The Man, the Woman, and the Child

Nativity by Brian Kershisnik, Oil on canvas 

This mammoth oil on canvas called “Nativity” is the work of Brian Kershisnik, a resident of Provo, Utah. He is a husband, father, and an artist deeply inspired by the unseen world. When people learn he is an artist and ask him what he paints, Brian replies “I paint Heaven and Hell, and getting there.” Let’s allow our gaze to move over this work, and see just where it takes us.

There is a dynamic surge that dominates the scene; a rush of angels billows and breaks over the canvas like a foaming wave, grabbing our attention by the collar and nearly pulling us into its celestial current. I can imagine if you were standing in front of it (the canvas is 17 feet long and over 7 feet high!), you’d feel the need to brace yourself against being swept away in the resounding gloria about to burst from this multitude of heavenly messengers. Their expressions range from reverent wonder and incredulous delight to a passionate cry to the world to “come and see” what wonders God has done.

Read more here.

There and Back Again: A TOB Speaker's Tale

I had the incredible honor of traveling half way around the world to speak on St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body this autumn. As a devotee and teacher of the pope’s rich legacy of catechesis, an added grace for me was landing in a place that St. John Paul II graced three times in his own life; once as priest, twice as pope.

St. John Paul II in Papua New Guinea, c. 1985

I found myself in Papua New Guinea (PNG), a land that in some ways is as fresh and unspoiled as Eden. It has only felt the touch of modernism in the last 80 years or so. Grandparents of some of those I met actually recall seeing WWII bombers flying overhead and mistakingly thinking them to be giant birds! At the same time PNG is a land suffering from fallen humanity as much as any land, with greed, corruption, domestic violence and child abuse.

It's home to lush rain forests, beautiful coastlines and coral reefs, with over 800 dialects and hundreds of different tribal identities. But it is also a place where, in certain places, women and children suffer under a distorted idea of what masculinity means, and what marriage is meant to be. I spoke at the Kefamo Conference Center in the highland region of Goroka to nearly two dozen bishops who serve the Melanesian people. The bishops were wonderfully receptive, open and eager to share their thoughts as we moved through the days of reflection. A third of these men were native Melanesians, others were missionary bishops who ranged from afar as Germany, Italy, Canada, the USA and Australia. Some have served the people of PNG for over 40 years.

Frangipani blossom, which smelled heavenly

Dr. Adam Cooper of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne, Australia, gave the first day of teaching on the background and history of the Theology of the Body as well as the reflection on "Original Man.” We had some very good conversations outside the classroom and I even had the chance to reconnect with him in Australia the following week at the John Paul II Institute. He was traveling with his wife Lizzie in PNG and we all enjoyed a love of the teaching as well as a sense of wonder at the flora and fauna of Papua New Guinea.



After the Coopers left PNG, I spent the next three days leading the bishops through the catechesis, finally closing with some words on the New Evangelization and the Way of Beauty in light of the Theology of the Body.

My final talk was attended by the Apostolic Nuncio of the region, Msgr. Michael Banach, himself a native of Massachusetts. He was very pleased that this content was being presented, and he shared during our closing session that indeed an emphasis on the "Way of Beauty" as revealed in St. John Paul II’s TOB catechesis is deeply important for the Church today. Fr.Victor Roche, SVD, General Secretary for the Catholic Bishops Conference of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands was also very happy at the style of pedagogy, in which I employed source quotes from TOB and supplemental insights from Benedict XVI and Pope Francis’s Joy of the Gospel, as well as cultural examples, music, sacred art and some theological illustrations of my own. He said it elicited responses and sharing from the bishops which were refreshing and not always so common when it came to similar workshops he had arranged for them! 




Fr. Victor has already indicated a desire to move forward in presenting the Theology of the Body at some level and through some medium that can allow the priests and people in general to come to know and live it. This sentiment was echoed by a number of the bishops as well (see attached evaluations supplied by Fr, Victor). We are presently discerning how to move forward given the challenges of time and distance.

Bishop Rochus Tatamai, grandnephew of Bl. Peter To Rot and Bill

As an aside, I had the privilege of meeting the grandnephew of Papua New Guinea’s first Blessed, Peter To Rot. His name is Bishop Rochus Tatamai, and he’s pictured to the right. He had asked if he could interview me for his radio station and actually pulled out a camcorder and proceeded to ask me questions on Theology of the Body for a solid 20 minutes! An amazing man of deep courage and faith.

The overall experience in PNG was humbling and hopeful. The struggles in this little nation of so much diversity are numerous. Polygamy, tribalism, the threat of secular modernism and a technological revolution without an adequate period of preparation for these simple people are tantamount. There is also, according to the bishops themselves, a disruption in the clergy’s understanding of what authentic celibacy is, so there’s all the more need for the Theology of the Body to shine in their catechesis and witness.


Bishops of PNG and the Solomon Islands, with Dr. Adam Cooper and Bill Donaghy

My second week abroad was spent in Sydney, Australia, where I gave a series of talks to young adults at Campion College, two Marionite churches, a talk at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, as well as a two day TOB seminar open to all at the Australian Catholic University (ACU). These events were largely orchestrated by one John Smyth, a Catholic school teacher who was phenomenal for making connections and queuing up my speaking events. He worked with Madeleine Vella, a former Generation Life missionary whose family hosted my stay the better part of that week. 




Also in the mix for hosting and arranging things was Bernard Toutounji, Director of Catholic Youth Services. The two day TOB seminar at ACU was MC’d by him and sponsored by 14 different offices and ministries. He was instrumental in orchestrating it all. 


Fr. Anthony Percy with Bill, Australian Catholic University.

During that week, I was privileged to meet Fr. Anthony Percy, priest and author of the wonderful book, Theology of the Body Made Simple. He’s a bit of a “celebrity” in Australia! I also met with Pat Langrell, one of our past students and now Chaplaincy Convenor at The University of Notre Dame, Melbourne. We sat down with some of the staff from the Archdiocese on connecting with the Theology of the Body Institute in the future. There was a strong desire from Pat Langrell, John Smyth, and Bernard Toutounji to potentially host a TOB1 week long course in Sydney as early as 2016.

At the end of the week, I took a short flight and one overnight in Melbourne, southern Australia, where I spoke on “Pope Francis and the Revolution of Tenderness” for a young adult ministry. I also met with Matthew MacDonald, Executive Officer of the Life, Marriage and Family Office and gave an extensive interview for the archdiocesan paper Kairos. That interview and an additional two articles can now be found online here in Volume 25, Issues 20 and 21

Bill's host family and friends, eating the best
Lebanese chicken in Sydney, and perhaps the world.


In Melbourne, I had the chance through John Smyth’s connections to meet up with Dr. Adam Cooper again in his office at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family. I met Dr. Tracey Rowland and Dr. Gerard O’Shea briefly, then had a good chat with Dr. Adam Cooper and Dr. Conor Sweeney over coffee. We shared our work and experiences and touched on the importance of teaching the theology of the body and the need to bring it to the whole Church.



 The Marriage and Family Office in Melbourne is equally excited about the potential of connecting with TOBI and our courses and they are willing to prepare the way for the Institute to offer programs when ready.

Overall, this was an incredible experience, and wonderful relationships have been forged, uniting people from distant places in the one Body of Christ, through the beautiful teaching on the theology of the body. I look forward to a return some day to both Papua New Guinea and Australia, but for now, after over 40 hours of plane travel in a dozen planes, and thousands of miles beneath me, nothing beat the reception of coming home! 



“The new evangelization is inseparable from the Christian family.”
- Pope Benedict XVI

The Mess of Christmas

Nativity, Bartolome Esteban Murillo

It seems far removed from the cold of December where I sit and write this reflection for you, but I'd like to take us back to the heat of summer, a year and five months ago to the day of this Christmas, July 25, South America. In the Cathedral of San Sebastian, Rio de Janeiro, Pope Francis held an impromptu gathering of young people. There a line was delivered that I believe deserves our deeper consideration in this time of Advent preparation. Pope Francis said,

“What is it that I expect as a consequence of World Youth Day? I want a mess. We knew that in Rio there would be great disorder, but I want trouble in the dioceses! ... I want to see the Church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!”

I want a mess. If you've been following the words and ministry of Pope Francis since that summer day, it would certainly appear that he has been successful in reaching that goal. The pope has sent some shockwaves into the See of Peter and for many the ripples continue to expand. The recent synod on marriage and family this past October had many faithful scratching their heads. Thanks to both confused and conflicted internal reporting and secular media manipulation, many wondered if the seamless garment of the Faith might finally be unravelling...

Read the rest! Click here...

Bacon and the Glorious Subterfuge of Christmas

After Mass yesterday, which inaugurated the First Sunday of Advent, we took the family (and me dear ole' Da who's visiting from Maine) to a fairly new breakfast venue in town called The Bacon Press. They had an incredible array of bacon themed and bacon saturated fare, and needless to say, I felt as if I were still participating in the afterglow of the Heavenly Banquet, yeah, as if the source of all grace flowing from the altar at St. Patrick's had indeed perchance sent a little trickle of glory into said establishment. If anyone is scandalized by what I just wrote I apolo... no, you have not yet tasted bacon. 

I believe the Jews were kept from eating pork not because it was evil, but lo, because they could not yet withstand the wonder of bacon until the Messianic age, when bacon's light would be set properly in its place as a secondary good, i.e. "You have a greater than bacon here." - Matthew 12:41b

During breakfast, as I was enjoying some pancake-battered, deep-fried bacon with my beautiful wife and children, and me dear ole' Da who's visiting from Maine, himself so wrapt in the glory of bacon that he rose from table and shared the idea with the general manager that "instead of bagels you could have 'bacels' which would be bagels with bacon in them", and as if it could get any better than all of this, Johnny Mathis soared through the restaurant radio singing "O Come Let Us Adore Him." Here's a sampling of the lyrics that I'm sure you've all been hearing in your local neighborhood Walmart, Targét, CVS, Tim Horton's, etc.

O come all ye faithful 
Joyful and triumphant...
Come and behold Him 
Born the King of angels
O come let us adore Him

O come let us adore Him

O come let us adore Him
Christ the Lord

I turned to Rebecca and had a 23 second adult conversation (which was long for us because we have three kids under 7 years old, were in a restaurant, and there was the added distraction of bacon). "How crazy is it that even in the midst of our secular culture, in our local neighborhood Walmart, Targét, CVS, Tim Horton's, and The Bacon Press, we're listening to Johnny Mathis soaring through the restaurant radio singing "O Come Let Us Adore Him"?

Ah, the Glorious Subterfuge of Christmas. We can run but we cannot hide. He comes. Even into Walmart, Targét, CVS, Tim Horton's, and The Bacon Press. He comes in a thousand ways, down a million little roads bringing His Life and Love through any and every crack in the culture we leave open. So let's not feel manipulated by the Christmas music playing in the KMart the day after Halloween, but rejoice! Jesus is in the Kmart! The Heavenly Bread lies in the tabernacle and the Heavenly Banquet is offered in our churches but in a certain sense the invitation is also in our stores, on car radios, workplaces, bus stations, everywhere at Christmas time! So come let us adore Him. 

And that's the glorious subterfuge of bacon.

U2?

If you've had your finger on the pulse of our culture in the last few years, then you've certainly become aware of one particular movement, a certain throb in the veins of the zeitgeist as it flows through the muscles of the news and media outlets that surround us; it’s a fixation on homosexuality.

We have been inundated of late by politics, popular music, film, television, and even the world of business and finance with anything and everything “gay.” The scope indeed seems all encompassing, from an official proclamation from the President in 2009 declaring June to be "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month” to the most recent announcement of Apple's CEO Tim Cook on Oct. 30: "I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.”

Just a few weeks ago, U2 released the cover art for their new album, Songs of Innocence (pictured above). The image is one of two shirtless men in an intimate embrace, with an older man’s head close to the waist of the younger, pressing his cheek against his stomach.

When I first laid eyes on it, as it scrolled through the carousel of album covers in the iTunes store on my computer, I had an immediate and involuntary response. “You too?” I shook my head, as other images flanking the U2 album, appeared. Many were of nearly naked women, or bare-chested men, in hyper-sexualized positions.

St. John Paul II in his Theology of the Body invited us into a mature attentiveness to those “immediate and involuntary responses” that come to us from the stimuli of our everyday encounters with people. He says we must “distinguish between what, on the one hand, makes up the manifold richness of masculinity and femininity in the signs that spring from their perennial call and creative attraction and what, on the other hand, bears only the sign of concupiscence (lust).” (TOB 48:4)

Mindful of my immediate response to the cover of the U2 album, Songs of Innocence, I set out on a little research and dug deeper. I discovered the two men were, in fact, father and son. The older man is Larry Mullen Jr, U2’s drummer, and the younger man, who bears a shining cross around his neck, is his son. I recalled again the name of the album, Songs of Innocence. In all honesty, I felt both manipulated by the media for having conditioned me to expect such intimacy to be eroticized, and also ashamed of my own accusatory look.

Back to St. John Paul II. “… Although within certain limits these variants and nuances of inner movements of the “heart” can be confused with each other, it should nonetheless be said that the inner man is called by Christ to reach a more mature and complete evaluation that allows him to distinguish and judge the various movements of his own heart. One should add that this task can be carried out and that it is truly worthy of man.” (TOB 48:4)

Let’s return to the stimulus that started this whole reflection. Same sex attraction and homosexuality have indeed become a dominating topic in the culture today. I think many people who don’t experience same sex attraction have their our own knee-jerk reactions that could be summed up in two ways; the “concerned” and “conservative” believer might draw back from discussions on homosexual inclinations and cling to the objective truth in Scripture and Tradition and approach no further. A “progressive” or “liberal” person might accept another’s subjective feelings (and any subsequent actions coming from them) as personal goods for them and so stand off from any judgement or condemnation. In a certain sense, they also keep their distance. But what do we make of these two reactions? Does either actually help man to reach that “more mature and complete evaluation that allows him to distinguish and judge the various movements of his own heart”? Do either of these responses press in beyond one’s desires to the core identity of the person? Are we defined by our desires or by our decisions?

In the midst of the seemingly endless spotlighting of all things “gay”, I know there is another way that goes deeper than the mere acceptance of our desires; a third way. A chaste, “attraction” to someone of the same sex, to be clear, can be a beautiful thing. It’s called friendship. It is in fact foundational for all of us to enter into and experience this gift. It’s an intimacy that doesn’t require the joining of bodies to facilitate the joining of hearts. Deeper still, it is equally and even more foundational that the fundamental embrace, that of a father and a son, be experienced anew. St. John Paul II wrote that the “ultimate purpose of mission is to enable people to share in the communion which exists between the Father and the Son.” (St. John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 23)

The intimate bond between a father and a son is the penultimate encounter that prefigures our ultimate embrace by the Heavenly Father. U2’s latest album cover, in capturing this connection, has offered us a very provocative image. It can serve as a kind of litmus test to the interior reactions in our hearts. What is our response to this image? What desires are stirred in us? What decisions must we make to begin the road home?

"And I'm a long way from your hill on Calvary
And I'm a long way from where I was, where I need to be…"
- U2, Song for Someone



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Originally posted on the TOBI blog!

Brittany Maynard and the Way of the Cross

Brittany Maynard was a 29 year old woman who, on Sunday, November 2, 2014, decided to take her own life before a terminal brain cancer took it first. She became a kind of heroine of "the right to die” movement, and has been praised by an astounding number of people from across the globe for the “courageous” way in which she took charge of her life, and died the way she wanted to die.

The picture most often connected with Brittany’s story (above) captures her in a seemingly shining moment of life; happy, a beaming smile, cuddling her dog, relaxing in a deckchair under the sun. 

In addition to leaving behind a husband and some extended family members, she also left the world with this assemblage of final words from her Facebook account:

“Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love. Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer that has taken so much from me … but would have taken so much more. The world is a beautiful place, travel has been my greatest teacher, my close friends and folks are the greatest givers. I even have a ring of support around my bed as I type… It is people who pause to appreciate life and give thanks who are happiest. If we change our thoughts, we change our world! Love and peace to you all… Goodbye world. Spread good energy. Pay it forward!”

Then Brittany took her meds and slipped away. Before the loss of control of her bodily functions, before the awkwardness of being carted around in a wheelchair, before the embarrassment of having her bedpan changed, of being washed and groomed each day by hands other than her own, she escaped. The burning fire of human suffering would not touch her. She would not taste again that childlike dependence that illness and disease thrust into our freedom and independence. Only that beaming picture of Brittany, healthy and strong, would remain. She took control.

When I watched Brittany’s final video, and looked at that beautiful face in the photograph, another face came to mind for me. It was a face of pain from the winter of 2005; another person with a debilitating disease who appeared on our screens, in our newspapers, on the internet. This was a sorrowful face, drooling, having lost control of his bodily functions. I saw the awkwardness of his being carted around in a wheelchair. He was washed and groomed each day by hands other than his own. He was St. John Paul II.  

I remember in those days, voices calling out for him to step away, to retire, to let go, to stop the pain, or at least spare us all of having to witness it. Many wondered why he persisted in that public display. Why does he allow himself to appear so broken, so dependent, so weak on the world’s stage? 

Decades before his decline, in his Theology of the Body, St. John Paul II wrote “These reflections do not include many problems that, with regard to their object, belong to the theology of the body (as, for example, the problem of suffering and death, so important in the biblical message)” (TOB 133:1). How prophetic that those reflections would be written on the very parchment of his flesh in those final days? It would be his very body, broken and carrying the weight of the world that would teach us about the mystery of suffering and how it should be lived? That via dolorosa was his final homily. At St. John Paul II’s bedside, a friend by the name of Cardinal Ratzinger told a gathering of concerned souls, ”The Pope is fully in control of the Church and is now governing it from his bed of pain.”

There is so much here. Concepts and ideas that are fundamental to the human project, to our deepest identity. The problem of evil, of human suffering, of freedom and of purpose. We ask ourselves what good is suffering? Is it useless? Is it an evil to be avoided at all costs? Can it actually be escaped? And would that escape be a worthy path for the human heart? For the follower of Christ, human life is fully revealed in Christ, who Himself entered our pain and did not disdain it. He came to soak up that suffering, that very sting of death and nail it to the tree. Isn’t this via crucis, then, the very way we also must walk, taking up our cross daily to follow Him?

"I have meditated on all this and thought it through again during my stay in the hospital... I realized that I must lead the Church of Christ into the third millennium with prayer and through various activities, but I have also seen that it is not enough. It is also necessary to lead by suffering.... The Pope must suffer, so that the world may see that there is a higher gospel, as it were, the gospel of suffering, by which the future is prepared..."

- St. John Paul II

Suffering is an unavoidable reality. In a fallen world, it may well be the very chisel with which we are sculpted into the sons and daughters of the Father. Suffering knocks away our arrogance, our pride, and it teaches us, purifies us, reminds us of our need for others, and of our radical dependence on the Divine Healer.

Every single human person suffers. We can either repress it and try to run away from this consuming fire or we can enter into it like the three young men in the Book of Daniel. It is here, it is part of human life, and if God allows it then it must have a purpose. According to St. John Paul II, this man who had quite his fair share of suffering in life, that purpose is one we cannot afford to lose.

“Suffering is present in the world in order to release love, in order to give birth to works of love towards one’s neighbor, in order to transform the whole of human civilization into a ‘civilization of love.’ ”

- St. John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, 30

The mystery of suffering. The incapacitating power of it astounds and confounds us. It's power makes us powerless. But in that powerlessness, we can learn that childlike dependence on God and others that is literally a prerequisite to the glory to come in Heaven! If we open our hearts to this mystery and ask what is has to teach us, then that power of love will become our own. The floodgates of grace will be unlocked by our open hearts, our prayer and our sacrifice. Untold riches can flood the world. We have seen all of this before. Christ led the way for us. He is the Way! He is the Suffering Servant. So rather than run from this fire of suffering, let us with the Son of Man enter into it. This is truly the only way through it. The path to Easter Joy is through the sorrow of our own Good Friday.

“Nightmares evaporate like mist in sunshine, fears dissolve and suffering vanishes when the whole human being becomes praise and trust, expectation and hope. This is the strength of prayer when it is pure, intense, and total abandonment to God our provident Redeemer.”

- St. John Paul II, General Audience, July 10, 2002

For the soul of Brittany Maynard, and for all of the souls of the departed, that the blood and water of Divine Mercy might cleanse and wash over them all, let us pray!

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First published at www.TOBinstitute.org

The Humanum Series... Coming Mid-November