Catholic Fertility Practices

Just can't seem to stop myself from placing this important information on this post. I know it may not affect most of you but there are those couples out in the Catholic world afraid of conception. Please pray for them as you carry your own cross. I could never imagine this cross but I know many families that do carry this cross.

I was just listening to Catholic Radio and a gentleman called in to the "Open-Line Show". His reason for calling is that he felt very confused because of a priest giving his wife approval to receive sterilization because of her anxiety due to the financial crisis in the world today. The priest said that yes of course it's okay as you have been open to life and have had children and that oh of course the Church approves of this. Fr. Mitch Pacwa informed the man that this priest was incorrect and that the Church never approves of sterilization or contraception at any time. This is why we have "Natural Family Planning" within the Catholic Church, this is an approved technique that married couples are able to use to avoid or to attempt pregnancy. Thank the Lord for holy Mother Church!!!! We are never left without guidance and if we have we're asking the wrong person.

I have had on my heart those that feel this burden in life and my prayer is that we will all learn to be a kind heart for each others needs. Please continue to pray for our family the Church, and that means YOU and ME. The teachings of the Church regarding contraception and sterilization are offered below... and this is something we as Catholics can use to teach others that may not understand this serious problem may cause the soul of a marriage.

God bless you and all those that read this and pass this on to others.

Contraception and Sterilization

Christians have always condemned contraceptive sex. Both forms mentioned in the Bible, coitus interruptus and sterilization, are condemned without exception (Gen. 38:9–10, Deut. 23:1). The early Fathers recognized that the purpose of sexual intercourse in natural law is procreation; contraceptive sex, which deliberately blocks that purpose, is a violation of natural law.

Every church in Christendom condemned contraception until 1930, when, at its decennial Lambeth Conference, Anglicanism gave permission for the use of contraception in a few cases. Soon all Protestant denominations had adopted the secularist position on contraception. Today not one stands with the Catholic Church to maintain the ancient Christian faith on this issue.

How badly things have decayed may be seen by comparing the current state of non-Catholic churches, where most pastors counsel young couples to decide before they are married what form of contraception they will use, with these quotations from the early Church Fathers, who condemned contraception in general as well as particular forms of it, as well as popular contraceptive sex practices that were then common (sterilization, oral contraceptives, coitus interruptus, and orally consummated sex).

Many Protestants, perhaps beginning to see the inevitable connection between contraception and divorce and between contraception and abortion, are now returning to the historic Christian position and rejecting contraceptive sexual practices.

It should be noted that some of the Church Fathers use language that can suggest to modern ears that there is no unitive.aspect to marital intercourse and that there is only a procreative.aspect. It is unclear whether this is what some of them actually thought or whether they are intending simply to stress that sexual activity becomes immoral if the procreative.aspect of a given marital act is deliberately frustrated. However that may be, over the course of time the Church has called greater attention to the unitive.aspect of marital intercourse, yet it remains true that the procreative.aspect of each particular marital act must not be frustrated.

The Letter of Barnabas

"Moreover, he [Moses] has rightly detested the weasel [Lev. 11:29]. For he means, ‘Thou shall not be like to those whom we hear of as committing wickedness with the mouth with the body through uncleanness [orally consummated sex]; nor shall thou be joined to those impure women who commit iniquity with the mouth with the body through uncleanness’" (Letter of Barnabas 10:8 [A.D. 74]).

Clement of Alexandria

"Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted" (The Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2 [A.D. 191]).

"To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature" (ibid., 2:10:95:3).

Hippolytus

"[Christian women with male concubines], on account of their prominent ancestry and great property, the so-called faithful want no children from slaves or lowborn commoners, [so] they use drugs of sterility or bind themselves tightly in order to expel a fetus which has already been engendered" (Refutation of All Heresies 9:12 [A.D. 225]).

Lactantius

"[Some] complain of the scantiness of their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children, as though, in truth, their means were in [their] power . . . or God did not daily make the rich poor and the poor rich. Wherefore, if any one on any account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to abstain from relations with his wife" (Divine Institutes 6:20 [A.D. 307]).

"God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital [’generating’] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring" (ibid., 6:23:18).

Council of Nicaea I

"[I]f anyone in sound health has castrated himself, it behooves that such a one, if enrolled among the clergy, should cease [from his ministry], and that from henceforth no such person should be promoted. But, as it is evident that this is said of those who willfully do the thing and presume to castrate themselves, so if any have been made eunuchs by barbarians, or by their masters, and should otherwise be found worthy, such men this canon admits to the clergy" (Canon 1 [A.D. 325]).

Epiphanius of Salamis

"They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption" (Medicine Chest Against Heresies 26:5:2 [A.D. 375]).

Augustine

"This proves that you [Manicheans] approve of having a wife, not for the procreation of children, but for the gratification of passion. In marriage, as the marriage law declares, the man and woman come together for the procreation of children. Therefore, whoever makes the procreation of children a greater sin than copulation, forbids marriage and makes the woman not a wife but a mistress, who for some gifts presented to her is joined to the man to gratify his passion" (The Morals of the Manichees 18:65 [A.D. 388]).

"You [Manicheans] make your auditors adulterers of their wives when they take care lest the women with whom they copulate conceive. They take wives according to the laws of matrimony by tablets announcing that the marriage is contracted to procreate children; and then, fearing because of your law [against childbearing] . . . they copulate in a shameful union only to satisfy lust for their wives. They are unwilling to have children, on whose account alone marriages are made. How is it, then, that you are not those prohibiting marriage, as the apostle predicted of you so long ago [1 Tim. 4:1–4], when you try to take from marriage what marriage is? When this is taken away, husbands are shameful lovers, wives are harlots, bridal chambers are brothels, fathers-in-law are pimps" (Against Faustus 15:7 [A.D. 400]).

"For thus the eternal law, that is, the will of God creator of all creatures, taking counsel for the conservation of natural order, not to serve lust, but to see to the preservation of the race, permits the delight of mortal flesh to be released from the control of reason in copulation only to propagate progeny" (ibid., 22:30).

"For necessary sexual intercourse for begetting [children] is alone worthy of marriage. But that which goes beyond this necessity no longer follows reason but lust. And yet it pertains to the character of marriage . . . to yield it to the partner lest by fornication the other sin damnably [through adultery]. . . . [T]hey [must] not turn away from them the mercy of God . . . by changing the natural use into that which is against nature, which is more damnable when it is done in the case of husband or wife. For, whereas that natural use, when it pass beyond the compact of marriage, that is, beyond the necessity of begetting [children], is pardonable in the case of a wife, damnable in the case of a harlot; that which is against nature is execrable when done in the case of a harlot, but more execrable in the case of a wife. Of so great power is the ordinance of the Creator, and the order of creation, that . . . when the man shall wish to use a body part of the wife not allowed for this purpose [orally or anally consummated sex], the wife is more shameful, if she suffer it to take place in her own case, than if in the case of another woman" (The Good of Marriage 11–12 [A.D. 401]).

...

"I am supposing, then, although you are not lying [with your wife] for the sake of procreating offspring, you are not for the sake of lust obstructing their procreation by an evil prayer or an evil deed. Those who do this, although they are called husband and wife, are not; nor do they retain any reality of marriage, but with a respectable name cover a shame. Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, comes to this, that they even procure poisons of sterility. . . . Assuredly if both husband and wife are like this, they are not married, and if they were like this from the beginning they come together not joined in matrimony but in seduction. If both are not like this, I dare to say that either the wife is in a fashion the harlot of her husband or he is an adulterer with his own wife" (Marriage and Concupiscence 1:15:17 [A.D. 419]).

John Chrysostom

"Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility [oral contraceptives], where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well. . . . Indeed, it is something worse than murder, and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you condemn the gift of God and fight with his [natural] laws? . . . Yet such turpitude . . . the matter still seems indifferent to many men—even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks" (Homilies on Romans 24 [A.D. 391]).

"[I]n truth, all men know that they who are under the power of this disease [the sin of covetousness] are wearied even of their father’s old age [wishing him to die so they can inherit]; and that which is sweet, and universally desirable, the having of children, they esteem grievous and unwelcome. Many at least with this view have even paid money to be childless, and have mutilated nature, not only killing the newborn, but even acting to prevent their beginning to live" (Homilies on Matthew 28:5 [A.D. 391]).

"[T]he man who has mutilated himself, in fact, is subject even to a curse, as Paul says, ‘I would that they who trouble you would cut the whole thing off’ [Gal. 5:12]. And very reasonably, for such a person is venturing on the deeds of murderers, and giving occasion to them that slander God’s creation, and opens the mouths of the Manicheans, and is guilty of the same unlawful acts as they that mutilate themselves among the Greeks. For to cut off our members has been from the beginning a work of demonical agency, and satanic device, that they may bring up a bad report upon the works of God, that they may mar this living creature, that imputing all not to the choice, but to the nature of our members, the more part of them may sin in security as being irresponsible, and doubly harm this living creature, both by mutilating the members and by impeding the forwardness of the free choice in behalf of good deeds" (ibid., 62:3).

"Observe how bitterly he [Paul] speaks against their deceivers . . . ‘I would that they which trouble you would cut the whole thing off’ [Gal. 5:12]. . . . On this account he curses them, and his meaning is as follows: ‘For them I have no concern, "A man that is heretical after the first and second admonition refuse" [Titus 3:10]. If they will, let them not only be circumcised but mutilated.’ Where then are those who dare to mutilate themselves, seeing that they draw down the apostolic curse, and accuse the workmanship of God, and take part with the Manichees?" (Commentary on Galatians 5:12 [A.D. 395]).

Jerome

"But I wonder why he [the heretic Jovinianus] set Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perchance even harlots give him pleasure; or Onan, who was slain because he grudged his brother seed. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?" (Against Jovinian 1:19 [A.D. 393]).

"You may see a number of women who are widows before they are wives. Others, indeed, will drink sterility and murder a man not yet born, [and some commit abortion]" (Letters 22:13 [A.D. 396]).

Caesarius of Arles

"Who is he who cannot warn that no woman may take a potion so that she is unable to conceive or condemns in herself the nature which God willed to be fecund? As often as she could have conceived or given birth, of that many homicides she will be held guilty, and, unless she undergoes suitable penance, she will be damned by eternal death in hell. If a woman does not wish to have children, let her enter into a religious agreement with her husband; for chastity is the sole sterility of a Christian woman" (Sermons 1:12 [A.D. 522]).

NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004

IMPRIMATUR: In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004

Our Lady of Sorrows

Consecration Prayer to Our Lady of Sorrows

Most holy Virgin and Queen of Martyrs, Mary, would that I could be in Heaven, there to contemplate the honours rendered to thee by the Most Holy Trinity and by the whole Heavenly Court! But since I am still a pilgrim in this vale of tears, receive from me, thy unworthy servant and a poor sinner, the most sincere homage and the most perfect act of vassalage a human creature can offer thee. In thy Immaculate Heart, pierced with so many swords of sorrow, I place today my poor soul forever; receive me as a partaker in thy dolors, and never suffer that I should depart from that Cross on which thy only begotten Son expired for me.

With thee, O Mary, I will endure all the sufferings, contradictions, infirmities, with which it will please thy Divine Son to visit me in this life. All of them I offer to thee, in memory of the Dolors which thou didst suffer during thy life, that every thought of my mind, every beating of my heart may henceforward be an act of compassion to thy Sorrows, and of complacency for the glory thou now enjoyest in Heaven. Since then, O Dear Mother, I now compassionate thy Dolors, and rejoice in seeing thee glorified, do thou also have compassion on me, and reconcile me to thy Son Jesus, that I may become thy true and loyal son (daughter); come on my last day and assist me in my last agony, even as thou wert present at the Agony of thy Divine Son Jesus, that from this painful exile I may go to Heaven, there to be made partaker of thy glory. Amen.

Happy Birthday Mary!

Finding the Peace YOU Need

This is a must read from Ma.rk Mal.lett's blog site...

Finding Peace

"DO you long for peace? In my encounters with other Christians in the past few years, the most evident spiritual malady is that few are at peace. Almost as if there is a common belief growing among Catholics that a lack of peace and joy is simply part of the suffering and spiritual attacks upon the Body of Christ." read more here

Carrying my Cross

This morning before Mass I was looking through the "Magnificat" and I noticed the meditation being offered for the day was about carrying our own personal cross. Wow, this is not easy! I realize that there is nothing I can say to take away the suffering that you may be enduring. I do know that through times of my own suffering it is good to share your pain and learn to turn it into a positive. Just keep asking Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, "What do you want of me?" Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you. Matthew 7:7

The one thing I do know because of this beautiful faith that I (you) have been given in the Catholic Church (universal Christian Church) is that we have been given Christ Jesus who suffered for us. He is our example of suffering and his mother is our example of the offering. What a great gift we have in our faith! There is no where else that we can go to find peace in our sufferings except in Christ Jesus and his mother, speak to Our Lady through the prayers of the holy rosary.

I found a book today by C. S. Lewis, that might help those that love to read, work through the pain of your own cross. Hey, let us know if you have read this book and what you thought? Maybe give us your own review? I'm thinking that it would be a great way to share our thoughts about suffering and how we can get through with our faith, hope and love still in tact..

Let us begin here and see where it takes us, maybe we could do a book study via blogger groups. What do you think and how can we bring support to you?

click on the picture to go to ama.zon

C.S. Lewis: The Problem of Pain

JACEK BACZ

The existence of suffering in a world created by a good and almighty God—“the problem of pain”—is a fundamental theological dilemma, and perhaps the most serious objection to the Christian religion.

C.S. Lewis 1898-1963

Known to his readers as a philosopher, a Christian apologist, a science fiction writer, an author of children's stories and a literary critic, C. S. Lewis has also been introduced to the general public as a romantic sufferer. In Shadowlands, movie audiences around the world watch a refined, upper-middle aged Oxford fellow theorize on pain, fall in late love with a witty, slightly annoying American divorcee with two children, and go through the agony of grief after her death. Whatever it takes to speculate on pain, it takes a lot more, it seems, to live it. And it takes C. S. Lewis to write competently on both.

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1898, of an Irish mother and a Welsh father, Clive Staples Lewis served as a Fellow and Tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford for more than thirty years. Yet, the Oxford establishment was slow to catch up with the fame of the author of "that Christian stuff", and, in 1954, Lewis accepted a Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge, where he worked until his death on 22nd November 1963.

Young Clive Staples was gifted with a lucid mind, a fact not fully manifest until his adult years. Still, at the age of four he properly discerned that people had names and declared he would rather be called 'Jack'. As Jack grew older, not unnaturally, he began to lose his never-robust Christian faith, a process set in motion by an early death of his mother and completed under the influence of his tutor, W. T. Kirkpatrick, a brilliant and compelling atheist logician. All through his twenties Lewis remained an informed and committed atheist. Then, at the age of 31, as he explains in his autobiography, he converted to Christianity: "In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed; that night a most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."¹ The conversion experience helped him understand not only religious indifference but also obstinacy in disbelief. "Who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape?"²

Inspired by the faith, armed with Kirkpatrick's logic and his own natural lucidity, Lewis went public with his Christianity, producing a series of masterpieces in Christian apologetics, remarkable in that normal people can understand them. The Problem of Pain, The Abolition of Man, Miracles, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce—written in the "spare time" between his Oxford tutorials—fully engage modernity and, for that reason, strike a cord with all those who share modernist assumptions (that is, with almost everybody). Through these works Lewis came to be known as a formidable defender of Christianity, capable of grasping with impressive clarity the meaning of modern times, that "failed promise of the Enlightenment".

The Problem of Pain, the first of a series of popular works on Christian doctrine, was written in 1940, twenty years before his beloved wife, Joy Davidman, died of cancer in the third year of their short-lived marriage. In the book Lewis considers the problem of suffering from a purely theoretical standpoint. Years later, struck with a daunting grief of a mourning husband he will write another classic on pain, a masterpiece of introspection: A Grief Observed. It takes courage to live through suffering; and it takes honesty to observe it. C. S. Lewis had both.

The existence of suffering in a world created by a good and almighty God—"the problem of pain"—is a fundamental theological dilemma and perhaps the most serious objection to the Christian religion. The issue is serious enough already in Theism. Christianity aggravates the problem by insisting on Love as the essence of God; then, unexpectedly, it makes a half turn and points to the Mystery of suffering—to Jesus, "the tears of God."³ Lewis does not propose to penetrate the mystery. He is content enough with approaching pain as mere problem that demands a solution; he formulates it and goes about solving it. "If God were good, He would make His creatures perfectly happy, and if He were almighty He would be able to do what he wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both."⁴ With a characteristic conciseness and clarity Lewis sets the stage for the entire book in the first paragraph of Chapter 2. "The possibility of solving [the problem] depends on showing that the terms 'good' and 'almighty', and perhaps also the term 'happy', are equivocal: for it must be admitted from the outset that if the popular meanings attached to these words are the best, or the only possible, meaning, then the argument is unanswerable". In the remaining nine chapters, Lewis will develop this basic statement through an in-depth reflection on divine omnipotence, divine goodness, human condition, human and animal pain, and last, but not least, hell and heaven.

The main argument of The Problem of Pain is preceded by a presentation of an atheist objection to the existence of God based on the observable futility of the universe. The book starts on a personal note: "Not many years ago when I was an atheist … ". There follows a compelling picture of a universe filled with futility and chance, darkness and cold, misery and suffering; a spectacle of civilizations passing away, of human race scientifically condemned to a final doom and of a universe bound to die. Thus, "either there is no spirit behind the universe, or else a spirit indifferent to good and evil, or else an evil spirit". On the other hand, "if the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator? […] The spectacle of the universe as revealed by experience can never have been ground for religion: it must always have been something in spite of which religion, acquired from a different source, was held". But, where should we look for the sources?

The "experience of the Numinous", a special kind of fear which excites awe, exemplified by, but not limited to, fear of the dead, yet going beyond mere dread or danger, is the first source; the other is the moral experience; and both "cannot be the result of inference from the visible universe" for nothing in the visible universe suggests them. Likewise, the identification of the Numinous with the Moral, "when the Numinous Power to which [men] feel awe is made the guardian of the morality to which they feel obligation"—a choice made by the Jews—must be viewed as utterly "unnatural" and very much unlike mere wish fulfillment, for "we desire nothing less than to see that Law whose naked authority is already insupportable armed with the incalculable claims of the Numinous". In Christianity, a historical component is added: an extraordinary man walking about in Palestine, claiming to be "one with" the Numinous and the Moral. Lewis develops a theme from Chesterton⁵, the stupefying argument for the divinity of Jesus. "Either He was a raving lunatic of an unusually abominable type, or else He was, and is, precisely what He said". Many regard Jesus as a holy man, a wise teacher: a thoroughly good man. Yet, this is precisely what cannot be held about him: sooner a lunatic or a deceiver than a mere good man— or else God himself. Aut Deus, aut homo malus.⁶

After this accelerated tour from atheism to Christianity, Lewis is ready for his main argument. He starts with God Almighty. What is the meaning of God's Omnipotence? Can he do whatever he pleases? Yes, except the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to him but not nonsense: "Nonsense remains nonsense even if we talk it about God." Probing further into Divine Omnipotence, Lewis builds up a universe of his own: a universe in which free souls, or perhaps, as we might say today, persons, can communicate. In the process, he discovers that "not even Omnipotence could create a society of free souls without at the same time creating a relatively independent and 'inexorable' Nature"; that a fixed nature of matter implies a possibility, though not a necessity, of evil and suffering, for "not all states of matter will be equally agreeable to the wishes of a given soul"; that souls, if they are free, may take advantage of the fixed laws of nature to hurt one another; that a "corrective" intervention by God in the laws of nature, which would remove the possibility—or the effect—of such abuse, while clearly imaginable, would eventually lead to a wholly meaningless universe, in which nothing important depended on man's choices. "Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you will find that you have excluded life itself". Thus, the universe as we know it might as well be a product of a wise and omnipotent Creator; it remains to be shown "how, perceiving a suffering world, and being assured, on quite different grounds, that God is good, we are to conceive that goodness and that suffering without a contradiction". An exploration of God's goodness might provide an answer.

God's idea of goodness is almost certainly unlike ours; yet, God's moral judgment must differ from ours "not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child's first attempt to draw a wheel"—or we could mean nothing by calling him good. Thus, where God means Love, we only mean Kindness, "the desire to see others than self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy". We want "not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven", a God "who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?'" (Let us note in passing how much this confusion between Love and Kindness is akin to our modern thinking: it sheds light on many present controversies, from assisted suicide to abortion to contraception.) But Love is not mere Kindness. "Kindness cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering", while Love "would rather see [the loved ones] suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes".

The goodness of God means that we are true objects of his love, not of his disinterested concern for our welfare. This aspect of God's love for man is greatly illuminated by the use of parallels from the Scripture. The reader is overwhelmed with the seducing beauty and grandeur of Lewis's imagery, as he develops the four scriptural analogies to explain the relation between the Creator and his creature: love of an artist for his artifact, love of a man for a beast, a father's love for a son, and a man's love for a woman. Every time an analogy is explored we stand in awe before the love so intense and deep; and we wonder "why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes"; and we wish God loved us less. "You asked for a loving God: you have one. […] The consuming fire that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes". We may wish for less love; but then we would dream an impossible dream. God is our only good. He gives "what he has, not what he has not; the happiness that there is, not the happiness that is not. If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows— the only food that any possible universe ever can grow—then we must starve eternally."

The awareness of a distinction between Love and Kindness and the recognition of what it means to be the object of God's love make it easier to comprehend why Love is not incompatible with suffering. Because God loves us he will not rest until he sees us wholly lovable. From that perspective, the suffering of a creature in need of alteration is a mere corollary to God's goodness. Yet, the problem is that the perception of man's sinful condition, and hence of a real need for alteration—a thing obvious even to ancient pagans—has largely disappeared from the modern horizon, rendering the Christian call to repentance and conversion unintelligible. To talk to the modern man, Lewis insists, "Christianity now has to preach the diagnosis—in itself a very bad news—before it can win the hearing for the cure." He considers two modern developments that contributed to the rise of a belief in the original innocence: the reduction of all virtues to kindness ("nothing except kindness is really good"), and the effect of psychoanalysis on the public mind ("shame is dangerous and must be done away with"). "Kindness, he says, is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds", for we can feel comfortably benevolent towards fellow men, as long as their good does not conflict with ours. He then considers in some detail the symptoms of man's wretchedness and brings us, step by step, to an inescapable conclusion: "We are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves." And at once we perceive a contradiction.

How could a bad creature have come from the hands of a good Creator? The Christian answer is that it did not: man, and the rest of creation, was initially good, but through the abuse of freedom, man made himself an abominable, wicked creature he now is. This doctrine, which finds no support in science—only in the Scripture, in the human heart and in newspapers—is particularly foreign to the modern mind, which operates within a progressivist and materialistic paradigm. Lewis is aware of his reader's disposition; from the outset, he insists that "science has nothing to say for or against the doctrine of the Fall". Focusing his analysis on the meaning of the terms 'savage' and 'brute', he shows that the popular notion of a 'savage' needs correction: "The prehistoric men who made the worst pottery might have made the best poetry and we should never know it". Also, he shows, there is no reason why mere "brutality" (in the sense of "animality") of our remote ancestors should imply their moral wickedness. Thus, it is conceivable that the paradisal man possessed goodness along with his natural 'savagery' and 'brutality'. He just may have been created good. He may have walked in God's will. And he may have chosen to walk out of it.

Scientific controversy out of the way, Lewis now gives his account of Creation and Fall; and an unsuspecting reader, who doubtless does not read St. Augustine, may be taken off-guard. For a modern mind desires nothing less than to see the "old Christian stuff", presumed dead for two hundred years, brought back to life; much less to comprehend that this is the very "stuff" that makes the whole Christian doctrine hang together. "The world is a dance in which good, descending from God, is disturbed by evil arising from the creatures, and the resulting conflict is resolved by God's own assumption of the suffering nature which evil produces. The doctrine of the Fall asserts that the evil which thus makes the fuel or raw material of the second and more complex kind of good is not God's contribution but man's". Now, in our time, the story ofParadise Lost, overly attacked from the outside and gradually diluted from the inside, has reached a peculiar status in the popular mind: because it is no longer meant literally, many imagine it is hardly meant at all. And no wonder; for the powerful biblical narrative that once fertilized the imagination—and thus appealed to the entire man, not only to his intellect—no longer operates on that level: an abstract truth may feed a theologian; a man in the street will starve. Ever aware of modern sensibilities, Lewis reclothes the abstraction; he gives the imagination the food it has been craving for; he restores drama, greatness and amazement;⁷and, horror of horrors, he makes it all seem so dangerously plausible. The entire book may be worth reading if only to discover that the good old original sin is alive and well: "We are not merely imperfect creatures that need improvement: we are rebels that need lay down their arms".

At this point in the argument, pain, no longer incompatible with God's Goodness and Omnipotence, becomes to be seen as God's way of accommodating the freedom of a rebel creature. We have seen that in a stable and meaningful universe a possibility of pain is inherent; and in a universe of creatures, inclined, by virtue of their fallen nature, to move away from God, evil becomes, so to speak, endemic. Yet, God is in charge; he supervises the circulation of good and evil; and He does it in a way that satisfies his Goodness, that is, with total respect for man's freedom. Let Lewis speak. "In the fallen and partially redeemed universe we may distinguish (1) the simple good descending from God, (2) the simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and (3) the exploitation of that evil by God for His redemptive purpose, which produces (4) the complex good to which accepted suffering and repented sin contribute. […] A merciful man aims at his neighbour's good as so does 'God's' will, consciously co-operating with 'the simple good'. A cruel man oppresses his neighbour and so does simple evil. But in doing such evil he is used by God, without his knowledge or consent, to produce the complex good — so that the first man serves God as a son, and the second as a tool. For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John". For Lewis, this divine design is a "tribulation system", and he explains how pain operates within it.

The proper good of a creature is to surrender to its Creator. However, the human spirit, hardened through "millennia of usurpation", will not "even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it." Thus, the function of pain, on the lowest level, is to shatter the illusion that "all is well", to plant "the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul". "We may rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities", but "pain insists on being attended to"; and, if Lewis was writing today he might add: "it cannot be deconstructed". On a higher level, pain shatters yet another illusion: that we are self-sufficient; that all we have is our own doing. This is perhaps where pain, when it afflicts "honest and decent people", seems most cruel and undeserved. But Lewis calls it a sign of "divine humility": it is "a poor thing to come to [God] as a last resort, to offer up 'our own' when it is no longer worth keeping. […] If God were a Kantian, who would not have us till we came to Him from the purest and best motives, who could be saved?" On the highest level, pain, through trials and sacrifices, teaches true self-sufficiency: to rely on God, to act out of heavenly strength, out of a purely supernatural motive. When man acts in this way he becomes a co-creator with God: "Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God's, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it."

Thus, the ordinary function of pain within the tribulation system is to make a creature's submission to the will of God easier. Lest it should seem a justification of pain, Lewis clarifies: "Pain hurts. That is what the word means. I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made perfect through suffering is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design." Alas, pain may also lead to a refusal of God and to a final, unrepented rebellion. Lewis does not shrink from considering this dreadful possibility. Conscious of modern disgust with the idea of eternal damnation, he examines common objections to the Christian doctrine of hell and shows that it is both logical and moral.

A Christian reflection on pain must end with a vision of heaven, the true end and home of humanity. Citing St. Paul, Lewis contrasts the "suffering of the present time" with the glory of heaven; but he insists that heaven is not a bribe, for it "offers nothing that a mercenary soul could desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to"(!). Lewis makes us desire heaven; he even claims that, in our heart of hearts, we have never desired anything else. "God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love". And every soul is unique: "Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you alone, because you were made for it." In heaven, unique souls reflect for one another some aspect of Divinity, which each was made to contemplate. The pattern of self-giving is the essence of heaven, as it is, the very core of reality: "For in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm […] of all being. […] From the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated and, by that abdication, becomes the more truly self. […] This is not a heavenly law which we can escape by remaining earthly, nor an earthly law which we can escape by being saved. What is outside the system of self-giving is not earth, nor nature, nor 'ordinary life', but simply and solely hell".

In The Problem of Pain, published in 1940, Lewis offered the reader this overly humble confession: "You would like to know how I behave when I am experiencing pain, not writing books about it. You need not guess for I will tell you; I am a great coward." In a letter to his brother Warnie, written while working on the book, he claimed: "If you are writing a book about pain and then you get some actual pain […] it does not either, as the cynic would expect, blow the doctrine to bits, nor, as a Christian would hope, turn into practice, but remains quite unconnected and irrelevant, just as any other bit of actual life does when you are reading or writing."⁸ Neither the confession nor the claim stood the test of time. In 1961, Lewis wrote about pain again, this time about his own. In A Grief Observed he satisfied, albeit inadvertently, the alleged curiosity of his readers. But he did not come across as a coward; nor did his firm grasp of "a theory of suffering" prove altogether irrelevant. True, his faith in God was challenged; he uttered blasphemies; he doubted God's existence; worst of all, he went through the very objections to God's goodness which he had refuted in The Problem of Pain: they all seemed valid to a disabled mind, under the sway of unbearable pain. But then, reason returned: "Why do I make room in my mind for such filth and nonsense? Do I hope that if feeling disguises itself as thought I shall feel less?"⁹

When feeling disguises itself as thought, all nonsense is possible. Nowhere is it truer than in the problem of pain. Yet, from the Christian perspective, anything that can reasonably be said about suffering is only a preamble to the Mystery of the Cross. Lewis's solution to "the problem of pain" prepares the intellect for a dive into the Mystery.

Endnotes:

1. C. S. Lewis: Surprised by Joy.
2. Ibid.
3. For a Christian analysis of suffering as mystery, see Peter Kreeft: Making Sense out of Suffering.
4. Unreferenced quotations are from C. S. Lewis: The Problem of Pain.
5. G. K. Chesterton: The Everlasting Man.
6. For a systematic development of Lewis's argument see Peter Kreeft: Between Heaven and Hell. The souls of C. S. Lewis, J. F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley, who all died on the same day of November 22nd 1963, argue about Jesus' divinity while awaiting judgment.
7. For a dramatization of the narrative of the Fall and an insight into the psyche of the unfallen creature see C. S. Lewis's novel Perelandra.
8. Walter Hooper: C. S. Lewis, A Companion and Guide.
9. C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Bacz, Jacek. “C.S. Lewis: The Problem of Pain.” The Newman Rambler (Spring 1999): 23-28.

Reprinted with permission of The Newman Rambler.

The Newman Rambler is published semi-annually by the Newman Centre of McGill University. To subscribe, please send your name, mailing address, and a $10 donation. Payable to: Newman Centre, at 3484 Peel Street, Montreal, QC, Canada, H3A 1W8.

THE AUTHOR

Jacek Bacz has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and works as a consultant. He is interested in C.S. Lewis and Christian apologetics.

Copyright © 1999 The Newman Rambler

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Feast ~ Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Difficult times produce great saints, what is God calling you to do?

Miracle Baby's Life Revived by Mother's Touch

Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice!

If you have received the gift of suffering,

then you are called to give praise to OUR LORD!

It is then you will receive peace....

http://attitudeisaltitude.com/

http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org/

You are never alone....

Do you realize that there is someone else in the midst of your struggles?

Are you aware that Christ is there with you in your times of suffering?

Jesus Christ the third person of the Divine Trinity is with YOU, call on HIM when you are feeling that life is becoming a challenge to you and all you want to do is say, "I quit, I'm done, I can't do this anymore". No, you can not do this anymore without HIM! I would like to challenge you to turn to Jesus and Mary today, start with 5 minutes of prayer and quiet. Then build up from there to 15 minutes then 30 and if you can get to one hour a day, wonderful. Open your Bible and let the Holy Spirit speak to your heart, He is the best friend that you will ever have in your life time, get to know HIM.

You are not alone in your suffering Christ Jesus and his mother have suffered them for you. Jesus is ever present in the sacraments of Holy Mother Church, hold on to these gifts and graces that we have been left from God Our Father in Heaven. Keep them as a treasure in your life and your heart.

We the faithful are in this together, you are not alone! Let us fight the good fight, the battles are there, but Christ Jesus is greater and He has already won!

Christ awaits YOU in the Blessed Sacrament run to HIM...

AMEN.

Monthly St. Gianna Mass & Catholic Fertility Support Group

Please come and join the Dominican Friars if you live in New York City and you or a friend are struggling with fertility this Mass would be a wonderful place of support! Please click the address below for directions....

Monthly St. Gianna Mass & Catholic Support Group

Thursday, August 19, 2010

6:00 - 8:30 pm

St. Catherine of Sienna Parish

* 411 East 68th Street, NY

Join the Dominican Friars Healthcare Ministry and The Gianna Center for Women for a night of prayer, music, reflection and healing for couples faced with pregnancy-related difficulties.

Following Mass, a support group for Catholics with infertility and pregnancy-related difficulties will be held, led by staff from the Gianna Catholic Healthcare Center for Women.

Schedule

6:00-6:30 pm Confessions

6:30-7:15 pm Mass

7:30-8:30 pm Catholic Infertility Support Group
(2nd floor of the parish building)

All are welcome to attend this evening dedicated to healing for couples.

Whenever you are seized by melancholy...

A note from a Poor Clare Colettine nun to YOU... Please note this will be the last mail from "the Heart a Priest", until the Spirit speaks otherwise.

Dear Little hearts,

There are in life some situations that despite our best efforts, we are filled with sadness and melancholy, human contact seems remote even when we are surrounded by others....it is a state that somehow God allows, and it is a space where we should reach out to him.... unite our hearts to his own agony, to his desolation in the Garden of Gethsemane.... we will draw strength from the mere fact that Christ suffered and carried all this before.

Without a doubt if we trust and surrender God will send an angel of consolation to us.

From the Heart of A Priest.

Thoughts of Brother Pio- (Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina).

Whenever you are seized by melancholy, let your thoughts dwell on that fateful night on which the Son of God began the work of redemption in the solitude of Gethsemane and offer your own sufferings to the Divine Father, along with the sufferings of Jesus.

Renew your faith...

Dear Little hearts,

Let these words speak.......... and if through infirmity, sickness or other reasons it is not possible for you to actually attend Mass, never the less focus upon the Great Sacrifice of love.

The next best thing is simply to read, ponder upon the prayers of the Mass and unite our hearts to the Sacrifice being offered up all over the world, we can be present be desire. And then make a spiritual communion, acknowledging to Jesus that although you cannot at this moment receive him sacramentally, invite him to invade and possess your mind, your heart, your soul, your total being.... say to him with all you are " This is my Body Given up for you"....Love will unite you.

From the Heart of A Priest.

Thoughts of Brother Pio- (Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina).

Renew your faith by attending Holy Mass. Keep your mind focused on the mystery that is unfolding before your eyes. In your mind's eye transport yourself to Calvary and meditate on the Victim who offers Himself to Divine Justice, paying the price of your redemption.

This note came from the Poor Clare Colettines TMD

Remember Jesus is with You!

Thoughts of Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina

In darkness, at times of tribulation and distress of the spirit, Jesus is with you. In such a state

you see nothing but darkness, but I can assure you on God's behalf that

the light of the Lord is all around you and pervades your spirit. You see yourself forsaken and I assure you

that Jesus is holding you tighter than ever to His divine Heart.

I feel a great desire to abandon myself

Sharing a note to YOU from the Poor Clare Colettines TMD:

Dear Little hearts,

Inspirations to surrender oneself to God, to abandon the known and cast ourselves trustingly into the Lords arms can only be a praying , a moving of the Holy Spirit within us. Any journeying from self to God, any response from our own self centeredness to God centeredness is a touch, an embrace of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is love and love desires union, and this inner desire that Saint Pio talks about in this extract is a genuine, authentic Divine Touch. We should always listen to such whisperings, they will bring us to a greater fullness of life. We will be sadly disappointed , it may be sooner or later, if we place our trust in the things of this world, they can disappear in an instant, and they belong only to the hear and now....far greater will be our happiness if we place our trust in God. The whole Christian journey is a pilgrimage of trust.

Many of us are wounded from having our trust broken, and it takes courage to begin again and to go on trusting, people may fail us God never will.

"From the Heart of A Priest"

Thoughts of Brother Pio- (Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina).

I feel a great desire to abandon myself with greater

trust to the Divine Mercy and to place my hope in God alone.

Don't worry about tomorrow

A note to you from a Poor Clare Colettine, TMD, Wales/UK

Dear Little hearts,

We all know that worry is useless, we all know it is fruitless, and yet coming to the acceptance and belief of that reality is a long, hard journey.

Presented with certain circumstances we are fearful, uncertain, and our inordinate imagination will present us with all kinds of mental pictures, of things that might, or could happen, which take our peace away.

Worry can be debilitating and exhausting leading nowhere, it is good to look back on our life and see how many times we have worried ourselves sick over something that in the final analysis, never became a reality!!!

Little by little we do learn.

Much better simply to throw ourselves into the arms of our Heavenly Father, the God who loves us, and will to trust and trust and trust. It is not easy but practise is a good thing and we will grow with every little surrender. Do not be robbed of your joy by being preoccupied with worry and worldly concerns, your Father knows your needs, he is with you and loves you, let it go.... and know peace.

We have many friends, much loved in America, please pray for the Bay State, for the 670 men and women with pending deployment, pray please for their families and loved ones. Ask Padre Pio to intercede for them all... In his lifetime many American soldiers visited Padre Pio, he was a priest for all.

"From the Heart of A Priest"

Thoughts of Brother Pio- (Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina).

Don't worry about tomorrow because the very same Heavenly Father who takes care of you today will have the same thought tomorrow and always. . . What does a child in the arms of such a Father have to fear? Be as children, who hardly ever think about their future as they have someone to think for them. They are sufficiently strong just by being with their father.