physical structures.

The second option is closer but is unacceptable because it has a sense of violence about it: God intervenes from the outside, like a foreigner, and forces the creature to develop along the lines of his will.

The third option seems fine. Instead of reducing the 4 causes of Aristotle, the material, formal, final, and efficient causes to the material and the efficient, it includes all 4 causes. And instead of acting from the outside, God's action with the creature can be seen as helping the creature develop in a way the creature wants to in the first place: it's not a foreign intervention at all but a help.⁷

Dickinson, Emily—Writing 1789 poems, collected in a definitive edition in only 1998 by R. W. Franklin, she spent her later years alone in her home. Was she isolated and injured? Or was she a fruitful mystic? Was she living the life of a cloistered hermit? In Mystical Prayer: The Poetic Example of Emily Dickinson (2019),⁸ Monsignor Charles M. Murphy argues for the latter. She did not participate in religious services but did not turn away from God at all. As Monsignor Murphy points out in his short, exquisite book, even her tombstone reads: Sent back. I find that her poems are largely undecipherable, if not seen from the viewpoint of a biblical and Christian mystic. On page 28 of Mystical Prayer, one finds, if not the best poem about mystical marriage with Christ, certainly the most succinct yet comprehensive one:

Title divine, is mine! The Wife - without the Sign! Acute Degree - conferred on me - Empress of Calvary! Royal - all but the Crown! Betrothed - without the swoon God sends us Women - When you - hold - Garnet to Garnet - Gold - to Gold - Born - Bridalled - Shrouded -In a Day - My Husband!" - women say - Stroking the Melody - Is this - the way?

And what could be more Christian that the short verse on page 117:

The Soul should always stand ajar

That if the Heaven inquire

He will not be obliged to wait

The stanza on page 113 below seems to imply that while the Puritan faith is not for her, she seeks God along her own mystical path. She is quoted as saying that the Bible is the center (Murphy, p. 112), so her circumference might be the periphery of the world, where the apostles are sent to preach the gospel, or where she travels on her mystical journeys. The Dip of Bell might be a reference to hell, meaning that she travels with God and not evil:

I saw no Way - The Heavens were stitched - I felt the Columns close - The Earth reversed her Hemispheres - I touched the Universe - And back it slid - and I alone - A speck opon [sic] a Ball - Went out opon [sic] Circumference - Beyond the Dip of Bell⁹ -

Perhaps because Dickinson suffered at first from depression (Murphy, p. 29), her words are few and come across like bullets since each one takes effort. It reminds one of the words of St. Mother Teresa, who suffered from a dark night of the soul for many decades and whose brief sayings are also like bullets. But, and perhaps it has already been done, a comparison study has to be made between Dickinson (1830–1886) and St. Therese of Lisieux (1873–1897), who lived an exteriorly quiet life but also had a mountainous passion for God.

The movie A Quiet Passion (Music Box Films, 2017), starring Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson, shows Emily Dickinson's rebellion not against God or even Christianity but against the restraints of Puritanism.¹⁰ How can you square the idea that this world is all evil with a family that has tremendous talents for accomplishing things in this world? Of course from a Catholic point of view, she is just aware, in spite of its strengths, of the inaccuracies of Puritanism. St. Faustyna, a mystic, writes a stanza, which has the sense of Dickinson about it, suggesting the Dickinson is also writing as a mystic:

O day most solemn, O day of brightness,

When the soul with know God in his omnipotence

And drown totally in his love,

Knowing the miseries of exile are over.

(Diary, no. 1230, p. 443)

La Divina Comedia (Dante, 1320)—We tend to read Inferno first probably because Purgatorio and Paradiso require some basic Catholic theology for it to make sense. But if we only read Inferno, we miss the joy, mercy, and light of the Catholic faith and see it only in terms of justice and punishment. The Sistine Chapel is a gallery like La Comedia, but it has biblical figures instead of Dante's contemporaries. And it rests heavily on the theological writing of St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), almost as an illustration of his comprehensive theology.

Don Quixote—One can't help but think that behind the Quixote is St. Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), who wanted to be a great knight, but after a serious leg injury in battle, he read the Gospels and the lives of the saints (for nothing else to read) and became a Christian knight. Cervantes was also a soldier, had his left hand maimed, and was imprisoned for 5 years in the 1570s. One sees in St. Ignatius, as in St. Francis and in St. Martin of Tours, who followed the same path of local soldier hero to Christian hero, the values of the virtues of the soldier. Don Quixote also leaves behind the romances of chivalry but doesn't become a Christian knight, a knight for Christ, but a knight or even a priest of sorts of the secular world. Cervantes' description of Dulcinea as full of stars is reminiscent perhaps of Our Lady of Guadalupe (1531). St. Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) was a great reformer saint known throughout Spain. Her last name includes the name Sánchez. Perhaps that was the source of the name Sancho.

The Elegant Universe—Superstrings, hidden dimensions, and the quest for the ultimate theory (Brian Green, Norton & Company, 1999). Beautiful. Scientists use aesthetic reasoning at times, of course, to decide which theory might be possible. They could also use theological considerations since the physical world mirrors the spiritual world. That the physical universe at the smallest level is made up of vibrating strings gives new meaning to Plato's harmony of the spheres.

Considering that there are 12 patriarchs, and 12 apostles, I guessed that there would be 12 elementary particles, and according to the brilliant Brian Green, there are! Plus 12 antiparticles, plus another 12 particles that have never been seen but should exist as a result of supersymmetry. One also thinks of the 24 thrones in the Apocalypse and the 12 stars in Mary's crown.

On page 216, Brian Green tells us that these 12 elementary particles fall into 3 families. He suggests that there are 3 families because of the different number of holes in the topology of the Calabi-Yau spaces. Another suggestion is that there are 3 families because it is an image of the family of the Trinity.

One would also assume since God could create physical reality in any form that's possible that he did create it in a way that profoundly reflects his nature, specifically in the number of dimensions. The question of how many dimensions there are in physical reality turns out to not be a simple question.

As an additional correspondence, Mr. Green points out that there are 4 force particles, which makes one think of the 4 lines of the Old Testament, the 4 gospels, or the 4 living creatures before the throne of God (Apocalypse 5:6).

On page 248, Mr. Greene tells us that the universe is estimated to be approximately 15 billion light-years long in each of the 3 dimensions, and the universe is just short of 15 billion years old. (We see the 3-1 pattern here.)

Mr. Green tells us that in the physical realm there are four force particles (Green, 11). In the spiritual realm, there are four gospels. And the genetic code of every living organism is made up of four letters or building blocks (A, T, G, and C).

In any atom (excepting dark matter and dark energy, which seems to not have atoms), there are three parts: protons, neutrons, and electrons. It makes sense that God, as three Persons, would make the basic building block to have three parts.

The End of Quantum Reality,¹¹ Wolfgang Smith, 2020,