A natural witness to the supernatural dimension

From the horror collapse of  Florida's Champlain Towers South comes an extraordinary account of survival. Just before it all fell, something jolted condo owner Iliana Monteagudo awake - she calls it a "rare force" - and thinking an open door at her balcony might be letting gusts of wind into her apartment, she got out of bed to close it. Then, behind her she saw a widening crack moving down her wall. She realised she had to get out of the building immediately. 

What followed is a startling series of events that lend weight to the notion of protection for those who pray for God's help.  Monteagudo, 64 and a Miami resident for 40 years, said she believes that if any of those moments had gone differently she would not be alive today. Let me use a report from CNN to describe what happened.

Before she went to bed she had lit a prayer candle before an icon of Our Lady of Guadelupe, and so by that action asking Mary, Jesus' mother, to intercede before God on her behalf.

But after she saw the huge crack Monteagudo went into overdrive. "Something inside me said run", she said." You have to run to save your life." The first help toward her quick escape was that the night before she had put her pills and credit cards into her purse because she knew she had to get up early in the morning. Quickly she put on clothes, grabbed her phone and purse, blew out the candle and left her condo.

She knew not to take the elevator but didn't know that the emergency stairs were just beside her unit, so she went to the farthest set of stairs instead.

"If I knew that, maybe I would have taken that one," Monteagudo said.

But as she was flying down the six floors of stairs, pleading with God to let her see her sons and grandsons again, she heard the sound of the tower she lived in collapsing. If she had been in the stairs closest to her home, she likely would have been crushed, her son, Andres Alvarez, said.

"She had to wake up early the next day, the next morning," Alvarez said. "She didn't take her sleeping pill because she was afraid she was going to oversleep. If it wasn't for that open door... if it wasn't for that wind... if she hadn't seen that crack... she wouldn't be here telling the story."

If a person is open to the wider principle of letting the eyes see and the ears hear, the "what ifs" do pose the question: Did God answer Iliana Monteagudo's prayers? Only God knows the answer.

In one way it is strange that Jesus, though understanding that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, directed everyone to pray for what they need - "And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” (Matthew 21:22). He used the parable of the persistent widow and the evil judge to urge not to give up when prayers are not answered in the way and time we expect.

A couple of preachers this Sunday had insights into how a person's faith, or that of someone close to them, was very much involved in Jesus' miracles, and how this is so in our lives, too. The gospel reading was about Jesus going to Nazareth, and his former neighbours did not accept him as an authoritative teacher and healer, though they knew of his miracles elsewhere - he did cure a few sick people there, though. 

What's involved is a "faith dialogue" with God. God offers, but we have to accept the offer. With an openness of heart and mind, miracles can happen. The message on Sunday was: "Let go of a scepticism that is born of limited expectations."

With Jesus' miracles he repeatedly told the cured person: "Go, your faith has healed-saved you." We can go to Jesus in hope and fearlessness.

The twin ideas of hearing and seeing are closely linked to the concepts of learning and understanding, both hallmarks of life and intelligence. However, all of us have that inclination to block out what we might see, to talk over what we might hear, and so shut our heart to what we need to understand. This is where repentance and metanoia (Greek for turning around) come in. The prophets knew their message was usually not accepted because their people were rebellious (Ezekiel 2:2-5). Isaiah (6:9-10) and Jesus (Matthew 13:13) were saddened... "because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand".

"We must not delimit the power of God to act and save...Everything is pure grace and God has the power to do everything... [so] 'if our faith is weak, all we need to do is to imitate the father whose child was suffering from epilepsy. He said to Jesus, 'I believe; help my unbelief'" (Mark 9:24).

To "delimit" means to "determine the limits or boundaries" of something. To avoid blocking our hearts and minds to the spiritual is a real challenge when the main players in society have been captured by the secular mindset and, in turn, they turn their firepower on us and want us in the same chains of conformity as themselves.  "Secular" means being being directed away from the spiritual order of life to have a focus only on the material and what is of this earth. This is very damaging to human wholeness. Conversely,  a "spiritual" mindset is all enveloping and open to all possibilities. 

To a Washington Post reporter, Monteagudo described her abrupt awakening this way: “It’s like something supernatural woke me up. I felt something strange..." Before leaving the apartment, "I blew out the candle that I light every night for Our Lady of Guadalupe”.

“I was afraid I was going to be crushed,” she said, adding: “I kept going, screaming, ‘God, help me, please help me. I want to see my sons, I want to see my grandsons, I want to live, please help me, God.'"

Monteagudo thought about all the things she lost: wedding photos, first Communion photos, kids’ birthday photos. "I lost everything, I don’t have a past,” she said. “But I say thank God, I’m still alive.”

Clearly, there has been a dialogue of faith in this woman's life, and it continued during her short but horrifying ordeal. 

A final point is that God can perform whatever wonders he wishes, at any time he desires, but he usually only performs a miracle when faith is present in a person's heart and mind. As in Nazareth, it's hard to envisage Jesus, the Creator God, healing someone who outright rejects him. The way to bridge the gap in our dialogue with God is to cultivate whatever tender shoots of faith that we have still alive from our religious upbringing, or that we find springing up as we experience the mysteries of the human journey.  

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Germans in tussle with teaching authority

The Church in Germany is offering the rest of the world a view of the clash between what many Germans believe should be a democratic institution but which, in fact, is a body whose role is the preservation and dissemination of what God has revealed by word and deed, through Scripture and Tradition. 

In the months ahead, representatives of German lay groups, parishes, and religious orders, will meet with bishops in a form of an ongoing synod - what they refer to as a "synodal path" - on how to reform the Church, especially its structures, to prevent a recurrence of the scandalous tide of sex abuse. 

Though that is the stated goal, and it is a noble objective, there is a fear the journey will be a wasted one as participants rehearse the hoary topics of  greater share of power for the Church members, the ordination of women, and a change in its stance toward the sinfulness of homosexual acts (N.B. the Church makes no moral judgment concerning the person who is, among other things, a homosexual). The hope is that the path will come to an end next February.

Debate on the ordination of women to be a priest, in particular, will display in stark terms the conflict between the "enlightened" ones and those charged with upholding the living teaching office of the Church. This office is its "magisterium" involving the "clarification and manifestation of the truth contained in the deposit of faith or truths connected to the deposit and the mission of the Church" (Feingold 2016)* 

Note that "this teaching office is not above the word of God in scripture, but serves it". The commission can be fulfilled only through God's anointing of those who fill the office as successors of Peter and his fellow apostles, and through the help of the Holy Spirit.

Pope John Paul II declared in 1994 that priestly ordination must be reserved to men only.  He did it in such a way that made plain he was making a definitive and infallible statement that confirmed the Tradition of the Church:

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force. Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Luke 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful. 

Read the short document here. It displays the elements of an exercise of the teaching authority of the pope in a case of infallibility, which is immunity from error in the teaching of the magisterium through the assistance of the Holy Spirit.

Feingold comments:

In this paragraph, the Pope has expressed himself very precisely so as to make clear that this pronouncement is definitive and therefore infallible, and thus can never be changed by any future pope or council. All of the requirements given in [the Vatican Council's] Lumen gentium §25 (summarized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church §891) are clearly realized. First, the Pope confirms that he is acting as supreme pastor when he speaks “in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren.” Second, he explicitly intends to make a definitive act (“this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful”). Finally, he is teaching on a question pertaining to faith and morals, for he says that it is “a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself.”*

Here is an instance of God acting in the Church for the guidance of His people. For those who have lost the sense of the spiritual as an integral part of our world along with the material, this is a hard saying.  

Therefore, that the ordination of women as priests is still on the agenda in the German discussions has caused the fear of another German schism to grip many in the Church outside secularised Europe. 

*Feingold, Lawrence, 2016, Faith Comes From What Is Heard: An Introduction to Fundamental Theology, Emmaus Academic, Steubenville, Ohio.

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We must not squander the Covid crisis

As with a world war, so too with the pandemic that maims families and nations

As Winston Churchill was working to form the United Nations after World War II, he famously said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”. With the Covid crisis creating havoc all around us, each community and even each person would do well to follow Churchill's prescription.

A common refrain in conversations is, "It'll be good when we get back to normal". But is it going to be true? So much of the lifestyle in developed countries seems unfit for purpose, if that purpose is to engender mental and physical health, happiness in the way of personal satisfaction with a meaningful role in society, and a hopeful mindview that knows worthwhile goals. 

Once again, for those of us bogged down in the mundane, a vision of what is possible when we decide to take control of  our life comes from Pope Francis in speaking this week about the aftermath of the pandemic. Several times in the past year he has returned to the theme of transforming whatever is not working in personal life and in the world's structures.

Pope Francis said this week that the world must not return to its “normal” way of life as the Covid crisis eases:

Only one thing is more serious than this crisis, and that is the risk that we will squander it, and not learn the lesson it teaches.

It is a lesson in humility, showing us that it is not possible to live healthy lives in an unhealthy world, or to go on as we were, without recognizing what went wrong. 

Even now, the great desire to return to normality can mask the senseless notion that we can go back to relying on false securities, habits and projects that aim exclusively at pursuing wealth and personal interests, while failing to respond to global injustice, the cry of the poor and the precarious health of our planet.

What does all this have to say to us as Christians?  We, too. are called to reflect seriously on whether we want to go back to doing what we did before, as if nothing happened, or instead to take up the challenge of this crisis.  

Crisis, as the original meaning of the word shows, always implies a judgement, a distinction between good and bad.  In ancient times, it was used of the farmer who separated the good grain from the chaff to be discarded.  In a similar way, the present crisis calls us to distinguish, discern and sift, in everything we do, between what is enduring and what is passing.

Pope Francis looked at "a world still struggling to emerge from the dramatic crisis caused by the pandemic" and said: "This scourge has tested everyone and everything". 

How we and the world respond to the test is crucial on many levels. The challenge is to not plod on as a victim of what life throws at us but, rather, to apply our will to create a new set of conditions for the well-being of our own family and for the whole human family.

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Safeguarding the family from the digital juggernaut

The digitally distracted family. Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

One way to break free from a psychically cancerous society is to be online less. People are increasingly seeing the need to undertake detoxification from technologies that create tension and other forms of distress in their life.

Robyn Ferrell's description of our predicament is so true. She writes:

The smart phone has become like a valet, arranging your life in terms that make it liveable. The smart phone is an object that does your thinking for you. You use its calculator to do what you used to do as mental arithmetic. You use its camera as a repository, and perhaps a substitute, for memory. The calendar is your social secretary, nudging you to your “two o’clock”. You keep track of time with it. You keep track of money with it. In fact, you even use it as money with a cashless payment app. You use it to find out where you are, and to navigate, with the map app.

When waiting anywhere, it is an indispensable amusement, with its podcasts and news apps. It’s the library in your pocket, the encyclopaedia, research assistant and broker of disputes at the dinner table. “Who was that guy in …?” You can even talk to it, and “Siri” will answer you and perform things for you. It makes you feel powerful, with a surge of attachment for this shiny and incredibly useful object.

And yet. Are you really sure who is master and who slave? Now you can’t add up to save your life; you’re lost without the calendar to tell you where to be when; you no longer remember the phone numbers of your friends and relations (or even your own). You need the phone to move funds or record your steps or summon an Uber. And that’s before you even make a call on this (uncannily) smart phone.

This was your instrument, but now you are beholden to it and dependent on it. And meanwhile, it is reporting on you behind your back. Like a jealous lover, it has you under surveillance wherever in the wide world you are roaming, discoverable by mobile phone towers and revealed by your purchases and searches. Or perhaps more like a handler, relaying your information faithfully to the powers that be, the marketers and advertisers who pay well for it. 

Ferrell links this view with that of Martin Heidegger, who died in 1976 and who had the insight that with technology all of nature had become a "standing reserve" - on call, as if it were a part of industrial inventory. For example, soil has no longer an essence in itself, but is seen as part of the food production sector of the economy. Everything has a means or end instrumentality. Ferrell goes on:

In this sense, Heidegger saw the danger of technology as a spiritual one, not only infecting others who become a standing reserve but a habit of thought in which even the self becomes trapped. It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that this dystopia has arrived, in the form of the internetted world bound in all its fibres to the instrumental-mercantile. 

Therefore, technology generates "consumer logic", central to which is "a prefabricated idea — a shorthand for thinking that forestalls thinking".  With the adoption of instrumental thinking and automated thought, "no other thinking makes sense anymore".

Drawing on other social observers, Ferrell leaves us with the view that "habits of mind associated with a market economy and its related technology ... became inflated in the modern world" and that "this remains a suggestive point of departure for diagnoses of our time".

You may recall the meme: "That moment you've lost your phone but feel like you're the one that's lost." That state must be part of the diagnosis of our time. As well, there is the resulting distress caused by the way tech companies tap addiction psychology in the design of the smartphone, to take one device.

Dr Anastasia Hronis, clinical psychologist and honorary associate at the University of Technology, Sydney, says a smartphone notification gives a dopamine rush similar to a hit of cocaine or a win at the slot machines:

I specialise in addictions — yet clients don't say 'I have a problem with my phone' — they present with anxiety-depression, and often phone addiction is a cause.

I foresee a push towards cafes and theatres introducing phone-free policies in the future, but for now the self-regulation is down to us.

A working mother reports how self-regulation in deliberately trying a digital detox proved a boon for she and her husband and their two sons:

I thought that anxiety, distraction and stress was the inevitable price I needed to paid for being a working mother.

But it was my own decision to not be fully present [within the family], and it was a habitual thing that could only be broken through a total detox.

Research findings on the digital environment coming out of Australia shed light on the worries parents have about their children:

Parents were significantly concerned about the negative impacts of digital media and technologies on their child’s physical activity levels (73%), attention span (62%), and time for, and interest in, playing (62%). 

Parenting and teaching are harder than they used to be:

• Most (73%) parents and grandparents think it is harder to control their child’s digital habits since they have got their own screen-based device.
• 83% of parents, carers and grandparents felt that their child was negatively distracted by digital technologies. 13% of these respondents felt that this distraction was experienced to ‘a great extent’.
• 84% of educators in Australia believe that digital technologiesare a growing distraction in the learning environment.
• 59% of respondents observed a decline in students' overall readiness to learn in the last 3-5 years.

This Growing Up Digital report I have been quoting from has this as part of its conclusion: 

Overwhelmingly, parents, carers and grandparents recognise that they are a critical influence on their child’s use of digital media and technology – in good and bad. 72% of parents recognise that their own technology habits influence those of their children. 90% of participants agreed with the statement, “I need to be a responsible user of digital technology for my child to learn from”. 

A comment that reflected a common view was: “As a parent I need to know how to work the programs and sites the kids access to be able to protect them. I do not assume they are safe”. Indeed, it is unrealistic to expect that children will improve their digital media habits unless they see their parents at home behaving accordingly.

It's not only the addictive nature of the technology and the learned ettiquette, or lack of it, of social media that consign adult and child alike to a toxic psychic state, but there is also the fact that digital media and technologies are mostly offered to young people for consumption rather than content creation. The Growing Up Digital report states:

Parents grapple with confusing messages about whether educational or learning uses of digital media and devices and recreational and entertainment use need to be treated in the same way. The time recommendation increases with a child’s age and are based on the idea of media as a ‘digital babysitter’ and a source of entertainment, rather than recognising the educational, active and engaging purposes that digital media can provide. Clarifying the key point that there are better uses of screens than others, and the need for balance in a young person’s day, is critical to seeing change in parental decision making [My emphasis -BS]. 

Passively consuming digital content poses other risks, too. The content that young people absorb and consume from the digital world around them is filled with ideas and examples that shape their views of the world around them and how they fit into it. Some of these are inappropriate and unsafe and without sharing what they are seeking and experiencing online, parents have little leverage to intervene. For parents, it is far better to engage in a conversation with young people about their habits and share the digital world with them.

Here's the report's punchline:

Ultimately, it has become abundantly clear that we all have a problem, and we all must take responsibility for helping young people grow up healthily, happily and responsibly.

The challenge must be accepted especially by those of us with a religious worldview. First, the technology itself - as I have tried to make plain for parents in this post - has an impact on the way we think, and parents must be ready to counterattack. Secondly, parents must be confident in their God-given role of caring for young ones. Third, parents must decide on practical steps to break the addiction, even simple practices such as putting smartphones in a drawer around meal time.

Based on the arguments and information of the type I have presented here, I am among the growing number convinced that a response in our personal lives is urgent as we wait to see if governments will be courageous enough to take a stand against the economic power and cultural influence of "Big Tech".

An important part of that response must be more time devoted to prayer and the reading of our scriptures. These in particular can provide some spiritual balance to the agitation that purposeless digital use generates. 

SOMETHING EXTRA: "Remembering is a subversive communal activity in an age that coaxes us to drift in the constantly streaming, twittering present, forgetful of history, forgetful of the past." - Richard B. Hays, drawing on his Biblical scholarship

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Christian insights into what we are today

The stuff of culture can create a heavy burden

Daniel Defoe, the English author of Robinson Crusoe, was as well a trader, business and political journalist, and travel writer.  His story of the shipwrecked sailor, published in 1719, has Crusoe looking back at his spiritual state as his life alone begins after eight years at sea. The words strike a chord when looking at the lives of many today:

I do not remember that I had, in all that time, one thought that so much as tended either to looking upwards towards God, or inwards towards a reflection upon my own ways; for a certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good, or conscience of evil, had entirely overwhelmed me; and I was all that the most hardened, unthinking, wicked creature among our common sailors can be supposed to be; not having the least sense, either of the fear of God in danger, or of thankfulness to God in deliverance.

There's the challenge for us all - to be alert as to what is happening internally, and as to how the environment of this age is imposing upon us "a certain stupidity of soul".

Another insightful observation about how the world we live in traps us in a particular frame of mind comes in this form:  

Perhaps we are not touched by idols today (even when we live in places with statues of gods and deities) but there are many other idols of a more subtle kind which we can easily fail to recognise as such – materialism and consumerism, the obsession with money and wealth, the cult of sex and even of the body, the slavery to image and fashion, the cult of the hero be it in the media or in sports (‘fans’ = fanatics, a word used to describe the actions of frenzied worshippers in another age). Obsession with such idols can blind us to the very real needs – material, social, spiritual – of those around us. Then we fail in the essential quality of being a child of God – love for each other.

Fr Frank Doyle SJ on 1 John 5:14-21. 

Read in full here.

Finally, there is the curse of  meaninglessness that has seeped into the bloodstream of society:

There is so much division in society today, simply because the individual is facing a crisis of meaning and purpose.  Because of secularism, man does not believe in a creator or the existence of the Ultimate, whom we call God.  He has no idea of his origin, purpose in life or the outcome at the end of this life.  The world teaches us that the universe, and that includes us all, comes from the random interactions of the atoms.  It is by accident that we were born into this world.  Life has no meaning, no intrinsic value, except to make the most of what this world offers, at the end of which we return to the universe as atoms. This lack of purpose means that we are called to live for ourselves.  There is no reference point, no objective truth or morals to follow.  It is all about me finding fulfillment in this life.  People are important to me insofar as they can enrich my life.  This is what individualism is all about.

Therefore, we have to take a countercultural stand. St Irenaeus, who died about the year 202, has words that encourage Christians to be countercultural these days in their mind and lifestyle: 

The glory of God is each person fully alive!

Ω On the eruption of dysphoria and rising rate of mental illness in young Americans, see my post here

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Mother says: 'Down's Syndrome is all about love'

Tommy, inset with his mother Jane, plays murder suspect Terry Boyle in a BBC drama

When my wife and I were talking about having a second child - this is more than 20 years ago - I did not show any enthusiasm because I was afraid. I was much older than my wife, but we would both be in the older group of new parents, and I was afraid that there would be a high chance of our having a baby with Down's Syndrome. Having an abortion if this did occur was out of the question. So we did not have a second child. 

I have come to regret how I let my fear rule our life in this way. I regret not being more positive about how God gives each person - whatever their personality, characteristics, or interests - a meaning in the providential plan for us all. I have come to regret, too, being so very ignorant of how people affected by Down's Syndrome can be a boon to a family and to society.

Earlier this month, this blog looked at how Richard Dawkins was chastised by parents of children with Down's because he could see only sorrow in the lives of such people and their families. See this post here. The parents pointed out that, to the contrary, despite health problems being typical in the early years, people with Down's were innately happy and they brought a lot of joy to their families. 

So, to continue to educate myself on this matter, I want to lay out more information on the life of a person with Down's Syndrome and what impact it has on their family.

Jane Jessop had been a marketing executive in England, and when a doctor told her that her newborn son had Down's Syndrome, the genetic condition caused by the presence of an extra chromosome in the pers, “My first reaction was to wonder why God had sent this baby to us....What was God’s purpose, what did he want me to do? But maybe it was more about God’s plan for Tommy.” The syndicated Telegraph article continues:

In her tired, postnatal state, she could not then have predicted that her son would go on to star in a prime-time BBC series, one of the first actors with Down’s to do so.

Down’s affects about 40,000 people in the UK and life expectancy has increased dramatically since the 1950s; somebody with Down’s can now expect to live to their late fifties, at least, with some living well into their seventies. 

Jessop highlights what is referred to as "the joy and warmth Tommy has brought into her world" - “He’s enriched us enormously. I’m delighted with the young man he’s turned out to be.”  The article explains:

Most people with Down’s experience some form of intellectual impairment; for many, language is delayed and memory impaired.

“Tommy’s prognosis was very poor. But I would say to parents, don’t believe all those pessimistic forecasts. When Tommy turned one, he kind of woke up. It was as though the sun came out; he became smiley and started learning. He reacted to everything, whereas he hadn’t in his first year. When we came into the room, he would bounce up and down. He attracted love.”

Tommy’s communication skills thrived with the help of music; he loved being sung to and playing with little bells on sticks. He once said that when he dances, he “becomes the music. It’s as if he disappears into himself,” says Jessop.

Tommy [who is now 36] was part of the first cohort of children with Down’s to attend a mixture of mainstream and specialist schooling (before the 1981 Education Act, disabled children in England were mostly segregated from their peers).

It enriched his childhood, as well as those of his classmates, who learnt to appreciate difference. Aged 10, he became a strong reader virtually overnight; he was fascinated with online quizzes and began to memorise Trivial Pursuit answers so he could beat his family.

“It was a bit cheeky – and good practice for learning lines now.”

Jessop admits to being a little sceptical when a teenage Tommy said he wanted to be an actor. “We didn’t really believe him. We were thinking: ‘Well, Tommy likes books, why doesn’t he work in the library?’ ”

She created a theatre group for those with learning disabilities, and it was successful in highlighting the skills of its members in the demanding entertainment industry. Tommy was then included in a BBC talent group.

[At present,] Jessop is frightened by the prospect that Tommy’s condition might at some point be eliminated from the population.

All pregnant women in the UK are now offered a free prenatal blood test screening for Down’s, first approved by the UK’s National Screening Council in 2016 (it replaced a more invasive test which carried of a risk of miscarriage).

Nine out of 10 in the UK terminate their pregnancy after receiving a positive diagnosis, according to a 2013 government report. The condition has almost disappeared in some countries, like Iceland, where termination rates approach 100 per cent. [See my Dawkins post here for details on Iceland's aggressive screening regime.]

Jessop says: “I’m really thankful I was never offered a test, because that is a horrible decision for parents to take. It’s ironic: now [people with Down’s] finally have the chance to learn and show us who they really are, and society and scientists are trying to deprive them of the chance to live. I’m not talking about abortion itself, I’m just talking about the choice of doing it because a child will have Down’s.

"I think having a child with Down’s syndrome is all about love. Some of my best times are when it’s just me and Tommy on location – he’s really good company. Think about your family, friends and colleagues – how boring would it be if everyone was the same.

“And the tragedy is that many adults with Down’s syndrome are aware of this. Tommy himself feels very scared by it.”

Her views are shared by actress Sally Phillips, whose son Olly was born with Down’s in 2004. Phillips told the Telegraph in 2016 that raising her son has been much more fun than she anticipated after seeing the grim face of the doctor who gave her Olly’s diagnosis.

“I think I would have been really served by having someone around standing up and saying: ‘This is a good thing’,” Phillips said. 

Tragic case

A tragic case of misdiagnosis arising from a prenatal test has come to light this week where an Irish couple sued doctors because they had an abortion when told their baby had Edwards’ Syndrome, a condition that is usually fatal around the time of birth. In fact, the baby was healthy and the tests had shown false results. The story - see here - concludes in this way:

Lawyers for Rebecca Price said the realisation that she had aborted a “normal, healthy baby” caused intense, nervous shock and left her with a devastating sense of loss.

Prenatal testing conducted in a perfunctory manner, and the acceptance of abortion as a catch-all remedy, are a combination that can be expected to cause ongoing torment as the death toll mounts because of mistakes.

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Mind wide shut - a common affliction in science

The door of the mind can be firmly closed to certain ideas

As a test for how open your mind is, here’s a story about finding happiness, told by a young Spanish professor to American writer Rod Dreher who was visiting Barcelona. The account was given at dinner so here it is in Dreher's words:

Pablo (as I will call him) was raised in a Marxist home. He was baptized as a baby, but that was the last thing he had to do with Christianity in any real sense. His parents were unbelievers, but they baptized their kids as part of the ritual of their Catholic society. Yet all throughout his childhood, he had the ability to see a woman that nobody else could see. There was something about her not quite right. He assumed it was the Holy Virgin from Christian mythology, but the culture of his home was materialist, so he never really tried to understand what was happening.

When it came time for his first communion, he told the priest that “I’m not going to eat that sh*t.” The priest slapped him for his blasphemy. Pablo was shocked to hear these words coming out of his mouth. Where had they come from? They weren’t his own.

There were all kinds of other spiritually dramatic things that happened to him, but this morning, I can’t remember them clearly. The climax of the story came a few years later, when he was roaming the streets of his city with a couple of his buddies. This was 2004. A homeless man walked up to them, and began to speak to Pablo: “Ah, Pablo, it is so good to finally meet you,” he said. “I am here to tell you that Jesus loves you.” And then the homeless man began to tell Pablo all kinds of things about his life. He was reading Pablo’s heart, and telling him things nobody could have known other than he, least of all an indigent stranger on the street.

He told Pablo that he knew that he had been seeing a woman appear since childhood, but that Pablo needed to know that that wasn’t the Holy Virgin. That was the Evil One disguising himself to deceive Pablo. Apparently Satan had had his eye on Pablo for a long, long time.

“Finally I asked the man what was his name,” Pablo told me. “He laughed and said, ‘The Happiness of Christmas.’ I asked him what his name really was, and he said the same thing.”

After bringing this message to Pablo, the homeless man wandered down the street, and disappeared into the crowd.

“Was he an angel?” I asked Pablo.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you follow him?”

“No, he was an indigent. We were all standing there completely shocked. My two friends saw and heard all of this. It wasn’t something I imagined.”

The next morning at breakfast, Pablo’s mother asked him what was wrong. “You seem different,” she said. But nothing was wrong. Everything was finally right.

Pablo then went to a church, to Mass. “I saw Our Lord in the Eucharist, and I knew that I really was looking at the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Creator of the Universe. I knew that this was where I had to be, and I could not leave Him behind.”

Pablo was confirmed as a Catholic, and began to roam around, looking for the will of God. Eventually he ended up in Barcelona. He is married now, and is a teacher.

He was the only religious believer in his extended family. Again, they were all Marxists. But one by one, seeing the difference Christ made in Pablo, they began to convert. His father was the last holdout. But one year ago, as he lay dying from stomach cancer, Pablo’s father called for a priest, made a confession, and was reconciled to Christ through the Church. Pablo now expects to be with his ex-communist father in Paradise someday.

My question for the "atheist" or the agnostic is, given that the information about the main incident comes from an honest source and there were witnesses to the accuracy of what the homeless stranger was telling Pablo, could it be at least possible that the strange man was somehow a messenger from God?

Clearly, there are several philosophies or academic constructs that have propelled Western society - and increasingly the whole world - into adopting a materialistic mindview. Because of this mindview and that other doors that close a person off from reality, many people find it extremely difficult to accept, or admit that they could accept, the existence of the spiritual realm because it is far beyond what is "normal".

Therefore, it's natural for a person to develop the set of materialistic preconceptions based on personal experience, education and on the fact such concepts are fashionable, if not de rigueur, in society. Society makes it easy even for those from a religious background to bow to the anti-intellectual and hedonistic (meaning, in effect, anti-social) moral atmosphere, given the consumerism, the wish for material success, and the superficiality promoted through all forms of media. 

It's worth spending some time checking out the filters, the blinkers, the gates, the doors that prevent a person or people generally from acknowledging the strength of information of another kind, other than what they are used to. Theists are accustomed to examining their conscience, which brings a person back to their essential beliefs. So let's look at some philosophies that have shaped Western societies and threaten to engulf societies around the world where the elites think they will be held in contempt if they do not follow the lead from abroad.

Doors that close a person to the spiritual:

1. Logical Positivism

Though he is by no means the first in this, Alfred Jules Ayer's 1936 work Language, Truth and Logic would have us accept the belief  that "only knowledge that can be empirically verified is warranted or meaningful". Of course, that statement is a philosophical principle and cannot in itself be empirically verified.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was of the same school, though he had a basic agnosticism, in that we cannot know anything. Reality was made up of statements, not objects. His principle was that we could not say anything except what can be said, meaning only propositions arising from natural science were possible.

2. Rationalism 

This is the philosophical position that adds human reason to the mix in that the empirical sciences and philosophy can provide sufficient explanations for all of reality. This is the foundation of the "New Atheists" who deride any attempt to undertake theology as a compelling pursuit of reality. On this basis Stephen Hawking expressed the view that physics would in time deliver a "theory of everything".

Rationalism is interesting in that its adherents are split into two camps. One party holds, as we see above, that reason is all we need to understand reality, though an objection is that it would fail to comprehend God who always remains more unknown to human reason than known. The other party has too little confidence in reason and proposes that even if there are realities above the bounds of reason we do not need a doctrine or science about such things because the natural order should be sufficient for human aspirations - we should not aim too high!

3. Materialism  

Keeping it simple, "materialism is a form of philosophical monism [denying the existence of a distinction or duality in some sphere, such as that between matter and mind, or God and the world] that holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. ... Materialism is closely related to physicalism [naturalism]—the view that all that exists is ultimately physical." (Wikipedia)

4. Scientism

This belief system runs from the weak version: “Of all the knowledge we have, scientific knowledge is the best knowledge”, to the "arrogant, dogmatic, or otherwise epistemically vicious" intrusion of science into other fields of study. In response, there is the pushback in academic circles like this: "Philosophy and Scientism: What Cognitive Neuroscience Can, and What It Cannot, Explain".

Another case of dogmatic scientism comes through the writing of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett who declare that a believer in God cannot accept both evolution and that God has been guiding human development.  But a mainstream Christian is freer in this matter and can accept both, though pointing out how the accepted theory is flawed in part.

In conclusion, scientists have achieved much that they can be proud of, but the history of the intellectual domain points to a close-minded materialism today that would have dismayed Galileo, Newton, Descartes and Pascal, as well as the "father of genetics", the developer of the Big Bang theory, and the head of the Human Genome Project—all of whom had a deep religious faith.  For the scientist and for all of us, the challenge remains: How to account for the spiritual nature of the experiences Pablo had as a child and the encounter with the stranger as an adult?

Ω Here is a list of eminent scientists, many of them Nobel Prize winners, who have shown that their life's work incorporates having a firm relationship with God.

Ω Go to my blog here to tap into my archive of posts.