Theological terms like ontology and eschatology are useful shorthand expressions for “the meaning of existence” and “the end of time,” but they are mere jargon if they are not explained. St. John does not say that Jesus is the ontological essence: He says, “in Him was life.” St. Paul does not speak of realized eschatology: He says, “this present world is passing away.”

I am thinking right now especially of the word encyclical because our Holy Father has issued his first: Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) [PDF version].

An encyclical is a circular letter, the word coming from the Greek word for circle, kyklos. Over the centuries, these letters sent around the world from the Pope have come to mean specifically major teaching entrusted to the patriarchs, primates, archbishops and bishops, for use in exercising their teaching, or “prophetic,” function as they instruct the people. This function boils down on the local level to parish pulpits and even a pastor’s column in the parish bulletin and catechetical classes.

The encyclical is the template for authentic teaching, rather like Greenwich Mean Time or the Bureau of Weights and Measures. It is the weightiest form of Apostolic Letter, so-called because the bishops are successors of the Apostles. The earliest Apostolic Letters are those letters in the New Testament. The difference is that all revelation ends with the death of the last Apostle and subsequent Apostolic Letters are commentary on that unchanging truth. In the nineteenth century, Pope Pius IX used the encyclical form to condemn the errors of materialism and spiritualism. He exposed the fallacies of Communism before Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto. Leo XIII was especially prolific. Some encyclicals celebrate and amplify earlier ones, such as Quadragesimo Anno and Centesimus Annus, which were the tributes of Pius XI and John Paul II on the fortieth and one hundreth anniversaries of Leo XIII’s teaching in 1891 on social justice, Rerum Novarum.

Some of the most famous are Pascendi Dominici Gregis (Pius X), Casti Connubii (Pius XI), Humani Generis (Pius XII), Pacem in Terris (John XXIII) and Veritatis Splendor (John Paul II). Usually, the mint text is in Latin, as the official language of the Church, although in 1937, Pius XI smuggled to the German bishops Mit Brennender Sorge in the language of the people suffering under the Nazis. The most important encyclicals have been the most controversial. Paul VI’s Humanæ Vitæ caused an uproar, and seldom has an encyclical been so devastatingly on the mark in its warning and predictions.

An encyclical always requires deference in conscience and has the full authority of the Pope’s infallible charism when he designates it as irreformable evidence of natural law, Scripture and Tradition. Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical is a highly generous gift of his intellect and eloquence and, most of all, his humble service to the Word of God.

See also:

• Papal Encyclicals.net
• Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) [PDF version]
• Traductore traditore: Blowing the whistle on love
• Benedict genius est

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more.”

Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘The Raven’ was composed while his moribund wife was suffering from tuberculosis, and as such, is a study of (in Poe’s words) “the human thirst for self-torture.” In it, the narrator, mourning the death of his beautiful love, Lenore, is mysteriously visited by a talking raven.

Written in trochaic octameter — i.e., lines of 8 pairs of syllables, the first with strong stress, the second with weak stress — all 18 verses have the same form. As the narrator’s night terror increases, the conserved meter contrasts the growing tension and anxiety. Its use of language, alliteration, internal rhymes, and archaic vocabulary, enhances the Gothic tenor of the piece. An instant sensation when it first appeared in the Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845, it is considered by many to be the best American poem ever written.

Read more »

A review of some statistics from our fiftieth anniversary year provides some interesting information: In 2005, we had 47 marriages (not counting the weddings of parishioners performed in other parts of the country or abroad), 69 baptisms and 8 funerals. Compared with just five years ago, this represents a 31 percent increase in marriages, a 98 percent increase in baptisms and an 11 percent decrease in deaths.

In a society whose average age is getting older, our parish is getting younger and more fecund. Even with all the canonical and pastoral work involved in marriage preparation, each wedding is a unique joy. It is especially gratifying that our baptisms have doubled in just a few years. We hear the voices of the little ones all about us in church, and if we hush their decibels, we are stifling the hope of the future. The decline in deaths may indicate that Murray Hill is a healthy place, but all of us pray for a happy death in the hope of resurrection to life eternal.

Amidst these happy statistics is the grim one which has appeared in various newspapers and magazines of late, sometimes begrudgingly, and sometimes with a sense of embarassment, and often with an appropriate sense of horror: Our city is the deadliest city in the nation for babies. Ten percent of all abortions in the United States take place in the state of New York, and 7 percent of these take place in the city of New York. In 2004, there were 124,100 live births in the city and 91,700 induced abortions. This is almost double the national average. Between 1996 and 2004, the number of abortions performed here for out-of-town women increased from 57 to 70 out of every 1,000. Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Center in Manhattan provides 11,000 abortions each year.

In the blinkered moral vision of our time, it is possible in the same hospital to have the latest technology struggling to save premature babies and to destroy other babies even older. Our city is prosperous and dazzling to behold, but it also conceals this darkest secret. Some consciences have become so debased that they take pride in what the Second Vatican Council called this abominable crime. The recent Senate hearings on the Alito nomination highlighted the poverty of moral discourse in high places.

These days also are an octave of prayer for Christian unity. There can be no unity with those dying religious sects that try to reconcile Christ and the destruction of his unborn sons and daughters. This Sunday, many of our parishioners, including older altar servers, will be traveling to Washington for the March of Life. Their absence from us will be our presence. I give my own thanks that our parish is a beacon of light in the darkness of our current “Culture of Death.”