nunblog

Just a reminder about Theology of the Body today (if you're reading this in the morning!).

This evening I really do want to get to Millennium Park for at least some of the evening concert with "The Stars of Lyric Opera" (including Renee Fleming!), but at a certain point, I am going to have to head due west to Daley Plaza for the Interfaith vigil observance for the 10th anniversary of the terrorists attacks on New York and Washington.
 
It's pretty important that there be a specifically religious observance (it doesn't have to be official to count!), because of the temptation out there to claim that the attacks we witnessed ten years ago are the "normal" fruit of religion. (A claim that, conveniently enough, ignores all the charitable works that, until 100 years ago, were the almost exclusive domain of religious groups.) That, plus what Cardinal George wrote of as the agenda of "aggressive secularism" "to prevent the church from acting in history" tell me that we are in a time when a new apologetics is needed. A two-fold sort of explanation and defense of the faith, with one part covering the intellectual issues (as traditional apologetics does), while the other part is a vibrant apologetics of life: the kind St Peter wrote about, that "wins over without a word" through the convincing power of a life well lived.

If religiously committed people can't offer that witness, things are dark indeed.