One of my favourite insights from Joseph Ratzinger’s long life in theology is that the Church does not convincingly propose the faith by the work of theology alone. Before his election as Pope he wrote that in the end the Church only has two compelling “arguments” for her faith being true. The first is the saints who have lived the Gospel fully and who the Church proposes as models of Christian witness. The second is the art that she has nurtured in her midst, her faith expressed in beauty, whether in painting, sculpture, architecture or music. Theology is necessary, but it is holiness and beauty that persuades.

Baseball’s spring training is not far off, and our Catholic “spring training” — the discipline of Lent — is fast approaching too. Not a bad time to think about baseball and virtue, which was brought to mind by the recent death of Stan Musial, one of the greatest ballplayers of all time.

Musial dominated the 1940s and 1950s, winning seven batting titles, three National League MVPs and winning the World Series three times. Even today, 50 years after his retirement in 1963, he remains second all-time for total bases, behind only the incomparable Hank Aaron, and fourth in all-time hits, behind Pete Rose, Ty Cobb and Aaron. He died at age 92, predeceased last year by his wife of 72 faithful and faith-filled years. His funeral was in St. Louis, at which a young boy who wanted to be like Stan Musial when he was growing up in that proud baseball city, Timothy Dolan, now cardinal archbishop of New York, was present to honour a Catholic disciple who tried to go to Mass every day.

In a eulogy given by another proud St. Louis baseball man, a moving story was told about Musial’s quiet holiness. Bob Costas, perhaps the most gifted broadcaster in sports, recalled an occasion in which Mickey Mantle, the great Yankee of the 1950s and 1960s, was visiting in his retirement. Costas invited Stan Musial to dinner and told Mantle who was coming. Mantle, a long-time alcoholic, told Costas: “I don’t know how I am going to do it, but I am not going to have a drink all day tomorrow or all evening. I don’t want to do anything foolish in front of Stan Musial.”

Tens of thousands wanted to be like Stan Musial the ballplayer. Mantle, who was almost as good as Musial on the diamond, knew that he ought to be like Musial the man.

“Stan was a better player than me, because he was a better man,” Mantle told Costas.

There are few decisions men, especially young men, make that are as important as choosing their friends. Perhaps the greatest compliment a man can receive is that which Mantle gave Musial — I don’t want to do anything foolish, anything unworthy, anything sinful in front of him.

Mantle spent most of his life choosing his friends unwisely. Perhaps because of all the scandals, movies were made of his life. Musial’s life was too simple, too honourable, too pious for Hollywood. One of the best of the Mantle films, perhaps the greatest of all baseball films, is 61*, a Billy Crystal film about the 1961 home run chase between Mantle and Roger Maris.

“Maris, the North Dakota homebody who has just won the 1960 Most Valuable Player award, sees that Mantle, the Oklahoma hellion who might have been the greatest player ever had he not blown out his knee in the 1951 Series, is risking both his own and the team’s success by his compulsive boozing and wenching,” wrote George Weigel, papal biographer and accomplished baseball fan, about a key scene in 61*.

“So Maris and his apartment-mate, outfielder Bob Cerv, invite Mantle to move in with them, cut out the nocturnal craziness, and get himself back together,” Weigel continues. “That act of solidarity, matched by the way manager Houk and Maris’s teammates rally around him when both fans and sportswriters choose Mickey over Roger in the Great Bambino Record Chase, exemplifies the distinctive way men can be friends. Mickey Mantle, a tortured spirit, died in 1995 after telling a press conference, ‘Don’t be like me. God gave me the ability to play baseball and that’s what I wanted to do. God gave me everything and I just wasted it.’ ”

Weigel concludes with the contrast: “Maris died in 1985 of Hodgkin’s lymphoma and is buried in his hometown, Fargo. This unassuming family man, who never took advantage of the lifestyle libertinism that Gotham (and the journalistic conventions of the era) made possible, was a good husband and father who endured hate mail and death threats, fan idiocies and press barbs. Roger Maris, a Catholic whom some would argue is the real single-season home run king, is one of the quiet heroes of the American Catholic experience.”

Little boys like Tim Dolan in St. Louis look for heroes at the ballpark. Grown-ups realize that the men on field are often not heroes at all. But sometimes they are, and sometimes even a grown-up cardinal of the Holy Roman Church finds a hero there. Stan Musial was a quiet Catholic hero. As Mickey Mantle might have said: “Be like him.”

(Fr. de Souza is the editor-in-chief of Convivium, a Canadian magazine of faith in our common life: www.cardus.ca/convivium.)

Canada, U.S. have world’s most extreme abortion licence

Victor Chan is the Dalai Lama’s man in Vancouver, arranging the Buddhist monk’s visits to that city. In a new book, The Wisdom of Compassion, Chan documents those visits, especially an encounter between the Dalai Lama and South Africa’s Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Vancouver in 2004.

I haven’t read the book, but the reporting of that meeting gives us an illuminating example of how the mainstream media covers religion. The headlines on stories about the book contained this eye-catcher: “God is not a Christian, says Tutu.” An excerpt appeared online at The Huffington Post and created quite a buzz.

Desmond Tutu, a man of admirable courage, was indispensable to the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa and the subsequent truth and reconciliation commission. Yet as a theological thinker, Archbishop Tutu is rather unimaginative and predictable. On any controverted question, he reliably takes the position adopted by the fashionable view of the secular liberal consensus. So when he declared in 2004 to the Dalai Lama that “God is not a Christian” it was perhaps newsworthy given that he is a Christian clergyman, but it was not new. In fact, it is not even that remarkable, for God is not a disciple of Jesus Christ, which is what a Christian is. If Archbishop Tutu was to say that Jesus Christ is not God, or that He did not reveal who God is to us, that would be something different, for it would mean that Archbishop Tutu is not a Christian.

The archbishop did say something remarkable in that encounter, but it was not what was highlighted in media reports.

“The glory about God is that God is a mystery,” Tutu said. “God is actually quite incredible in many ways. But God allows us to misunderstand her but also to understand her.”

This too was given wide play, noting that the reference to God as “she” produced wild applause in the audience.

“I’ve frequently said I’m glad I’m not God,” Tutu continued. “But I’m also glad God is God. He can watch us speak, spread hatred, in His name. Apartheid was for a long time justified by the church. We do the same when we say all those awful things we say about gays and lesbians. We speak on behalf of a God of love. The God that I worship is an omnipotent God. He is also incredibly, totally impotent. The God that I worship is almighty, and also incredibly weak.

“He can sit there and watch me make a wrong choice,” Tutu continued. “But the glory of God is actually mind-blowing. He can sit and not intervene because He has such an incredible, incredible reverence for my autonomy. He is prepared to let me go to hell. Freely. Rather than compel me to go to heaven. He weeps when He sees us do the things that we do to one another. But He does not send lightning bolts to destroy the ungodly. And that is fantastic. God says, ‘I can’t force you. I beg you, please for your own sake, make the right choice. I beg you.’ ”

When Tutu speaks about God not being Christian, or God being “she” or about how Christians are beastly to gays and lesbians, it is trumpeted as extraordinary and courageous, even though it is neither, as witness the laudations in the hall.

What is remarkable though is that Tutu speaks about God’s respect for our freedom to the point of making Himself weak. Some may think it bold to say that God is “impotent.” From St. Paul onwards the Church has preached Christ crucified. That God makes Himself “impotent” before our freedom was commonplace in the preaching of the Fathers of the Church.

The news in the excerpt is that the impeccably liberal Desmond Tutu believes in hell. Hell means that God respects our freedom to the extent of honouring the consequences of our choices; a cosmos without hell is also without freedom. It is likely that Tutu’s comments about hell were not met with rapturous applause, which is a good sign, because the preacher who always gets rapturous applause is not a preacher at all, but a panderer.

The mainstream media prides itself on being bold in challenging orthodoxies, both sacred and profane.

The Huffington Post thought it was doing just that in highlighting the apparent Christian heterodoxy of a great liberal hero, Archbishop Tutu. But he was just echoing the secular liberal orthodoxy. The actual news was that, whatever his views on gender and sexual orientation, Tutu was perfectly orthodox on the reality, and necessity, of hell in his conversation with the Dalai Lama.

The headline should have been: “Tutu reminds the Dalai Lama about hell.”

(Fr. de Souza is the editor-in-chief of Convivium, a Canadian magazine of faith in our common life: www.cardus.ca/convivium.)

AVE MARIA, FLORIDA - Notre Dame football brings together religion and sports in a particularly pleasing way, and for this football chaplain to be on hand in Miami for the college football national championship — Notre Dame vs. Alabama — was a blessing most pleasing indeed. It was a more conflicted blessing after the opening kickoff, from which point Alabama administered a severe beating to Notre Dame en route to its third national championship in four years.

Clothes may make the man, but vestments don’t make the priest. The Mass is holy whether the priest is wearing beautiful vestments or something akin to a picnic blanket. That being said, liturgical vesture does matter; it doesn’t make the priest or the Mass, but it can make both the priest and the offering of the Mass more worthy of the right worship of God.

We have emerged from a long period in which the norm in many Canadian parishes ranged from merely adequate to hideous. Happily though, in recent years one rarely sees the detritus of the 1970s, chasubles made out of rough fabrics and felt and apparently decorated by small children with poor motor skills. The same renewed care for the liturgy that resulted in the vastly improved new translation of the Mass is also manifest in priests choosing vestments that are elegant and evocative of Catholic devotions. Vestments ought to inspire the faithful to lift their vision toward divine things, not to avert their eyes altogether. It may even be that a priest more suitably adorned for the Mass might inspire the faithful to dress more elegantly too.

I think about vestments in a particular way on Gaudete Sunday, when the liturgical colour is rose, not the usual Advent violet. I am blessed to have more vestments than priests usually do. Some were made by my own mother, and others were made or purchased abroad, where vestments can be had at a fraction of the prevailing prices in Canada. Many of them have stories — made for my first Mass, for my sister’s religious vows, bought for an anniversary or at a particular holy shrine — but my Gaudete Sunday rose chasuble has the best story of all.

In 2002, I was studying in Rome and Msgr. Charles Elmer, a long-time faculty member and spiritual father at the Pontifical North American College, had his 50th anniversary of priestly ordination that Dec. 20. The College celebration was set for Gaudete Sunday, and I asked Msgr. Elmer, both a friend and mentor, if there was anything he wanted. The old priest, who lived very simply, said he would like to offer his anniversary Mass in the same kind of Roman chasuble that he wore at his ordination in 1952 at St. John Lateran in Rome. The College did not have a rose-coloured Roman chasuble, so to honour a priest greatly beloved and admired, I bought Msgr. Elmer a new one, simple but elegant, from Gammarelli, the Roman ecclesiastical haberdasher. He was touched and happy.

We did not count on the objection of the College’s then liturgical director, a younger priest. Whether he objected to using something the College did not own, or whether he objected to the Roman vestment, or whether he took perverse delight in asserting his authority against a priest more senior than he, I do not know, but he told Msgr. Elmer that because the dozens of concelebrants could not all wear rose, the rose chasuble could not be worn. He was wrong on liturgical grounds, and it was wrong to deny the modest request of a venerable priest. (When a few years later he suffered the acute embarrassment of being dismissed in mid-semester, I thought it well-deserved, though I regretted it was for other behaviour, and not for how he had treated Msgr. Elmer.)

In any case, Msgr. Elmer, a D-Day veteran, handled the situation with humility and grace. He declined to do what I advised, which was to show up in the sacristy clad as he wished and dare anyone to tell him otherwise. Instead, he took me aside, thanked me for the gift and said that he would do that if I insisted, as I had bought him the gift he had desired. But his own preference would be to obey the whims of the liturgical director. I was disappointed for him, and angry too. I was quite eager for a fight. Msgr. Elmer taught me that one goes to Mass not eager for a fight but ready to receive a gift. And so he gave me one.

“Raymond, I am an old man now and not many years are left. You are just newly ordained. I am grateful for your gift, but now do me another kindness and receive this gift back from me to you, from an old priest to a young one,” Msgr. Elmer told me. “You will have many Sundays to wear it, I will have few.”

Msgr. Elmer actually had eight more Gaudete Sundays; he died in September 2011. This year would have been his 60th anniversary. I received back the gift I had given, and every Gaudete Sunday I wear it, remembering a great priest who knew how to rejoice in the Lord always.

At his Angelus address on Dec. 9, Pope Benedict commented upon the Sunday Gospel, in which St. Luke carefully lists the various rulers, sacred and profane, when St. John the Baptist began his preaching.

And still going strong after 10 years

I have been writing about a lot of anniversaries this year — 1,700 years since Constantine’s victory at the Milvian bridge, 500 years since the completion of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, 50 years since the opening of the Second Vatican Council. In the secular calendar, we have had the diamond jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and the 30th anniversary of the patriation of the constitution, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In the light of all that, 10 years may not seem like very much — though I did write about my own 10th anniversary of priestly ordination this past summer. Another anniversary comes this week. Ten years for Salt + Light Television, and it is an occasion worth celebrating.

Fr. Thomas Rosica, director of World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto, founded Salt + Light TV in the months after WYD, with the generous support of the Gagliano family. The name Salt + Light came from the theme of the WYD itself, taken from the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus tells His disciples that they are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

This week Salt + Light marks 10 years since its establishment, even though it did not begin broadcasting until June 2003. The major celebratory event was the Dec. 5 Christmas concert with The Priests, but we had something of an anticipated celebration in Kingston when Fr. Rosica and Sebastian Gomes visited our archdiocese Dec. 2. They offered two presentations — one in Sebastian’s home parish in Perth, Ont., and the other at our cathedral — on the new evangelization, reporting on their experience at the recent synod on the new evangelization in Rome.

Fr. Rosica served among the synod officials, briefing the English-speaking journalists. Gomes is one of the network’s dynamic young journalists who, along with his colleague Cheridan Sanders, covered the synod. Their report stressed two points. First, that the new evangelization is not to teach people about Jesus, but to help people encounter Jesus. Second, that faithful Catholics themselves have to be converted anew and feel a new enthusiasm for their faith. Without this new enthusiasm, we won’t desire to share our faith with others.

Salt + Light, a powerful initiative for the new evangelization in Canada, is entering its second decade launching a new program that attempts to do just that. Hosted by Gomes and Sanders, The Church Alive takes its title from Pope Benedict XVI’s inaugural homily, wherein he proclaimed that the “Church is young, the Church is alive.” It was not exactly the “be not afraid” of Blessed John Paul II’s inaugural homily, but it speaks of Benedict’s priority for the new evangelization. The Church is alive in Jesus Christ to be sure, but needs to become more lively, precisely in those places where the Church is in critical condition.

The Church Alive is described as “fast-paced,” meaning that its pilot episode covers the year of faith, the Second Vatican Council and Blessed John XXIII in the first four-and-a-half minutes. It’s aimed at making young Catholics excited about their faith and equipping them to share it with their contemporaries. This is not your grandmother’s religious TV. Gomes on the documents of Vatican II: “These are absolutely huge.”

Huge, indeed. Imagine what that would make Ephesus or Trent. Enormous.

Gomes and Sanders are just the latest innovation from Salt + Light in presenting the faith. Gomes reveals something of the Salt + Light secret when he says that the staff at Salt + Light is not permitted to say that something can’t be done, or that we have never done it that way before.

The new evangelization requires, by definition, new methods. And so not having done something that way before is often an advantage. At 10 years, Salt + Light is no longer new, but it is still doing new things and is very much part of the new evangelization in Canada.
Having led the reform of the Newman Centre at the University of Toronto in the 1990s, World Youth Day in 2002 and now Salt + Light for 10 years, Fr. Rosica is becoming — if one might put it this way — a young elder of the new evangelization. The continuing good news about Salt + Light is that there are a great many young evangelists following behind him. Salt + Light — ad multos annos!

As the days grow colder and the nights longer, George Frideric Handel returns to the choir loft and the concert hall, to say nothing of the shopping mall. The naturalized British composer’s Messiah is sung by amateurs and professionals alike in these weeks. All of which is rather curious, for the celebrated “Hallelujah Chorus,” in salute of which both princes and peasants rise to their feet, is part of a vast biblical libretto — stretching from Isaiah to Revelation — and takes its place after the Ascension. So the chorus properly belongs more to Easter than Christmas, but Christmas is where it has stuck in our cultural imagination.

Handel though, especially this year, could be considered a fitting adornment for Christ the King. In 1727, Handel was commissioned by King George II to compose anthems for his coronation. Handel composed four anthems for the occasion. So magnificently did he fulfil this royal patronage that his music is now perpetually associated with the coronation of British monarchs.

Thus it was an inspired decision by the Melos Choir and Chamber Orchestra of Kingston to perform the coronation anthems at St. George’s Anglican Cathedral in celebration of the diamond jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. St. George’s just being a short walk down Johnson Street from our own Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, it was easy enough to attend the Sunday afternoon concert before returning to offer the evening Mass. For good measure, I took along the students who sing at Newman House for an afternoon of Christian culture.

Handel’s coronation anthems are settings of biblical passages which, when employed for coronations, make manifest that kingship in this world is to be patterned on the kingship of Christ. The aspiration of kings should be — literally — the listening heart of Solomon, that he might govern the people wisely.

King Solomon is the focal point of the most famous of Handel’s anthems, “Zadok the Priest.” The text is an adaptation of I Kings 1:38-40: “Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet anointed Solomon King; and all the people rejoiced, rejoiced and said: ‘God save the King! Long live the King! God save the King! May the King live forever. Amen. Alleluia!’ ”

That biblical text has been used in every coronation of English (and later British) monarchs since that of King Edgar in 973 at Bath. Handel’s setting, after its spectacular debut in 1727, has been repeated at every coronation, including that of Queen Elizabeth 60 years ago. Indeed, after King George II died, composer William Boyce was commissioned to produce new settings for the coronation in 1761 of King George III. Boyce accepted, but declined to provide a new setting for “Zadok,” arguing that Handel’s setting could not be improved upon. He was right.

The Melos musicians did a splendid job of performing the anthems, and the setting of the Anglican cathedral was a reminder that these anthems are properly prayers for a gracious and noble sovereign, even as the royal anthem of “God Save the Queen” is a simple prayer.

The coronation anthems — in addition to “Zadok,” they include “My heart is inditing,” “Let Thy hand be strengthened” and “The King shall rejoice” — constitute a corpus of Christian culture. They are liturgy which soars, combining splendid sacred music with the word of God. As music does at its best, they mark something of the majesty of a moment and bring it easily to mind upon hearing just a few bars. As “Adeste fidelis” or “O Holy Night” immediately bring to mind Midnight Mass, the coronation anthems, even if performed at the concert hall instead of a cathedral, bring to mind not only the pomp and pageantry, but also the sacral character of Christian kingship.

As a liturgical genre, the anthem is an Anglican speciality, combining the textual brevity of a Roman antiphon with the power of a great hymn. The coronation anthems are a fine introduction to anthems for Catholics who may be unfamiliar with them.

A final treat from the diamond jubilee sacred music concert was the singing of the royal anthem — and not just the first verse of “God Save the Queen.” Here’s the Canadian verse for our Queen: “Our loved Dominion bless with peace and happiness/ From shore to shore/ Let our Queen’s realms all be united, loyal and free/ True to themselves and thee/ Forevermore.”

Listen to Handel’s Messiah this December to be sure; but even before Advent begins, in this week of Christ the King, listen to the coronation anthems, from the composer of Christian kingship.

Viva Cristo Rey! Long live Christ the King!

That was the defiant cry of the Cristeros, and the Feast of Christ the King is a fitting time to remember a dark period in history. Never heard of the Cristero rebellion? Most have not, including in Mexico. It is a story we should know.

In the 1920s, the Mexican government of Plutarco Calles waged war on the Catholic Church. Not metaphorically, but literally, with laws that proscribed worship, restricted the conduct of the clergy, interfered in the governance of the Church and trampled upon religious liberty — all of it enforced by the armed power of the state. It was totalitarianism just across the Rio Grande.

The Cristeros were faithful Catholics who rose up — both in armed rebellion and by other means — to defend their faith and their religious freedom. They proudly proclaimed they were fighting for Christ the King and the Virgin of Guadalupe.

The Cristero war lasted from 1926 to 1929. Thousands of Mexicans suffered violent persecution for the faith — priests hanged in their churches, religious shot down by firing squad in the town squares, faithful men and women jailed, tortured and killed in hatred for the faith.

After this shameful period of Mexican history concluded, official Mexico decreed that it would not speak of its shame. Consequently, few people are even aware that a fierce religious persecution took place less than a hundred years ago in North America.

All this is remedied by a film every Catholic must watch, For Greater Glory, which tells the story in a magnificent way, comparable in acting and production to any major Hollywood film. Released in theatres in the United States in the spring, it did not have theatrical release in Canada. The DVD went on sale in the United States on Sept. 11, and will be released in Canada on Dec. 18.

Last week I wrote about the feminine soul and recommended as a Christmas gift a book — My Sisters, The Saints — that gives a compelling account of a distinctly contemporary path of Catholic feminine discipleship. This week, might I suggest this movie, martial in content, which highlights a complementary masculine path to holiness — and all the more compelling for those manly virtues are demonstrated heroically by a 14- year-old boy.

Blessed José Luis Sanchez joins the Cristeros after witnessing the martyrdom of his parish priest. This teenage martyr was beatified in 2005, and the cinematic portrayal of his heroic life is profoundly moving. Even more impressive, the heroism of the boy moves the mercenary general, hired to lead the Cristeros, to genuine conversion.

The general’s story is one of a great military man who no longer has a great cause to give his life to, and who does not share the tradition of faith with his own wife and the Mexican people. The general learns from the boy the heart of manly virtue, which is to embrace with great courage a noble cause, a cause greater than one’s own achievement.

Upon enacting the laws prohibiting worship, President Calles told the French ambassador to Mexico that “without Mass and the sacraments the Mexican people will soon lose their faith.” He was right about the consequences of being denied the sacraments, but he was wrong in thinking that the Mexican people would not fight for their faith, fight for the sacraments and fight for the Mass.

All of this is suitable to bring to mind on the Feast of Christ the King. Aware of the attacks on Jesus and His Church around the world — both the Russian and Mexican revolutions of 1917 turned viciously against religion — Pope Pius XI declared in December 1925 a new feast, the Feast of Christ the King. The Holy Father reminded the world that the kingship of Christ was not subject to the ambitions of tyrants.

“The annual and universal celebration of the feast of the Kingship of Christ will draw attention to the evils which anticlericalism has brought upon society in drawing men away from Christ, and will also do much to remedy them,” wrote Pius XI in his 1925 encyclical, Quas Primas. “While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim His kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm His rights. The way has been happily and providentially prepared for the celebration of this feast ever since the end of the last century. … The kingship and empire of Christ have been recognized in the pious custom, practised by many families, of dedicating themselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; not only families have performed this act of dedication, but nations, too, and kingdoms. In fact, the whole of the human race was at the insistence of Pope Leo XIII, in the Holy Year 1900, consecrated to the Divine Heart.”

I saw the film in Michigan on the Feast of the Sacred Heart last June. I cannot recommend highly enough planning to obtain and see this film now, with Christ the King upon us.

Viva Cristo Rey!