Denver Catholic

4 I OPINION SEPTEMBER 10, 2014 I DENVER CATHOLIC REGISTER ARCHBISHOP AQUILA'S SCHEDULE Sept. 13: Mass and institution of lectors for deacon program, Christ the King Chapel, St. JPII Center (5 p.m.) Sept. 14: Mass and dedication of new church building, Holy Name Parish, Steamboat Springs (4:30 p.m.) CORRECTION The obituary on Frank Sferra in the Aug. 27 Denver Catholic Register gave the wrong year for his birth. Sferra was born in 1936. THE CATHOLIC DIFFERENCE GEORGE WEIGEL In a year replete with devastating news, the June 22 death of Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami hit especially hard. For decades, Fouad, a man of genius I was honored to call a friend, was an invaluable mentor in matters involving the Arab world and its often-lethal discontents. It was a cauldron of self-de- structive passions he knew well, this Lebanese Shiite who came to the United States because he found here a model of the civility and tolerance he wished for his people. Fouad Ajami described the pathologies of the Arab world with singular clarity and literary grace. His was not the carping of the exile who despises what he has left; it was the sharp, penetrat- ing, and ultimately compassionate (because true) critique of one who mourned the catastrophic condition of contemporary Arab civilization, the hijacking of Arab politics by self-serving dictators, virulent anti-Semites, and Islamist fanatics, and the untold lives warped or lost in consequence. That deep, moral passion about the corruptions of Arab culture was never more eloquently expressed than in the column he wrote for the Wall Street Journal, a month after 9/11: "A darkness, a long winter, has descended on the Arabs. Nothing grows in the middle between an authoritarian politi- cal order and populations given to perennial flings with dicta- tors, abandoned to their most malignant hatreds. Something is amiss in an Arab world that besieges American embassies for visas and at the same time celebrates America's calamities. Something has gone terribly wrong in a world where young men strap themselves with explosives, only to be hailed as "martyrs" and "avengers." Some months ago, I got an e-mail from Fouad, express- ing his enthusiasm for what he had seen of Pope Francis and teasing me that, under these circumstances, he might become a Catholic. It was a light-hearted comment with a se- rious undertone. For years, Fouad had told me of his respect for John Paul II and Benedict XVI; he had also invited me to address his seminar at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies on the role of the Catholic Church in shaping world politics. That role, Fouad understood, had changed. The power the Church deployed today was not the political power it once wielded; it was now moral power, the power of persuasion and reason, both of which Fouad be- lieved essential to the Arab world's recovery from the intellec- tual morass into which it had sunk centuries ago. Thus while the herd of independent minds was having a field day condemning Benedict XVI for his 2006 Regensburg Lecture, Fouad understood that the Bavarian pope had cor- rectly identified the two critical challenges that contemporary history posed to 21st-century Islam: the challenges of finding, within authoritative Islamic sources, Islamic warrants under- writing religious tolerance and distinguishing religious and political authority in public life. The answer to political Islamism and jihadism, Fouad knew, was not turning hundreds of millions of Muslims into good sec- ular liberals; that simply wasn't going to happen, the fantasies of secular foreign policy strategists notwithstanding. But there was an alternative. The Catholic Church had retrieved lost elements of its own tradition, and learned some new things along the way, in coming to terms with religious freedom and political modernity. That's what Islam would have to do. Fouad Ajami would have been heartbroken over Mosul being emptied of its Christians by the homicidal maniacs of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The Middle East he longed to help bring to birth was a region that would honor its many re- ligious traditions and cherish the cultural gifts each faith offered its neighbors. The incomprehensible carelessness of Americans in washing their hands of Iraq in recent years deeply saddened him. So, I expect, did the tendency of Christian leaders in the Middle East to curry favor with the dictator in power, in the vain hope that their communities would be left alone. That was strategic folly, Fouad knew, because it helped empower the criminals and the haters. May the great soul of this man of reason and decency rest in peace. Remembering the great Fouad Ajami DENVER CATHOLIC REGISTER CIRCULATION CUSTOMER SERVICE: 303-722-4687 OR CIRCULATION@ARCHDEN.ORG Published by the Archdiocese of Denver, 1300 S. Steele St., Denver, CO 80210 Denver Catholic Register (USPS 557-020) is published weekly except the last week of December and the first week of January, and in June, July and August when it goes bi-weekly. The Register is printed by Signature Offset in Denver. Periodical postage paid in Denver, CO. Subscriptions: $35 a year in Colorado; $42 per year out of state. Foreign countries: $42 surface, all countries, 6-8 weeks for delivery; $135 air, all other countries (average). Mexico, $48 air; Canada, $55 air. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Denver Catholic Register, Circulation Dept., 1300 S. Steele St., Denver, CO 80210 or e-mail circulation@archden.org. Editorial: 303-715-3215 or editor@archden.org Advertising: 303-715-3253 or dcrads@archden.org Circulation: 303-715-3211 or circulation@archden.org Online: www.DenverCatholicRegister.org General Manager Karna Swanson Editor Roxanne King Business Manager Michael O'Neill MARRIAGE MISSIONARIES BY MATT AND MINDY DALTON Marriage is to image the Trinity, to be a sign (sacrament) of God's eternal exchange of life and love that is intended to point all to the reality of life eternally with God in heaven. Our married love should reflect the love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God the Fa- ther pours all of his love out in- to his son Jesus, upon receiving the Father's love Jesus returns that same love back to his Fa- ther; their love is so strong and so powerful that the very fruit of the Father and Son's love IS the Holy Spirit. If a husband and wife's love is authentic, as God intended, they may get to name the fruit of their love nine months later. As parents of children of varying ages, it's always a strug- gle to determine when to teach our children about God's plan for intimate love. What we have discovered over the past eight years of full-time mar- riage coaching, is that reading a book or watching a video on God's plan can be very good and educational. However, it is not the same as being that living witness to our children. God entrusted us with the blessing of children, and we are to be that witness that points them to God. We also learned that we must take courage and talk to them about sexuality. If we don't someone else will and most definitely the culture will, and it won't be God's blueprint that is being promoted. Sometimes couples will ask, "We're worried about our teen- ager becoming sexually active. What can we do?" The answer can be shock- ing: "Are you living chastity within your own marriage relationship?" "What does that have to do with our children?" they ask. The reality is that if we are not living out God's design for chastity within our own mar- riage, then how can we expect our children to live a chaste life? Living chastity as a married couple means treating each other with dignity and not as sexual objects, and also in thinking, acting and speak- ing with integrity. Chastity includes not contracepting, learning and living NFP (natu- ral family planning), and being open to children. Imagine a couple who drinks, smokes and curses in front of their children. Their teenag- er shows up one night with a six-pack of beer and cigarettes in their hands and the parents are extremely upset. "What do you think you're doing?" they scream. The response: "Just following your example." We are our children's mar- riage prep! They are like spong- es, soaking up everything we do, everything we say; the re- corders are on. They are watch- ing how we communicate, how we interact, how we handle struggles, how we connect with one another—they are watch - ing how we love. If we live our married lives the way God in- tended, in his image, then our children will recognize that authentic love when they grow up; either in another human being or as gift to the Church. May we all strive to be wit- nesses of love for our children, starting with our marital inti- macy, striving to image the love of the Trinity. To paraphrase Bishop Fulton Sheen: There are hundreds and thousands of people around the world who disagree with what they think the Church teaches. However, there are less than a hundred people who disagree with what she truly teaches. In the next several columns, we are going to be writing about why the Church teach- es what she teaches, the con- sequences that we are faced with when we don't follow Holy Mother Church and the practi- cal ways that married couples can tap into the grace that is available to us in this glorious sacrament of marriage. Matt and Mindy Dalton can be reached at matt@marriage missionaries.org, or 303-578-8287 or at www.marriagemissionaries. org. Being a witness of authentic love

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