Three Impediments to the Christian Faith that St. Augustine Overcame, and Why They Still Matter

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Image: www.economist.com

Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear. – J.R.R. Tolkien

Many of the things get in the way of Christian faith and have remain remarkably consistent through the ages. Here are three roadblocks that St. Augustine, whose feast we celebrate tomorrow, had to overcome before fully embracing the Catholic faith, as described in his autobiographical Confessions.

1. Disordered Sexuality

When it comes to sex, St. Augustine wears his heart on his sleeve in the Confessions, speaking with remarkable frankness. He is famous for relating that as young man he used to pray, ‘Give me chastity and continence, but not yet’ (VIII, 7). Unfortunately, he lived in a culture, not unlike ours, in which chastity was seen as unmanly. When his friends boasted of their own conquests, he was eager not to lose face with them:

Does God Answer Prayers?

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

There will be an answer—let it be. – Paul McCartney

Does God answer prayers? This is one of the most common religious questions out there. It cuts straight to the question of what kind of relationship we can have with God. It informs how—or even whether—we pray. And it quickly branches out to a multitude of related questions. How can God answer conflicting prayer requests? If God doesn’t answer all our prayers, how can we know which he will answer? What kinds of things should we ask for and what should we not ask for?

I would like to suggest that asking whether God answers prayers is often the wrong question. Usually, it comes out of anxiety or unreflective doubts. Assurance that God “answers” requests is taken to be a sort of proof of faith. In such situations, the question that people should really be interested in is, “Is God listening to me?” And this is really distinct from whether he grants requests.

Seatback Entertainment: Progress or Stultification?

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

The medium is the massage. – Marshall McLuhan

I have always enjoyed flying, which is a blessing given that my current position involves a fair amount of travel. Apart from the security lines, I profit from the down-time in the lounge, I enjoy looking out the window of the aeroplane, and I actually like the little meals they bring right to your seat as though you were an astronaut. Finally, I appreciate the opportunity to watch films. A large fraction of the movies I see are at ten thousand metres off the ground.

The Astonishing Givenness of the World

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Photo: John O'Brien, SJ

The whole of nature is something prepared for us, composed for us, given to us, delivered into our care by a supernatural dispensation. – David B. Hart

Being suddenly struck by the sight of the full moon is one of those commonly disarming experiences. The other night as I was walking down the street, I looked up and there it was, perfectly round and full and low on the horizon next to a church spire. I had not been at all aware of its phase, and it took me a bit by surprise. There it just was.

There is a mix of the familiar and the strange when one sees the full moon in this way—or any other weird or beautiful thing: a bridge over a river, a deer in the path, even the dripping of an icicle outside the window. It is not that it is something entirely new, for these are all things that are commonly seen, but rather the being surprised at all by its simple presence that is disarming: one is suddenly reminded that it is, rather than what it is. Such unexpected encounters are, I think, not uncommon, though some more than others have cultivated an attitude that makes them more alive to the sheer givenness of things in the world.

Justice and Peace and Galaxies

By Adam Hincks, S.J.


(Photo: VIS - news.va)

I found Him in the shining of the stars. –Tennyson

What do galaxies have to do with justice and peace? It is perhaps a curious question to ask, but it is one that came up during the 2014 Vatican Observatory Summer School held last month. This four week programme, offered every two years, is for beginning graduate students or upper-year undergraduates in astronomy. One of its unique features is that a maximum of two students are accepted from any one country, making it a very international experience. The school this year, on the topic of “Galaxies: Near and Far, Old and Young”, had twenty-five students from twenty-three countries.

Missing Mass with the Pope

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Santa Maria di Trastevere, Rome.

Kyrk þerinne watȝ non ȝete,         No church building was there [in heaven]
Chapel ne temple þat euer watȝ set.   Nor was chapel or temple ever set there. – Pearl

This month I am at the Vatican Observatory just outside Rome, helping with their biannual summer school, about which I will probably write an article when it is finished. In the meantime, one of the many benefits of the school is its relative proximity to the Eternal City, which I visited on Pentecost Sunday. I was greeted at the bus stop by fellow Canadian, Fr. Michael Czerny, S.J., who lives a stone’s throw from St. Peter’s Basilica. We had originally intended to attend the mass at the basilica, but due to a mix-up in our scheduling, it had already started by the time I arrived. So instead, we went to a small chapel in the Jesuit curia a couple of blocks away and the two of us celebrated mass there.

Misology: A Most Terrible Disease

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

A little learning is a dangerous thing
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
– Pope

The human race is afflicted by many diseases, but one of the great benefits of modern science has been the successful elimination or treatment of a great number of them. And although some illnesses remain, there is still reasonable hope that they, too, will be conquered by medical progress. But there are some diseases which medicine of the body will never be able to confront. Their cures lie only in the will of the diseased.

The Blessing of Wounded Hands

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Claude (right), whose grandmother was murdered by his neighbour, Innocent (left).
Claude forgave Innocent and the men have now reconciled.
From the book "As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda", by Catherine Claire Larson.

Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. 

– Oscar Wilde

The risen body of Jesus Christ is wounded. This fact about the resurrection has been more present to me than usual this Easter, probably prompted by a homily that I heard during the Octave of Easter. The wounds of Christ were also mentioned by Pope Francis on Divine Mercy Sunday when he canonised John XXXIII and John Paul II:

The wounds of Jesus are a scandal, a stumbling block for faith, yet they are also the test of faith. That is why on the body of the risen Christ the wounds never pass away: they remain, for those wounds are the enduring sign of God’s love for us. They are essential for believing in God. Not for believing that God exists, but for believing that God is love, mercy and faithfulness. Saint Peter, quoting Isaiah, writes to Christians: “By his wounds you have been healed”.

So, You’re Reading the Title of This Blog Entry

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Though a limited series, it was one from which he had acquired more sound information by diligent perusal than many a man of opportunities has done from a furlong of laden shelves.
— On Gabriel Oak’s tiny library in Far from the Madding Crowd

Now you are continuing on to read its first sentence. Before you go any further, stop and ask yourself what are the chances that you will read every sentence of this blog article, right through to the end, without checking your email, looking at Facebook, texting a friend, following a hyperlink, or interrupting in any other similar way. If you are like me and are honest with yourself, the chances are small! How many online articles do we merely skim, glance at, or half-heartedly scroll through, desultorily highlighting random snippets of text?

Devotions: Overcoming Our Embarrassments

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Alcove shrine, San Antonio, Texas

Editor's note: This begins a series on Catholic devotions — why they matter, what they're made of, what they are not. In a strong and prescriptive phrase in his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola wrote "we ought to praise not only the building and adornment of churches, but also the images and veneration of them according to what they represent." He seemed to press the point even further, writing "we should show our esteem for the relics of the saints by venerating them and praying to the saints. We should praise visits to Station Churches, pilgrimages, indulgences, jubilees, crusade insults, and the lighting of candles in churches." For some, these devotions are the spiritual life-blood of the believing Church; for others they may seem simplistic or quaint. But in the spirit of our founder, we, too, seek to explore and understand the powerful role of devotions in the Church today.

Once when I was at mass in the village of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, I heard a disturbance at the main doors behind me. Some village folk were coming down the warped wooden aisle of the seventeenth century church carrying large dolls or statues of the Virgin Mary. They placed them a little to the side of the front of the church, and I noticed for the first time that there were other such statues gathered there; they seemed all to be home-made. Meanwhile, the priest did not bat an eyelid, but continued with the service, and the newcomers, having completed their delivery, joined the congregation. After mass, I learned that all the statues would be blessed by the pastor.

Darren Aronofsky’s Noah and the Dominion of Man

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too.
– Blake
Consider the following well-known passage from the Bible.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; may they rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the beasts and over everything of the earth and over all creeping things that creep upon the earth.” And God created man in his image: in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:26–27)

Much Christian theology and anthropology is based on the doctrine that man is created in God’s image, but rarely is the connexion made today between man being made in God’s image and man being made to rule over the creatures of the world. Clearly, the Biblical text links the two, if only by their proximity. It is, moreover, possible to translate the first verse as, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, so that he may rule etc.” (c.f., the NIV rendering). Finally, it is not possible to soften the notion of man ruling over other creatures. The Hebrew verb used here (רדה) is consistently employed elsewhere in the Bible to denote ruling, having dominion, and even subduing (e.g., 1 Kings 4:24, Ezekiel 29:15, Isaiah 14:6).

Thoughts from Oxford University

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days – such as that day when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning. – Evelyn Waugh (on Oxford)

Last week I had the good fortune of visiting Oxford University to attend a meeting of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) collaboration. Though I had passed through the city once as a child, I retained no memories. And so, upon returning, I manfully pushed aside any romantic images of this venerable institution that centuries of literature and hearsay inevitably inspire. After all, here in the twenty-first century it would have motor buses, shops and, surely, at least a few hideous buildings dating from the nineteen sixties. Perhaps, I thought, there would be traces lingering of the Oxford of a hundred years ago, but I was here for a meeting.

Were Jesus & Mary Free in the Face of Temptation?

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Jesus Returning in the Spirit,  John Lee Vince

Eden raised in the waste Wilderness.–Milton

The gospel from last Sunday’s mass in the Roman Rite was Matthew’s account of the temptation of Christ. Its themes are very topical as we enter into Lent and reflect on how we respond to temptation in our own lives. Further, the fact that Jesus was tempted is a key point of his incarnation. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, for example, sees this as central to the efficacy of Jesus’s mission: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” (Heb. 4:15)

There is, however, probably a nagging thought in the back of many of our minds as we listen to this gospel: was Jesus really tempted in the same way that we were? After all, he was the Son of God. Wasn’t it somehow easier for him? I have heard similar objections to the doctrine of Mary’s immaculate conception. If Mary was born without original sin, doesn’t that make her assent to Gabriel’s message less powerful? Was she really free to say “yes” if she hadn’t ever experienced saying “no” to God?

Last Sunday I Witnessed an Exorcism

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you're gonna have to serve somebody.
– Bob Dylan
Once when I was talking to a priest the topic turned to exorcisms. He nonchalantly told me that he had performed an exorcism just the other day. Taken aback, I hesitantly asked him what the circumstances were, not wanting to trespass on anything that wasn’t my business. He calmly replied that he performed exorcisms quite routinely, and then, seeing my incredulity, explained that the rite of baptism includes a prayer of exorcism. Before the actual sacrament is administered in the Latin Rite, the priest prays to Christ who was sent “to cast out the power of Satan, spirit of evil, to rescue man from the kingdom of darkness, and bring him into the splendour of your kingdom of light”.

The Heart of the Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,

And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, naught could remove,

Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage. – The Prologue

Aeroplanes are a great place to watch films that one wouldn’t ordinarily see, and it was in this way that I saw last year’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. It was a rather bold production, for the screenplay is a hybrid of Shakespeare’s script and the pen of the film’s screenwriter. The “new parts” are also in verse, complete with many rhyming couplets, and the writer attempts to emulate Shakespeare’s ingenious use of imagery, simile and metaphor. In the end, however, this endeavour falls quite flat: I was surprised at how easy it was to detect whose voice was whose, and the transitions from the contemporary poet to the immortal bard were jarring. I would have been happier with more of William and less of his imitator. Coupled with wooden acting from Hailee Steinfeld, who played Juliet, this made the film a failure in my estimation, despite its impressive production design, good score and an excellent performance from Paul Giamatti as Friar Laurence.

Nevertheless, I was intrigued by the mystery screenwriter, not only for his daring attempt, but also because of a distinctive Catholic voice to the screenplay: musings on the mystery of Providence, retaining a reference to purgatory and the greatly amplified role of Friar Laurence were all clues to this. When I came to write this article, I found that my intuition was correct: the screenwriter was none other than the English Catholic Julian Fellowes, most famous for penning Gosford Park and Downton Abbey, and whom I have mentioned before on this blog.

God, Atoms and Horrid Red Things

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Eye of God Nebula  (Image: karenquinto.com)

Simple truth miscalled simplicity. – Shakespeare

Earlier this month the New Republic did something rather brazen: it published an article attacking a book that the author freely admits he did not read. In the piece, outspoken atheist Jerry A. Coyne claims that he is not impressed by David Bentley Hart’s new book, The Experience of God and amazingly, without having read the work, he concludes that Hart’s thesis is “meaningless”. Now, I have not read Hart’s book either, but I have studied enough philosophy to know that the main idea Coyne finds so opaque—that “God is the condition of the possibility of anything existing at all”—is one of the oldest and most venerable notions of God, arguably going all the way back to Plato, and traditionally believed to be reflected in Exodus 3. It is certainly not meaningless, even if great minds have disagreed about it.

Is Sherlock Holmes the Paragon of Human Rationality?

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

What would philosopher Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (centre) say about Sherlock Holmes?

In the ideal detective story the reader is given all the clues yet fails to spot the criminals. 

– Bernard Lonergan

“Elementary!”, Sherlock Holmes is famous for saying to a baffled Dr. Watson when he grasps a key insight for solving a crime. There is something magical about Sherlock Holmes’s ability to see evidence in clues that people around him miss. It is a skill that we all admire and desire to possess for ourselves. Perhaps this is the reason the popularity of the two current television adaptations of this fictional detective, Sherlock (set in modern London) and Elementary (set in modern Manhattan). Both depict not only Sherlock’s uncanny intelligence but also his eccentric character and lack of social skills. Juxtaposed with his cerebral skills, these traits that make him a very entertaining character to watch.

In many ways, Sherlock Holmes’s methods of solving crime exemplifies the thought of a great Canadian Jesuit philosopher of the last century. Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) believed that the key to solving many problems in philosophy, theology and other sciences is to grasp what we are actually doing when we come to know something. He explained that there are three fundamental, interlocking processes involved in knowing:

Jesus and Isaac

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

Abraham Sacrificing Isaac, Gerhard Wilhelm von Reutern, 1849.

Unlike anyone else, Our Lord came on earth, not to live, but to die. –Fulton Sheen

One Christmas gift my community received was a copy of this year’s television miniseries The Bible. The first episode, which I watched on Boxing Day, covers the whole book of Genesis. Needless to say, given that it was only an hour long, the writers had to be very selective about what to include. For example, Jacob and Esau, as well as Joseph and his brothers, are omitted entirely. On the other hand, one of the most famous stories of the book (if not the whole Bible) is given ample attention: the Binding of Isaac. I thought the film did a decent job of conveying the range of emotions that are present in the story, and it recalled to me how I have often thought of this peculiar and yet strangely powerful narrative.

Nelson Mandela and the Embodiment a Socratic Paradox

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

(Image: biography.com)

The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity. – Mandela

I was out of town at a meeting when Nelson Mandel died and learned of his passing early in the morning when I glanced at a newspaper box. Even though I knew he had been in poor health, the news surprised me and I felt the weight of a great period in history coming to an end.

I have always been inspired by Mandela. Several years of my childhood were spent in Lesotho, the small, independent nation surrounded by South Africa. Although much poorer, it was a kind of haven from the senseless and often brutal apartheid that existed in its gigantic neighbour. I remember watching on television when Mandela was released from prison and the swift changes that began happening across the border. But since Mandela died two weeks ago, my memory keeps returning to an old, abandoned house not too far from where we lived. Riddled with bullet-holes and stained by the soot of fire, it had been an African National Congress (ANC) hideout that the South African army had assaulted by helicopter a few years before we moved there. I suppose this image comes back to me as a reminder of the oppression which Mandela devoted his life to eradicate.

Christ With Us in the Scriptures

It occurred to the editors of Ibo that there was one basic question, so fundamental to the Christian life, that it demanded to be explored for greater profit of both ourselves and our faithful readers. Quite simply, the question was this: What are the ways Christ promised to be with us? “That’s so obvious!” the reader might cry. Perhaps. But it is nonetheless an important question. Unless we know the primary ways of encountering the living God in the bracing reality of our lives, the faith risks becoming an abstraction at best, an ideology at worst. There are four privileged ways we know of in which Christ manifests himself to his people in the here-and-now. Four writers are exploring these in a series of four short articles. The first is here, the second is here, the third is here. This is the fourth and final one.

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

(Image: redletterchristians.org)

Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. –St. Jerome

Every time we hear a reading from the Bible at mass, the lector concludes by saying, “The Word of the Lord,” and we respond, “Thanks be to God.” In this simple exchange, we acknowledge the centrality of the written texts of our faith in our experience of God. For although the Bible is a product of many human authors living in many concrete times and cultures, it is not merely a human book: we believe that in it, God reveals himself to his people. As taught by the Second Vatican Council, all parts of the Bible “have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself” (Dei Verbum, §11).

Thus, the Word of God as recorded in Sacred Scripture is one of the privileged ways that the Lord Jesus is with us. To explore this further, I would like to consider two traditional approaches to interpreting the text of the Bible. The first is as the Book of Scripture, complementary to the Book of Nature that is studied by the natural sciences. The second is the distinction between the literal and spiritual senses that coexist in the sacred writings.