Dear Friends, 
At morning Mass one day last week, Msgr. Steve Callahan, the pastor at our parish, passed along something he heard a day earlier. "The opposite of faith is not doubt," he said. "The opposite of faith is control." That struck me as one of the most important insights I have ever heard. Faith is not propositional. It is not shorthand for the things we believe. Though nothing is more antithetical to the faithful surrender of control than the dissolute loss of control, faith is a lot closer to recklessness than it is to the otherwise respectable pagan virtues, like justice and prudence. On a practical note, the CDs that we send out monthly to our donors will be in the mail by early next week. The current CD contains passages Randy excerpted from a series entitled "The Self and Its Sources" that I gave almost 20 years ago. (When it comes to material that dated, I rely on Randy's editorial judgment. After all, I've learned things over the years. I trust Randy to sort the wheat from the chaff.) If you would like to become a donor and receive these monthly expressions of our gratitude, click on the old photo below to find out more.* * * *
Thus concludes my monthly message to our Cornerstone Forum friends. What follows is a miscellaneous collection of items I posted on the Cornerstone Forum Facebook Page. My writing and research prevents me from anything more sustained. If you have Facebook or Twitter, I hope you will "Like" our Facebook page and "Follow" us on Twitter.
 
Here are a few items that we posted on our social media sites over the last 10 days or so.
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The cornball conviction that faith is a crutch for those who need such things is, in fact, the ever-ready, shop-worn crutch on which the fainthearted depend for reassurance as to their superior ability to face facts unflinchingly.
To believe wrote Hans Urs von Balthasar, "does not at all mean to practice a 'theological virtue,' but to refrain from evading the phenomenon that presents itself, not to wince: on the contrary, to come forward, to let oneself be touched, to stand firm. This is what is decisive. Most people do not face the issue."
Not to wince . . .
Faith is about facing facts, not about avoiding them. As it turns out, the facts -- precisely the facts about the mystery of human existence -- actually have a Face.
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"Those who have said 'no' remain marked," wrote Hans Urs von Balthasar. "They burn, but they consume themselves. They become cynical and destructive, they smell each other out and hold together. It makes no matter whether they officially leave the Church or remain within her. Anyone who has some facility for discerning spirits can recognize them. ... In the desperate exhibition which they make of themselves, those who have rejected their call show what disappearance into pure service could have been."
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T. S. Eliot:
"The Christian thinker ... the man who is trying consciously and conscientiously to explain to himself the sequence which culminated in faith ... finds the world to be so and so; he finds its character inexplicable by any non-religious theory; among religions he finds Christianity, and Catholic Christianity, to account most satisfactorily for the world and especially for the moral world within; and thus, by what Newman calls 'powerful and concurrent' reasons, he finds himself inexorably committed to the dogma of the Incarnation. To the unbeliever, this method seems disingenuous and perverse; for the unbeliever is, as a rule, not so greatly troubled to explain the world to himself, nor so greatly distressed by its disorder; nor is he generally concerned (in modern terms) to 'preserve values'."
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Romano Guardini:
"Classical man only lived before that crisis which was the coming of Christ. With the advent of Christ man confronted a decision which placed him on a new level of existence. Sören Kierkegaard made this fact clear, once and for all. With the coming of Christ man's existence took on an earnestness which classical antiquity never knew simply because it had no way of knowing it. The earnestness did not spring from human maturity; it sprang from the call which each person received from God through Christ. With this call the person opened his eyes, he was awakened for the first time in his life."
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Henri de Lubac:
"As the life of the spirit develops, it inevitably comes up against new data, giving rise to new problems. New thresholds appear, which must be crossed, without our knowing into what new domains we shall be forced to enter. Drawing back or even stopping is impossible. That would not be showing humility, but giving up; not firmness, but bewilderment; not security, but suicide. So all spiritual life, that of the intelligence like that of the soul, calls for a share of adventure. All tradition requires the finding of new things. For the intelligence as well as for the soul, fidelity is of necessity creative."
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"Philosophy looks up to Christ with the same worried expectation of a dog looking at his master. Will he make up his mind to throw him the bone that will busy him for the rest of the day?" - Hans Urs von Balthasar
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T. S. Eliot - Choruses from "The Rock"
"It is hard for those who live near a Police Station
To believe in the triumph of violence.
Do you think that the Faith has conquered the World
And that lions no longer need keepers?
Do you need to be told that whatever has been, can still be?
Do you need to be told that even such modest attainments
As you can boast in the way of polite society
Will hardly survive the Faith to which they owe their significance?"
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"May God grant my continued understanding of one thing: attachment to the Church's tradition, far from being a stumbling block, is the principle of all effective audacity." - Henri de Lubac
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W. H. Auden:
"O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start:
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart."
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The great British historian, Christopher Dawson (1889-1970):
"Thus we find ourselves back in the same situation as that which the Christians encountered during the decline of the ancient world. Everything depends on whether the Christians of the new age are equal to their mission -- whether they are able to communicate their hope to a world in which man finds himself alone and helpless before the monstrous forces which have been created by man to serve his own ends but which have now escaped from his control and threaten to destroy him."
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"Even in these times of intoxication mingled with anxiety, amidst the most pressing necessities, it is the role of the Christian, a man among his brother men, buoyed up by the same aspirations and cast down by the same anxieties, to raise his voice and remind those who forget of their own nobility." - Henri de Lubac, 1947
Finally, some people regard the immensity of the universe as proof of human insignificance, reinforcing the soft nihilism so widespread today. But evidence to date seems to indicate the haunting uniqueness of the one creature capable of being truly amazed by that immensity. My theory is that God has provided a breathtaking view of cosmic grandeur in order that we might more readily understand the privileged place we have in the cosmic orderr and behave accordingly. Here's a little video of what NASA calls a massive 'wanna-be' star -- six TRILLION miles long and 4,500 light-years away. To take the 30 second ride, click below.
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Protostar IRAS 20324+4057 Zoom Sequence
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Thank you again for your friendship, generosity, and prayers. We are genuinely grateful.
Sincerely,
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