sábado, 5 de janeiro de 2013

Revista TIME: Promotores del aborto pierden batalla ante pro-vidas en EEUU

WASHINGTON D.C., 04 Ene. 13 / 01:34 pm (ACI/EWTN Noticias).- En la portada de su edición de enero de 2013, la famosa revista estadounidense TIME, asegura que si bien "hace 40 años, los activistas del derecho al aborto obtuvieron una victoria épica con Roe vs. Wade", que permitió la legalización del aborto en Estados Unidos, "ellos han estado perdiendo desde entonces" ante los pro-vida.

Según explica Kate Pickert, autora del artículo de portada, desde que en enero de 1973 la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos convirtió en un derecho federal el acceso al aborto, "el movimiento pro-elección (aborto) ha estado perdiendo".
"En muchas partes del país, actualmente, recurrir a un aborto es más difícil que en muchos lugares desde la década de 1970".

Pickert señaló que "hay menos médicos dispuestos a realizar el procedimiento y menos clínicas abortistas abiertas al negocio".

"Los activistas pro-choice (abortistas) han sido sobrepasados por sus contrapartes pro-vida, que han presionado exitosamente para obtener regulaciones estatales que limitan el acceso" al aborto, escribió.

"Muchos estados requieren actualmente que las mujeres pasen por consejería, periodos de espera o ultrasonidos antes de someterse a abortos", indicó.

Para la periodista estadounidense, "la causa pro-vida ha estado ganando la guerra del aborto, en parte, porque ha perseguido una estrategia organizada y bien ejecutada".
Además, reconoció, "la opinión pública está crecientemente" del lado pro-vida.

"Gracias al ultrasonido prenatal y a los avances de la neonatología, los estadounidenses pueden ahora conocer cómo se ve un feto y que los bebés nacidos tan tempranamente como a las 24 semanas pueden ahora sobrevivir", señaló Pickert.

La periodista de TIME dijo que "a pesar de que tres cuartos de los estadounidenses creen que el aborto debería ser legal en algunos o todos los casos, la mayoría apoya leyes estatales que regulen el procedimiento, y cada vez menos se identifican a sí mismos como ‘pro-choice’ en las encuestas de opinión pública".

Pickert también retrató la división generacional que destruye por dentro la causa abortista, pues "los jóvenes activistas del derecho al aborto se quejan de que las líderes de las organizaciones feministas", que tenían 20 o 30 años cuando se legalizó el aborto en Estados Unidos, "no están dispuestas a pasar la antorcha a nuevas generaciones".

Sin embargo, para Kate Pickert, uno de los principales motivos de la derrota de los promotores del aborto es que "en una democracia dinámica como Estados Unidos, defender el status quo es siempre más difícil que luchar para cambiarlo".

Una de las expresiones más claras del avance de la causa pro-vida en Estados Unidos es la multitudinaria Marcha nacional que realizan cientos de miles de personas, con frecuencia ignoradas por los medios, todos los años en enero, en el aniversario del fallo de Roe vs. Wade.

La última marcha, la del año 2012, reunió a más de 400 mil personas que durante varias horas soportaron intenso frío, neblina y hasta lluvia mientras recorrían las principales calles de la capital estadounidense hasta la sede del Capitolio.
Para ver la portada de enero de TIME, ingrese a: http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20130114,00.html

Arzobispado presenta recurso contra ley del aborto en Uruguay

MONTEVIDEO, 04 Ene. 13 / 08:12 pm (ACI/EWTN Noticias).- La coordinadora del área salud sexual y reproductiva del Ministerio de Salud Pública (MSP), Leticia Rieppi, informó a que el Arzobispado de Montevideo (Uruguay), presentó una recusación a la reglamentación de la ley del aborto.

En declaraciones al diario El País, la funcionara señaló que con este recurso ya son tres las impugnaciones contra el reglamento de la ley del aborto. Las dos anteriores fueron presentadas por un centenar de médicos y por la organización no Gubernamental (ONG) Madrinas de la Vida.

En diciembre de 2012 los obispos uruguayos habían expresado su rechazo a la ley del aborto y su reglamentación. "Mientras no sea derogada la ley en cuestión, creemos que su reglamentación tiene que ser extremadamente cuidadosa para no aumentar el daño que ya provoca", indicaron en un comunicado.

En su texto, los obispos exigieron el respeto a la objeción de conciencia de médicos y la de ideario de las instituciones. Asimismo advirtieron "la injusticia e inequidad al negar el derecho a la objeción de ideario a futuras instituciones de salud".

Por su parte, los médicos denunciaron que el decreto del aborto “pretende limitar derechos fundamentales garantizados por la Constitución” y viola “la independencia de la conciencia moral y cívica de todo trabajador dependiente”.

Según informó la prensa uruguaya, el Ministerio de Salud Pública tiene 120 días para hacer los descargos sobre las recusaciones.

“The Goodness and Humanity of God” - by Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.

In Crisis 

The sub-title of J. Budziszewski’s 2009 book, The Line Through the Heart, reads as follows: “Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction.” The initial dedicatory citation in the book, from which the book derives its title, is a memorable one from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It reads: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Needless to say, this sentence is soul-wrenching. It compels us all to stop blaming external causes and systems for the conditions of our souls and of our society. This insight is but a graphic adaption of Plato’s affirmation that the disorders of our polities are first found in the disorders of our own souls. These disorders are not our subjective “feelings” about what ought to be if we were given what we wanted but standards first found in the reality of things that remain valid and have their defined consequences whether we ignore them or not.

What particularly struck me in reading Budziszewski’s book, however, was his attention to natural law as itself a sign of contradiction. He went into what has always been a murky moral area, namely, why is it so difficult to recognize and act on the truth of things? We might, at first sight, think that it is a rather simple problem. Show me the truth and I will change my ways! But it does not really work that way. One might say that our public order is today a massive refusal to accept the truth of human nature itself. We ultimately are forced to justify this doing what we want by denying that there is a human nature to conform ourselves to.

Ultimate questions are said to be insolvable. Thus, we are free to believe and act as we want. The purpose of government, as a consequence, is to make whatever we want to do possible for us with little or no cost to ourselves. If our activities cause diseases or derangements of human lives, the solution is not, through self-discipline, to stop the activities that cause the damage but to find a “cure” that will enable us to continue what we want without any consequences to ourselves. We look to technology to substitute for our own lack of self-rule.

II.

The phrase, a sign of contradiction, is from Luke’s gospel (2:21-40). The scene in the Temple of Jerusalem depicts the aged Simeon who sees the child Jesus. He recognizes Him to be the savior who was promised to Israel. This Child will be the cause of “the rise and fall of many in Israel.” Evidently, the “cause” of this rising or falling itself had to do with the recognition or the refusal to recognize Him. It was something in our power to do or refuse. Simeon addresses these words to Mary, Christ’s mother. He tells her further that her soul will be pierced. In retrospect, we know that a relation exists between the rejection of Christ and His death on the Cross. This consequence too is related to the fall of many who reject Christ’s identity and hence the Father’s plan for our salvation through Him.

Benedict XVI takes up this theme of a sign of contradiction in his own reflections on the scene in the Temple when Christ is brought for His purification. Not only was Christ a sign of contradiction to the Jews but He remains a sign of contradiction to our times and pretty much for the same reason. What, we might ask, exactly is this contradiction that Christ is said to signify and portend? Clearly, it has to do with what Bernard of Clairvaux was getting at when he told us of divinity and humanity existing in the same person, in this Jesus. Obviously, man is not God. The claim of a man to be a god is considered blasphemy which attributes to man what does not belong to him.

Yet, if there is no God, there can be no nature either. Hence, the most basic step in establishing a human “freedom” that has no relation to what man is would be to deny the existence of a God who stood outside of the world which was dependent for its existence on Him. This is the specifically Christian God. Modern atheism is itself dependent on an understanding of a God who did not need to create. Thus, when it denies nature, atheism is likewise denying the cause of nature as we know it. Nature does not stand independently of God for its own being.

III.

Benedict tells us that the “contradiction” that moderns express is directed toward the  Christian God. That is, we are not merely saying that no god exists, but we are positively affirming, defiantly, that this creator God, who is said to create human nature and become incarnate in it, is specifically denied. The result is that we affirm man in the place of God. Our understanding of man must, in other words, reject in a positive, voluntary manner, those things in human nature that are said to be inclinations placed there by God. This God “limits” us. He wants us to be what He has intended for us to be. We are to choose what is best for us by following the inclinations of our nature, of our natural law. We would like to “free” ourselves from nature in order that we become what we “want” to be. And what we “want” to be must, logically, eliminate any sign that something in us is better made than what we ourselves could conjure up.

This result is why so much of our contemporary life is taken up with ways of life that deny marriage, children, and seek to glorify ways of life that are intrinsically opposed to them. To achieve this latter goal of complete independence from God, we must lie to ourselves about what we are. Here the pope takes up a theme that is already in Plato. No one, Plato said, wants a “lie in his soul about the most important things.” But if we do want to replace God with our own definition of ourselves, we must lie to ourselves, deceive ourselves, about what we are. We must seek ourselves independently of what we ought to be. If we succeed in this endeavor, we will make ourselves into monsters and oddities, as Benedict spelled out for us in Spe Salvi.

If we turn back to the line of thought that Bernard was pursuing, we see that God did not disdain to join Himself to human nature as He created it. In the Incarnation, God affirms the goodness of human nature as such. Thus, modern atheism’s uniqueness is not just a denial that God exists, but that He could become man and remain true God. Indeed, there is no world of nature that exists apart from the divine plan that includes the Incarnation.

As Benedict graphically shows in the earlier volumes of Jesus of Nazareth, the world is different precisely because the Son of God became man in the world at a definite time and place. This fact, which all evidence seems to affirm as true, is itself sufficient to make us aware that the world is different when God is within it. It contains within itself an order to the divinity which passes through the heart of every human being and deals with his affirmation or rejection of good and evil.

The sign of contradiction is most manifest by the difficulty we see in accepting the truth of the Incarnation with all its implications. Yves Simon once remarked that it is a most difficult thing for a man to give up an idea or theory that he knows or suspects may be wrong. The habits of vice in many ways have become so solidified in our culture that it is almost impossible for most people even to conceive that their way of life is disordered.

In this sense, the natural law becomes yet another sign of contradiction as it remains present at least in our minds and memories as a judgment on how we have chosen to live. In many areas of the world, including our own, we are seeing more and more not just the legally enforced living of disordered lives but the official effort to repress any speaking or information that suggests anything is wrong with it. This is really what is behind the establishment of “diversity” as the only criterion of truth. It is a form of relativism that seeks to silence any possibility that “the goodness and humanity of God” are the true keys to human living and its ultimate destiny in eternal, not political, life.



Catholics and Depression - by CWR Staff

In CWR 

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, MD, is the author, with Msgr. John Cihak, STD, of the book, The Catholic Guide to Depression: How the Saints, the Sacraments, and Psychiatry Can Help You Break Its Grip and Find Happiness Again (Sophia Institute Press, 2012). Dr. Kheriaty is the Director of Residency Training and Medical Education in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine. He co-directs the Program in Medical Ethics in the School of Medicine, and serves as chairman of the clinical ethics committee at UCI Medical Center. Dr. Kheriaty graduated from the University of Notre Dame in philosophy and pre-medical sciences, and earned his MD degree from Georgetown University. Msgr. Cihak is a priest of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon who currently works in the Vatican. He helped to start Quo Vadis Days camps promoting discernment and the priesthood at the high school level that now operate in several U.S. dioceses. He has been a pastor and served in seminary formation. 

Their book “reviews the effective ways that have recently been devised to deal with this grave and sometimes deadly affliction — ways that are not only consistent with the teachings of the Church, but even rooted in many of those teachings.” The authors were recently interviewed by Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, about the serious challenges posed by depression and how those challenges can be best addressed through faith, clinical science, and other means.
 
CWR: The topic of depression is fairly commonplace, but you note that there is no simple definition of "depression". What are some of the major features of depression? Is it just an emotional state, or more?
 
Dr. Kheriaty: Depression is more than just an emotional state, though of course it typically involves profound changes in a person’s emotions.  Sadness and anxiety are the most common emotional states associated with depression, though anger and irritability are also commonly found in depressed individuals.  Depression affects other areas of our mental and physical life beyond our emotions. Depressed individuals typically experience changes in their thinking, with difficulty concentrating or focusing, and a lack of cognitive flexibility.  Depressed individuals develop a kind of “tunnel vision” where their thoughts are rigidly and pervasively negative.  In many cases, suicidal thinking is present, driven by thoughts or feelings of hopelessness and despair.  A person with depression often feels physically drained, with low levels of energy, little or no motivation, and slowed movements. 

Another feature of depression is what psychiatrists called “anhedonia”, which is the inability to experience pleasure or joy in activities that the person would typically enjoy.  Sleep is often disturbed, and the normal sleep-wake cycle is disrupted.  

Changes in appetite are common, often with consequent weight loss or occasionally weight gain (in so-called “atypical depression”).  So we see that depression involves many mental and physical changes, and affects not just a person’s emotions, but also their physical health and their ability to think clearly and act in the world.

CWR: Christians sometime think, or are tempted to think, that depression is a sign of spiritual failure or evidence of a lack of faith. What are the problems with, and dangers of, such perspectives?

Dr. Kheriaty: The problem with this perspective is that it does not recognize that depression is a complex illness with many contributing factors.  While we acknowledge in The Catholic Guide to Depression that spiritual or moral factors can be among the causes, we also argue that there are many other factors that play a role in the development of depression, many of which are outside of the patient’s direct control – biological factors, genetic predispositions, familial and early attachment problems, interpersonal loss, traumatic experiences, early abuse, neglect, and so on.  If we attend only to the spiritual or moral factors, then we do the person a disservice by ignoring other important contributing elements that often play a significant role in depression.  With that said, the spiritual factors, and other behavioral factors within a patient’s control, should not be ignored either.  We wrote this book, in part, as a way to bring the medical, social, and biological sciences into dialogue with philosophy, theology, and Catholic spirituality, in order to gain a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of this complex affliction.  We hope that this multifaceted approach will help people more adequately address depression from all of these complementary perspectives.

Msgr. Cihak: I would completely agree. I think perhaps sometimes in our desire to get to the bottom of things, we can tend to oversimplify the situation. As Dr. Kheriaty said, there can be many contributing factors. The book reflects an intentionally Catholic approach by integrating the truths of medicine, philosophy and faith. We should keep the whole in mind as well as the deep connection between the body and the soul. In our respective vocations, we have both encountered people suffering from depression who actually manifest a strong faith, which they themselves might not be able to see, but which has been helping them to keep going in the tough times. That being said, we attempt to demonstrate in the book that our Faith has profound things to say about depression, its deepest theological origins, its redemption by Jesus Christ and its transformation in His Church.

CWR: Are psychiatry and Christian faith in opposition to one another? If not, how can Christians discern between the benefits of psychiatry and problematic theories, for example, Freudian or Jungian accounts of religious belief and human relationships?

Msgr. Cihak: Put simply, no. Since all truth has its ultimate origin in God, the Church has always taught that the truths of faith and the truths of reason can never contradict each other. On this point, we can appeal to giants such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure as well as the various pronouncements of the Magisterium such as Bl. John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio. Because of this common divine origin, we can say that all truths have an intrinsic unity; truth is symphonic. Put one truth next to another and they resonate with each other. Sound medical or psychological science, and Christian faith rightly understood and interpreted, are not and never have been in opposition. We see our task as Catholic thinkers to build bridges between these sciences, always maintaining their proper competencies and autonomy, and to search out these harmonies, confident that they are already there to be discovered.

Dr. Kheriaty: We should add, however, that at various points in the history of psychiatry, some psychiatrists have ventured beyond what medical science can legitimately claim, and have made anti-religious claims in the name of psychiatry, or masquerading under the banner of “science”.  For example, the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, famously claimed that religious belief was psychologically unhealthy – indeed, he called religion the “universal obsessive neurosis of mankind”.  But this claim had nothing to do with actual empirical research; it instead reflected Freud’s own personal bias against religion.  The elements of his theory upon which this claim supposedly relied were never scientific; that is, they could not be subjected to scientific measurement or empirical proof.  The fact is that more recent evidence from a large body of medical and scientific research has shown that for most people, religious and spiritual practices (like meditative prayer, attending church regularly, and participating in communal worship) actually have positive benefits on a person’s mental and physical health, including reducing the risk of depression and helping patients to recover more quickly from depressive episodes.

Our book is one attempt to help readers thoughtfully discern between the legitimate benefits of psychiatry and problematic theories that have sometimes been put forward in the name of psychiatry or psychology.  There are other Catholic writers, Paul Vitz for example, who have addressed these issues in some of their writings as well.  Certainly there is more work that needs to be done in this area by people that have expertise in both the medical and psychological sciences and in philosophical anthropology and spiritual theology.  We need ongoing academic research and dialogue here, as well as people who can “translate” this intellectual work into writing that is accessible to a lay audience.  We hope that our book can make a contribution to this dialogue.  We also hope that it will serve as a user-friendly and practical guide for people suffering from depression, as well as for therapists, clergy, spiritual directors, and family members or friends who are trying to help a loved one with depression.

CWR: Bl. John Paul II said (as you quote), "Depression is always a spiritual trial." What should Christians know about the relationship between depression and the spiritual life? How is the "dark night of soul" different from various forms of depression?

Dr. Kheriaty: Depression certainly affects our spiritual life, and our spiritual life is central to helping us prevent or recover from depression. Depression is indeed a spiritual trial because it wounds us so deeply – you could say that it is an affliction not just of the body but also of the soul.  Depression can make prayer feel impossibly hard (though prayer is always possible, even when affective consolations are absent, even when we are assailed by dryness or distraction). We can know, with certainty and confidence, that God is our loving Father, that he is close to us and that he sustains us, even through painful trials and periods of suffering in this life.  We know also, in faith, that our suffering is not pointless, but can be redemptive when united to the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.

Msgr. Cihak: Although depression can sometimes resemble on the surface other spiritual or moral states, like spiritual lukewarmness or acedia on one hand, or the dark nights of the senses and of the spirit described by St. John of the Cross on the other, we argue in the book that it is very important to distinguish carefully between depression and these states because these states mean different things. In the case of lukewarmness or acedia, it is a negative, bad trend in the spiritual life involving moral fault which results in weakening one’s movement toward the Lord. The dark nights are actually positive, good, grace-filled movements in the spiritual life bringing one into deeper intimacy with the Lord.

Dr. Kheriaty: Yes, exactly.  With careful and prudent discernment, these states of mind and soul can be distinguished.  For example, the dark night is typically not accompanied by the physical or bodily symptoms of depression, like sleep disturbances, appetite changes, or changes in one’s level of physical energy.  These distinctions can be made by consultation with a prudent spiritual director, ideally in conjunction with and communication with a sensitive psychiatric or medical assessment when symptoms of depression are present.  We describe these various states and distinguish them in some detail in The Catholic Guide to Depression; however, it’s also important to recognize that sometimes these states can appear together, so clean distinctions are often difficult in practice.  Depression can go hand-in-hand with acedia or spiritual lukewarmness; it may be sustained by behaviors that, wittingly or unwittingly, the afflicted person is engaging in, and which call for repentance and reform.

CWR: What are some reasons for people committing suicide? What are some of the challenges faced in dealing with those struggling with suicidal tendencies and impulses?

Msgr. Cihak: I think the first thing we must say is that suicide is awful. I think one of the more powerful parts of the book is Dr. Kheriaty’s discussion of one such tragedy. God is the sovereign Master of life. We are the stewards, not owners, of the life entrusted to us by Him. Suicide contradicts the natural human inclination to live, which is placed in us by the good God. So suicide is gravely contrary to the just love of self, love of neighbor and love of God. However, though it is always wrong, the Church teaches that conditions such as grave psychological disturbances, anguish, grave fear of hardship, or suffering can diminish one’s responsibility in committing suicide (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2280-2283).

Dr. Kheriaty: The reasons for a person’s suicide often remain a mystery, to a large extent.  Research on suicide suggests that it is typically an ambivalent and impulsive act.  The person’s rationality may be impaired by a serious mental illness, like depression or psychosis.  Often drug or alcohol abuse catalyze a suicide attempt, by making a vulnerable individual more impulsive and impairing his judgment.  Depression plays a central role in a majority of suicides, which is one of the chief reasons why we should recognize and treat depression early on in the course of the episode.  A central psychological theme of most suicidal individuals is a profound sense of hopelessness.  This is one of the reasons, as research has demonstrated, that Christian faith can significantly lower the risk of suicide: our faith raises our sites to a glorious future, beyond the vicissitudes of this life; in faith, we have hope for eternal life with God.  Faith, hope, and love can therefore help us endure situations in this life that might otherwise feel intolerable.

Suicide is, tragically, all too common.  It is now the second leading cause of death among college students, and the third leading cause of death among young people age 15 - 24.  Many family members and friends struggle for the rest of their lives with a sense of guilt and self-blame after the death of a loved one by suicide, wondering what they might have done to prevent it.  In my professional experience, some suicides can be prevented, and we should always do whatever we can to lower a person’s risk of suicide. That being said, there are some suicidal individuals who are very difficult to assist.  In these instances, we place these individuals prayerfully in the hands of God, as the Catechism states with pastoral sensitivity: “We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives.  By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance.  The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives” (2283).  And so should we.

CWR: What are some of the myths or misnomers regarding psychotherapy? And what basis exists for a Christian approach to psychotherapy?

Dr. Kheriaty: It seems in recent decades that the psychotherapist’s office has replaced the confessional in the Western world.  While it is true that the confession lines are all too short, and most of us, including those suffering from depression, would benefit from receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation more frequently, it is also true that the confessional is not meant to cure psychological disorders like depression.  Blessed John Paul II said as much in an address to psychiatrists when he said that the confessional is not and cannot be an alternative to the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist’s office, nor can one expect the Sacrament of Penance to heal truly pathological conditions.  He went on to say that the confessor, though he is a healer of souls, is not a physician or a healer in the technical sense of the term. In fact, if the condition of the penitent seems to require medical care, the confessor should not deal with the matter himself, but should send the penitent to competent and honest professionals. 

The relationship between psychotherapy and the Sacrament of Confession once again points to the need for constructive dialogue between religion and psychiatry, between priests who are instruments of Christ’s healing in the confessional, and psychiatrists and other therapists who are instruments of Christ’s healing in psychotherapy.  Neither one can or should try to replace the work of the other.  Psychotherapy has its limitations, and therapy alone cannot cure our deepest wounds, but it can play an important role in the lives of many people in need of psychological healing.

Msgr. Cihak: Another way of stating this truth is that no amount of psychotherapy can take away sin or the guilt that comes from sin.  For this, we need conversion and Sacramental Confession.  On the other hand, while we never presume to limit the way in which God works, the grace of the Sacrament and the counsel given in the confessional (which by necessity is usually very brief), isn’t designed to work directly on the deep and habitual patterns of thinking and feeling that are the focus of treatment in psychotherapy. In fact, by respecting the competence and autonomy of each of these two ways of healing, they can come together to work powerfully in a person’s life. We made the deliberate choice to work together on this book—one a psychiatrist and the other a priest—precisely to show how this Catholic approach can be so effective.

Dr. Kheriaty: I’ll add a few remarks regarding your question about a Christian basis for psychotherapy.  A Christian approach to psychotherapy does not just mean that the therapist quotes Bible verses when offering counsel (though of course, this may be helpful in some circumstances).  Rather, it informs the entire approach to the patient in therapy, which seeks to know and heal the person in a way consonant with the person’s nature as a human being.  All therapists can recognize some foundational truths about the human person, by the light of reason and sound science: that the human person is a substantial unity of body and soul; that he is rational (able to grasp truth), relational (made for relationships of love and self-giving), and free to pursue the good.  A Christian therapist, moreover, by the light of revelation, can also perceive that the human person is created good, though fallen and therefore wounded, but also redeemed and capable of being sanctified by God.  This is the philosophical and theological framework within which a Catholic therapist approaches his or her work.  These characteristics, unfortunately, are often denied or contradicted by many modern and overly narrow psychological theories that do not take into account the full truth about the human person, but instead attempt to reduce the person to one or another aspect only.  This may allow for partial truths and insights to emerge, but such a reductionistic approach ultimately prevents one from seeing the full and marvelous truth about the human person as created and redeemed by God.

Msgr. Cihak: As people can see from what Dr. Kheriaty said, psychotherapy has everything to do with the big questions of human life, and therefore has everything to do with philosophy and theology. Psychotherapy is basically applying philosophical and theological insights to the way we think, feel and approach life. It is fundamentally a human science. Psychotherapy can benefit from the full truth of the human person that comes from the philosophical and theological tradition of the Church; and this same tradition can benefit from way these ideas actually come to bear on a person’s life in psychotherapy.

CWR: What are some of the spiritual disorders that lead to depression?

Msgr. Cihak: I think we could begin by observing that sin creates misery. Moral evil is not simply a bad idea; it harms and ruins peoples’ lives. The fundamental spiritual disorder is the choice of sin, which if left unchecked becomes habitual and begins to corrupt and even destroy that vital relationship with the Lord of life who desires our fulfillment and happiness. So being immersed in serious sin can certainly lead one to or hold one in a depressive state.

Dr. Kheriaty: Precisely.  I will mention as well the sin of despair, which is contrary to the virtue of hope, and commonly leads to depressive states.  Also envy, which is a form of sadness at another person’s good, can also incline one toward depression.  Spiritual lukewarmness or coldness in relation to the things of God, and what George Weigel has called “metaphysical boredom”, a sort of spiritual ennui, can put a person at risk for depressive or anxious states.  Atheism, especially in the face of death, can lead ultimately to despair or a denial of reality.  A person faces his own mortality, yet lacks a transcendental hope or a spiritual reference point, will often resort to desperate attempts to control the timing and circumstances of his death, or to avoid suffering at all costs.  We see this in the push for physician-assisted suicide, for example.  The world is chock full of dead end paths that lead a person away from ultimate and lasting happiness.  Not all spiritual disorders lead to clinical depression, but all spiritual disorders ultimately lead toward unhappiness of one form or another.

CWR: How can the saints and the sacraments bring freedom from anxiety and depression?

Msgr. Cihak: The saints show the life of Christ to be real, concrete and possible.

Dr. Kheriaty: Well said.  When we look to the saints for help with depression, it’s important to remember that every one of the saints was a person of flesh and blood, just like us.  Each of them had defects that they had to struggle to overcome.  Too many overly pious biographies of saints gloss over the messy aspects of their life and omit their defects or vulnerabilities, as though these people were sanctified from birth – as though they were made from fundamentally different “stuff” than the rest of us.  These well-intentioned books ought to be tossed in the trash bin.  The saints were real people.  They fought and won; they fought and lost.  But the thing that made them saints is that when they were defeated by their own weaknesses, they got up again, brushed themselves off, and with God’s grace, they went back into the fray to fight again.  Many of them suffered from depression or other severe mental illnesses at various points in their journey of life.  With God’s grace they finished the race, they kept the faith.  The saints can, through their friendship and their intercession, help us also to fight the battles against our own defects and weaknesses, to struggle and persevere on those days that feel messy, where nothing seems to be going right.  They know; they’ve been there too.  And from Heaven they are cheering us on to victory.

Msgr. Cihak: If the saints make the divine life a real possibility and a concrete invitation to imitate, then the Sacraments are the primary way that the divine life is communicated to us. Jesus does nothing superfluous, and so the Sacraments that He instituted should be of paramount importance to the Christian. Immersing ourselves in the sacramental life, as well as cultivating a life of prayer and virtue, is what we call “the ordinary means of sanctification”. These means can be of great help in resisting and recovering from mental illness, including depression. It is important to remember that the primary aim of the graces of the Sacraments is to accomplish the work of salvation in us, but we ought not to overly compartmentalize the effects of grace given the unity of the human person. Grace can also accomplish physical and mental healing when it is part of God’s plan for us. In any case, the Lord’s grace is always good for us.

CWR: Therapy, you note, cannot uncover the most important truths about the human person. What is the foundational truth that must be appropriated in order that we might be whole and healed?

Msgr. Cihak: God desires our happiness. We were made in His very image and called to become like Him. We were created to live with the Blessed Trinity forever and to have our humanity become fully illuminated and enlivened by the divine life. This happens through Jesus Christ, the one and only Savior of the world. Because of sin, the path to that destiny is marked by the Cross. So every follower of Christ will have difficulties and struggles in this earthly life. Sometimes struggling against depression is part of one’s conformity to the Cross of Christ, which always leads to everlasting life. By union with Christ, in the end, He will form us by the power of His grace to be like Him, truly Godlike.

Dr. Kheriaty: Here is another way of saying the same thing: the most important truth about us is truth of our divine filiation – the marvelous truth that God is my loving Father.  In Christ the Son, my Savior, I am an adopted son or daughter of God.  Each day we should try to go deeper into the meaning of this truth for our lives.  The fact that God is my loving Father is not just one more fact among many; it is, so to speak, the lens through which I should view everything else in my life and in the world.  God loves me more intensely and more affectionately than all the fathers and mothers of this world love their children.  He is close to me, so very close, “more inward to me than I am to myself,” in St. Augustine’s mysterious formulation.  Not only did he create me, in love he sent his own Son to redeem me from sin, from death, and from despair.  Jesus Christ, who is our brother, our friend, our Savior and our God, says to us now what he said to his apostles the night before he died: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy” (Jn 16:20), and he assures us, “In the world you will have tribulation, but take courage, for I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33). 

What Archbishop Müller Said About the SSPX and “Continuity” - by Michael J. Miller

In CWR 

Volume VII of Joseph Ratzinger’s Collected Works, an anthology of his writings on the Second Vatican Council, was recently published in German. On November 28, 2012, the editor of the Opera Omnia, Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, who is now also prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, presented this latest volume in the series at the Teutonic College of Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome. This was the place where German and Austrian Council Fathers used to confer regularly with theologians and periti, including then-Father Ratzinger, at special meetings organized by Cardinal Frings of Cologne. An Italian version of Archbishop Müller’s speech appeared in the edition of L’Osservatore Romano dated November 29. 

Although the speech ostensibly outlined the contents of Volume VII and quoted a few familiar passages from a Vatican II document, it elicited several sharply critical responses from traditional Catholics, including an unsigned, six-part analysis by a theologian from the Society of St. Pius X and an essay by historian Roberto de Mattei. What under other circumstances might have been a routine publishing event proved to be an informal but revealing moment in the ongoing theological discussions between the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Society of St. Pius X. 
 
Presentation of Volume VII

The two main themes of Archbishop Müller’s speech are stated in the first two paragraphs of the speech: “Joseph Ratzinger, from the time when he was a theologian, helped to shape the Council and accompanied it in all its phases…. The Council is an integral part of the history of the Church, and therefore it can be correctly understood only if this two-thousand-year context is considered.” 

The subtitle of Volume VII, Formulation—Transmission—Interpretation, marks the phases in Ratzinger’s Council-related work. The young professor of theology participated in the Preparatory Commissions for the Council as a theological advisor to Cardinal Frings. During a meeting at the Teutonic College in October 1962, Ratzinger criticized a conciliar schema (draft document) for describing the “sources” of Revelation in the plural; he argued that it is more theologically correct to speak of a single divine wellspring from which both Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture flow. Cardinal Frings adopted this critique and presented it at a General Assembly. Father Ratzinger was then appointed to two Conciliar Commissions and continued to help improve what eventually became the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum.  

During and immediately after the sessions of Vatican II, Ratzinger provided “first-hand” reports on the proceedings in books, articles, lectures, and interviews, thus “stimulating debate” and facilitating “the reception” of the results of the Council. In the years between 1966 and 2003 he also wrote commentaries of all four Dogmatic Constitutions, based on their original, officially approved Latin texts, which most clearly express the will of the Council Fathers. Archbishop Müller comments: “Anyone who wants to understand the Council must consider attentively all the Constitutions, Decrees, and Declarations, because they alone, in their unity, represent the valid heritage of the Council.”  

Finally, while serving as prefect of the CDF and now as Pope, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has written about how the Second Vatican Council should be interpreted and implemented. Two paragraphs from the section of Archbishop Müller’s presentation entitled “Hermeneutic of renewal in continuity” started a controversy; an English translation of them follows:  

In his Address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005, which sparked considerable interest, Benedict XVI emphasizes “the hermeneutic of reform in continuity” as opposed to a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.” Joseph Ratzinger thus takes up a position in line with his statements in 1966. This interpretation [i.e. the first-mentioned hermeneutic] is the only one possible according to the principles of Catholic theology, in other words, considering the indissoluble whole made up of Sacred Scripture, the complete and integral Tradition, and the Magisterium, the highest expression of which is the Council presided over by the Successor of St. Peter as Head of the visible Church. Besides this sole orthodox interpretation there is unfortunately a heretical interpretation, that is, the hermeneutic of rupture, both on the progressive side and on the traditionalist side. Both sides have in common their rejection of the Council; the progressives in wanting to leave it behind, as if it were a temporary phase to abandon in order to get to another church, and the traditionalists in not wanting to arrive at the Council, as if it were the winter of the Catholic Church.

“Continuity” signifies permanent correspondence with the origin, not an adaption of whatever has been, which also can set us on the wrong path. The oft-quoted watchword aggiornamento (“updating”) therefore does not mean “secularization” of the faith, which would lead to its dissolution, but rather the origin proclaimed again and again in new eras, the starting point from which salvation is given to mankind; aggiornamento therefore signifies “making present” the message of Jesus Christ. 
 
A historian’s response

On December 5, Roman historian Roberto de Mattei posted an article in Italian entitled “The Prefect of the CDF against Benedict XVI?” at the website www.conciliovaticanosecondo.it, which is devoted to discussion of Vatican II. In it he accuses Archbishop Müller of declaring “Vatican Council II as the sole and absolute dogma of our times…based on an entirely personal reading of the famous address of Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005.” Professor de Mattei faults the current prefect of the CDF for pretending that there is a “connection of absolute continuity between the current position of the Pope and the one that Father Joseph Ratzinger adopted as a young theologian.… Archbishop Müller says nothing about the theological development made over the course of fifty years by Cardinal Ratzinger.” The historian cites an extensive passage from a speech given by Ratzinger to the Chilean Bishops Conference in July 1988 in which he criticizes those who view Vatican II as “an end of Tradition, a new start from zero.” De Mattei concludes with the argument, “The Second Vatican Council is not a ‘package deal’ to be accepted or rejected in toto. Gaudium et Spes, for example, appears today to be an outdated document, pervaded with the nineteenth- and twentieth-century myth of progress.” 

With all due respect to an eminent historian of Vatican II, the professor seems to have misinterpreted Archbishop Müller’s remarks about “the hermeneutic of reform in continuity” as the only possible interpretation according to the principles of Catholic theology. The prefect of the CDF was not saying that Vatican II is the sole hermeneutic by which to interpret the Catholic faith and the world, the only lens through which we can legitimately look at them. He was saying, precisely, that when interpreting the Second Vatican Council and its documents, the hermeneutic of reform in continuity is the only authentically Catholic interpretation. 

A syntactical ambiguity in Archbishop Müller’s speech may have caused this misunderstanding. The disputed sentence ends with the clause: “the highest expression of which is the Council presided over by the Successor of St. Peter as Head of the visible Church.” The relative pronoun “which” refers back to “Magisterium”; indeed, the clause is ecclesiological “boilerplate,” a description of one form of the Magisterium that has become common parlance in post-conciliar discussion of teaching authority in the Church. The sentence also allows a second ingenious interpretation, however: “which” could conceivably refer back to “the indissoluble whole” (that is, Scripture, Tradition, Magisterium). This grammatically less likely reading would dangerously imply that an Ecumenical Council “trumps” everything else in the Church. That is obviously not true; even an Ecumenical Council is bound by the truths of Scripture and by the authority of Tradition and cannot remake them in its own image.  

Professor de Mattei is quite right about one thing, nonetheless: the current prefect of the CDF offered in his presentation speech an idiosyncratic reading of the Holy Father’s Address to the Roman Curia at Christmastime 2005, in which the Pope also articulated the concept of “the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.” The following unedited quotation from that address makes it crystal clear that this unorthodox interpretation of Vatican II can only be the one favored by ultra-progressives and innovators.  

The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.
These innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the Council, and starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move ahead. Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council's deepest intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague.
In a word: it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim.

The hermeneutic of rupture described in these three paragraphs plainly cannot be attributed to the Society of St. Pius X or to other Catholic groups that questioned the new pastoral teachings or liturgical disciplines introduced by Vatican II. Therefore when Archbishop Müller talks about a hermeneutic of rupture “on the traditionalist side” he has ceased presenting the published works of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and has begun to editorialize.  

Of course the Holy Father himself recognizes that misunderstandings of Vatican II teaching come from various, even diametrically opposed quarters. In his homily on the first day of the Year of Faith he remarked, “Reference to the [conciliar] documents saves us from extremes of anachronistic nostalgia and running too far ahead.” Benedict XVI recommends the hermeneutic of continuity to those on both extremes, but he does not apply the expression “hermeneutic of rupture” to traditional Catholics. 
 
An SSPX response

The six-part response by an SSPX theologian to the presentation speech by Archbishop Müller contains a humorous subtitle that sums up its attitude: “Outside the Vatican II Council, no salvation?” Like Professor de Mattei, the SSPX theologian assumes that Archbishop Müller is “dogmatizing” the Council, based on the extremely broad (albeit improbable) reading of the CDF prefect’s sentence about the Second Vatican Council as “the highest expression” of the Church. The anonymous author then summarizes his take on the Prefect’s argument in the form of a syllogism:  

— (Major) Whoever does not accept the integral magisterium of the Church is heretical.
 (Minor) But the SSPX refuses Vatican II, part of the integral Church teaching.
 (Conclusion) Therefore, the SSPX is heretical. 

“Needless to say,” the SSPX author begins, “this declaration of Archbishop Müller is not an official statement coming in the extraordinary form of, say, a decree or an anathema.” He gently complains that this “is not the first time that Rome is ‘using’ the SSPX” as a foil for “the arch-modernists.” (Indeed, Cardinal Kurt Koch repeatedly has likened the doctrinal position of the Society of St. Pius X to that of Martin Luther.) 
The SSPX theologian and his General Superior, Bishop Bernard Fellay, agree completely that in principle “This interpretation (of a magisterial act in continuity with the past) is the only one possible according to the principles of Catholic theology, in consideration of the indissoluble link between Sacred Scripture, the complete and integral Tradition and the Magisterium.” The problem is that, in the particulars, Rome sees continuity in teaching where the SSPX sees discontinuity. If “continuity” exists only subjectively, in the minds of those currently in authority in the Church, then this logically leads to the position that “The message of Revelation is of no importance; what counts is to get along.” 
 
Conclusion

Although it proclaimed no dogmas, the Second Vatican Council was a teaching event: it taught that there is more to Catholic theology than Thomism, more to the Catholic Church than the Western Tradition, and more to Christian life on earth than the visible Catholic Church.  

Despite the latest round of misunderstandings in published statements by members of the CDF and the SSPX, it should be clear that they agree that: 

 The documents of Vatican II require interpretation in light of the Church’s entire Tradition.
 The documents of Vatican II have often been interpreted erroneously. 
 The solution to differences of opinion about interpreting the documents of Vatican II can come only from the highest authority of the Catholic Church.



sexta-feira, 4 de janeiro de 2013

Uma vez isto, para sempre isso? - por Nuno Serras Pereira



O P. António Vieira em um dos seus Sermões, a propósito de uma refeição de Jesus em casa de Simão, o leproso, nota, com grande perspicácia, que Simão é assim conhecido não por padecer de lepra, mas sim por a ter sofrido no passado, daí concluindo da obtusidade malvada e obstinada dos homens - que contrariamente a Deus, o qual perdoa, transfigura e, por isso, não lembra mais -, se engancham ao que foi, marcando perpetuamente os outros com os males que sofrem ou que fizeram. Recorde-se que a lepra para a mentalidade bíblica não é só uma doença, como um símbolo privilegiado do pecado. Assim como aquela corrompe e desfigura o corpo, de modo semelhante, este derranca e deforma a alma. Foste uma vez leproso ou pecador, pois para sempre o serás! Foste uma vez isto, então isso ficarás permanentemente, senão mesmo eternamente!

Nós, como ensinava S. Gregório, somos filhos dos nossos actos, das nossas acções. Estas não são unicamente transitivas mas também intransitivas, por outras palavras, elas não exercem somente uma modificação exterior, no mundo, mas repercutem no interior, configurando-o, formatando-o, para usar um vocábulo muito em voga. Se roubo, torno-me ladrão. Se mato, directa e deliberadamente um inocente, faço-me assassino. Se minto, sou mentiroso. Se compartilho os meus bens e o meu tempo, sou generoso. Se me abstenho de consentir em pensamentos, palavras e actos impuros, sou casto, etc., etc. É, por isso, que uma pessoa é aquilo que consente e não aquilo que sente. Seria absurdo acoimar de incendiário qualquer sujeito que sentindo embora sôfregas ganas de lançar fogo a pinhais e depósitos de explosivos nunca o tivesse feito; ou considerar bêbado, um outro que tendo desejos importunos, embora insistentes, de ingerir álcool em demasia nunca neles consinta nem lhes dê cumprimento; ou condenar como adúltero um homem casado, que sentindo-se atraído por outras mulheres que não a sua esposa não lhe seja infiel. Pois, tudo isto, que naturalmente é óbvio e a tudo se aplica, se desarma e rende perante aquela “coisa” que hoje se denomina, com uma expressão absurda e abstrusa, homossexualidade.  Tiveste actos sexuais com alguém do mesmo sexo, ou mesmo simplesmente padeceste ou ainda sofres de atracção desordenada por pessoas do mesmo sexo, embora não a consintas? Pois, tens então uma orientação homossexual; és irremediavelmente e para sempre um homossexual! E o não reconhecimento disso constitui uma violenta agressão, uma fobia demente, uma discriminação persecutória! 

O monumental dislate advogado totalitariamente pelos “homonazis” não tem, como é evidente, nenhum fundamento na realidade. Não só pelo que já dissemos anteriormente mas também porque existe inatamente, inscrita no próprio ser da pessoa humana, uma única orientação sexual, a recíproca entre varão e varoa, entre macho e fêmea, entre homem e mulher (felizmente, isto que para mim é evidente há muitos anos, é nos dias de hoje reconhecido por distintos psicólogos e psiquiatras, por exemplo, Joseph Nicolosi). Que ela depois possa ser distorcida, como uma das muitas consequências do pecado original, que se traduz numa alienação e rejeição da própria identidade corpóreo espiritual, a mais das vezes inconsciente, sem acto de culpa própria portanto, é indubitável. A verdade, porém, é que a resolução dos problemas que subjazem a esses desejos desordenados faz com que eles desapareçam. A psicoterapia actual ainda não consegue restaurar em todos os que a ela recorrem a sua condição natural e inata (aquilo que hoje se diz heterossexualidade; estes termos são absurdos porque a palavra sexo ou sexualidade já diz a diferença), mas o facto indesmentível, apesar da propaganda contrária, de o alcançar em percentagens muito significativas (do ponto de vista médico) é altamente encorajador, pelo que faz todo o sentido, continuar a intensificar e aprofundar essas terapias, que os “homonazis” querem proibir.

A quantidade ingente (em termos percentuais) de ex-homossexuais, para usar a terminologia corrente, que reencontraram a sua natural sexualidade e que hoje vivem casamentos fecundos e felizes aí está como um testemunho irrefutável desmentindo a ideologia “homototalitária”. Uma quantidade enorme destas curas foi alcançada simplesmente por uma vivência séria do Cristianismo, ou por uma aliança deste com a psicoterapia. Pelo que é inegável a existência de um profundo problema religioso subjacente a esta patologia ou enfermidade espiritual. Acresce que uma soma igualmente significativa de pessoas que tinha actos sexuais com outras do mesmo sexo, deixou essa vida promiscua e doentia, não obstante a permanência de desejos desordenados não consentidos, e vive agora uma vida continente e casta.

Graças a Deus que pessoas altamente qualificadas que se têm dedicado a estes nossos irmãos forjaram uma terminologia adequada, que não veicula a ideologia “homonazi” como a que está em voga nos dias de hoje. Assim, os termos homossexualidade, ou “gay”, ou lesbianismo, ou “orientação sexual” que transmitem uma falsa ideia de uma identidade distinta das outras pessoas, devem ser abandonados e substituídos pelos seguintes: homens que fazem sexo com outros homens (hsh), mulheres que fazem sexo com outras mulheres (msm), pessoas que têm uma atracção desordenada por outras do mesmo sexo (adms ou ams). 

Parece-me de todo desejável que os textos do Magistério da Igreja abandonem o termo homossexualidade e adoptem estes ou outros semelhantes que são, enquanto a mim, precisos e verdadeiros. De facto o vocábulo homossexual, de recente uso, não tem nenhum de per si nenhum conteúdo doutrinal, nem é essencial a qualquer ponto da Doutrina, pelo contrário é meramente acidental e substituível pelo termo tradicional ou por estes que indiquei. Acresce que, na minha opinião, é estrambólico que no Catecismo da Igreja Católica, se fale de “pessoas homossexuais” sem estender esse tipo de terminologia no mesmo campo da sexualidade dizendo, por exemplo, “pessoas prostitutas”, “pessoas masturbadoras”, “pessoas fornicadoras”, “pessoas pedófilas”; ou, fora desse campo, “pessoas cleptomaníacas”, “pessoas piromaníacas”, etc., etc.

Uma interrogação que surge em muitas mentes será a de se uma pessoa com atracções desordenados por outras do mesmo sexo (adms) poderá ser Santa. A resposta é claramente afirmativa. De facto, se isso constituiu para ela uma provação, e contra a qual (adms) combateu incansavelmente toda a sua vida, saindo vencedor, amando a Deus sobretudo e sobre todos, e ao próximo ordenadamente, com o Amor que lhe veio de Jesus Cristo, claro que está na Glória de Deus, e poderá ser canonizado pela Igreja, se é que já o não foi. Isto não significa que um “homossexual” possa ser Santo, mas exactamente o contrário. O mesmo se diga de toda e qualquer outra tendência predominante ou exclusiva objectivamente desordenada.

Isto, porém, não significa que a propensão desordenada por pessoas do mesmo sexo seja equivalente à natural tendência da de um homem por uma mulher. Isso seria o que alguns designam por “homoheresia”. Essa falsa equivalência levou muitos, ainda que não poucos de grande boa-fé, a concederem que pessoas com adms profundamente radicada fossem consideradas aptas para receberem as Ordens Sacras, isto é, para o Sacerdócio ministerial. Não obstante ser válido o Sacramento da Ordem recebido deve afirmar-se com toda a clareza que não é lícito e que por isso devem dele se excluir os candidatos que padeçam desse distúrbio - até para seu próprio bem. De resto, existe uma gama variada de outras circunstâncias ou características que expungem um número considerável de candidatos, pelo que não se trata de uma discriminação injusta, mas sim de um discernimento salutar.

Uma vez, porém, que existem Sacerdotes assim, como é do conhecimento público (que, de boa-fé ou dissimuladamente, com a cumplicidade ou por ignorância da parte dos respectivos prelados foram, admitidos ao Sacramento da Ordem), é seu grave dever acolher e cooperar com a Omnipotência da Graça de Deus, vivendo continentes e castos, na inteireza do seu ser, de modo a que abracem, de todo o coração, o Dom, o Espírito Santo, que os faça viver existencialmente a conformação com Jesus Cristo, Esposo da Igreja. Esta Nupcialidade exige o enjeitamento do narcisismo e o acolhimento da alteridade e da reciprocidade assimétrica, na entrega verdadeira e sincera de si mesmo a Deus e aos outros, por Seu amor. Transfigurados, pela configuração com Jesus Cristo, sanados pelo Seu Amor Infinito, poderão também eles vir a ser Santos.

04. 01. 2013