Denver Catholic

22 APRIL 18-24, 2015 | DENVER CATHOLIC Perspectives W hen my toddler son was an infant, I began a little prayer tradition. As bedtime draws near, he and I cuddle in the dark, slowly rocking together as I softly sing three Hail Marys in his ear. Then, as I lay him in his crib and whisper to him how much God, his daddy and I love him, I pray a silent prayer of my own: Oh Jesus, please protect my sweet, pre- cious baby. Please bring him safely to the morning. But should you choose to bring him home to you, please, oh Lord, give me the strength to bear the loss, and the faith to see your eternal kingdom. I cherish this prayer, even as it some- times frightens me, for it causes me to daily ponder that which Our Blessed Mother so beautifully embraced: that our greatest joy and deepest peace as parents will come when we entrust our children to the loving will of Our Father. I have learned much in recent years of this mysterious truth. I am the oldest of fi ve children. In 2009, my sister Angela (whose religious name is Sister Mary Servant of the Cross) entered the Servants of the Lord and Virgin of Matara missionary com- munity. Several years later, her twin, my brother Andy entered their "twin" order of priests, the Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE). God willing, Sister Servant will profess fi nal vows in 2016, and Brother Andy will be ordained a missionary priest in 2019. I can now say with all sincerity that our family is overjoyed and blessed beyond words by the twins' "YES" to the Lord's will for their lives. We have been forever changed by their gift, and could not imagine them walking any other path. It is di… cult to admit we didn't always feel this way. Shouldn't every faithful Catholic celebrate the gift of a religious vocation to the Church? Yes. But the reality is that just as Joseph and Mary experienced "great anxiety" at the sudden loss of their 12-year-old son in the temple, we may also struggle with the disorienting loss of our own loved ones, particularly when they are "lost" to the piercing beauty of the Cross and all that its mis- sion entails. In the fi rst few years after the twins' entry into the convent and seminary, my entire family struggled. We mourned their inaccessibility. We mourned their detachment. We even mourned their future, which would assuredly pull them to faraway and potentially dangerous missionary lands. It was a very hard transition for all of us. It is so tempting to grasp onto our children and our families. To a certain extent, it is natural and good for us to shield one another. Even Mary and Joseph went to great lengths to protect the Child Jesus, and they undoubtedly loved him with at least the same inten- sity with which we love our own children. But the fact of the matter is this: they knew from day one that their son belonged to the Father. And when the time came, Mary gave him up to the Way of the Cross. She consecrated him as a baby in the temple, and she walked with him every single day, all the way to his crucifi xion. Certainly, death and martyrdom are very rare callings, and I join all mothers in praying that we, and our children, be spared this painful sword. But whether our children are called to the vocation of marriage or that of consecrated life, we can be certain of this: they will know suŸ ering in the path God has for them. But only there will they will discover abundant joy and the greatest of peace. We are called—as parents, as siblings, and as Christians—to surrender our lives and our loved ones in total conse- cration to the Way of the Cross, and to pray for absolute conviction in the many blessings promised to those who choose this path. As we continue this Year of the Con- secrated Life, may every father, mother, brother and sister pray for the courage to love the Lord so completely, that we are willing to surrender everything, and everyone, to his holy will. T hat Blessed John Henry Newman was one of the great infl uences on Vatican II is "a commonplace," as Newman's biographer, Father Ian Ker, puts it. But what does that mean? What infl u- ence did Newman have on a Council that opened 72 years after his death? And from this side of history, what might we learn from Newman about the proper way to "read" Vatican II, as we anticipate the 50th anniversary of its conclusion on Dec. 8? Those are questions Father Ker explores in "Newman on Vatican II" (Oxford University Press), a book whose brevity is inversely proportional to its depth. Ker is our best interpreter of Newman's thought; and when Ian Ker says something about how Newman infl uenced and would "read" Vatican II, serious Catholics will pay attention. That Newman was a great infl uence on Vatican II means, in part, that the Council's eŸ orts to retrieve the wisdom of the Church Fathers and the great medieval doctors was presaged in Newman's own work, going back to his Anglican days. As Ker writes, "A century before the theological revival that came to be known as the nouvelle the- ologie [new theology] began in France in the 1930s, Newman and his fellow Tractarians in the Oxford Movement were already seeking to return to the sources of Christianity in the writings of the Fathers." And that "return" (often called ressourcement theology) was not a matter of pious nostalgia but of intellec- tual adventure: a movement that sought to enrich the Church's refl ection on her own nature and mission at a moment when theology risked falling into a sub-discipline of logic—something dry and abstract, detached from the explo- sive good news of the Gospel. That Newman had considerable infl uence at Vatican II is also evident in the Council's seminal Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum). There, the Council Fathers teach that the Great Tradition "that comes from the apostles makes prog- ress in the Church, with the help of the Holy Spirit....as the centuries go by, the Church is always advancing toward the plenitude of divine truth, until even- tually the words of God are fulfi lled in her." Thus did Vatican II vindicate New- man's great work on the development of doctrine, which grew from a theo- logical method that brought history, and indeed life itself, back into play as sources of refl ection and growth in our understanding of God's revelation. That Newman could make this con- tribution to the Catholic future was due to the fact that he was neither a traditionalist, who thought the Church's self-understanding frozen in amber, nor a progressive, who believed that nothing is fi nally settled in the rule of faith. Rather, Newman was a reformer devoted to history, who worked for reform-in-continuity with the Great Tradition, and who, in his explorations of the development of doctrine, helped the Church learn to tell the diŸ erence between genuine development and rupture. One reason Newman can help us "read" Vatican II, Father Ker suggests, is because he was deeply versed in the history of ecumenical councils. He knew that virtually all such mega-events in Christian history began in controversy, were conducted in controversy, and led to controversy—and unintended con- sequences, more often than not. Thus to pose "conciliarism" as an all-pur- pose tool with which to fi x what ails the Church would be, to Newman, an implausible idea, given the historical record. Newman can also help us "read" the post-Vatican II situation in which the Church fi nds herself because he knew, in the late 19th century, that trouble was brewing: "The trials that lie before us," he preached in 1873, "are such as would appall and make dizzy even such courageous hearts as St. Athana- sius, St. Gregory I, or St. Gregory VII." Why? Because a world tone-deaf to the supernatural—which Newman saw coming—would be a world in which Catholics were seen as "the enemies … of civil liberties and of human progress." Sound familiar? If so, it's because meeting that chal- lenge is the challenge of our time, through the development of an evangel- ical Catholicism that lets the world hear rumors of angels once again. Newman and Vatican II George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. The Catholic Di¡ erence GEORGE WEIGEL Tracy Murphy is a wife, mother and once communications professional for the Church, now a full-time mom. Guest Column TRACY MURPHY Giving the gift of my family Blessed John Henry Newman PAINTING BY SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS

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